Hey there. It's Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson and Labor Day weekend is coming up in the United States. This is the type of holiday weekend, maybe you have this in your culture, where there's a lot of picnics, there's a lot of short weekend getaways, there's a lot of visiting homes and potlucks. There's a lot of food events. In this vlog, I just want to talk about all the ways that we abandon ourselves when these types of weekend events happen. We go to parties or to picnics and we don't take care of ourselves sometimes the way we know that we should. And this kind of wobble in our Bright Line Eating® journey can grow actually after that, where a little slip becomes a bigger slip and suddenly, we find ourselves in the ditch and eating in uncontrollable ways. And so, I just want to talk about some of the sources of that self-abandonment.
I would say that there's three major ways that I see people doing this during events like Labor Day weekend. I would say one of them is not taking the time to plan ahead enough, not enough preparation. So for example, an all day picnic can be a food disaster if you haven't really thought through your day's meals and what you're going to eat and brought your food with you. If you do think through what you're going to eat and bring your food with you, it's easy peasy lemon squeezy. Everybody's grilling and barbecuing and doing what they're doing, and when it's mealtime, you bring out your lunch that you're excited to eat, it's delicious and you've weighed and measured it. It's no sugar, no flour, it's exactly what you want to be eating. It's just so much easier to eat none of what everybody else is making than to try to pick through and find something that works and then not know how much of it you're eating.
If you just take the time to plan and prepare enough, events like this can be just joyful. And what's interesting is that Parts of us often scream, "But that's not really participating. I want to be there with everybody. I don't want to have to eat my own food." And what's interesting is that what most of us find who do Bright Line Eating is that we actually get freed up to be with the people who are there more when our food is handled because then for the hours leading up to our lunch meal and the hours afterwards, we're actually present. We're actually able to play volleyball and go on the slip and slide and do fun things. We don't have to be obsessed about frankly what's on that buffet table and perseverating on it and noticing that geez, nobody actually brought a salad that isn't filled with sweet craziness and candied pecans and stuff.
We can arrive at an event without preparing, assuming there'll be food for us. And there may not be. There may actually not be. I've gone to some events where it's like, okay, there's actually nothing I can eat here. So long ago I made a commitment to just bring my own food to gatherings like this. Okay. So that's one big category of self-abandonment I see is just not taking the time to plan and prepare.
Another category of self-abandonment has to do with people and people pleasing and codependency, frankly. If we were on our own, we'd be more than happy to bring our own lunch, but we're worried about embarrassing our spouse or disappointing our mother-in-law who always bakes or we're embarrassed to bring our Tupperware to a town picnic or parade. There are so many ways that we get embarrassed or codependent trying to take care of other people's feelings. It's interesting, this is why I often activate the peanut allergy metaphor, where if other people were. If someone had baked us peanut butter cookies and we were allergic to peanuts, their emotions about the situation wouldn't factor in that strongly. We'd be sorry to disappoint them, but if we have an anaphylactic shock reaction to eating peanuts, their peanut butter cookies are not tempting for us. We're not about to say, "Oh, well, I hate to disappoint them." That's not where our head's at. It suddenly becomes very easy to find the words of, "I'm so sorry you went through all that trouble to make these for me, but I totally can't eat these. I'm so sorry. I have a peanut allergy, and I love you and it's got nothing to do with you, but I can't eat them." And so, when we have a level of conviction about what we're doing here in Bright Line Eating, when it really does become a matter of life and death, when it is the linchpin of our happiness, our flourishing, our well-being, everything we want for ourselves and want in life is on the other side of just staying Bright for goodness sakes, it becomes that much of a no-brainer to just take care of ourselves with food.
I know because I've been doing it for 23 years. The reality is that the people who matter won't mind and the people who mind don't matter. God bless them, but honestly, the people who mind don't matter, truly. And not to say that this might be your spouse, it might be your mother-in-law, so not to say that they don't matter, but it's more to the point of just like if someone was still pushing you to eat those peanut butter cookies, their pressure wouldn't matter. That's what I mean. It's like when you're really convicted about why you do what you do and who you are when it comes to food, that pressure just doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You can love them anyway and find the words. The words will come born out of your conviction.
I'm saying it as if it's easy, but those of you who get stuck in traps of lack of boundaries and codependency around food and trying to people please, know that it's not easy. It's really not. It's a trick to find in yourself the courage of your own convictions and to leave to others what's theirs to handle, to let them have their disappointment, to let them have their frustration, to let them have their perspective on it, to let them think badly of you. If they do, to let them, right? Thank you, Mel Robbins, the let them idea. It does take something to shift your mindset of, I'm going to do what's right for me and I'm going to let them feel however they feel about it. It's not my job to regulate their emotions. My job is to live my life and I'm doing quite well at it. Thank you very much.
The last category of self-abandonment that I see over holiday weekends like this is looking at that food a bit too much without strong mental boundaries, without slamming the door against those food thoughts, without having a strong, clear mantra that you use. The minute any of that food starts to look remotely enticing, mine is, "Thank you God, that's not my food. That's poison to me." And I say it and really think about the poison that that food inflicts on my life and my soul, my thoughts, my emotions, my feelings in my skin. I don't want that food in my system. It's poison to me. And being willing to slam the door on those food thoughts really quickly and then turn your attention elsewhere so that you get out of the weekend without a lot of pecs, post-event collapse syndrome, P-E-C-S, PECS. If you let yourself think about that food and stare at it too much, fondle it too much in your mind, what happens is after the weekend, you're exhausted from all the mental effort. Maybe you didn't break your Bright Lines, but the thoughts of all that food got you pretty close and suddenly your program is a lot weaker and your mental state is a lot weaker and you've got PECS to deal with now, post-event collapse syndrome, where you've got to be very careful about not breaking your Bright Lines after the weekend is over. Oftentimes people will successfully avoid eating whatever's at an event like this and then end up finding the exact same or similar foods to eat in the days afterwards because of their lack of mental fortitude during the event itself. They let those foods creep into their psyche and they start to do a number on us really in the back of our minds.
The underlying theme here has to do with inner conflict and us being someone who's clear about what we're doing and aligned deep inside. It's not always easy to clear away inner conflicts and live in peace and well-resourced deep inside. It's not easy at all. It's not a trivial thing. As we live our Bright Line Eating journey for a little bit, often we find that we have to do the inner work. We have to do the inner work to become someone who is clear, peaceful, resourced and aligned enough to be able to navigate a weekend like Labor Day weekend successfully in the ways that I'm talking about.
Luckily right after Labor Day weekend, starting on Tuesday, the Tuesday after Labor Day, which I believe is September 8th, I'm offering a webinar and I think I'm offering it twice that week. It's live. There won't be a recording, but it is live and there's two showings so you can pick the one you want to go to. It's all about having inner peace and the power of becoming resourced, the power of becoming resourced deep inside so that we're not caught up and mired in inner conflicts that keep us from being able to plan ahead, that keep us from being able to say no thank you with grace and that keep us from being able to slam the door on those food thoughts before they become like worms eating out our brains and leading to bad outcomes down the line. It takes inner work. As you stay Bright, you'll see. As you stay Bright, what you'll find is you've got to do the inner work in order to be someone who can live peacefully in a well-resourced state long term as you're Bright. In this webinar, I'm going to teach you the three-step process for doing that and how I've done that work over time and just some super advanced tips and tricks from someone who's been on this path for 30 years doing inner work. I've been doing inner work now for 32 year and it's one of my favorite things to teach. It's a free webinar. Catch it if you can. No worries if not. The link to register is down below. That's the weekly vlog. I love you so much and I will see you next week.
