My Surrender Experiment: My Body (Part 1) E146

May 21, 2024

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I am taking you on a personal experiment. I am sharing it all with you while I let go of a part of me that I wanted to let go of for such a long time. The part of me that dislikes her body. Now is the time in my life when I am ready to do this. And I take you with me!

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This journey started about 2 years ago. Obviously, it’s not over yet – otherwise, we wouldn’t have this conversation today. I am at a significant step where I am going to experiment with the concept of surrendering which I learned from Michael Singer. I will take you along with me while I am going through this step on my change journey. So there will be further episodes where I update you on my progress and insights.

The steps I’ve taken so far and the ones I am about to take, can be applied to any situation in your life that you would like to let go of or change. For my experiment, it’s going to be my relationship with my body.

I started at my highest weight about 2 years ago when I decided to do something about my relationship with my body (show pictures from my Miami Photoshoot). Until then I tried a lot of things for over a decade or so to lose weight. But these things always just worked for a while and when I stopped I would put on all the weight from before and then some. If body weight is one of your topics in this life, you know what I am talking about.

Over the last 2 years, I lost some weight but not such an amount that I could say I am done and happy with my body. I will share with you how I lost that initial weight and it’s not going to be through dieting or restricting myself but through inner work. And what that means is what you will discover in this episode.

This works on any change you want to make

I am going to walk you through the steps on my journey that I experienced over the last 2 years with my body. Only now in reflection can I see how wonderful this works for all kinds of situations in your life. But going through it, I had no idea that this was a natural progression. It did not feel natural or progressive going through it.

You can apply these levels of change that I went through to any other situation in your life which you’ve not been able to change yet but have tried so many times. For example, if you want to change a relationship with someone in your life, like a partner, parent, child or friend. Or you want to change a habit like smoking, eating unhealthy foods or drinking alcohol. Or you try to get a new job, new home or new relationship. You can apply it to literally anything where you tried and failed so far.

So let’s get started!

The physical level of change

For most of my adult life, I had a very negative mindset about my body. I would shame myself, say awful things about my body and criticise myself at any given chance. I tried a few diets and restrictions and all of them worked for a while and when I would stop them, my weight would creep back up. Over the years I would just get bigger and bigger and with that came an increase in my negative self-talk. You could literally call it self-hate.

I tried to change my relationship with my body by changing my body. It’s the physical level, the first level of change, that I focused on for most of my adult life. But I can say now for sure it doesn’t work for me. I even restricted myself at certain times over the last 2 years with no significant impact on my body weight. Once I did not drink alcohol for 10 months and last month I stopped having any sweats, cakes, alcohol and sugary drinks. It had no impact on my body weight. That already tells me, it’s not the solution for me and probably for lots of you neither.

And to be honest, I don’t want to live like that anymore. That’s why I am going this inner path instead of controlling, forcing and restricting myself in the 3D world. I don’t call that living and I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life. I’ve done enough of it.

The mental level of change

So when I started to go within on this change journey, the next step I took was changing the negative self-talk. I went into my mental state of being, my state of mind about my body. I looked at what I was saying to myself, my thoughts and what I believed about my body. I spent about a year undoing the habitual self-criticism and judging that would go on automatically in my mind. I believe that has helped me to lose the weight that I lost in the last few years.

This is the first step of the inner work that I was talking about. Going within and making changes on the inside instead of the outside. So for one year, I focused on my beliefs, my thoughts and my mental chatter about my body. To be honest, it wasn’t just about my body. I learned how to make my mind work for me in all areas of my life. But at that time a huge focus was my relationship with my body.

Reflecting back on where I was when I started and comparing it to how I speak about my body now, I would say that I decreased the negative self-talk by about 75%. There is still some but it’s so much better and it doesn’t take over a big chunk of my energy and time anymore.

This is the perfect place to start your inner work. It makes such a huge difference in your life if you change the programming of your thoughts and beliefs. And it’s more analytical and tangible than the next level.

The emotional level of change

I did not go through this next level of change with the focus just on my body image but my emotional state in general. Obviously, a lot of emotions like guilt, shame and frustration are linked to how I was feeling about my body so I took care of these parts as part of my inner work.

In the last 12 to 18 months I focused on letting go of emotional addictions inside of me. I use various techniques to discover and then release these stuck emotions from my energy field. And all of this work has helped me to feel differently about my body but still not enough for me to let go of the part of me that still wants to look different.

Another important part that is included in this emotional level of change is the coping mechanism that we use for the sake of not feeling these emotions. We ignore, suppress, and deny these emotions being there because they make us feel uncomfortable. We have been taught that we don’t want to feel negative emotions and therefore we use all kinds of mechanisms to shove them down so we can pretend that they don’t exist. Obviously, it doesn’t work either.

The best indicators to find such emotions are triggers. Every time you get triggered to feel a low-vibrating emotion inside of you, it’s a sign for you to look closer and let it go. Your subconscious mind is using your life to bring up emotions that you are ready to let go of. And learning to recognise those triggers to then be able to let go of the emotions, is crucial in the process of change.

As you can see, the emotional level is a bit trickier to grasp and needs more willingness to change for you to truly go through this stage. It’s not easy but it’s so worth it. I would never go back and suppress my emotions instead of facing and releasing them. I take any chance to get rid of emotional blockages inside of me.

The level of acceptance

We caught up now to this present moment and as you can see on the levels of change we still have 2 more levels to talk about.

Where I am today with my body is that nothing much has changed in the last year but it wasn’t really my focus either. I think I drifted into the next level of change which is acceptance. And that makes sense then, that nothing has changed about my body or my weight if I accepted it.

And you could think that this is the place to be. I overcame my limiting beliefs, my emotional reactions and now I move into acceptance and am all good with how I look. But it’s not. There is still this lingering personality trait in me that wants to weigh less and feel more comfortable in my own skin.

While doing this inner work, I realized that I have never felt good about my body. Since being an adult, there was never a time when I was happy about my body and felt good about it. That shows me that this is a huge part of who I am: A person who dislikes her body in whatever state it is in. Does this make sense to you?

It means I can lose 30 pounds and still not be happy with my body. It has become part of who I am. But the problem with acceptance is that the part that I am accepting is still part of my being. I still live with it because I accepted it. After living in acceptance for around a year now I realize that it’s still not enough for me.

I finally want to let go of all of it. And for that to happen, I now move away from the acceptance state and step into my surrender experiment.

The level of surrender

I talked about the steps of surrendering in the last episode (Episode 145). These are the steps we can go through at any moment when we want to surrender. And I have been using them in all kinds of situations in the past 12 months since studying the books and courses of Michael Singer.

Obviously, I am going to use them in my experiment but I know I can go even deeper. I want to embody this surrender process and whatever else I can discover to let go on a new level, the surrender level.

What I want to get out of this experiment is to not think about my body and weight as not good enough anymore. I just want my body to be whatever size and form it is and I want to be ok with it. I don’t want to restrict myself and feel bad when I have something not super nutritious. I want to be more intuitive and relaxed about what I eat and drink and not worry so much.

I am fed up with spending time and energy on thoughts and emotions about my body and how I look. I just want to be ok however I look. That part of me that is always unhappy with the way I look, that’s the part I want to let go of. And for some reason, I was not able to do that yet with the other levels of change. Now it’s time for me to dive even deeper inside of myself.

I don’t have the answer yet, that’s why it’s an experiment. I’m taking you on this adventure and will share with you as I go what comes up for me and what works and what doesn’t. I am very excited and a bit scared. But that’s good. It means I am stepping out of my comfort zone.

Your invite to go on a change journey yourself

I am grateful for you being part of this experiment. If it weren’t for you, I would probably not do it and for sure not speak so openly about it. But I felt called to do this one together with you.

I invite you to go on your own change journey. You know now the different levels of change and you can check where you are at with something important that you want to change. Are you still trying to change it only on the physical level but keep failing? Or are you already working on reprogramming your beliefs, perceptions and attitudes to help you with the change? Maybe you are even facing the emotions that keep you stuck in the past and unable to change.

Potentially, you tried everything you could and went into acceptance about your situation. That is ok. This is a great place to be, so much better than fighting on the physical level. But now you can open your eyes to another possibility. I invite you to go into your own surrender experiment. Now you know there is another opportunity other than accepting what you can’t change.

And if you would like help, to begin with your inner work and learn the mental and emotional levels of change, I teach them to you inside Energy Academy. When you are ready to try something new, then come and join us. I am here for you and to guide you through this process.

Thank you so much for reading this deeply personal episode today. I appreciate your attention and support. And I can’t wait to give you an update soon.

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I still have times when I don’t enjoy my life (my most vulnerable episode yet) Episode 141
The Perfect Imperfection of Your Personality Episode 135
A year from now you’ll wish you started today Episode 132

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