When you decide it’s time to really step out and do something great, it usually brings some fear up, right?

And you probably think that fear is about what’s outside you – what will other people think?, will they like it?, will they judge me?, will I be approved of?, will it be any good?

But most of what we’re really afraid of comes from the inside first.

We start judging and doubting and tearing our own work down WAY before anyone else has a chance to.

We run all our ideas past a gauntlet of tests, critiques and invalidations before they ever get to see the light of day.

Did you know that the only outer criticisms you’re ever afraid of are the ones you worry are true?

Think about this for a moment. When someone tells you something negative or even constructively negative, and you’ve never heard it before – you’re surprised right? And maybe even grateful to hear it, saying “Wow, I never even knew that!”

But when someone tells you something you’ve heard in your own head over and over again, you react. It’s already got a huge charge on it and it’s not like you NEEDED to hear it again. You’re  defending yourself against it on the inside every day.

So how safe are you making it for yourself to risk and create and express?

Everyone says in order to succeed and gain attention in this crowded world you’ve got to “be revolutionary” and “do epic shit”. And I agree.

But how safe is that when you’re waiting for the hammer of inner judgment to fall?

Now at this point, a lot of people will defend “judgment” saying it’s not really negative in and of itself, we all need to “discern” good from bad and right from wrong.

OK. I’m not talking about discernment here. Yes, that’s a good thing.

I’m talking about anything you say or think to yourself, about yourself, that’s the slightest bit unkind.

And for me, unkindness is as much about the “tone” you use with yourself as it is about the words.

It’s about how you treat yourself every day.

If you had a friend that spoke to you in the way that you speak to yourself, would you stay friends with them?

That’s a really good test for the quality of your inner dialogue.

Every single interaction you have with yourself makes your inner relationship better or worse. Every time you speak to yourself, you set up an inner expectation of what the next interaction will be like.

You have the power to leave yourself with a safer, more encouraging place to play, anticipating kindness and support.

Or you can leave yourself in a slight atmosphere of dread, waiting for the next unkindness or harsh word.

And, just like a 35 year marriage, these constant interactions and their quality add up over time to create a space for you to bloom in or not.

So if you want to step out and do something big, something you’ve never done before, your inner world will need to be safer than it’s ever been before!

Risk requires support. A place to fall back when we fail – where someone will say “There, there,” and help us console our hearts and lick our wounds.

And the very first place we can create huge support is inside ourselves.

When I was getting ready to step out in 1997 as a coach for the first time, I found myself completely unable to do it. And then my own coach at the time pointed out that I had no community or outer support system and that I would really need that first in order to get out there.

But what neither of us realized then was that support was entirely missing in my inner world too.

When inner support is missing, we go looking for support in our outer world. But in a cruel irony, we’ll often assume that we’re going to receive the same kind of support from others as we’re receiving from ourselves.

And if by chance someone lovely and truly encouraging happens to stumble into our circle, we’ll go ahead and project our inner judgment on them, telling ourselves a story about what they must be thinking about us.

It’s really crazy making isn’t it?

No wonder we have such a hard time creating and expressing and stepping out as our true authentic selves!

So if you’re getting ready to take a risk and be bold and revolutionary…

…take some time to lay a foundation of inner support and encouragement.
You’ll need it.

If you’d like to learn more about how to create a compassionate, encouraging and safe relationship with yourself in my upcoming 5-week teleclass, you can Sign Up Here for more information and a free audio recording.

What’s your experience with risk and inner support? How do you make it safe for yourself to step out? I’d love to hear in the comments below.

You might also like these:

1. Beyond Repression – Making Space for Your Irrational Beauty

You WANT to be taking action on your true desires, but you just can’t seem to get past that invisible wall that’s got you stopped.

Maybe random things just keep getting in the way. Maybe you’ve been telling yourself you’re too busy – but that doesn’t make the longing stop.

Or maybe you KNOW you’re sabotaging the very thing you want the most and judging yourself for that is becoming one more reason to avoid it.

Whatever your resistance looks like, you know you simply must get past it if you’re ever going to get to where you really want to be in your life.

And if you’re anything like me, you’ve found that willpower doesn’t work long term – it’s just tiring – and forcing yourself takes all the joy out of something you want to love and not hate everyday.

Get the Skills and Knowledge to Go Past Your Invisible Walls

The Wisdom of Your Resistance is a 5-Week Teleclass program that shows you step-by-step how to track your resistance and enter into a compassionate dialogue with it so you can immediately end the tug of war you’ve been having with yourself.

Your resistance patterns, and all parts of you for that matter, are incredibly wise and with the right training, you can start finding out WHY they’ve been getting in your way so you can give them what they need to get on board and work FOR you.

You’ll be building skills in 6 distinct areas and learning practical techniques you can use anytime, anywhere, to make new choices and keep resistance from taking over.

Plus, you’ll be unlearning a lifetime of judgment and inner criticism and learning brand new positive, heart-centered ways to stay connected to your motivation and desire.

The program includes 5 weekly teleclasses, mp3 recordings and transcripts in case you can’t be there live,  a community support forum, weekly worksheets and pdf guides, a copy of the 15 Minutes to Outsmarting Your Resistance kit and one personal Discovery Session with me.

And you won’t have mountains of homework! This is about doing tiny things through your day that completely transform your inner experience. Our resistance loves to make tasks look like big barriers, so everything will be bite-sized and do-able!

No matter what your obstacles are, you’ll find effective ways to see through them and transform them into good fuel, for progress you can feel great about.

And the brilliant thing about this process is that it’s designed to work even if you’re resisting the program itself!

Personalized Coaching

Whenever you’re dealing with resistance, it’s good to remember that things are being actively hidden and kept buried in your subconscious in order to keep you safe and happy.

That’s why I’m including direct, personal coaching time with me, so you can get straight to the bottom of what’s been blocking you and save yourself years of hunting and struggle.

AND, you’ll have a half-price discount on additional coaching hours for the duration of the 5-week program and for one month after, as well.

Community Support

One of the favorite and most common strategies of resistance is “divide and conquer”. That means your resistance likes it when you’re isolated, cut off from support and thinking you’re the only one who’s feeling this way.

So one of the things I’m the MOST excited about is the community forum that will be a part of this teleclass program.

You’ll be able to get direct feedback from me, but when you get a taste of the support available from the rest of your fellow students that will probably become even more valuable to you.

Together we’ll create a resource for each other filled with wisdom, camaraderie, insight and laughter.

And I’m going to keep it open for an additional month after the program ends so you’ll have a transition time before you start “flying solo” with all your new habits and skills.

Plus, YOU Get to Help Design the Program!

This is the first ever offering of The Wisdom of Your Resistance Teleclass program. And because of that, I’m going to be seeking your input and advice on what you need, what order to do things in and what formats will work best for you.

So you get to help me create the program that will work the very best for you!

What’s the Free Offer?

This is actually a moment I’ve been waiting a long time for. I struggled so long with my own resistance that I had moments when I seriously thought I would never really accomplish anything.

And I know from intimate experience that one of the areas resistance likes to go after is money – making sure the resources are never there to get what you need to move forward.

Now, finally, I have the chance to take that limitation off the table for you.

That’s why I’m offering three scholarships to the readers of this blog. The three lucky winners will get the entire program absolutely free. Winners will be notified two days before the course opens to the Early Bird List that they have won their spot in The Wisdom of Your Resistance teleclass program.

How Can You Get in for Free?

To enter to win a free scholarship, here’s what you need to do. At the bottom of this page, add a comment, and tell me:

• What’s your biggest frustration around dealing with resistance and obstacles to your goals and dreams?
• Where would you like to see yourself after The Wisdom of Your Resistance Teleclass program? (You don’t have to give specifics if it feels pretty personal – just tell me in a general way.)

Do you have questions about the Wisdom of Your Resistance teleclass? Please let me know those, too! I’m happy to answer them.

Tell All Your Friends

Do you know someone who could benefit from The Wisdom of Your Resistance Teleclass program? Click on the Share button below to share it on Twitter and Facebook and wherever you like. You can also use the Retweet button to tweet it out to your peeps.

Remember, you just need to tell me:

• What’s your biggest frustration around dealing with resistance and obstacles to your goals and dreams?
• Where would you like to see yourself after The Wisdom of Your Resistance Teleclass program?

And if you have questions, let me know about those, too!

Best of Luck!

Our contest is now closed and congratulations go out to our 3 lucky winners, Eva, LaVonne and Sang-Gye. Thank you all for your participation and comments! For more program info, previews, discounts and access to a FREE Intro Teleclass July 27th @ 8 pm Eastern, just put your name on the Early Bird List.  I’ll also be sending the mp3 recording of the teleclass, entitled “7 Sources of Resistance and How to Make Friends With Them, to everyone on the list!

You might also like these:

1. Why Traditional Coaching is No Match for Resistance
2. Resistance is Your Soul’s Compass
3. If you’re going to fall off the wagon, DECIDE to first

Or “What I learned about success while shoveling my walkway.”

Thank goodness this is NOT my sidewalk....

An insight like this might sound silly but, when I got it – in the hush of a rural Nova Scotia night with the snow still falling softly – it was actually kinda profound.

First of all, shoveling is far from my favorite thing to do. And here in Atlantic Canada freshly fallen snow turns quickly into a wet, heavy cement-like substance that doesn’t want to come off the shovel when you go to hurl it to one side of the path.

To say that I had many moments when I wanted to quit is rather an understatement.

But in the end, I finished it and felt the lovely puff of pride when my husband (bless his heart) stopped in the front doorway to admire the fine job I did. (He KNOWS he’ll never get help with it again if he nitpicks….smart man!)

And the reason I finished boiled down to 3 things, which I realized apply to just about everything else we might want to quit, so here they are:

1.  Doing it faster to “just get it over with” only made it worse.

I kept getting exhausted by the sheer volume and weight of the snow and it was definitely making me grumble more about the whole thing. It was when I slowed down to a more enjoyable and sustainable pace that I noticed the hush of the night and the beauty around me and got just a little more grateful to be outside after all.

2. As long as I’m committed to finishing, taking a rest is OK.

And I took lots of them. And at first, when I was grumbling, every rest I took I thought might become my stopping place. And when we don’t want to do what we’re doing, it’s so easy to label any true need for a break as avoidance, resistance or procrastination.

In fact, we can get afraid to stop just for fear that we’ll never start again. But then, at some point, I fully committed to getting it finished, all the way up the steps. And after that, a rest was just a rest. And it was good!

3. When I wasn’t sure I could do it, I would turn around and see how much of it I had done already.

And it surprised me what a great motivational boost this was, but even when I first started and there was WAY more yet to do than what I had completed, every time I looked at the finished bit, I felt great.

And once I figured this out, I just kept looking back at the ever increasing amount of evidence that I could do it and just kept on doing it and pretty soon…it was DONE!

And then I thought how curious it is that, when we get so focused on “moving forward” with something hard, it seems counter-intuitive to look back.

Yet,  all the evidence for how far we’ve come, even if it’s just a tiny increment, is behind us.

In writing this, I remembered a friend who doesn’t write to do lists, she writes DONE lists. Now I can see why!

So the new “prescription” I’m going to be playing with this year is:

Slow down
Rest when needed
Be inspired by what’s already done

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Where do YOU draw your inspiration from when you want to quit?

If you enjoyed this article, and you’re not signed up yet, go ahead and subscribe to receive free updates by email or in a reader.

You might also like these:

1. Why Desires Are Better Than Resolutions Any Day
2. With Resolutions, a Good Idea Isn’t Good Enough

Calendar from Linda & Harriet

Happy New Year!

And with the New Year comes the inevitable  reviews and stats on how well we generally do at following through on our New Year’s resolutions!

Generally, the stats say we don’t do so well and, in my experience, there’s one big reason for that…  we haven’t dug deep enough to find out WHY we really chose our New Year’s resolutions in the first place.

Some resolutions seem so obvious.

We KNOW that we’re 25 pounds over our healthier weight, or we KNOW that the smoking or junk food is bad for us – so OF COURSE we should resolve to do something about them.

In this case, too, we’re often making the obvious resolutions for the benefit of someone close to us. We say we’ll do it because it makes THEM feel better and also gets them off our back for a little while.

And sometimes we pick a resolution for someone else’s benefit.

We may choose a resolution because THEY picked one and if you live in the same house it’s a lot easier to BOTH quit smoking or eat healthier.  And, of course, you want to be supportive…

The downside is this :

That isn’t always the truth of our own heart and it sets us up for a lot of inner struggle, defeat, self-judgment and maybe their judgment too, when we don’t succeed in staying with it.

There’s a much more powerful and satisfying way to go about this and it requires a little digging – into our desires.

With resolutions a “good idea” just isn’t good enough.

You see, all the kinds of resolutions I listed above seem like perfectly good “ideas” – but that’s the problem, they’re just ideas. They’re in the mind and we haven’t brought them down to heart level yet.

The heart level is where all the power is and the fuel that will keep you going even when you want to quit, and even when your spouse or room-mate quits!

Let’s say you’re faced with the obvious choice that resolving to lose 20 pounds would be really good for you – and everyone else in your household thinks so too. That’s a fine and healthy and well-intended choice – but lets take it deeper now.

5 questions to ask about your resolution to find the desire behind it:

Take some time and sit down in a quiet space, maybe first thing in the morning or last thing at night, and simply watch your breathing for a minute or two as a way to quiet your inner world. Notice your body relaxing just a little bit and just breathe.

Then take a few minutes to reflect on WHY you would want to make that resolution this year. Next you can ask the following questions in any order you want and see what comes up for you:

1. What feels important about this for you? Why?
   (And when you get an answer, you can ask Why? about that, and so on, peeling layers into your heart as you go)
2. Is there something happening in your life right now that makes this choice more important than before?
   Maybe you tried this and couldn’t follow through. What’s different now?
3. Is there a longing behind your resolution?
   Is there an ache for something that you’re missing in yourself or your life? And how does that longing relate to the resolution you chose?
   (Hint: longing is GREAT fuel for staying motivated.)
4. Is choosing this a way to stop feeling badly about something?
   Is there an underlying desire to simply feel good again, with or without the change? If that’s the case, find a way to come to a deep acceptance of where you are now, first, so you’re not in reaction to feeling bad at the same time that you’re trying to change.
5. Is choosing this a means to something else that you desire even more?
   For example, someone might be choosing to lose weight in order to find a relationship. If so, what’s the desire that’s even stronger than your current resolution?

Write down whatever comes up for you in the process. You might even want to do this over the course of several days in a row – sometimes we hold back a bit the first time, because we’re a little scared of what we’ll find. This definitely gets easier as we go along!

This could change things….

Based on what you discover, you might choose a different resolution all together, deepen your motivation for your original one, or decide it’s not the right time to make one at all.

No matter what you decide for this year, you’ll be a lot more honest about it, a lot more motivated and a lot more likely to succeed!

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this or on New Year’s Resolutions in general. Share your comments below.

(And if you enjoyed this post, go ahead and subscribe to receive free updates by email or in a reader.)

You might also like these:

1. Why Desires Are Better Than Resolutions Any Day
2. Presents & Presence for Your New Year
3. The 2 Kinds of Motivation

What to do...what to do....

I’m just starting to get into exploring the whole “blogosphere” and finding like minded others to read and hang out with. And I found a gem today that I want to share with you.

Briana at Blisscovery wrote a funny and insightful post about the dialogue she had with a personal trainer trying to pressure her to commit to a contract after a free session, and also about the inner dialogue she had with herself about her right to take her own sweet time.

Take a look here:  I can make broccoli an unhealthy decision.

Then come back and leave me a comment below  and let me know if you enjoyed this.

And if you’re enjoying these posts,  go ahead, treat yourself and subscribe to receive free updates.

You might also like these:

1. If you’re going to fall off the wagon, DECIDE to first
2. All Your Great Evidence is Behind You
3. Come, come again…

There’s a pretty good chance, if you’re sitting in a house, with a computer, reading this in an email or on a web browser, that you have all your basic needs of food, clothing and shelter met, with some income left over to pay for internet and pay some attention to things beyond your own backyard.

This “luxury” we have, of having the time, space and money to pay attention to what we want to is not available everywhere in our world. And the gift of our awareness plus the availability of so much global information is showing us things we never even knew we wanted to change.

And if we’re living from our hearts to any degree at all, the plight of others and our world as a whole provokes a response in us – a desire – to help, to console, to soften the pain or address the need in whatever way we can.

But what to do from there?

Andrew Harvey, a modern day mystic, writer, teacher and student of the worlds mystical traditions,  offers a handbook for answering that very question.

I’ve been following Andrew for a long time, ad his book The Son of Man opened my eyes to the mystic essence available within the Christian tradition and helped me shake some of the dogma I was still locked into at the time.

I actually haven’t read Andrew’s new book, The Hope. It only just released on September 15th and I just ordered my copy online, so I hope it gets here soon!

I heard a portion of a talk he gave played on cassette years ago and just a few minutes of listening to him absolutely set my heart on fire!

And I believe it was Andrew who talked about becoming a “radical radioactive nuisance for love”, a term that has stuck with us in The Way of the Heart community.

So if Andrew has written a handbook for what he calls spiritual activists, I have no doubt that it will be passionate gasoline for any fire in us that wants to change the world.

You might also like these:

1. Mercedes Sosa, the power of heart + truth + voice

Mercedes Sosa 1973

This past Sunday, October 4th, a great light went out in Latin America and in our world.

Mercedes Sosa had one of the most powerful female voices I have ever heard and she became a voice for the longings of her country and her people in a time when they desperately needed one.

Born in northern Argentina, she began recording, performing and touring in the  mid 1960′s, starting mainly with Argentine folk songs and widening her repetoire to include songs from across Latin America.

She supported Perron in her youth and was a key figure in what was called the “new song” movement in Argentina, a movement that captured the change embodied by the 60′s.

In 1971, she recorded a tribute album to the Chilean poet Violetta Parra, which included a cover of Parra’s song, Gracias A La Vida, or Thank You To Life, which became one of Mercedes Sosa’s signature pieces.

In the 1970′s, as Argentina became more and more oppressive under the military dictatorship, the voice of Mercedes Sosa began to be seen by the authorities as too powerful in it’s heartfelt honesty and in 1976 she and her entire audience were arrested and searched at a concert.

Mercedes was only released through international pressure, and she was then banned from Argentina and would not return until 1982, just months before the military government fell.

I first heard her voice on one of the world’s best radio stations, CKUA, in Alberta, singing Gracias A La Vida from the recording of her homecoming concerts in Beunos Aires. I was captivated by the great power and deep love for humanity I heard in her and I’ve been listening to her ever since.

I wanted to share with you this You Tube video of her singing Gracias A La Vida and I managed to track down a lovely English translation of the lyrics, which I’ve re-printed below, which you might want to read first and then watch the video.

Mercedes Sosa has become my icon for the power of a single female voice and what it can embody in and for the world, and this song has become my favorite gratitude song of all time.

I sincerely hope you enjoy this and as always I would love to hear your comments below.

Thank you to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me two beams of light, that when opened,
Can perfectly distinguish black from white
And in the sky above, her starry backdrop,
And from within the multitude
The one that I love.

Thank you to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me an ear that, in all of its width
Records— night and day—crickets and canaries,
Hammers and turbines and bricks and storms,
And the tender voice of my beloved.

Thank you to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me sound and the alphabet.
With them the words that I think and declare:
“Mother,” “Friend,” “Brother” and the light shining.
The route of the soul from which comes love.

Thank you to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me the ability to walk with my tired feet.
With them I have traversed cities and puddles
Valleys and deserts, mountains and plains.
And your house, your street and your patio.

Thank you to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me a heart, that causes my frame to shudder,
When I see the fruit of the human brain,
When I see good so far from bad,
When I see within the clarity of your eyes…

Thank you to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me laughter and it gave me longing.
With them I distinguish happiness and pain—
The two materials from which my songs are formed,
And your song, as well, which is the same song.
And everyone’s song, which is my very song.

You might also like these:

1. Come, come again…

On A Roll, by Sally Spooner

Most of us have heard the phrase “I’m on a roll”. And often we’re smiling when we say it, because it usually means that more than one good thing in a row has happened – like, we made 3 great shots in a row or we had 4 positive phone calls in an hour.

You get the picture. A “roll” is all about momentum!

In terms of moving forward with things in our life, especially the things we’ve been resisting or procrastinating on, there’s no dynamic more useful than ‘a roll’!

But how can we reliably conjure one up? They seem notoriously difficult to control. I mean if we could just create one whenever we wanted, we could get all kinds of things accomplished, right?

Well, what if we can? I was definitely on a roll this afternoon and I started to do what I often do when I catch myself in the middle of a pattern – I started to take it apart and figure it out.

What started it? How did I get there? How did I keep it going?

And what I realized is that ‘a roll’ starts with an energy boost.

Today, it started with accomplishing something pretty small and easy that I had been avoiding – one email to one client.

Whew, I thought…that was easy! So I sent another one from my to do list, and then another until all 5 items on that list were crossed off.

Wow, did that feel good! And I got all kinds of energy from doing it!

So then I dove straight in to a writing project I needed to start and plowed through that for an hour or more until my body told me it was time to stand up and move. And boy it felt great to get started on that project.

Next thing I knew, I had the energy to power-walk down the road to the mailbox – something I’ve been trying to do every day this week. I got back feeling revitalized and lo and behold…I had the energy to clean up the kitchen! And believe me, the kitchen is my nemesis – it’s the BIGGIE on my list.

Are you seeing the pattern here?

I started with one tiny email and ended up completing the BIG ONE, the kitchen. What I realized is that each task freed up energy for the next one.

So, the most important key to getting this “roll” going was starting small, with something that I had almost no resistance to doing in that moment, even though I had been putting it off.

As soon as the first small task was done, I felt so great about it that I got a boost of energy that made the next task possible.

Could I have done the kitchen after the first email? Noooooo!

There’s no way I would have had enough energy for that. It took the great energy and relief of completing 5 emails, invoices, an hour of writing and a fabulous walk to the mailbox to create enough energy for me to tackle the kitchen.

Isn’t that wild? You’d think that after each task I did, I’d have LESS energy available, but I actually had MORE!

Somehow, the energy I had available after each task led me to the next right task, not too big and not too small for what I could handle then.

It was like walking up an easy set of stairs.

So try this process:

The next time you’d like to conjure up ‘a roll’, pick a small task that will feel great to complete and just do it. And when you feel great after you’ve done it, pick one more and see where the energy takes you.

And if you feel blocked in your next task or like you don’t have enough energy to tackle it, you’ve probably picked one too big or too stressful. Try going for a smaller, easier item or something that feels fun and keep the energy going.

I’d love to hear about your experiences with this or with momentum in general.

You might also like these:

1. The Myth of “I don’t feel like it” (Part I)
2. All Your Great Evidence is Behind You
3. With Resolutions, a Good Idea Isn’t Good Enough

I read a great blog post by Tim Brownson from the UK on commitment to the change process which relates beautifully to my recent writing on temptation.

Most of the post relates to a reader’s feedback that they can’t seem to stay with his posts because they’re too long, which leads to his musing on commitment to other processes in our lives.

The point that I especially loved though is in the bulleted list at the end where he talks about Deciding. In referring to an example of being tempted by cake in the refrigerator, he writes:

Do not allow your unconscious to take over here, make a conscious decision. If you want the cake then make a decision to eat it, just don’t allow yourself to default into a negative action. The latter leads to a sense of helplessness, the former keeps you in control.

It is much easier to hop back on the wagon if you know you made the decision to get off in the first place rather than believing your were thrown off for reason or reasons unknown.

This is really brilliant. It allows us to “witness” the temptation, and be the one “choosing” what to do with it, versus identifying ourselves as someone who is completely at the mercy of our whims and cravings.

This is a powerful identity to reinforce!
Thanks Tim!

Let us know how this strikes you. Join in the discussion below.

You might also like these:

1. Secret Fuel to Overthrow Temptation
2. Jump Scared!
3. Healthy decisions are all about the “why”

Several years ago I undertook a major cleanse that involved radically restricting my diet. Imagine if you will 8 months of no sugar, no wheat or gluten, no dairy, no red meat and no fruit except lemons and cranberries.

Most people generally ask at this point “What’s left?” A surprisingly long list actually, but that’s another blog post.

What I didn’t know back when I started the cleanse was that I was about to get a very in-depth look at temptation.

And I mean, we got intimate! I lived with it for days and weeks on end and just when I thought (in my safe little apartment) that I had vanquished it, I would have to go to the grocery store and go another round with it.

I was reminded recently of the major breakthrough I had during that time and an insight that led to one of my most successful tactics for facing down temptation.

What I discovered is this:

Remembering something I loved, gave me the fuel to stare down temptation and win.

Now I suspect there are a bunch of reasons for this.

1) Heart power is always the strongest motivational force within us.
(The heart has the strongest electromagnetic field in the body and perhaps   that has something to do with it too.)

2) Remembering what I loved in a moment of temptation provided an immediate distraction from my obsessive focus on the tempting object.

3) Remembering love created a major “state change” or emotional shift from craving and agitation to warmth and fondness.

And that was the turning point. I realized that:

…the loving state and the craving state cannot co-exist!

So of course, I immediately started trying to find a love antidote for each tempting thing. And that was when I made another major discovery.

The beloved person, place or thing did NOT have to relate in any way to the thing I was being tempted by. They could be totally unrelated and it STILL worked.

So for example, you could be in the middle of a long put off de-cluttering of your bedroom closet and feeling incredibly tempted to stop and watch TV instead.

And you could call up the feeling of how much you love your dog in that moment (let’s say you Really love your dog…) and suddenly find yourself feeling pretty good and having enough energy to finish the closet after all.

So the loved item and the tempting item don’t need to relate to each other at all. It’s the state of feeling the love inside that does the trick.

Once I figured this out I began my trips to the grocery store with a beloved person in mind. I would then walk the aisles repeating inside my head like a mantra:

I love you more than these brownies, more than these cookies, more than this cheese….

Now, I happened to use some “love comparison” language there – but there’s no comparing needed.

In our earlier example, you could just stand in front of the closet breathing in the warm feeling of love for your pet, perhaps remembering fond times or the look that cracks you up – with no comparisons needed at all.

Generally, I found that the stronger the craving or temptation, the deeper I would need to get into the feeling of love in order to counteract it.

Try this when your own temptations strike and let me know how it goes.

What have your moments of temptation taught you?

You might also like these:

1. If you’re going to fall off the wagon, DECIDE to first
2. Resistance is Your Soul’s Compass
3. The Myth of “I don’t feel like it” (Part 2)