Change Is Good :)

I feel like I am opening my eyes, for the first time in a long while. It is sometimes almost too bright and the change is a little scary, but I am ready to stop hiding.
If you have been reading along you may have noticed that I am not a huge fan of change. I resist, I make excuses and I hide. I have been aware of this for a while and I have been moving along with this awareness. Often, it seems, at a snails pace :) Sometimes it seems especially hard, and I am sure that at these times I am making the most progress.
I am really amazed at how many different ways I have found to hide over the years. Things I thought I did just for enjoyment, that were really ways to hide out :)
For example, I LOVE to read. Ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you. Books are great, but I have definitely been using them as a way to hide from or avoid unpleasantness. OK, if I am completely honest, I have to say I have also used them to avoid change in any way! There are other ways that I have hidden, I am after all very creative :)
But I have to say one of the most self-destructive ways I chose to hide was by gaining weight. This probably doesn't make sense to you, or maybe it does, but by gaining weight I have hidden myself very effectively. It is almost like the more weight I gain the less I can see me. The less I AM me! I am inside somewhere, but I am hidden. In many ways this has really been working for me, avoider (yes I know that isn't really a word) that I am :) But now that I am opening my eyes and looking around I see that I don't want to let this go on.
Usually at this point I stop and close my eyes again. Because change is hard and I really don't like it. But lately I have been letting my true self out more and I find that I really like her, A LOT! Way more than I like this other person I have let myself become.
So change will be necessary it seems.
I was looking at a website recently called Secrets Of A Weight Loss Master and it really made a lot of sense to me. Especially when I read that "The secret to permanent weight loss is to remember and recover who you really are." So on my Journey of change today I thought I would work on using a few of the Affirmations I found there. Here they are if you would like to use them yourself:

• Just for today I will practice self-acceptance. The struggle ends with me. I choose to stop struggling. I deserve peace.

• Joy is my natural state. I will begin to act from my center and tap into the joy that is mine.

• I let go easily of the things that no longer serve me. Life is a series of endings and new beginnings. I surrender the old, so that I may receive the new.

Happy thoughts to you :)

Oh, and, how do you hide?