An Appetite for Life
- hailo
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Glow Up Week: Let Yourself Have Desires
Welcome back to your weekly reset inside of Hot Literati <3
Glow Up Week
One question I've asked myself obsessively over the past few years is "why am I who I am"? I find It's the swirly sort of question that can leave you looking at blank space for a bit. I've liked the idea of "glowing up" ever since I found a beauty blog at 12 years old and visited the same site every single day. Especially during the summer.
I like the idea of "glowing up," even though it's a bit trite and overused online, because I've found in my own experience that it really starts in your own mind, with your own thoughts. You can become different because you can think differently.
On Hunger
For example, I feel that I've massively reframed my thoughts around hunger. Hunger isn't just what you eat. There's a lot of fascinating stuff on psychological hunger, and how sometimes when we don't understand what it is we actually want, we fill it with other things, like crazy flings, or late night drunken pizza (fair & fun), or metrics, or money, so on so forth. I'm fascinated with this idea because the malleability of my own thoughts helped me radically transform my relationship with food and exercise. I love food. I love moving my body. And I have high standards when it comes to both. But I had to let go of this weird guilt around any sort of hunger or physical exertion to allow myself to have real desires and understand what it meant to pursue them.
Little Deaths/Delights #92
Three things I'm letting go of, and three things I'm embracing this week
Little Deaths
Late nights - I ruminate in the evenings. I think it's a sign I should go to bed earlier
Rain! - spring is actually my least favorite season haha. My hair gets a bit ah, with the humidity
That I can't fly - I often think I'd enjoy living in the sky
Little Delights
Book Club! - really enjoying my first Lispector so far
Cardio! - I've done some long runs this past week that were wonderful
Amelie in the west village - baby's first coq au vin
Addition vs. Subtraction
This was something that 100% changed my brain. I encountered this concept in a few different books and podcasts, but it's the idea that focusing on restriction, or what you can't have increases your craving for that thing.
And the solution here isn't perfection, but is creating enough cognitive room to understand yourself. It's so much stronger to focus on what you're running toward instead of what you're running away from. And this applies to every area of your life. This is the key importance of learning, reflection, and goal-setting. Your life will change when you focus on what you're running toward.
Start the Work
If any of this really resonates with you, I've put together Guided Journals that walk you through the process of learning, reflecting, and setting new goals, using theories from psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and more. Two key ones for this subject are How to Fix Your Relationship with Food and How to Build a Five Year Plan.
If you want to go through this sort of work with other people, you can join the Hot Literati Community anytime.
