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Truth … All the women in my family struggle with their weight … the men too!
Truth … I eat for hunger, for pleasure, for sorrow. And I know when I’m doing it!
Truth … I’ve never been happier, more content, more aligned with who I really am, and more grateful!
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That’s the truth!
I look back at my pictures—from even six or seven years ago. I see leaner arms, a smaller waist, thinner legs, younger skin. I’ll smile. “Boy, I looked good!”
If you talked to most highly successful people, they would tell you that it took hard work, perseverance, focus, and the right plan. I bet they’d also tell you that they had a little bit of good luck thrown in from time to time. Even so, there were many times when they felt like giving up (and nearly did), but something always brought them back. I’ll bet there were times they felt like frauds or felt inadequate, ill-equipped, and even terrified . . . but something always told them to stay the course.
When Failure Isn’t an Option, You’ll Succeed
The inspiring story of Thomas Edison and his 10,000 attempts to create the lightbulb should give us the encouragement to never give up. Yes, that’s right! Edison tried more than 10,000 different ways to make a glass bulb light up, and at least 9,999 times were failures. I bet it was hard for him. I bet there were moments of frustration, hair pulling, and even the odd time he felt like throwing in the towel. But he never did. I’m sure he had to continually rework his plan and stay focused on his dream of putting electric lights into homes around the world. Something in him believed that he could do it.
Don’t ever assume it was easy—not for Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Babe Ruth, Amelia Earhart, Susan B. Anthony, Joan of Arc, Martin Luther King, Jr., Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama . . . or even for your own parents! There are millions of empowered people who have blessed our world by stepping into their power—we just don’t know their names. Whether your aspiration is to do something on a global, national, regional scale, or on a level in your own backyard, your dreams matter . . . and manifesting those dreams takes effort. Don’t ever kid yourself!
What I remind myself of is that it takes more drudgery to get up every day and go to a job you hate. It takes more exertion to live in an overweight body, dependent on medication. I know firsthand that it’s downright draining to be in an unfulfilling relationship or to be around someone who is negative or condescending. To me, that’s far harder than the energy required to keep the faith, believe in your dream, and take action! Nobody ever said it was going to be easy . . . but what’s the alternative?
Are you ready to stop waiting for someone . . . anyone . . . to wake up and notice you—notice your talents, needs, wants, and desires? Are you ready to accept yourself for who you are (for all your supposed faults, weaknesses, addictions, fears, syndromes, and dysfunctions) and love yourself regardless? If so, you are ready to become an empowered person! You’re ready to begin creating a magnificent life!
I’m sure you’ve given yourself too many “outs” in the past—too many permissible excuses, but they just don’t cut it anymore. You have a choice: to keep doing what you’ve been doing or to do something you’ve never done before. Sure, this may scare you and maybe you’re not exactly sure what to do yet. You’ll find out. You’ll make the calls, do the research, and discover your next steps. You don’t have to know the whole journey today; you just need to begin moving in the right direction.
Remind yourself that you’re worth more than you’ve been. Your life is worth more than you’ve been living. Don’t beat yourself up, guilt yourself, or blame others for your situation. It is what it is, and you’ve learned so much along the way. You’re not going to wait for anyone to give you permission to be you. You’re not going to wait anymore for someone to come along and give you the money you need to start that business, set you up on that blind date, or fix your dysfunctional family. You’re taking charge. You’re going to treat yourself the way you want to be treated and stop resisting yourself and your dreams. You’ll no longer resist asking for help when you need it or doing the things that may feel a little uncomfortable.
From this day forward, assume complete accountability for your life. You must take charge of it and do what you need to do to create a life that is genuinely yours: a life that has purpose, meaning, joy, and value. You will no longer rob yourself of your dignity, integrity, and self-respect by blaming, waiting, hoping, and praying that someone will give you the things you want. You know that if it’s going to be, it’s up to me.
You know that to achieve an empowered life, you must reach higher. You must step out of your comfort zone and your need to seek permission to live your greatest life. Make a list each evening, just before going to bed, of the seven essential action steps that you need to take the next day—seven steps that will bring you closer to your goals. Start each morning with the most important step.
You are the master of your destiny, the captain of your ship. Every choice you make (or don’t make) is yours. Never give up!
In the must-have book Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill writes that “the root of all achievement is desire”—specifically, a burning desire!
I used to think this meant that if I “thought about something a lot”—that if I really focused on it—the roots of achievement would just take hold and my “wantings” would be satisfied.
I’ve come to know that success is only realized once you, personally, possess the true essence of desire in every cell of your being. (And no, that isn’t just wanting something badly enough).
Desire is when something takes over you—something very primitive and unmistakeable—that drives you to do whatever it takes in order to achieve your dream or goal—without exception, without compromise, without anger, without regret, without fear, blame, guilt or shame.
Take losing weight, for example. There were times in my life that I really wanted to lose my extra body fat, and I truly believed that I desired it with every ounce of my being! In fact, most of the time, it was all I thought about! But my actions were still fuelled by self-loathing, shame, and frustration. Sure, I’d do my best to eat well but it was an effort! I’d drag my butt out of bed early to exercise but I felt angry that I had to. I struggled and white-knuckled it when it came to skipping on dessert or passing up a glass of wine. “Why did some women get to eat whatever they wanted and still be thin?” It really bugged me!
And then a shift happened. I can only compare it to falling in love. If you don’t really desire the person you’re with than being loving, understanding, giving, willing, patient, trusting, even staying faithful, can be challenging. You, literally, have to white-knuckle it. On the contrary, if you’ve ever fallen “head over heels” you’ll know that all those qualities come effortlessly—happily, willingly!
So if you find yourself struggling in any area of your life—especially over this holiday season—ask yourself “Why am I doing this?”
Truth be told, you don’t really want what you think you want!
Something in you isn’t ready, or doesn’t feel safe, for success. You may think you want to lose weight . . . You may think you want to fall in love . . . You may think you are ready for big money . . . but if you’re not able to, naturally, be good to yourself then you’re still stuck in sorrow, self-pity, fear, blame, guilt or shame. You’re pissed off that you have to do “the work” . . . and, for you, it is work, isn’t it??
Why?
Because you aren’t in love with yourself and so just like dating someone who you don’t really “dig”, it’s really challenging to be good to yourself. It’s hard to eat well, it’s tough to fit in workouts, it’s unfair to have to skip on dessert!
Does this make sense?
You don’t really desire it because you don’t really feel desirable . . . loveable . . . important enough . . . worthy! You don’t “dig” yourself!
So your task this holiday season isn’t to pass up on the shortbread cookies or say no to your company’s Christmas party. It’s to find ways to fall back in love with yourself, to remember who you really are, and to reclaim the parts of yourself you tucked away years ago (probably because someone made you think you weren’t good enough. You are!)
I hope to see you in January at my next home retreat! Have a beautiful holiday season and be good to yourself!
Just take a trip to any clinic in North America and watch the prescriptions being doled out and I’ll promise you that one of the number one ways to disempower your life is to leave your health in the hands of others (especially in the hands of corporate America, who are making billions of dollars from your disempowerment!)
Don’t get me wrong, God-bless nurses and doctors (especially nurses, who are so underpaid for the difficult and demanding work they do). If you find yourself in an automobile crash or with some acute injury or attack, these are precisely the folks you need! They have the technology and brilliance to save lives. But as far as healing disease—cancer, cardiovascular, diabetes, depression, HIV/AIDS (the list goes on and on) they simply don’t have the answers we’re looking for. We must take our health back into our own hands. We must open our eyes to what we are doing—or not doing—to and for ourselves.
Where the Problem Lies: $ $ $
Cancer, for example, has been leashing its fury on us, as a nation, for as long as most of us can remember; yet, despite research expenditures now over six billion dollars annually; during the last 30 years, increases in the survivability of the major cancers, including breast cancer, colon cancer, lung cancer and prostate cancer can be measured in just a few percentage points.
One must question: Is this war on cancer just too profitable to end? And if not, why are we no closer now than we were 30 years ago to finding a cure?
I think it is about time that money went into educating the public on the truth: Cancer, among most diseases, is ravaging us because we are ravaging ourselves—knowingly and unknowingly! And most of us are being attacked without realizing it, until it’s nearly too late. It is prevention not early detection that we must focus on.
Our bodies are overfed yet undernourished. The air we breathe is contaminated with toxins. Our food and beverages are covered in pesticides and filled with hydrogenated fats, sugar, and chemicals. Our meats and dairy are pumped full of hormones and antibiotics. We spend hours in front of computer monitors, talking on cellular phones, and racing around in a frantic pace, trying to keep up with the Jones’. We pop pills for our constant aches and pains, harboring disappointments, let-downs, and betrayals; living primarily in the past while worrying about the future.
Wake Up and Smell the Green Tea
More now than ever before, we have an abundance of choices; yet sadly, but understandably, especially in our fast-paced and chaotic lives, the fast and easy ones seem to be the ones that too many of us are choosing.
It seems that we put more value on the quality of the car we drive than we do on the quality of the food we eat. We put more attention on paying off our homes than we do on paying attention to the people in our homes—starting first and foremost with ourselves! We simply have our priorities confused, and in our effort to make life easier, we’ve totally complicated it. The body is a perfect example of this: It may be a complex machine with trillions of chemical reactions happening every second but taking care of it is actually quite simple. As long as we give it what it needs—versus what we want—it will run beautifully. Instead we fill it with foods it can’t process, toxins it can’t fight, stress it can’t tolerate, and medicines that have a rippling result of negative side-effects.
And then, we, the weary and scared patient, look to our doctor hoping he can dole us out just one more “magic pill” that can save our lives. Sadly, we’ve allowed ourselves to give away our power and lay it, instead, on the shoulders of the almighty M.D.
Not only does this leave us feeling disempowered, helpless, and afraid, but also it puts all of the responsibility on the doctor to heal us. And believe it or not folks, doctors are not actually God! And as far as I’m concerned, they are burdening way too much of this load.
Pharmaceutical companies may be making massive money but they themselves are filled with employees, just like you and me, who need a better option for their own health too. It’s time to value people more than money. It’s time that you value yourself—your health, your children’s health, and the health of this planet!
The good news is that we can not only stop the damaging effects of our current lifestyle but with a little commitment and willpower we can actually reverse the damage we’ve done!
Why not start tonight by going to bed a little earlier and waking up a little earlier? When you wake up, head straight out for a brisk 20 minute walk. Enjoy a breakfast of organic yogurt with a banana, berries, and raw muesli with a hot cup of cancer-fighting green tea. Take a few minutes to give thanks for everything in your life. Take the train to work. Smile. Listen to relaxing music. Have a big salad with salmon or tofu for lunch. Drink plenty of water with lemon. Let your work stay at work as you head out a little earlier than normal. As you walk through the door, kiss your spouse and your kids, and pat your dog. Give thanks again. Do something fun. Turn off the TV. Read a great book. Light some candles. Make love. Clean up your finances. Simplify your life. Meditate. Do a cleanse. Eliminate red meat. Cut back on alcohol. Dance. Sing. Laugh. Live….
Your Health . . . Your Life . . . Your Choice!
Although liposuction or gastric-bypass surgery may seem like the easiest way to lose weight (or if finding a rich mate or winning the lottery would be the best answer to your money woes), it’s not! If you don’t know how you achieved your success, you won’t know how to maintain it. You’ll always be afraid that you won’t be able to keep it up or that someone will come along and steal it. Just think about the woman who loses 20 pounds on a crazy fad diet without exercising and then becomes afraid to eat—terrified that she’ll gain it back, obsessively weighing herself every day. Studies show that over 75 percent of people who win the lottery are broke within five years, and I can assure you that a rich man’s money will always be his!
If you don’t really know how you created your success and experience a setback (life always gives us setbacks), you’ll be an emotional mess, hanging on to whatever scraps you can. On the other hand, if you know how you created your success, you’ll have the know-how, plus the jet fuel, to overcome any obstacles and catapult yourself forward again, quickly!
Three days ago we took my new website LIVE.
Excitedly, we blasted out an email to my thousands upon thousands of “supporters” asking them to “opt-in” to our new system.
Wouldn’t you know our “new system” couldn’t (or better said wouldn’t) allow for so many names to be added at once! Everything went down and I began receiving hundreds of emails from people telling me that they “didn’t get the link to opt-in”. Aaahhhh!
Some of the pages on the new site wouldn’t work. My merchant visa was accidentally canceled. No one could purchase anything! Movies wouldn’t play properly. One thing after another! Aaahhhhhh!
So what did we do? What would you have done?
Would you have panicked? Picked up the phone, started yelling . . . crying . . . gotten angry at someone? Blamed someone? I mean, there’s always someone to blame, isn’t there??? There’s always someone responsible for the mistakes!!!
Would you have buried your head in the sand or poured yourself a tall, stiff drink to settle your nerves?
Just like the song that I often sang to my children when they were young, “What do you do when things go wrong and nothing but trouble comes your way?”
Well, here’s what we did . . .
We stayed completely calm and pulled together without blame. It didn’t matter WHY. We simply assessed the situation and instantly begin weighing our options . . . focused on finding solutions! Complaining is pointless. Blaming is pointless. Besides, there really is no ‘U’ or ‘I’ in TEAM!
We kept our team intact, knowing that if one of us couldn’t figure it out, someone, somewhere, could. We continually refocused, refusing negative thoughts from trying to enter. We stayed positive, almost jovial. Nothing is ever as bad as it seems! We knew that the moment of absolute certainty may never arrive, so we made our decisions swiftly and confidently—knowing that almost anything can be reversed if necessary. Once a decision was made, we moved on—wasting our energy, second-guessing ourselves was just that . . . a waste—pointless!
We are an EMPOWERED TEAM!
A disempowered person, on the other hand, will focus on the problem (and boy, she always seems to have a new problem!!) thinking that if she talks about it a lot—sharing her misery with anyone who’ll listen—somehow it will alleviate some of her pain. She loses friends fairly quickly, or has only a few, because most are tired of hearing her complaints.
I always remind myself that “those who complain are in pain!” Ironically, complaining does not help, as it is actually a way of avoiding it—avoiding any responsibility! “If we sink it wasn’t my fault!”
Talking about it a lot won’t fix a thing!!! Focusing on what you want and finding solutions does! Yes, you need to discuss problems but then you must either find a way to accept it or fix it and MOVE ON!!!
Disempowered people will look for the worst, dwell on the negative, recite “their story” as often as it seems appropriate to the conversation (they also try to find opportunities to make the conversation fit “their story”), explaining only “their side” of the story, finding reasons why “it’s not their fault”. . . as this will justify their lack of success. They may even think they are normally “positive”—a survivor who is simply sharing her tales of woe to keep you from falling prey to her same challenges.
This same approach applies to everything in life—even relationship struggles!
Staying focused on solutions is not always easy . . . but no one ever said living an empowered life is always easy. For example, how do you stay focused on finding solutions when your marriage is falling apart or when your teenage children are reckless and out-of-control? How do you stay focused on finding solutions when you’ve just been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness or when the recession is severely affecting your business and you’re losing assets?
Here are my five points to keep in mind when coming up with solutions:
