I remember when I first understood beneficial intent that for me it was like a eureka moment and therefore I want to share the idea with you and hope you will also get great benefit from it.
If you think that everything you do, and I mean everything you do, has an initial benefit linked to it, then you can understand why you do what you do. Even if that action has a negative outcome then the original intent would have been beneficial.
For example, if you have had an argument with someone then you might well go and grab a chocolate bar and eat it. You could just argue that it isn't a benefit so therefore why did you do it. But the reality is that the original beneficial intent of having the food was to "cheer yourself up" and hence your mind was trying to make you happier. The fact that ultimately you will become overweight / obese is a negative outcome but the initial intent was very much positive.
So whenever you do anything and can't understand why you did it, instead of beating yourself up and generally saying you can't believe you did it, think instead of what the benefit was of doing it. When you realise the benefit you can then change the original action next time to still get the benefit, but without the destructive outcome.
When I was big I used to hate being by myself, therefore whenever Jo used to go to work I used to binge eat out of the cupboards in the kitchen. I always said I didn't know why I did it, but the reason I did it was that I was trying to change my emotional state from being lonely to enjoying the food. Now I am slim, I realise that actually I don't like being by myself because I am a sociable chap, so now I chat to my friends on the phone, come on the internet and write a few E-Mails or go on Facebook. Therefore, I have realised the original intent was to stop me being lonely but the way I was doing that was making me very very overweight, now I choose instead to keep in touch with people which gives me the same result but without the negative outcomes.
So remember ultimately everything you do is to help you, whenever you eat when maybe you think you shouldn't, or drink when you shouldn't or put an extra £50 on the overdraft then think , 'what was the benefit of doing that? '
Finally I was explaining this to someone last year and they asked me this question "OK, what was the benefit of being big then Mike?", I sat for a few seconds before answering, "Because people never used to push me about then", it was another revelation to me as I realised that when I was at my biggest I had this hidden benefit in my mind of being some sort of tough guy (which I never was!).
