Houses of Healing

Secrets to Successful Follow Through

"I am in a situation where I know what I want to do and how to do it but I can not seem to follow through on my intentions. I get started and feel great about what I am doing. I get all excited and vow this time to really follow through. But soon the same thing happens - I just fade away. I can't seem to stick with my good plan and my good intentions. What should I do?"

Most of us have had the experience of wanting to obtain a desired result and seeing it slip repeatedly through our fingers. The most frustrating part of change is watching good intentions fade away and old habits win the day.

As you start making changes, you are probably filled with enthusiasm for the promise of changes to come. You are convinced that this time will be different. You WILL follow through on the changes you want to make. You will have a healthier lifestyle. You will save money. You will find the one... You will loose weight... You will... - whatever.

There are many reasons for not following through – perhaps the goal is not right for you. Maybe you don’t have the resources you need. Maybe you think you want to reach your goal but are actually being pushed into doing something you think you should do but don’t really want to do. Maybe you already have too much on your plate and can’t take on any more.

But let’s assume that it is none of those but it is just a lack of ability to follow through.

Our brains are hard wired to be alert for the things that are threatening to us. We are not hard wired for following through on things that don’t seem to be an emergency right now.

To override this natural tendency to act only on things that seem to be important in the moment you can trick your brain into following through more naturally.

Don’t let yourself stay caught in a downward spiral of doing the same old things. Train yourself to notice right away when your commitment is beginning to slip and master two or three key “will power tricks” to get your brain back on track so that you do what you say you want to do.

By learning to better manage your energy using these “will power tricks,” you can coax success with these strategies to bring your desires for change into effective and efficient actions that give you the results you want.

Here are four of my favorite “Will Power Tricks” found in my e-course The Way of Change.

Just Do It. Start Now

Begin where you are.

(This is my favorite “will power trick” that I give my coaching clients.)

Maybe you want to start attending your children’s sports activities but it's late - if you leave now the game will be almost over when you get there.

Go anyway.

Don’t wait for the perfect time, the perfect place, or the perfect mood. You don’t have to start your new life on a Monday. If you have missed every day but today, start today. If you are only going to get to hear the last 5 minutes of the lecture – go anyway.

Forward movement begets more forward movement. Going anyway begins the momentum you need to keep pulling you forward. And every time you “just do it” the next time is more familiar – and easier.

All You Have To Do Is Show Up

Leading the Horse To Water

(found in the book, Following Through: a Revolutionary New Method for Finishing Whatever You Start by Steve Levinson and Pete Greide)

The crux of this strategy is to put yourself in a better position to follow through. This strategy aims to just move you a bit closer to your intended action while at the same time offering you an "out" if the going gets too rough.

The Leading the Horse to Water is all about showing up – it doesn’t ask you to do anything once you are there. Realizing that all you have to do is show up and that you can quit whenever you want is enough to release the resistance, you are building up for not doing what you want. And once you release that resistance, what seemed so hard suddenly looks much easier.

For example, when you would rather do anything else than take your daily walk have a standing agreement with yourself that you will just go and put on your walking shoes. Once you have your shoes on and are dressed for your walk it is almost guaranteed that you are out the door walking.

A Little Forethought To Put You On Your Way

Get your supplies together.

For instance, if you are making a change and you want to journal daily, don’t be distracted collecting your writing supplies every day. Put everything that you will need in the one place where you will be journaling and keep it there. When it is time to journal all you have to do is pick up the journal and the pen and start writing.

Think ahead to the next two or three things you want to follow through on, make a list of what you will need to begin these changes and start getting everything together now.

Once you have your supplies put them in the place where they will be needed. Make it easy to focus on the task at hand.

A little forethought will enable you to carry through to completion without delays, distractions, or unnecessary running around.

Persistent Daily Action Wins the Game

Develop routines.

Change does not happen overnight. There are powerful physiological and psychological processes that are set to keep you like you are. They keep drawing you back to your current baseline.

Forget that 21 days to a new habit idea. It takes 3-6 months of consistent daily practice to rewire the enzymatic pathways in your brain so that your new habit becomes natural for you.

Transformation may look like it is instantaneous but there is no miracle moment. Take the time to get it right in the first place. Give the change your resources, your efforts, your attention, and your focus. Every moment of dedication to the change will benefit you many fold down the line. Don’t rush to move onto the next thing. Make sure that you allow yourself time to build a strong foundation.

Develop a routine around the change you want to see. For instance, if you want to connect with your kids more often don’t wait for the time to open up. Instead, design a bedtime routine that you do every night with them.

Master a couple of these “will power tricks” to use whenever you find yourself not doing what you say you want to do and celebrate and acknowledge yourself every time you do follow through - the struggle with following through will soon fade away.

How Far Can You Take The Law of Attraction?

You Can’t Just Sit Around Visualizing and Expect Things To Happen … Or Can You?

"Your action has nothing to do with your abundance! Your abundance is a response to your vibration. Of course, your belief is part of your vibration. So, if you believe that action is part of what brings your abundance, then you've got to unravel that."  –Abraham-Hicks

What you mean I have to get off my couch and take action if I want a financial independence? A total fantasy! I don’t believe it.

I love the Law of Attraction – and have for years. There are many slants to the Law Attraction but all the permeations are grounded in the same principle – that we human beings have the capacity to create the life we want.

When I was younger, I had an inherent knowledge that I created the life I want. I didn’t have to work at believing it – I just knew it.

And in my youth, I had lots of energy. I am an Aries, I have fire signs all over my astrological chart, my Mayan chart is all about energy, etc. The point is I had an abundance of natural energy – and I still have lots of natural energy – and taking action has always been easy and natural for me and I love to do things.

I became obsessed with action and taking actions – the right actions at the right time became my mantra.

In manifesting my life, I used lots of energy (translate to “actions”) to do it. I am a big fan of action. I even wrote a 26 week e-course about how to get yourself to take appropriate and inspired actions – after all, you can’t just sit around visualizing something if you want it to really happen – or can you?

A strange phenomenon happened to me about 5 years ago - totally out of the blue. (I’m sure I had nothing to do with it. ) I went through a monumental “worldview” paradigm shift.

I was now in my 50s and I could see that there were about a million actions that I had not taken to get prepared for this stage of my life. That was when I had this shocking realization - that all my actions carried such a paltry bit of energy compared to the inertia of this gigantic world. Even my “inspired actions” didn’t seem significant next to the immensity of all that was happening in this universe. 

It was time for a new worldview - my old one wasn’t working that well for me anymore. This stuff is OK when you are younger and have lots of time in front of you but when you are older and have so many things you have to do before it’s “too late” this stuff doesn’t really fit the real world. What was I thinking all these years?

After many muddled confrontations with more mundane worldviews (e.g. Soon I’m going to get too old to work so I need a gigantic retirement fund; the mainstream does things a certain way for a reason - because it works - so I’d best get in line with mainstream), I ended up back in the Law of Attraction - but with what seemed to me to be an upgraded perception.

Do you ever notice that we always end up where we started but at a more conscious and aware level?

An aside about paradigms and THE TRUTH

A paradigm is a way of organizing an aspect of the world by applying certain logical principles to explain certain observations (think allopathic medicine vs. spiritual healing).

You can’t say that one paradigm is truer than another. For instance, Christianity vs. Goddess religion – which one is the representation of The Truth of reality?  But we often mistake the prevailing (or our favorite) paradigm as a representation of The Truth of reality.

There are no true paradigms.  A paradigm is just a viewpoint. No paradigm can lay claim to being “The Truth” while others are misguided - although proponents of particular paradigms try to do it all the time.

Do we really know what is The Truth?  Not really - it is more a matter of belief and faith than of Truth but we often mistake our belief and faith as The Truth.  Or we say that one paradigm is The Truth because it fits the facts better.  But we all know facts are changing day by day (remember, the world used to be flat and Pluto was a planet).

So, if it is not The Truth that makes a paradigm “worthy” of your attention what is it that makes a paradigm useful?

What makes a paradigm useful is the strength and integrity of its own internal logic system. Does its internal logic stand up under scrutiny – is its logic pure and consistent with its main conceptual principles?

Any paradigm is only as good as the integrity and consistency of its own internal logic.

In the end, the matter of useful (as opposed to truthful) comes down to: Does the paradigm answer my key questions in a way that seems more satisfying to me than other paradigms? 

Does this paradigm make more sense to me than other paradigms?

Does it jive more with what I think I know now?

Does it fit the facts that I think are true?

Does it have practical applications to my life as I want to live it?

The thing with paradigms is this: their logic is designed to work internally - within their own paradigm. You can ‘t take the logic from one paradigm and plop it down in another paradigm and expect to reach any logically consistent conclusions. (Applying the logic of the scientific paradigm to the paradigm of shamanic healing just doesn’t fit.) If you attempt to mix paradigm logic systems eventually it ends up as murky chaos or a blob of mediocrity.

Back to the Law of Attraction

After five years of paradigm busting and building, here I am with my upgraded understanding of the logic for the Law of Attraction and I keep bristling at these references to the necessity for taking action.

When you bring up the Law of Attraction, many people ready with a tirade about action being what it takes in this world to make things happen. If you want to be successful, you have to work your butt off and this whole Law of Attraction is a scam – or worse.

You may have noticed this in the fallout after The Secret was highlighted on the Oprah show.  There were all kinds of outraged rebuttals - some even going as far as saying how it was unethical to even suggest that visualizing something would make it happen. People were being misled and if they took the Law of Attraction seriously - they would all stop doing what really mattered – getting out there and taking those actions to make things work.

James Arthur Ray - spotlighted on Oprah as a Law of Attraction proponent - says if you just sit around on your couch all day visualizing being rich they will come and take your furniture away.

And awhile back, what I read from Aaron Potts (Today is the Day blog) is- “The belief that you can sit around visualizing millions of dollars, and then suddenly they will just show up for you is nothing less than a total fantasy.”

And Bill Harris over at the Blog that Ate Mind Chatter referred to (somewhere in his voluminous posts) the idea that you could make things happen in this world without taking action as bulls#!t. (paraphrased)

Something about all this need for action didn’t strike me as fully consistent with the Law of Attraction logic. I have to say that the whole idea of action being necessary within the paradigm of the Law of Attraction doesn’t make any sense to me.

I think it’s a case of trying to apply the logic of consensual reality to the logic of the Law of Attraction. 

“A total fantasy” – Maybe that’s going too far

The basic tenet of the Law of Attraction is simple – whatever you are in vibrational alignment with is what you see show up in your world. Your thoughts, feelings, body functioning, actions, beliefs, mental constructs, - and probably more - all contribute to your vibrational alignment.

This concept of vibrational alignment is the key. Vibrational alignment is beyond thinking positive, it is beyond feeling good, it is beyond taking actions/ inspired actions, it is beyond beliefs – it is a certain state of being wherein thoughts, feelings, actions, beliefs all become attuned to its resonant frequency or energetic coherence.

You probably shouldn’t want to go around taking actions that are in contradiction to what you truly want because this won’t be in tune with your vibrational alignment. But do you really have to take action to bring into your life what you do want?

What about shamanic healing?
What about long distance healing?
What about extra-sensory perceptions?
Telepathic experiences?

Just Sitting Home On Your Couch

If you are sitting home on your couch being in vibrational alignment with your desire for money to just come to your door there is nothing in the Law of Attraction’s basic paradigm logic that says that can’t happen.

There may be lots of things in other paradigms about how the world works that say that won’t happen.  But if you are in vibrational alignment (that is you believe it is possible, you believe you can do it, you feel good about doing it, you have not bought into any consensual reality beliefs that it’s a total fantasy to do it, etc.) with the desire to sit home on your couch and become rich  - the Law of Attraction says what you are in vibrational alignment with shows up in your life.

In our Western worldview, we have big energy concepts (e.g. beliefs, consensual agreement, morphogenetic fields) around going out there and working for what you want. Not to mention the Puritan Work Ethic - and there is a lot of agreement in the world for that.  And even in the arena of the Law of Attraction there are subgroups of people who are into the necessity for taking actions to create the life you want.

Why is it that there is such a lot of energy around the need for taking actions?

Scientists tell us that we seem to be programmed from birth to accept the idea of locality as reality. Loosely translated this means that if we want to make something happen we have to make direct contact with it. As humans, it seems that we find the ability to influence at a distance unnatural. “Research on babies has shown that they don’t accept action at a distance, believing that there needs to be contact between two objects to allow one to act on the other.”

Maybe this feeling and belief about the necessity for action is just an outgrowth of our apparently inherent consensual agreement that we have to act on and make direct contact with something to make it happen.

My current favorite Law of Attraction paradigm is provided by Abraham – Ester and Jerry Hicks. The Abraham logic about action is one I really resonate with and for me it provides me with the most joy and freedom in my manifestation process - and provides me with the most intriguing options for possibilities.

Action is not discouraged but neither is it deemed necessary.

“You did not come into this environment to create through action. Instead, your action is meant to be a way in which you enjoy what you have created through thought. You are mostly physical-action Beings at this time because you do not yet understand the power of your thoughts. When you are better at applying your deliberate thought, there will not be so much action for you to tend to.” 

Just for a moment, allow it to be possible that we don’t have to take actions to create what we want. Just for a moment, imagine that you have managed to transcend the limiting belief in the need for locality. Just for a moment imagine that maybe actions are just for the thrill of it all – but not necessary.  The how is not important – but the allowing of the possibility is.

I once worked with a man who said that his fortune came to him through his fax machine. He had written a couple of books and mostly they sat on his bookshelf. Then one day some millionaire from Australia sent him a fax and said he wanted to buy the rights to his books. Somehow the books had gotten into the hands of this Australian millionaire and he was willing to pay a lot of money for the rights to them. Since then, I check my faxes carefully.

Sometimes what we think can’t be done is more a matter of having reached the limits of what we can imagine rather than a statement of truth. For instance, one of my current limiting imagination thoughts is that healing takes time and change is gradual. But I’m working on bringing a little bit of uncertainty to what I think I know so that it gives away to a wider field of possibilities.

Action fans are fond of saying - If you want to win the lottery, you have to buy a ticket. Do you?

Why couldn’t you sit home on your couch being in vibrational alignment with becoming rich without having to do anything and - have it happen?

What if you were sitting on your couch in your living room and between the pages of your favorite comic book you found a lottery ticket and it’s the winning ticket. Perhaps the wind blew there. Perhaps a bird picked it up and dropped it there. Perhaps an angel dropped it there … or whatever. You win the millions and you didn’t even have to leave the house. They will come and get your furniture  - when they bring you your new furniture.

Yes, I know you had to buy the comic, find the lottery ticket and check the winning numbers – and they are all actions. I’m not against action. For me action makes the whole process of manifestation more enjoyable. And I think taking action is a very helpful and easy way to shift your vibrational alignment – but is it really necessary for manifestation – for creating what you want in your life?

The point is this – let yourself imagine for a moment letting go of the need for action. Imagine stepping into a paradigm where it is your certain state of being - your vibrational alignment - that creates your life. Taking action is helpful and fun - but not necessary.

Push your mind to let go of the need for action and see what opens up – what possibilities appear. If you like the idea of action, it’s not prohibited – it is just a cool extra-added luxury item in the manifestation process. It’s an optional step. It just adds to your feelings of joy and bliss. If you are into action.

What is the harm of letting go of our attachment to action?

Don’t you think it’s better to embrace all the possibilities rather than be constrained by limits?

I believe that as humans we have the biological potential for allowing straight out thought manifestation.

Am I there yet?

No.

I find it paradoxical to hold this belief and still have to rely so much on action to bring about the results I want. For me at this point in my life I find that bringing about what I want to see in my life relies heavily on focused thought, creative positive emotions, and disciplined, inspired actions. I am still reaching for that pure thought manifestation.

If you can move yourself out of the predominant agreement that action is needed for manifestation to occur, if you can move yourself beyond the inherent human concept of locality, and you are happily sitting home on your couch attracting money to you – maybe I’ll come visit you and you can give me some tips. Then I will have more choices – sometimes I’ll sit on my couch too and sometimes I will get out and about in the world doing things.

"Everything you can imagine is real."   -Picasso

Are Women Still Different Than Men?

Despite politically correct notions, I find that women are different from men and have a distinct function in the world. Generally, women still hold the ancient and traditional position of being the gatekeepers and caretakers of families - in all their varied forms.

Before I get all those flaming comments of protest - Sure there are exceptions and I’m glad to see them. I wholeheartedly support a woman’s right to take on any role. And men have an equally valid and important – but different role in the family. (It is just not my job to work with them.)

It is fundamentally woman’s work to raise, shape, and form the family structure and it is a full time job. Now that it has become the societal norm for both parents to work full time on jobs other than raising the family – Who cares for the shaping and forming of the family structure? Who cares for the mother attempting to do both jobs?

Changing Other People in a Relationship

Here's a simple question that came up in Personal Coaching session:

My husband and I have been married for five years and his family is still a mystery to me. I’ve tried everything I know to develop a closer relationship with them. I call his parents at least once a week, set up outings and dinner dates with them, and invite them on our excursions. All to no avail. They simply don’t seem interested. I think that close family relationships are important and I’ve told them how much I would like to get to know them better. And still their response is lukewarm. Should I just give up?

Research shows that when we feel emotionally disconnected from those with whom we are in relationship, our emotional brain becomes aroused and we move into flight or fight mode. This means we respond only in terms of defense and attack. The results are not good for our relationships and it throws our physiology into chaos.

Nothing affects the emotional brain like the quality of your relationships. Women are relationship oriented - Relationships mean a lot to women. A good relationship can give you increased energy and support a positive outlook. A troubled relationship can wear you out. The health and wellbeing of your relationships entrains your emotional brain, which in turn governs your physiological health.

When you are engaged in disconnected, turbulent, or emotionally unfulfilling relationships, your moods and energy can become drained, negative, and unsustaining.

By contrast, relationship peace and connection can lead to better health and well being, more vital energy and more positive moods. By almost every measure those who have close and rewarding relationships do better than those who have turbulent relationships.

Often times in relationships we are looking to the other party to be an equal part of turning the relationship into something that meets our needs. But before we even get to that point there is a lot of our own internal work that can be done and often needs to be done before we can experience the kind of relationships we want.

In a situation like you are experiencing the first place to look at would be the whole issue of your need to have close family relationships. It is so important to be aware of our needs and then to find a way to get those needs met. Asking for what you need from friends and family can be wonderful and successful tactic to help get those needs taken care of. But, there are pitfalls in that process.

You may be asking your husband’s family to fulfill a need of yours that they are not capable of fulfilling – particularly in a way that is satisfying to you. If you have a need for close family relationships, you have to match up with someone who likes to give close family relationships. It makes no sense to keep coming to the tropics when you want to be snow skiing. They may be doing the best they can but simply not be able to do what it is you need.

If you have a need for this experience of close family relationships and your in-laws don’t seem to be able to meet that need – find another way. Perhaps it is more fulfilling for you (and less stress on them) if you fill your need by developing close relationships with other members of the family.

Also, it is a good practice to discover what is underlying this need. Maybe, these close family relationships make you feel connected and secure in a caring network. If that is the case, there are many means to experience this type of connection – become a Big Sister or get involved in a local charity organization. Once you discover the essence of your need there are many ways to get that need met.

Could be that your in-laws are already experiencing a close family relationship with you. Maybe their lukewarm response is their idea of a close family relationship and it could help you if you found out more about their ideal family interactions. Some people can feel totally connected to friends and family and not see or speak with them for months. You all might be in agreement on the basic outcome of the relationships – it is just that the ways and means that don’t mesh.

Maybe they don’t like doing the things the things you like to do – find out what their favorite things to do are. Sitting home and watching TV might be their preference and they aren’t so fond of dinners out and excursions to new places.

There is a quote by Gandhi that says, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” This is wonderful advice for a relationship. Often we come to a relationship seeking something outside of ourselves. If we want intimacy in a relationship we can not be waiting for the other person to be intimate. We have to be intimacy ourselves. We have to develop our own experience of intimacy so that no matter who we are relating to we are able to experience an intimate connection with them. The experience comes from our own dynamic and we merge and expand that experience in the presence of another – but we don’t depend on them to make something happen for us. We become the experience we want to have in a relationship.

Unfortunately – or is that fortunately?- you can’t change anyone but yourself. Taking the focus off your husband’s in-laws and putting it on the only place you can change – yourself – will put you back in the driver’s seat and leave you in an empowered position. The need you feel for close family relationships may be your call to become connection, intimacy, or support. As you grow and develop these characteristics, of the essence of close family relationships, you will not only fill up your need but also generate those characteristics in the world and attract them to you.

Good luck and have fun.

“When we know that the cause of something is in ourselves, and that we (ourselves) are one of the few things in the universe that we have the right and ability to change, we begin to get a sense of the choices we really do have, an inkling of the power we have, a feeling of being in charge of our lives, of our future, of our dreams.” - John-Roger and Peter McWilliams

The Value of Negative Emotions

I believe that the most important thing in the world is that you feel good. When you feel good, you are most likely to experience your greatest growth and evolutionary change.

The problem for me is that I so naturally seem to find the negative in any situation. I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to stop homing in on the negative. But then I realized that something that comes so naturally to me might actually be a benefit.

Negative emotions have well understood evolutionary value. Negative emotions such as fear, loss, and aggression signal the activation of our flight or fight response. When we experience negative emotions, we have a feeling of aversion, which sets us on course to identify what is wrong and eliminate it. Negative emotions and thoughts are associated with a survival alert that activates a reaction to fight, flight or conserve - each reaction with obvious evolutionary value.
That is all well and good. But it still seems kind of negative. In contemplating this, I linked up with a principle from the teachings of Abraham and The Law of Attraction – “desire is born out of contrast." What this means is that when you are experiencing something negative in you it prompts you to connect with what you really want in your life.

“When you find yourself in the midst of negative emotion... now here's a new twist to it. You are all understanding are you not that when you are feeling negative emotion it is your Inner Being telling you that you are RESISTING something that you WANT!! That is not an easy thing for everyone to understand ...” --Abraham-Hicks

If you hate your job, that negative experience is what summons from you your desire – your dream – for the kind of job you really want.

If you are in a “bad” relationship it prompts you to identify your desire and dream to have an intimate, loving, and kind relationship.

Experiencing the negative, seeing the negative, identifying the negative acts like a wake-up call for you to embrace your dreams and desires. And bringing forth your dreams and desires in the world is what pulls you forward in your evolutionary growth and development.

Negative emotions become troublesome when you spend all of your time there. When something negative happens there is a temptation to embellish the event and tell your sad and sorry story to anyone who will listen – even if you are just telling it to your self over and over again. We can easily get stuck in the negative and feel compelled to grind it into reality.

If you are experiencing something negative, the trick is to quickly identify what desire or dream it is conflicting with – and then get off the negative.

When you are experiencing a negative experience quickly get the message you are sending to yourself about what it is that you really want and move on. Figure out the dream or desire that is calling to you and put your attention there.

Now then, isn’t that a more creative, resourceful, fun, and useful way to handle anything negative that is in your life?

Who's in Your Face?

I’m a big fan The Biggest Loser reality TV show.

It’s shocking that the US has the world’s most overweight population- almost 60 million people. Poor diet, too much stress, lack of vacations, sleep deficits – lots of reasons for this predicament.

But that’s not what I want to talk about today.

It is good to be inspired to lose a bit of weight, but here is the thing I find most interesting about the Biggest Loser - it is a great example of an effective change process.

Do you know what is the biggest factor accounting for the lack of success in making health and wellness changes? Take a guess.

Compliance.

The lack of following the recommendations given by your health care provider is the biggest reason for not achieving the health and wellness goals you want.

In one study, those who were compliant with a placebo protocol achieved better results than those taking the same placebo but who weren’t compliant with the protocol. Maybe compliance itself a valuable tool in and of itself for getting the results you are after.

Could it be that the biggest reason for the sad predicament of being the most overweight population is that we don’t have effective change processes that support compliance.

If you look at the Biggest Loser change process, you see several key things:

Contestants are isolated from their families, friends, etc.  – Yes, they lose their regular support networks but they are also taken out of habitual patterns and relationships. And habitual patterns and relationships actually support keeping you were you are – not intentionally but structurally. As Jillian (one of the trainers) observed - removing people from their families and friends helps to remove people from their enablers.

At the Biggest Loser Camp, contestants only do things that are related to their primary goal of losing weight. They don’t go to work. No cleaning house. No friend’s night out. There are no other distractions – it is all about losing weight. Talk about focus.

Contestants learn new strategies about how to take care of themselves in ways that are directly related to achieving their weight loss goal. They change how they eat, their physical activity, how they rest, how they push through obstacles. They learn to be different, do things differently, and they do different things.

The process has a beginning and an end. It doesn’t just drift on endlessly.

There is a huge payoff at the end and big prizes along the way. It is not just one big grueling process. Rewards work.

They have to face the harsh truth about what is happening for them. Big pictures of their fat selves surround them. They dress in outfits that reveal their gross shapes. Doctors tell them straight out what health risks they face if they stay fat. After highlighting for the contestants how fat they actually are and the risks involved, everyone and everything turns the attention to where the constants what to be.

And then there are the trainers – everyone has their favorite trainer but all the trainers share one common characteristic – they are in your face telling you what to do, when to do it, how much to do. 

The trainers are not at all interested in excuses about why you cannot do it. And the trainers are not that interested in how you think it might be done better. You do what they tell you to do and that is what it is all about.

It is evident that the trainers care about the people they work with and they develop some strong bonds with the contestants. But the trainers aren’t afraid to push their people to do what is needed to get the results. The most successful contestants are those who surrender to the process and enthusiastically partner with their trainer doing what their trainer is telling them to do.

Take home lessons:

If you want to get different results, you cannot be the same, doing the same things the same way.

Love your family and friends but realize that all aspects your current life are supporting you where you are. In order to get somewhere different just about everything in your current life will need to be transformed in some way.

Focus, focus, and focus – everything you do should in some way support the new results you want.

Build a grounded structure to your change process by setting realistic target dates and going for them.

Build in rewards along the way.

Give up being delusional. Tell yourself the truth about where you are and what is happening for you. Then place your sights on where you want to be.

Find an appropriate someone (health practitioner, coach, consultant, therapist, friend) who is congruent with your way of working, who you trust to know their stuff, who you relate well with, who supports your values and beliefs, and partner with them - then do what they tell you to do.  Be compliant and follow through. 

Pleasures

Increase your happiness in the present by learning to enjoy the pleasures of the moment.

Pleasures are a route to increasing the experience of positive emotions in the present and opening the gateway to the experience of the sense of happiness in the present. By learning how to increase the pleasures in your life you will pave the way for increased positive feeling throughout your lifetime.

Pleasures can be honed, nurtured, discovered and supported. They can be sharpened, amplified and brought purposely into your experience. Pleasures are perceived and experienced through the senses and expanded and amplified in your emotions. Pleasures are tied to the satisfaction of biological needs. Pleasures heighten momentary experience but don’t generally build reserves for the future. Pleasures are an important contribution to present happiness and increased positive feelings, even though they are not considered the route to lasting happiness.

Try this to enhance your experience of pleasures in the moment and increase your happiness in the present.

Set aside a free day every now and again to indulge in your favorite pleasures. Don’t get distracted by all of your practical responsibilities. Purposefully design your day of pleasure and carry out the plan.

The Love Yourself Love Your Life Coaching Program is all about how to increase your positive emotions and identify, develop and leverage your strengths. Give me a call at 434-263-4996 or email me at maryann@evenstaronline.com and we can talk about how this special Life By Design program can work for you.

Reach for the Better Feeling

We are in the midst of a drought here in Virginia. Last Friday was the first day it has significantly rained in months.

We live in the woods in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains and we are always interacting with nature. Before the rains we were very aware of the drooping leaves on the trees, the grasses turning brown, and the ground becoming hard and dusty.

Various research studies have investigated plants and their awareness and some have found that when plants are stressed- like when they don’t get enough water - they emit a high pitched screech. Some research also shows that when plants feel life threatened they “faint”.

Surrounded by nature as we are - whether we were conscious of it or not - we were embedded in this natural response to the drought. I found that myself, my family, and my local clients were experiencing some very challenging moods.

In times like these, when you are embedded in a structure larger than yourself, it behooves you to take extra steps to take great care of yourself. Keep looking within asking yourself “What do I need within myself to reach for the better feeling?”

For myself, I wanted to feel like I had more personal power in my environment. Rearranging my dinning room, writing up a new program that I want to add to my practice, and taking naps helped me feel that I had more power to arrange my personal environment and I felt better – while waiting for the rain to come.

Use circumstances to guide you in your internal conversation but don’t let circumstances dictate how you feel and what you do.

After the rain, the plants are feeling better, the screeching has subsided and rain is predicted for later this week. We sure do need it still.

“True wisdom consists in not departing from nature and in molding our conduct according to her laws and model.” -Seneca

Lead with Your Strengths

Psychologists are discovering that human strengths act as buffers against suffering and ineffective action in the world: Strengths such as:

Optimism
Courage
Interpersonal skills
Future – mindedness
Faith
Work ethic
Hope
Honesty
Perseverance
The capacity for flow
Insight
... to name several.

But how to foster these strengths and virtues in all people – young and old?

The acquisition or possession of certain competencies, strengths, positive characteristics, or resilience factors are the elements that lead to developmental trajectories of well-being. These then become the appropriate focus for personal development programs that seek to increase the experience of a life well lived. These personal strengths produce optimal development and support conditions that produce happiness, gratification, well being, and the good and meaningful life. Illuminating each person’s strengths and virtues increases their happiness.

Happiness requires more than simply experiencing positive affective states. To fully experience happiness – "the good life" - one must deploy and exercise their personal strengths. The more correct question for governing one’s direction in life is not just "How can I be happy?’ but rather the question "What is the good life?"

"The good life" is found through the identification and use of each person’s individual strengths.

Several years ago, I became intrigued with the notion of leading with my strengths and not trying to correct my weakness. I was fairly aware of my weaknesses – I have no sense of direction, my math skills are terrible, and I don’t feel comfortable at cocktail parties or acting on stage – to name a few.

Trouble was, I was not sure of what my strengths were. I thought I was good at academics but I had a suspicion (as most people do) that any day now ‘they" were going to discover that I really was not that good after all.

I came across Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton’s work presented in their book Now, Discover Your Strengths. They had been doing some work with the Gallup organization and had developed an online assessment tool to help identify personal strengths. Here is an updated version of the book that you need to buy before you can take the assessment.

I took their StrengthFinder assessment and it revealed my unarticulated strengths. Strengths I had - but had not recognized.

My top 5 strengths from StrengthFinder turned out to be:

Intellection - People strong in the Intellection theme are characterized by their intellectual activity. They are introspective and appreciate intellectual discussions.

Strategic - People strong in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot relevant patterns and issues.

Learner - People strong in the Learner theme have a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve. In particular, the process of learning, rather than the outcome, excites them.

Relater - People who are strong in the Relater theme enjoy close relationships with others. They find deep satisfaction in working hard with friends to achieve a goal.

Futuristic - People strong in the Futuristic theme are inspired by the future and what could be. They inspire others with their visions of the future.

My Strengths Revelation

I was both surprised and relieved. I always knew that intellection and learner were part of who I was – however, I never really thought about them as strengths. They were just always there - and now I could really own them.

I was completely surprised about the strengths strategic and futuristic. They seem like such "grown up" strengths that I had a secret ambition to strive for but thought I was too "soft" to be good at.

Relator – I was happy that at least I had one strength that had something to do with people rather than just ideas – since I have worked with people all of my life.

As I was getting into developing and leveraging my StrengthFinder strengths, the Values in Action project began. The Values In Action (VIA) Project, under the direction of Christopher Peterson, had begun its search for human characteristics that are accepted cross-culturally and are stable across situations and across time.

My strengths revealed by the VIA strength survey were:

Curiosity and interest in the world - "You are curious about everything. You are always asking questions, and you find all subjects and topics fascinating. You like exploration and discovery."

Creativity, ingenuity, and originality - "Thinking of new ways to do things is a crucial part of who you are. You are never content with doing something the conventional way if a better way is possible."

Judgment, critical thinking, and open-mindedness - "Thinking things through and examining them from all sides are important aspects of who you are. You do not jump to conclusions, and you rely only on solid evidence to make your decisions. You are able to change your mind."

Love of learning - "You love learning new things, whether in a class or on your own. You have always loved school, reading, and museums-anywhere and everywhere there is an opportunity to learn."

Perspective (wisdom) - "Although you may not think of yourself as wise, your friends hold this view of you. They value your perspective on matters and turn to you for advice. You have a way of looking at the world that makes sense to others and to yourself."

Almost immediately upon discovering my strengths, my whole perception of myself began to rework itself. I claimed my strengths and went forward in the world to learn (the learner) how to use my strengths in as many ways as I could. I set about to develop and nourish my strengths and use them consciously in all the aspects of my life.

To my continual surprise, I noticed myself consistently approaching life from at least one of my strengths instead of being hesitant or holding myself back, I began to relax into using the strength. Amazingly the strength would unfold and I would see myself doing all kinds of things that I never thought I had the predilection for.

As this went on, I became increasingly comfortable with myself. My fears about being revealed as a fraud disappeared. For the first time in my life I truly felt naturally congruent and authentic – I did not have to convince myself – it just was. I felt that I was acquiring a natural mastery.

Giving Up My Weaknesses

The other great thing that happened is that I stopped trying to correct my weaknesses.

One of the strengths defined on the StrengthFinder assessment is the strength of Woo. Those strong in this strength enjoy winning people over and getting them to like them. Woo people like meeting new people and strangers are rarely intimidating to them.

I have never been comfortable being a Woo person. But to succeed in business you are told that you need to get out there and be a Woo person. I spent a lot of energy trying to make myself get out there and meet new people. I forced myself and I got good at it – but it never really flowed easily for me - and it had a lot of hidden energy expenses in it for me. It was hard to make myself move against my natural flows of energy.

Now that I knew my strengths, I could give up Wooing people. Instead I nourish and develop my strength of being able to relate to other people – which I like doing a lot more and which comes naturally to me with no hidden costs.

My Top Strength

Another interesting thing I learned about myself had to do with my top strength - Curiosity - as revealed by the VIA assessment. Not only is curiosity my top strength but I also am in the 100th percentile of all categories of people who have curiosity as one of their strengths.

This means I am as far out there as you can get in terms of being curious.

Suddenly it explained many things about me. Like:

How come I am attracted to getting tons of certifications (it was not pathological after all)

Why I can never settle on just one interest and am always wanting to do many different things

Why I always have to be involved in multiple projects in order to feel productive

Why every time I got an idea about something (every second of the day) I felt compelled to try and make it happen.

It became clear to me that this strength– curiosity - had been over used and become a weakness for me. You know, "curiosity killed the cat". Well for me, curiosity could drive me to distraction and undo my focus. A strength over developed and not used in conjunction with your other strengths can become your weakness.

I now know that every brilliant idea that comes into my head is not a message that needs to be followed. It is just my natural curiosity doing its job and I can pick and choose what to follow up on. I am still curious about most everything – but a lot more relaxed.

What this has to do with you:

Identify your strengths – Take the StrengthFinder assessment and the VIA survey.

Nourish, develop, and leverage your strengths in all the areas of your life and you will:

Be happier

Be and feel more authentic and genuine

Develop a new and more appreciative perception of yourself

Stop trying to correct your weakness and save yourself lots of hidden energy costs

Be able to see how your worst weakness can actually be the outcome of using your top strength without balancing it with your other strengths. From there, you can naturally let that weakness take its place in the constellation of your other strengths

Get things done more efficiently and with less effort because you are riding along on your own flow channels

Experience a sense of natural mastery and excellence because you are being naturally authentic and leveraging your best self.

Are You Leading with Your Strengths?

I know my strengths and I can name them.

I am comfortable with my strengths.

I know how to develop and nourish my strengths.

I know how to use my strengths in every area of my life.

I know my weaknesses and I can name them.

I can see how my greatest weakness is tied to my greatest strength.

I know how to compensate for my weaknesses.

If you answered "no" to any of the above you could benefit from knowing more about your personal strengths and how to use them for more success, mastery and happiness in life. I would love to speak with you about how to do this.

Science says that there is a simple formula for experiencing success, mastery and happiness in life: Use your personal strengths every day in every way in all the main realms of your life and this will lead you to the experience of happiness, gratification and satisfaction. Use your personal strengths in the service of something larger than your personal life and this will lead you to experience the meaningful life.

If you would like to learn more about your personal strengths and how to leverage them in your life, speak with me about options that are available for you to do this. Email me or call 434–263-4996.

No room at the inn

When new clients come into a Mood and Energy Management Program, they are uplifted and excited.

Their energy has been in the dumper, their moods are not in the “happy, happy” realm, and they feel like crap - and their doctors are still telling them that nothing is wrong with them.

They are uplifted and excited because they have come into a paradigm where the source of these imbalances can be found and re-balanced. Who wouldn’t feel uplifted?

I spend a lot of time letting prospective clients know that it will take a big investment of resources for them to work through my most advanced programs – but mostly they are hearing that here is a solution to turn around how they feel – finally!

Things go fine for a month, two, or even three and then suddenly their ability to cram this new life that they are diligently setting up into their old life bursts apart at the seams. I take it as sure sign that things are at the busting point when I start talking about the need to change their lives and they start perspiring.

So here is the thing (to paraphrase Ben Franklin or Albert Einstein – depending on your source) – you cannot keep doing what you are doing and expect to get different results. Somehow we have a hard time applying this basic idea.

If you keep doing (and being) what you are now – alas, you will keep getting what you have now.

And when you try to do more of what you are doing now, you just get more of what you have now.

You can try moving faster in order to take all those new supplements, fit in your new regime, and hurry to get to bed and wake up “on time”. But moving faster is part of what got you where you are – the place that you don’t want to be.

The bottom line is this – you have to change your worldview about life, health, wellness, well-being, and success. You can keep trying to cram all the new health and wellness recommendations into the old worldview - but your life is already full – there is no room at that inn any more. You are going to have to find an upgrade.

What’s the upgrade? A paradigm shift. A new conceptual view of the way things work and your place in the world. Luckily, a paradigm shift isn’t all that hard to achieve - but it does take attention. It is sort of like consciously directed self brain-washing in the direction that you want to go.

When clients in these integral programs are not doing well, part of the reason is that their worldview isn’t working for them anymore. They are out of synch in some way with the growth, development, or evolutionary process they are going through and the resistance or drag in their systems shows up in feeling bad.

When you are feeling bad it is time for an upgrade to your new current worldview.

I have some specific tricks of the trade to engineering a paradigm shift but a simplistic and very workable approach is to selectively choose the kind of data and experiences you expose yourself to.

I once read that if you read an hour a day on a subject for two years you would be an expert on the subject. If you did it for 3 years (maybe it was 4) you would be a world expert. Same principle.

I recommend to my clients that they use the wonderful “Golden Hour” - right after they wake up in the morning - when their mind is easily shifting between the conscious and unconscious state, to read. Best done outside in a natural place.

Read something that is attractive to you that is just beyond how you currently view the world and your place in it. Choose something that is pleasing, attractive, and uplifting to you. Don’t make it the same stuff you already know - instead reach just a little outside your comfort zone to a place that is intriguing and exciting.

Instead of reinforcing what is making you feel bad why not reach for a conceptual shift that is going to support what you want in life? Go find another inn – maybe one where they serve you breakfast in bed.