On family road trips, we kids would always groan in
misery when Dad turned off the highway and zoomed down a minor road. “I’m
taking a shortcut!” he’d announce proudly.
This always ended badly. Invariably, we’d end up
lost or in the opposite direction to where we needed to be, leaving Mum
swearing, squabbling with Dad and pouring over the well-thumbed AA Road Atlas (no GPS in those days!)
and us rolling our eyes at each other. Good times.
It occurred to me recently how often shortcuts,
instead of getting us to a destination faster, can take us further away from
where we want to go.
Take, for example, the ongoing quest of so many women
to lose weight. Research has proven over and over again that the only known
path to achieving and maintaining a healthy weight is to eat a
range of nutrient-rich foods, exercise regularly, get enough sleep and drink
plenty of water. But instead of following this advice, millions of people
around the world continue to starve themselves, shell out for expensive
superfoods from some far-flung jungle, screw up their appetite hormones through
dieting and deprive their bodies of the nutrients they need. Overwhelmingly,
they gain back any weight they lose. Diets do not work. This is as
certain as Tuesday following Monday, and Harry Potter winning the final battle
in each book. But rather than trust the well-signposted route of exercising and eating a nourishing diet at regular intervals for the long term, people prefer to look for a silver
bullet – usually involving short-term deprivation or regimented eating. All of
which takes them further and further away from their desired destination.
Intuition and intention guru Jess Lively mentioned in a recent podcast that she struggled with
her weight and disordered eating for almost nine years. No matter what approach
she took towards eating, she could not lose weight. But when she stopped worrying about food and instead focused on self-compassion and her own happiness,
the weight shifted, and she has remained a healthy weight ever since. This did
not happen overnight, it took several years. There are no shortcuts.
Sometimes, I suspect, people are looking for a
shortcut when they contact me for an angel card reading about finding a partner. Romance,
in particular, seems to be an area where people are seeking a magic formula. I totally
get that – I spent more than a decade looking for a shortcut to love. But every
angel card reading, horoscope, psychic reading and self-help book would tell me
the same thing: you’ll get a happy, healthy relationship when you *are* happy
and healthy. Like attracts like.
This was infuriating. I didn’t want to do
any work on myself – I wanted a wonderful man to turn up on my doorstep and make
everything instantly perfect. And so I waited. And waited. Turns out,
complaining incessantly about being single, feeling like a failure, hating on yourself,
seeking solace in junk food and alcohol, and throwing yourself at everyone who
even smiles at you weren’t effective paths to a healthy relationship (I
knooooow, right?!). Everything I’d been told was true: to find someone to love,
you have to first love yourself. There are no shortcuts.
As I wrote in a post last August (read it here),
self-love is an inside job – I have learned the hard way that you can’t
outsource it. I did not meet a lovely man then become a contented,
confident person who leads from the heart – it was the other way
around. I became a contented, confident person then attracted a lovely man. And then I found myself on a whole new journey. Because instead of being a solution, a relationship is actually just a whole new set of challenges and (often uncomfortable) opportunities for self-examination. But I wouldn’t be ready to face those deeper wounds if I hadn’t already done so much work on myself.
And so the journey of healing continues. Which reminds me, here’s an irony – my boyfriend’s surname is ‘Healy’. The word ‘heal’ is right there in the name (yep, the Universe has a sense of humour).
Stay on track. Do the work. Don’t look for quick
fixes. There are no shortcuts.