Do you struggle with one step forward, two steps back in your get-healthy efforts? Do you hate to say no, when you want to say yes, even though saying no will help you get what you most want?
Do you more often than not choose anything and everything that will make “it” easier, rather than deal with the confrontation change requires?
I remember a few years back when reading Sharon Salzberg’s highly acclaimed book, “Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation.” I paused when she guided me and her other readers to take “mental note” of the emotions that show up when we set out to meditate. She said,
“You may notice yourself resisting these difficult emotions and the bodily sensations that accompany them—pushing them away and feeling ashamed of them. Or perhaps you find yourself getting pulled into them—replaying an argument, or reliving feelings of rage, helplessness, or humiliation.”
Salzberg, with my Dad and others, taught me about the “fleetingness” of emotions — That they come, and they go, like clouds floating by in the sky… But it’s how we respond that’s meaningful, for our health and wellbeing, and for every other goal we hope to achieve in life.
I spoke to a former client recently, a client that totally dominated his 6-month coaching program with me. He scheduled a call to “reboot” his commitment to the many results he gained. Because, though he achieved every health and life goal he wanted in our work together, he said, “Carol, no one I know eats healthy; This makes it really hard for me to stick with all that I learned!”
Three Questions and One Quote:
I asked my former client to consider three questions,
- Did you stick with taking consistent action every day, after your program ended?
- Did you stick with your morning ritual, to help you stay focused on what you most want?
- What did falling off the plan teach you? Help you see?
And I reminded him of a favorite quote,
“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” —Aristotle
Beyond Struggle, Beyond Fleeting Emotions
Did you see the 1996 Olympics, or ever hear of Olympic gold-winner Kerri Strug and how she unwittingly became a national hero at that event?
Kerri Strug was a member of “The Magnificent Seven,” the victorious all-around women’s gymnastics team that represented the United States at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. When performing her first Vault, Strug under-rotated her landing and badly damaged her ankle. But despite her injury, Strug completed her final Vault, landed on both feet, if even for just a moment, to help the USA Women’s gymnastic team win all-round gold!
It was a breathtaking site to behold, to watch 19-year young Strug run down the mat for her second Vault, in spite of her injury. It was an emotional site to behold, to watch her lift her arms in victory, while she raised her injured foot in pain. It was a fierceness of mental mastery and conviction to witness, because of the struggle of the moments.
Trust Your Struggle
When my former client paused to consider my questions, my heart reached out to assure him that I SO understood, and… That “one step forward and two steps back” is the way. That “inch by inch, results are a cinch.” That, I too remember the many times I felt like “odd girl out,” and ended up caving to the spoken, and often unspoken pressure to “stick with the tribe,” and “just shut up and eat the pizza already!” Those times that were equally mixed with relief to just “go with the flow” and the freedom to just let go of my own struggle with, “Why does healthy have to be so hard?”
But when we pause, for even just a few minutes, on the mental mastery 19-year young Kerri Strug beamed for all the world to see at the 1996 Olympics, every opportunity that comes to us, including the times that feel challenging and utterly impossible, becomes an opportunity to choose what we most want again.
And when we pause, for even just a few more minutes, on the wise insight Sharon Salzberg offers in her book, “Real Happiness,” that thoughts are just thoughts, and emotions are just emotions, that they both come, and they both go, and both are only laden with the meaning we give them, we learn how every moment becomes our teacher. We can choose struggle as a lesson on “it’s hard,” and we can choose struggle as a lesson on, ‘we know what we want, by what we know we don’t want.’
Every so-called struggle, becomes our best teacher. Every so-called adversity, becomes our best friend. Every so-called struggle becomes an opportunity to open to the lessons of the experience and choose again.
From this perspective, struggle doesn’t feel like struggle. Rather, it feels like a learning opportunity to stalk.
Trust your struggle. Be thankful for your struggle. Without it, I’ve learned, we would would never discover our strengths.
What Could Be Possible?
What could be possible if you could let go of “it’s hard?’ What would would be different for you, if you trusted your struggle? More results? More fun? More ease, more joy, more energy?
Learn how to “Eliminate Excuses: Prioritize Your Health Now,” in 7 short days HERE? It’s FREE
Do you have beliefs and thoughts that seem to stop you in one area of life, though you’re successful in other areas? Beliefs and thoughts that limit you from looking and feeling as amazing as you deserve, for example? Beliefs and thoughts that hold you back and leave you feeling like a victim of circumstance, rather than empowered and fired-up about all that you’re capable of achieving?
Tapping is cool. Brad will show you how to tap on specific meridian points, while saying specific phrases designed to presence you to your best Self and clear the roots of your limiting thought patterns.
You lost weight. You mastered the diet. You resumed a fitness routine. You reduced chronic symptoms. You even developed a greater understanding of the ways your thoughts predicate what you eat, what you believe about healthy versus unhealthy, and even what you need to do to create consistent and healthy results.
Last night someone said to me, “You haven’t aged one year, Carol (though I haven’t seen this person in 30+ years). Can you help me stop eating so much? Tell me what’s your top secret to looking so young?” …As they whispered in my ear, “What’s your favorite treatment?”
My plan for one of my client calls this week was to highlight what I thought would be smart for her to consider, as she moves forward from all that she’s accomplished in her 6-month coaching program, “
You hear me talk about my love and reverence for the healing powers of drinking
We think ourselves healthy, yet rely on medications. We accept that some bodies “just can’t” digest fruits and vegetables—the foods nature designed for us. We believe that heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and autoimmune disorders are just genetic fate, as if we’re powerless to change our future.
Anxiety was but one of the symptoms I suffered from when I was sick many years back. So one of my doctors, among the several treating me, recommended I take, what was for me, a debilitating dosage of Xanax. When I asked the pharmacist if she could lower the dosage because I couldn’t stand after taking it, she said she’d call the doctor for his approval.
Do you suffer from chronic illness, or know someone who does?
When growing up, my grandfather would bring a roast beef for my Mom to cook every Sunday. And in our Irish American home, of course mashed potatoes and gravy were a given. Roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy were always our slated Sunday family tradition, a tradition laced with love and the sweetest of memories. I remember at a very young age laughing with my grandfather as he would swing me in the air and run around with me and my brothers in the back yard, after our family dinner.
