The BEFORE

When faced with a problem that we are intimidated by we ALL experience 4 stages of hardship before we conquer the issue:

Stage One: Denial

Your life was formed with YOU as the center of your world. As a kid all of the big humans around you validated that truth.

When you were a child you most likely thought that your mother was an extension of you. However she most likely thought that you were an extension of her. We all create a reality in which we are at the center and everything revolves around us. When something doesn’t go our way that can be incredibly upsetting as it sometimes goes against what we have already learned which is that we expect the world will bend to our will.

Two: Anger

Often we really want what we haven’t earned. When we blame people, places or things we give up our rights to change.

Three: Bargaining

Weighing your food, planning your food and separating your food are critical to your success. Those little extra spoonfuls of peanut butter DO stand in the way of your progress. When you only think of things in terms of what you’re giving up and never in terms of what you may be acquiring you will NEVER be able to make a change. The only difference between a grave and a rut is just a couple of feet.

This is really important to consider: Most of us are practiced at either being alive in the past or being alive in the future. Almost NO ONE is practiced at being alive right now. Stop the bargaining. Live in the present moment and make a decision in the now. This is the only path to true change.

Four: Recovery

The mind creates stress and trauma. The greater your imagination often the more elaborate and difficult to untangle your problems will become. How you think determines how you act. Life is always giving us an opportunity to be our best selves. But you have to be capable of seeing it as the opportunity and not the roadblock.

I wish I looked like…

We all have that rhetoric that we use on ourselves. And for the most part, it’s useless. Find experiences that inspire you and begin to change the dialogue.