|
Home
Up
Exercise Alert
Exercise ANGER
Exercise CHILD
Exercise LETGO
| |
 Tools for a
Balanced Lifestyle
A Program of Recovery from Weight Related Problems
Going for the 3 increases: Increase of Health; Increase of Happiness and
Increase of Energy
Chapter 2:
Exercise to Live
IV.
The Exercise LETTING GO
When the cavemen and
cavewomen were needing to be active physically in order to survive, what they
did not need was some authoritarian controller who intimidated them to "get
out there and work your hardest to get our food." They needed to work hard
to get food anyway and didn't need someone to nag, coerce, compel or demand that
they be active physically. If someone in their cave community had tried to
intimidate them to "exercise" the strong likelihood existed that they
would have felt angry, resentful, rebellious and defiant and not wanted to go
out to be physically active to get their prey. Unfortunately for the cavepeople,
if they reacted negatively to such intimidation to exercise, they would have
never survived and probably would have died if they refused to actively pursue
their food. So too you cannot resist the necessity to put exercise into your
life, because you find this program, author or class leader triggering your
sense of being intimidated or coerced to exercise. This sense of being coreced
may be due to the rhetoric used in this program about exercise being as vital to
living as food, water and air.
If after hearing the
necessity for exercise to maintain a healthy lifestyle, you are finding yourself
feeling compelled, angry, coerced, mandated, cheated, or intimidated to do so
you might be reacting in a "control" way to the sense of your
"external locus of control" demanding that you meet a certain set of
conditions or expectation in order for you to gain approval, acceptance or
recognition in this program. More importantly you might be currently fearing
that your retention in this program is imperiled if you do not immediately
implement an exercise program in your life. This sense of being intimidated into
doing something in order to gain someone else's approval might be triggering in
you the same old negative tapes in your head when an "authoritarian,"
"autocratic," "critical," or "demanding" parent,
relative, teacher, or significant other tried to intimidate you to meet certain
conditions in order to be loved, accepted or approved. What might be triggered
by the messages, both explicit and implicit in this program about exercise, are
actions which imply resentment, rebellion, resentment, sadness, depression,
anger, passive aggressiveness or lack of desire to comply. These actions might
be tied into old control modes from your past of helplessness or overdependency.
Helplessness came from the
belief that "No matter what I do, it will never be good enough to get the
other's approval, recognition or acceptance. So why try." This resulted in
you waiting for the other to do it for you or to make it easier for you to
accomplish. Today this form of control might look like the excuses: "I
don't have time to put exercise into my life." "I can't exercise the
way others do and I feel foolish trying." "I could never exercise in
front of others, I would feel so silly and stupid looking." "I don't
know what type of exercise is right for me." "I don't know what they
mean by exercise." "Explain again to me what you mean, I don't get
it." This helplessness is a form of manipulation to get the intimidating
other off your back. It is a protest about your lack of desire to be forced into
doing anything you really do not want to do. If the cavepeople were helpless
they would have died. The result of the helplessness mode, in not implementing a
healthy level of exercise and physical activity into your life, could be your
self-destruction and untimely death. You need to let go of your helplessness
concerning exercise so that you can survive.
Overdependence came from the
belief that "I am nothing emotionally, spiritually or intellectually unless
a significant other accepts, approves, values, recognizes, reinforces or loves
me." This resulted in you accepting the conditions, expectations, demands
and self-scripts which that significant other set for you, no matter how
difficult it was for you to attain. This need to please and get praise from the
other would lead you to resort to manipulation and conning to try to convince
the other you were achieving or doing what was desired, even if you hated or
despised doing it. What was important was to be taken care of emotionally and to
gain the support of this other, even if what was expected was outrageous or
demeaning for you to perform. You learned to be a people pleaser so as to get
the crumbs from this other's emotional banquet. You were never able to feel
fully complete or satisfied and became addicted or compulsive about getting the
emotional support from others. At the same time you grew to resent and hate the
power you gave these others to make you feel the way you felt about yourself.
You internally were rebellious and jealous of how they controlled you, when in
reality it was you who were controlling the situation by placing the others in
such a powerful position in your life. Are you falling back into your old
control mode of overdependence by doing exercise only to get your need for
emotional support from the class leader or the group? If yes, then you are not
doing exercise for yourself, but rather you are doing it for the others in your
"external locus of control." This naturally leads to resentment,
hostility and rebellion against these others for having the power to influence
how you feel about yourself. With this will come a lack of commitment to
exercise and eventual decrease of this healthy activity in your life. If the
cavepeople decreased their level of physical activity because they resented the
other cave dwellers for only loving them if they were active, they would
eventually die of starvation. You too could die out of your over controlling
mode of overdependence on others for emotional support because you will most
probably cease to exercise if you do not get enough external positive
reinforcement for doing it. You need to let go of the overdependence you have
placed on others for emotional support. You need to become emotionally
independent and depend only on your own emotional reinforcement of yourself for
exercising.
LET GO
is the system by which you can let go of the need to be helpless or
overdependent on others when it comes to doing exercise. By letting go of these
control modes you will first reduce the stress, anxiety, tension and possible
severe emotional distress you have been feeling over the necessity to implement an exercise
program into your life. What LET GO will do for you is to help you to
accept personal responsibility for doing exercise for yourself. It will help you
to own the messages of the Tools for a Balanced Lifestyle Program as your
own messages. It will help you to not allow yourself to feel intimidated,
coerced or compelled by this program to exercise. You will begin to exercise
because you "want to" instead of because you "have to." This
program cannot become effective for you as long as you do not incorporate it
into your "internal locus of control." LET GO will enable you
to internalize the necessity of exercise as vital to your life. It will lead you
to want to survive and live a healthy life through exercising and increasing
your level of physical activity.
The more you let go of the control response to the message of exercise in this
program, the more serenity and peace you will possess within yourself since you
will be doing something to improve your survivability instead of your
self-destructiveness. You have five steps to take in the LET GO process.
First: you need to Lighten
the Pressure to be helpless or overdependent in response to the necessity to
implement exercise in your life. This will require that you complete the ALERT,
ANGER and CHILD systems approach to exercise in the first three
sections of this chapter. This will assist you to become more rational about the
need for exercise in your life. It will release some of the anger and resentment
you have about the need to exercise to hopefully open your heart and mind to
this message. It will lastly give you a chance to self-nurture yourself through
self-forgiveness for not exercising more regularly in your life already. This
will help you to lighten the pressure to resort to your old unhealthy forms of
control such as helplessness or overdependence to deal with the need to
exercise.
Second: you need to Exercise
your Rights to not control others through manipulation, conning or
people pleasing in regards to exercising. You need to accept personal
responsibility for your own life and put exercise into it for it to be healthy
and strong. This step involves you in accepting that you have the power to make
exercise happen in your life. This means that you do not need anyone to
intimidate, coerce, nag or compel you to exercise. That you freely choose to
exercise because you want to live. You begin to say self-affirmations like:
-
I am exercising to save my life.
-
I am exercising only for my own approval and recognition.
-
I am in control of my own life.
-
I am competent and capable of exercising for my health.
Third: you need to Take
Steps necessary to prevent you falling back into helplessness or
overdependence because you feel resentment, resistance, rebellion or lack of
interest or desire to exercise. You need to implement a structure in your life
which frees others of the responsibility to rescue you if you should fail to
live up to your personal commitment to implement exercise in your life. This
means that from this point forward in the Tools for a Balanced Lifestyle
Program, you will no longer be required to hand in the weekly exercise
sheet. You will be expected to do this sheet for yourself each week and put it
in your program manual. You need to take all steps necessary to insure that you
alone are the sole person for whom you are exercising. You need to continually
monitor to insure that you do not fall back into exercising only to meet the
expectation of this program. You need to take steps to own the messages of this
program so that the message that exercise is essential for life is your message
to yourself which motivates you to continue to exercise for yourself. You begin
to say:
-
I own the Balance Lifestyle Program's messages as personal messages to
myself.
-
I am doing this balanced lifestyle effort only for me.
-
I only need my affirmation and support to be successful in exercising.
-
I let go of the need for the approval of others for my efforts to
exercise.
Fourth: you need to Give
Up the Need to try to get others to make it easier for you or to do
it for you when it comes to exercising. You need to accept that exercise is a
personal thing and that you cannot hold anyone else personally responsible if
you cease to exercise in the future. You alone are responsible for the level of
exercise in your life. You need to give up the need to blame or hold others
responsible for that which only you have control over in your life.
Putting exercise into your life is to accept your responsibility for your
own life. Take ownership of your own life by not needing to pull others into
your need to exercise. It is best that your exercise program not involve doing
it with others, so that you do not slip back into overdependence on others to be
responsible for you exercising.
Fifth: you need to Order your
Life so that you can maintain the serenity gained from taking control and
responsibility of your own life and the need for exercise in it. This entails
letting your support people know that you need to exercise only for yourself.
You need to let them know that you cannot expect or want them to reinforce you
for what you are doing in your life. You need to set yourself up as the sole
person responsible to reinforce your exercise efforts to prevent backsliding or
relapsing into helplessness or overdependence when it comes to the need to have
exercise in your life.
There are other
possibilities about the need to let go of control when it comes to the need to
exercise to live. To explore these other control issues more, read the Tools
for Handling Control Issues. Those of us who have controlling natures need to let
go of the need for such control if we are to be successful in exercising to
live.
Related Tools for Coping
Readings:
1. Self-Esteem Seekers
Anonymous
2.Tools for Relationships
3. Tools for Handling
Loss
4. Tools for Handling
Control
\
To proceed to the next
section in Chapter 2: Exercise to Live in the Tools for Balanced Lifestyle
click on the topic below:
|
Coping.org:
Tools for Coping
with Life's
Stressors
Coping.org
is a Public Service of James J. Messina, Ph.D. & Constance M. Messina, Ph.D.,
Email: