Q&A 8 – Will I be happy when I stop overeating?

One of the misconceptions we innocently carry is that our happiness can only begin when we overcome our overeating habit and lose weight.

Today I examine whether that’s true, and if not, what else might be true about our experience of an unwanted habit.

Resources Mentioned in this Episode

* Freedom From Overeating (and other habits) online course

* Armchair Expert podcast episode with Ed Sheeran

Transcript of the episode

Hello, explorers and welcome back to another Q&A; episode of Unbroken. I’m really happy you’re here. 

Today I want to talk about the question: Will I be happy when I stop overeating? 

I wanted to explore this a little bit because yesterday I was doing a bunch of house cleaning, and I was listening to an older episode of Armchair Expert. That’s a podcast hosted by an actor and director from the United States called Dax Shepard. And the episode I happened to choose was an older one and his guest was Ed Sheeran. Ed Sheeran, if you don’t know, is a musician from the UK.

They started to talk about this really interesting thing that I wanted to share, because it ties in so beautifully with what we’re learning about the Inside-Out understanding. So at some point in the interview, Ed was sharing a story about how his biggest goal as he was growing up and learning to be a musician was to have a sold out show at Wembley Stadium. And that was a North Star that kept him going. It was very specific. It wasn’t a sold out show at any other stadium. It was specifically a sold out show at Wembley Stadium. And he talked about how that happened eventually to him when he became really popular, and he had that actual experience. 

What he shared was that when it happened, and the show was over, and he walked off stage, he didn’t feel the big feeling of euphoria and a feeling of having reached the peak of the mountain, that he’d made it, that everything was great and all those things that we think that we’ll experience when we reach a very specific goal like that of his. 

And then Dax Shepard shared that he had had a similar experience. And his was around money; he thought that if he earned a certain amount of money, that he would feel all those feelings of euphoria and happiness and peak of the mountain stuff. And he didn’t say it on that particular episode, but I’ve heard him talk about it before.

So I’m going to add a couple of extra things in here, that he had, in his mind a very specific amount of money. When he was raised they didn’t have a lot of money. He was raised by a single mom. And they were, it sounds like, it a little bit poor. His Northstar was that if he had a million dollars in the bank then he would be happy, that would be the thing that would fix all his problems and create that sense of that peak of the mountain feeling for him. 

I’ve heard him tell this story a couple of different times around this subject. He was flying from somewhere to somewhere else. And I should say DAX is a self-professed recovering alcoholic and drug addict. But at the time of this story, he was actively drinking.

He had time before his flight, so he went to the airport bar and had as many drinks as he could get into himself, before he had to go to his gate. And then he had an epiphany.