Fear as Fuel

Have you ever been afraid of something?  I have been working very hard to make changes in my life.  Today marks the beginning of the last hundred days of 2012.  So I am going to use these 100 days as a sort of bootcamp.  Really examine what I am doing, where I am going wrong, and really stepping up into my life.  But as I write that the fear starts rolling in.  How can I actually use that fear as fuel to make those changes?

In many cases fear can actually save your life.  Walking in a dark area known for crime or deep in the woods it’s good to have that fear so you’ll pay extra close attention to your surroundings in case of a criminal or a bear.

I have always been terrified of sharks.  This is an irrational fear because I have never lived near the ocean or ever really had any connection with sharks at all.  But it is not irrational to have a healthy fear of sharks.  I mean can you ever hear that music “Da dum da dum da dum” without thinking of “Jaws”!  Being appropriately scared of sharks is a good thing.  Sharks, violent criminals and bears… oh my.  These are all very valid fears.

But what happens when fears aren’t so valid… fears that won’t save your life… fears that actually rule and ruin your life.  Those unrealistic fears that are basically destroying your life … what do you do about that?

Letting that kind of fear run you … is like sleeping through life while continually having a really frightening nightmare.  That type of fear bores its way into your brain playing these horrible fabricated scenarios over and over while adding more and more ghastly details each time.

The irrational fears that might ruin your life like choosing not to do something because of a fear of what people will think.  “I can’t do that…what will they think of me?”  The funny thing is that those people whose judgement we worry about are usually more worried about what we think about them.  So I’m worried about what you think of me but you’re worried what I think of you.  It’s like that old joke, “That’s enough about me. Let’s talk about you… What do you think of me?”

Okay so can we all agree … Let’s let that fear go. That fear is off the table  

What else is there to fear?  How about failure?  What if I fail?  Failure.  Now, that is a huge fear.  Fear of failure keeps people from trying things.  Who wants to try things if they’re going to fail?   But the real question is what if you don’t fail?  What then?

If you only succeed all the time won’t that get boring? You'd like to give constant success a try.

But even if you did succeed you would still keep trying something new.  Because that is how humans are wired.  We’re always looking for something more… how to improve, how to do it better.  That is our way.  We have to do it.  So if you’re afraid to try because you fear failure… that’s natural… that’s human… embrace it and hope for it.  That is where the magic lies.

Thomas Edison, the great innovator was asked how he kept going after failing to invent the light bulb over 10,000 times.  His retort,  “I never failed I just discovered all the ways not to invent the light bulb.”

So what fears are keeping the light out of your life?  Consider that fear is the pressure applied to the raw materials of your life to create something new.   Like the pressure applied on a lump of coal to create a diamond.  Or the way extreme heat is used to turn base elements into steel; The steel it takes to bring buildings into existence; Buildings that began as a single thought in some ones mind; the mind of a person who might have been afraid of what people might think of them or their idea; Or maybe they feared that they would fail   But that building made of steel stands as proof that fear is not the place to stop.

So the next time that fear rears its ugly head and tries to silence your passions…  Consider the magic you will make for yourself and the world by not bending to the fear.

Mark Twain said, “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, NOT absence of fear.”

So I am going to have to stop being afraid of the changes that will transpire over these next 100 days.

Uncried tears and unspoken fears

Well it certainly has been a very long time since my last post.  As usual I started with very high hopes of writing consistently but then... I didn't. 

"I'll do it tomorrow" is the refrain that I've been singing my whole life.  As I get older I am quickly realizing that the tomorrow doesn't belong to me any more (not that they did before but you know what I mean).  In getting past the guilt and the self recriminations I wanted to jump in to writing this blog again.  So a few weeks back I thought "I know, I'll write every day..." This had disaster written all over it.  But then the little kid in me was all enthusiastic with "Yeah, but this time it will be different!"  This is the second verse to the aforementioned song.

After spending a little time hiding under the covers I remembered this phrase that someone told me about fat - "The fat that we hold is actually uncried tears and unspoken fears."  Great, now I'm going to have to go through all the things again that made me fat and miserable in the first place?  Actually no.  Because this time it can be different.  I am no longer a child looking up to adults to approve, reward and feed me.  People withholding love and food for whatever reason they thought was a good idea.  (I am certainly not blaming people who were equally messed up but it still happened).  Now what?

I don't think I have to cry those rivers and feel those fears because a lot of those fears were created from a child who didn't know about the options in life.  There was no way of knowing as an 8-year-old how to nourish my soul.  All I cared about were Barbie dolls and finding out that Jonny Quest was not a real boy but in fact a drawing (my heart still aches a little over that). 

Now I need to allow those uncried tears some honor and release.  Then to reassure that 8-year-old that there's really nothing to fear so that we can all get on with life.  My one big sadness of not getting a hold of my weight and body sooner is that no matter how slim and fit I get at this point in life I pretty much have to give up on the idea of ever wearing leather pants.

One Step Forward and Two Steps Back

This title "One Step Forward and Two Steps Back" isn't just part of a routine on "Dancing with the Stars" it's life. 

In starting this blog I wanted to write about this new concept on weight and my life long struggle (there have been numerous writings on the subject).  So, when the idea hit me that fat is really just energy waiting to be harnessed that created an image of all these fat cells just wanting to express themselves as fulfilled energy.  As a person who has spent many hours and dollars in 'self improvement' seminars, workshops and weekends listening to inspiring leaders urging the group onto finding our bliss and living our best life ever (sorry, Oprah, you weren't the first with that expression) this seemed like a place where my little fat cells needed to travel.  So wouldn't it be interesting if I became the inspirational speaker for my own fat!

These fat cells and I have been together for a very long time.  Some have moved on to energy and other have joined... (I have spent most of my life looking like a human accordion.... fat - thin-ish - fatter - less thin... you get the picture).  Might as well use all those hours of self-improvement experience. 

When I started back in June it was working brilliantly my weight was dropping only through my thoughts of encouraging my fat to be energy.  Why hadn't I done this before?  As a person thinks so are they.  My new favorite speaker, Mike Dooley, has coined a phrase "Thoughts become things so choose the good ones" (By the way if you aren't signed up to his "Notes from the Universe" do yourself a favor). Things were moving along great for my thinking off my weight and then that 'voice' started in.  (It was also the voice that suggested I forget about writing this blog because I was a self proclaimed Luddite and didn't really have much to say anyway).  The negative energy kept pushing me back into my old patterns of life... I've been on an ice cream binge extraordinaire...I've been believing that negativity and going back toward my old way of life.  (Many years before hearing about Dr. Phil I always suggested to friends "And how is that working for you?"... I've got the annoyed friends to prove it).  How was that working for me?  Badly.

But the negative energy was keeping me from my new ideas that were working to put me back onto a more familiar path.  Then I conjured up another analogy (I got a million of em) I'm driving this bus of my life and this energy, negative or otherwise, is just the fuel but I get to set the GPS and drive the bus.  Those negative thoughts are backseat drivers.  Sometimes that 'little voice inside' can give some good suggestions - don't go down that road because there's construction, you need to stop for stamps or don't forget the ice cream.  But that's all they are - suggestions - some of which we programmed ourselves as children.  That is a whole other topic but if you created these protections as a 5 year old that would mean we're still making some decisions from that perspective but would you let a 5 year old drive your car?  No.  Then why are we letting a 5-year-old drive our lives?

So after the sadness of going back on what I'd originally set out to do I chose to change course and go in the direction of what I want and how I want to live my life.

Even though I had to take those two steps back sometimes that's all you need to get a running start.

Food Isn't The Enemy...It's Me!

In my quest to "awaken my fat to its true mission in life" (becoming energy for me) I can't help but think about all the years of fearing food.  Which foods are good... Which are bad...Guilt... Sneak Eating... Calories... Carbs... Fats... Counting.... Weighing... It's no wonder I'm gaining weight, because apparently what you think about is what you draw to yourself.  Great, so all this time that I've been panicking about my weight I was really begging to get more.

A friend of mine recently ate chocolate and told me how guilty she felt about doing that.  How many times did I feel the burn of guilt after eating ‘something bad’… I can’t even count.  But what are we guilty about?  Did we steal this food? No.  Did it belong to someone else? No.  So where is this guilt going?  Oh, that’s right, the guilt is going into our bag of personal torture devices.  Guilt is seated right next to self loathing (it’s a tight fit, but they are very close) and next to them is unrealistic expectations which happens to be holding hands with misery over lost dreams… I think you get the picture.

No more guilt (a wasted emotion) – food is just food, and I am no longer an 8 year old who is being scrutinized by what I am “supposed” to eat.  So now the more that I get in touch with what hunger signals my body is actually sending, I don’t have to eat until I am unable to move in order to be full, and neither do I have to wait until my hands shake and my stomach groans before I allow myself to eat.  There is a happy medium, but finding that sweet spot is a journey in itself, one step at a time. 

Why Weight ... The Time Is Now!

My weight has been an issue my whole life. Well, even when it wasn't an issue I was led to believe it was a problem.  As a result, my weight continued to grow as I filled the pockets of every weight loss conglomerate to try and shed these unwanted pounds. I've spent my life as a human accordion - fat gain/weight loss/fat gain/weight loss (losing the size of an entire family in the process). All the while hating this fat.  Blaming my fat for any life challenges or any issues faced. Always turning my anger on my arch enemy - my super powered nemesis - FAT.  

"What you resist persists." After years of angst it recently hit me.  What is fat anyway? It's stored energy.  It's not an evil overlord with the ulterior motive of ruining my life (Tell that to my teenage years that were ruined by being a fattie). But 'fat' was just a thing, a mere noun and not a ruthless destroyer of lives. 

A scientific definition - "Fat is a necessary, efficient source of energy. An ounce of fat contains more than twice as much stored energy as does an ounce of protein or carbohydrates and is digested more slowly, resulting in the sensation of satiety after eating. It also enhances the taste, aroma, and texture of food. Fat, or adipose tissue, protects and insulates internal organs against heat loss and regulates cholesterol metabolism."

I had no idea fat was so awesome!

This gave me an idea to stop fighting and start inspiring my own fat.  After reading all these inspirational books about visualizing and manifesting, it was time to use what I learned. I was going to be an inspirational leader to my fat.  Appeal to its natural talents rather than hating it and fighting it. Rally the fat troops to live up to their full potential of being energy.

The battle cry: "Come on fat cells!  We've been together a long time. Now it's your turn to do what it is you do best.... Be Energy!  I am no longer going to hold you back with slurs and epithets hurled to hurt your feelings.  You have goals, my dear fat, and I will no longer stand in your way. So I encourage you to get out there and be energy.  Live the life that was meant for you and you alone. You were born as energy and you should live as energy.  Go fat go!"

So that's where I am at this point.  I do sort of feel a bit of a shift and feel like eating carrots and hummus.  Who knows, maybe this could be the answer to my weight problem... I mean 'weight energy.'