A Motivational Quote for a Garbage Existence

I saw what was supposed to be an inspirational quote that I instantly hated:

“If people aren’t laughing at your dreams, your dreams aren’t big enough.”

I take several issues with this, but before we dive into my tirade, I want to share with you why this quote in particular (and my disagreement) are relevant to the relationships you have with food and your body.

These relationships largely stem from your relationship with yourself. In the vast majority of cases where people are unhappy with how they eat, they also suffer from low self-worth.

Low self-worth has many causes, and while they include cultural pressures around factors like how your body looks, other contributors such as your beliefs about productivity or your accomplishments can be just as toxic.

Which brings me to the garbage quote I’m preparing to tear apart: “If people aren’t laughing at your dreams, your dreams aren’t big enough.”

The suggestion that your dreams ought to be laughably outrageous in order to be considered ‘big enough’ is a reflection of hustle culture. The core tenets of hustle culture are to put in longer hours, sacrifice your downtime, maximize productivity at all times, and monetize your hobbies or start a side business. 

Essentially: do more, achieve more, make more, in order to be considered enough.

Except that there are no limits to how much you should take on because there is no defined “enough”. Hustle culture is built on a scarcity mindset. No matter how much you achieve, how much you make, or how much you get done, it will not be enough.

When you live and breathe “never enough” each day, it will eat away at your self-worth like a swarm of termites boring through dead wood.

Additionally, the stress that comes from putting yourself into overdrive day in and day out can add fuel to an already disordered relationship with food.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying you shouldn’t ever have big dreams. But what I do want to make clear is that you don’t HAVE to dream big in order to feel like you’re doing enough or like your life is good enough.

Which brings me to my next point.

The second issue I take with this quote is that people laughing at your big dreams is some kind of badge of honor.

What if the laughter means you’re surrounded by the wrong people, who don’t believe in you?

I do, in fact, like to dream big. But I have made sure that the people I surround myself with aren’t going to laugh when I share my ideas and plans with them. Instead, they might clap their hands together, break into a wide grin, and say, “Wow! I can’t wait to watch you do it.”

There’s nothing I could say that my allies would laugh at. And I take care to limit my time with people who would laugh—or as my coach would call them, the “naysayers.”

What if, instead of following cultural pressures to DO MORE, HAVE MORE, BE MORE, you stepped back to identify: what is enough? And what is enough for me?

Or what if you paused to really lean into the gratitude you feel for what you have, what you do, and who you are?

The same principle applies to your body.

When your beliefs about your body and self are born from the wellspring of “not good enough,” it fuels an insatiable desire to change yourself.

That desire can initiate a years-long or even decades-long fight with your body, sustained on a steady diet of judgment, self-criticism, and self-loathing. These thoughts and feelings can lead us down a long path of attempting to manipulate our actual diets in order to alter our bodies.

All in the name of becoming good enough.

But what if feeling enough—both accomplishing enough and looking enough—is not a process of becoming? What if feeling enough is not waiting for you to achieve a certain level of productivity, income, fitness level, or waist size?

What if all feeling good enough means getting to the end of your day and telling yourself, “I did enough today”? Or looking in the mirror and saying, “My body is deserving of respect and acceptance”?

I’ll leave you with that question to get curious about.

In the meantime, what I can tell you is this: believing that you are enough is like a salmon swimming upstream. Occasionally you’re going to get snagged and eaten by a grizzly bear. 

Changing your beliefs about your worth requires you to unlearn much of what you’ve been subconsciously taught your whole life. And there’s no shame in asking for some assistance along the way or wanting to make the journey within a community, like the coaching and community you’ll find in Food Body Self.

Look, if people aren’t laughing at your dreams, know this: only you get to decide when your dreams are big enough. And you deserve to be surrounded by people who accept and support you no matter what you wish to achieve.

Because you are already doing—and being—enough.