empowering your mind 129
your six - year - old self can speak and be heard. Your writing will look
like a fi rst grader ’ s, and often your answers are found during the
memories of these younger years. So let your inner child have a
word with you. My fi rst attempt with nondominant hand journaliz-
ing produced: “ This really feels stupid. I bet this is a waste of time! ”
So don ’ t worry if your more practiced, critical left brain does not
want to relinquish its command of the situation; just stick with it,
breathe deeply for a few breaths, and ask your inner child what his
or her thoughts are. Mentally remind your right brain that it is okay
to come out and play. It is natural and quite common for this to
take a while, so allow yourself at least fi fteen minutes with this
experience, for a few days in a row. Most participants who give it a
fair effort are amazed at what comes out!
You Can Do It: Making a Paradigm Shift
Most overweight people I meet quickly explain to me that they “ just
like food ” or that they “ come from a large family ” or “ everyone in my
family is big, ” or “ I really don ’ t eat as much as a lot of thin people
I know; I can look at food and gain weight. ” Although I believe
that much of this information has some degree of truth in it,
it largely evades the important, empowering truth — which would
include what their minds have not revealed to them or what they
do not care to admit out loud. Because our egos function to secure
our need for love, acceptance, security, and approval, we tend to
communicate what we think will make us look good or right, or
we say whatever we think will be perceived as funny or intelligent.
This ego - driven response is not something people are necessarily
aware of, it is so deeply ingrained in us — we simply do it out of
habit, because we ’ ve been working from this survival platform our
entire lives. Webster ’ s defi nes ego , in psychoanalytic terms, as “ the
part of the psyche which experiences the external world through
the senses, organizes the thought processes rationally, and governs
action; it mediates between the impulses of the id (our reservoir of
instinctual drives and the source of psychic energy, dominated by