MOMENTUM OF THOUGHTS abraham hicks

two power-houses of "new age" thinking sit down and bash it out (see video) these are ideas whose time has come! it seems crazy at first, but i believe it's true. just like the world will consider the most unlikely candidates to be president, they will also consider the most unlikely ideas. (And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. -nin) remember that song from the 60's that said, "this is the dawning of the age of aquarius"? mark my words...the sun is about to rise over the mountains. 

the gabriel method: brain waves

http://www.thegabrielmethod.com/

LISTEN TO THIS: https://soundcloud.com/hay-house/visualization-for-weight-loss-with-jon-gabriel

The Trouble with Starting Again

the photo here shows a huge ginger root for the juicer, 5 of 10 pounds of carrots, 1 of 2 bunches of spinach (good for juice or smoothy), cilantro, parsley, head of romaine ( i know people frown on ice-burg, but i like it mixed in with other greens- it's a good staple). on the spendy side is the low carb protein powder and almond milk. i find have a protein shake is a good way to keep me from conjuring up a good tasting- "interesting" breakfast. it's quick and easy, and can sometimes get me out of the kitchen before i start "creating" in there.

the trouble with starting again is the fear of failure. the fear of going thru all the hard work, suffering, schlogging, trying and hoping- only to get tried-out after six or seven days, weeks, or months. Exhausting yourself again, then eating wrong and stopping everything, and gaining back the weight and losing all the momentum one more time. it's a trap.

so how about i don't do that again. how about i don't "try so hard", but i try just a little. if i just shop smarter, fill it with veg and expensive stuff that's good for me instead of cheap stuff that's not.

the other thing i have to remember is that "this is me". i have always been a little heavy, and will always be a little heavy. so this isn't a blog about, "look at me struggle and strive to be something i am not", it's a blog about taking responsibility for my own health. being mindful of who i am and what i can do to enjoy the best parts of life.

moving out of your comfort zone

as strange it that sounds, once we start to change the way we live, get healthy and lose weight we will begin to move out of our comfort zone. we will no longer be the ordinary person on the street, eating at a fast burger place and watching tv. we will be the extra-ordinary person who eats an enlightened diet, is conscious of who she is and where he's going and active pursuing dreams and passions not watching them on tv. prepare yourself for this. prepare yourself for how great you are becoming every day. breathe into the moment, like a broadway star about to go on stage. this is your moment.

the journey

Your journey will be much lighter and easier if you don’t try to carry your entire past and future around with you. Take a break. Let go of your obsession with yesterday’s struggles and tomorrow’s to-do list, and simply enjoy the beauty of what’s right here, right now. Sometimes you have to stop thinking that some new richness will fulfill you, so you can fully experience the richness that's already yours.

happiness

moving forward is about staying in the moment.

being grateful for where i am.

taking care of myself just for today.

forgiveness. understanding.

and knowing that the mystery of life (and it's challenges) is a gift.

walk more. breathe more. give and be love.

like a bird hunting for a worm, you have to work for it.

well, i may be onto something here, as this is the third blog post on the same topic: laziness. in conversation with a friend today i was discussing the topic in the context of not only food but life. about being tired and the times when one doesn't feel like choosing the right foods and then have to chop and prepare them or when one doesn't feel like going for a walk and she reminded me that there is so much joy in these processes. for instance, taking a walk and noticing that what was no more than a little seedling yesterday was a flower today. these simple pleasures, that are the food of life, are lost when we choose instead to stay home and sleep or spend just a little longer checking our facebook profile updates like status. and then she said something that may stick with me for the rest of my life, she said, (in regard to whole living practices)

"health is my first job. just like a bird needs to go out a catch a worm to eat in the morning."

i love that: "it's my first job". my first job is to take the action required to keep my body+mind+spirit in good working order so that i may truly be present and serve in some way on this planet. you have to work for it. that's very different from being lazy. in our culture we are taught that you earn money (or acquire money) and then you are entitled to buy things. the more you have the more you can get. you can have what you want, pre-fab food, a sedentary lifestyle,and mindless consumption. why? because you can pay for it!
to have stuff is to prove you are worth stuff. more stuff = more self worth. really? i could get into the whole hoarding culture thing here, or obesity/self worth thing here, but that's not really the point. it's simpler than that:

matthew 6/26
Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

faith in yourself (and where you're going)

Amanda Sizemore, farmer, handling the crops that survived devastating rains.

i don't think about faith much. haven't used the word in many years. i don't tend to say things like "ya gotta have faith!". i always thought that was more of a christian-thing, referring to of course to "faith in god". but as i have considered what keeps me from meeting my personal goals and staying on track with my health, i have decided that it is not lack of willpower or lack of desire, but rather a lack of faith.

change is difficult. even when it is change for the good. even when it is self selected change. changing the way you think about food, how you prepare it how much you eat and when and where. and focusing daily on gratitude and goals and breathing and walking. all change for the good. and the results are good too! the slimming effect is good. more energy is good. but, alas! sometimes exhausting. i begin to wonder "how much longer can i keep this up? will my dreams come true? is it all worth it?"

and this, my peeps, is where faith comes in. faith in myself. not faith in some far away place or person or idea. faith in being alive today. faith in knowing that good things will sprout from the seeds that i labor to plant today. faith like a farmer has faith!

when i went looking for a "faith" image to accompany this blog post, i was afraid of what i might find, and all my fears came true. it was mostly churchy-imagery with hookey slogans attached. but when i changed my search to "faith in where you're going" it lead me to the image you see above and to the story of two farmers, Jeremy and Amanda Sizemore who know about faith:

Storms swamped their fields with rain that sometimes totaled 3 or more inches in a day. In May alone, the area absorbed a record-breaking 9 inches. So much rain makes it logistically difficult to get in the fields to plant crops, and it creates a perfect environment for pests, fungi and other diseases. The Sizemores estimate their revenue came up about 50 percent below expectations because of lost crops. But they never quit, and they plan to come back bigger next year. “Farming is more about having faith in what you're doing than having control over it,” said Jeremy, 35. “If you ain't got faith, you ain't going to last long.”

so as i move back into my body and eating the right stuff that nourishes me, "the whole me" rather than feeding my diseases, i have to give thanks to my faith for keeping me on track. because just as mr. sizemore says,"If you ain't got faith, you ain't going to last long.”

for the rest of the story about the sizemores go here.

in a search for passion i discovered seth godin.

in my ongoing search for authenticity, creativity, passion and "doing the right thing", i have been following the blog of permission marketing guru seth godin. his concepts of how things work now are boldly different from anything else i have read, and putting these ideas into practice takes courage and commitment. i thought it was unfair of me to keep all these ideas to myself, when i am sharing so much of what i am thinking about, and when i read today's blog post by mr. godin at 3am this morning, i decided it was time to share the wealth. how, you may ask, does this stuff go with body+mind+and spirit? and my answer is, i'm not sure. but i suspect that it does. these are uncharted territories we are marching in these days and we all need to take the responsibility to be leaders (says seth). reading seth's book entitled "tribes" is part of the reason i decided to write this blog, to take risks, to share, to create, to say "here, i made this". whether you are a marketer or a mother, i hope you find this new information inspiring. here is some of what seth has written:

What matters now:

• Trust
• Permission
• Remarkability
• Leadership
• Stories that spread
• Humanity: connection, compassion, and humility

All six of these are the result of successful work by humans who refuse to follow industrial-age  rules. These assets aren’t generated by external strategies and MBAs and positioning memos. These are the results of internal struggle, of brave decisions without a map and the willingness to allow others to live with dignity.

They are about standing out, not fitting in, about inventing, not duplicating.

TRUST AND PERMISSION: In a marketplace that’s open to just about anyone, the only people we hear are the people we choose to hear. Media is cheap, sure, but attention is filtered, and it’s virtually impossible to be heard unless the consumer gives us the ability to be heard. The more valuable someone’s attention is, the harder it is to earn.

And who gets heard?

Why would someone listen to the prankster or the shyster or the huckster? No, we choose to listen to those we trust. We do business with and donate to those who have earned our attention. We seek out people who tell us stories that resonate, we listen to those stories, and we engage with those people or businesses that delight or reassure or surprise in a positive way.

And all of those behaviors are the acts of people, not machines. We embrace the humanity in those around us, particularly as the rest of the world appears to become less human and more cold. Who will you miss? That is who you are listening to .

REMARKABILITY: The same bias toward humanity and connection exists in the way we choose which ideas we’ll share with our friends and colleagues. No one talks about the boring, the predictable, or the safe. We don’t risk interactions in order to spread the word about something obvious or trite.

The remarkable is almost always new and untested, fresh and risky.

LEADERSHIP: Management is almost diametrically opposed to leadership. Management is about generating yesterday’s results, but a little faster or a little more cheaply. We know how to manage the world—we relentlessly seek to cut costs and to limit variation, while we exalt obedience.

Leadership, though, is a whole other game. Leadership puts the leader on the line. No manual, no rule book, no überleader to point the finger at when things go wrong. If you ask someone for the rule  book on how to lead, you’re secretly wishing to be a manager.

Leaders are vulnerable, not controlling, and they are racing to the top, taking us to a new place, not to the place of cheap, fast, compliant safety.

STORIES THAT SPREAD: The next asset that makes the new economy work is the story that spreads. Before the revolution, in a world of limited choice, shelf space mattered a great deal. You could buy your way onto the store shelf, or you could be the only one on the ballot, or you could use a connection to get your résumé in front of the hiring guy. In a world of abundant choice, though, none of these tactics is effective. The chooser has too many alternatives, there’s too much clutter, and the scarce resources are attention and trust, not shelf space. This situation is tough for many, because attention and trust must be earned, not acquired.

More difficult still is the magic of the story that resonates. After trust is earned and your work is seen, only a fraction of it is magical enough to be worth spreading. Again, this magic is the work of the human artist, not the corporate machine. We’re no longer interested in average stuff for average people.

HUMANITY: We don’t worship industrial the way we used to. We seek out human originality and caring instead. When price and availability are no longer sufficient advantages (because everything is available and the price is no longer news), then what we are drawn to is the vulnerability and transparency that bring us together, that turn the “other” into one of us.

For a long time to come the masses will still clamor for cheap and obvious and reliable. But the people you seek to lead, the people who are helping to define the next thing and the interesting frontier, these people want your humanity, not your discounts.

All of these assets, rolled into one, provide the foundation for the change maker of the future. And that individual (or the team that person leads) has no choice but to build these assets with novelty, with a fresh approach to an old problem, with a human touch that is worth talking about.
I can’t wait until we return to zero percent unemployment, to a time when people with something to contribute (everyone)  pick themselves instead of waiting for a bureaucrat’s permission to do important work.

read seth godin's whole blog post and/or subscribe here.

shifting gears

when i started this project, 50 pounds to passion, my intention was to bring my life into balance. and when i looked at my life i could see that the most obvious place to start was with my body, because this weight imbalance was the "easiest" to correct because you can see it in the mirror. i changed the way i ate and increased my level of physical activity. now i feel better and i do have a better sense of self. all good.

but now as i struggle along with this effort, i am aware of some of the stumbling blocks to my success: i'm hopelessly under-employed.

why is this a stumbling block? because when i am there i am so bored i can focus on little else than where my next little treat might come from and at the end of the day i feel like i need to reward myself with food and drink just for making it through the grind of it all. on the contrary, when i am engaged in activities i enjoy, writing, editing video, solving a graphic design challenge or collaborating on a project with creative people i respect, the last thing on my mind is food.

if my goal is to find passion, and find balance i am going to have to resolve this issue. but there are few places to turn to get the answers. when everyone says "follow your bliss", i think to myself, "wow, i have followed my bliss in the past and it has lead me straight to the poor house". so in these next few weeks, i intend to maintain what i have started with diet and exercise, but my blog posts will be more focused on setting new goals, and finding new roads to accessing a healthy, happy life.

Is setting goals, setting yourself up for failure?

Just when i began questioning the whole process of setting and being side-tracked by goals i came across this blog post by Dr Mark Hyman.

Eat better, exercise more, learn more, love more, love better, be a better son, father, friend, be a better doctor, reach more people, heal the planet, end obesity, starvation, and global warming – ARRRRRGGHHHHHHH!!
It’s enough to make me want to stay in bed and watch movies on iTunes. How can I do all of this? How can I wake up and figure out what do to first, second, or third? How can I achieve even one of these things?  I actually fail all the time.  There is absolutely no way I can achieve my goals.
Our culture is awash with endless pressure to do more, do better, be skinnier, be richer, be happier, be fitter, and be healthier.  We are offered endless lists of what do to, how to achieve more, reach our dreams, lose weight, attain the five steps to immortality, find the seven ways to stop wrinkles, or how to lose 100 pounds in ten days.
We go for these promises because we have this innate yearning to grow, to evolve, to improve, and to be better.
I am in the change business, the transformation business.  I want people to feel better, live well, be happy, be awake, be alive, and to be healthy.  I have to set goals for myself, and I help others to set goals for themselves.
Unfortunately, this leads to inevitable disappointment because we can never reach our goals.  And once we do reach some desired result there will be another goal that will grab our attention.  It is hard to do, but I have found that if you give up your goals magic happens. (go to the blog post here)