Ep #59: 4 Steps to the NEW YOU: RETRAIN THE MONKEY BRAIN Commitment, Thoughts, Plans and Accountability (think, feel, act)

Do you WANT to lose weight, drink less, eat better,  live in more joy and light and love, but also....HOW???!! This is the episode about making it happen--retraining that monkey brain, about drawing that line in the sand and how to move toward your goal and into greater awareness of self, and ultimately to living more in the NOW and living in greater love, peace and happiness. No matter where you are in your journey you will be able to apply these 4 steps and make it happen!

IN THIS EPISODE
Heartsing Podcast
GAME CHANGERS: Magic Pages, Meditation, Weight Loss Thoughts

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Transcript

4 steps to the NEW YOU: RETRAIN THE MONKEY BRAIN: Commitment, Thoughts, Plans and Accountability (think, feel, act)

I wanted to perhaps do this podcast on getting out of the HOWS and into the NOW, but it really is about thought awareness, plans and our monkey brains…which in turn brings us to living more in the now so it turned into a podcast once again on the HOWS. I will lead you through these 4 steps to creating a New You through retraining your brain, so you can in the end, live more in the NOW. As we go, I will be sharing my experience as we do here on the Heartsing Podcast and leave you with some tools and ideas for implementation in your own world!  

Don’t worry, I’ll wrap it up in a clean bow for you at the end to take action on, then you can just replay the end to do the work, but you will need all the mindset tools first, so sit back and have a listen…. 

I have just gone through another doorway, crossed over the threshold into another version of ME and this passing of the threshold happened with a commitment to live more and more in the place that serves Highest Self. To live in alignment so I can fulfil my purpose in this world. So I can BE THE LIGHT as my inner guide told me in yoga the other day. 

When I asked what would I need to do to “BE THE LIGHT”

The answer was oddly the same as it was when I was seeking my reason 100 pounds ago and it was to   be the “HOT SKINNY BIKER BITCH”. 

This goal the answer was not much different, though my health protocol has evolved drastically in these past few years, the answer was still was bringing awareness to habits which don’t serve me and letting go of these. Because I know when I have a good plan, when I increase my thought awareness and make more conscious decisions, when I work to improve my lifestyle, habits and health I live in this place where I share the light through me more and more. 

This place full of love and vitality, a zest for life from the inside out that you can see, that you can FEEL this energy. The more and more I practice conscious choice, live an intentional life, the more of this light energy I carry. This light, this inner radiance is my source of creativity and I LOVE creating life! I want more I said, and that means I want more health. 

And, well, I know HOW to do that! I’ve spent the past few years doing just this and working on helping others do this! I can do this—I can level up yet again and get even healthier, even more in alignment once again changing WHO I am…how I think about food, how I treat my body, how I start my days, the activities I crave now, like meditation and yoga…. I’m ready for the next level of this release. 

I threw the gauntlet down on this next level. I’ve known inside of me what needs to be done, I was just choosing to turn my head. When I threw down the gauntlet this time, it was to say that I am dedicated to eating to my gut health Viome test and improving my microbiome, including no flour/no sugar (processed foods) and announcing that I’m done dancing with the wine wench…for life. I’m finally just done messing with her—I just want to feel good in my body, and none of these things are serving me and I’m ready for this next level. 

What is that next level for you? 

What do you need to release? 

When I first started, taking a break from the Wine Wench for a week was a big deal, now I’m excited to just not indulge the B again. In fact, at the grocery store this week, she didn’t even get a nod when I passed the aisle and when I realized I had zero reaction to all the bottles, I nearly jumped for joy! Like a big ass Toyota jump in the middle of Safeway.

The decision had been made, and WOW, how much easier the decision is to just not have ANY, when my monkey brain knows I mean it anyway. It’s much easier than it is to dance with the B that ALWAYS, without fail, gets me out of alignment. It’s inflammatory, it’s not good for my cells, my sleep score on my Oura ring is literally HALF of what it is without the B in there! And you know what happens when we don’t sleep well…. sleep is so key! I will do an episode on just the Wine Wench at some point. 

The Flour and Sugar I’ve been dancing with since 2011, since I first read the wheat belly and there was a line in there that says about 2 pieces of wheat bread having the same response to insulin in the body as a candy bar!!! Well, give me the friggin’ candy bar, all day long! I felt so lied to. So betrayed by everything we were taught growing up. That healthy sandwich I thought was a good choice was generating hunger, releasing sugar and blocking my full signals! UGH!

Now, I want to move away from sugar all together and stop that dance too. I’m really good at the gluten as I’ve been practicing that for over 10 years, and please note that you can be gluten free/sugar free and overweight, but it naturally resets your hormones and it makes it SO much easier to listen to your body. 

Why is sugar bad for us? 

Refined sugar is linked to cancer, hearts issues, strokes, it’s inflammatory and it just makes me crave more foods. I am striving to remove this completely since I have that thing for ice cream hanging on, and yes, I know some isn’t going to KILL me but I also know once it’s out, and my mind is made up, the decision for my smart brain is much easier so I’m working on elimination, besides, I like my Avo bowl just as much! 

My current protocol exception has popcorn at the movies for December—I will probably pop and take my own, but Mili and I like to do the movies and she will be here for the holidays and I will admit I still enjoy a good buffer at the movies. In fact—that is a real test if you REALLY enjoy the movies—sit there without any popcorn. It’s a rare movie I would make it through, there are a million other things I would often be doing. Heh. 

I’m also working on redefining this—what entertainment and fun looks like with my family, my girls, like Lexi and I doing the spa day and me hitting the mountain instead of dinner and drinks. 

I have a lot of “experiences” planned for Mili and none involve food—Ice skating, an escape room, museums and historical sites, hikes and secret tree tunnels. Of course there will be food, and we will be eating out, but I want the holiday to revolve around US just enjoying each other and creating memories, and those memories not being tied to food. 

What about your holidays, birthdays or other celebrations? 

Can you re-imagine them without food? At least without food being at the core? 

How do we create fun and not consume it? Start to challenge yourself!

There are several women that have thrown down the gauntlet with me on the wine wench this month! They are doing a sober December and some committing to squashing the habit altogether too. I love it! What a great time to reimagine your future self!

Maybe booze isn’t on your list of nemesis’s and it’s all the sweet treats! 

Are you ready to throw down with this habit and create awareness around your brain? 

Pick something—join on in! this is the FIRST STEP IN THIS 4 STEP PROCESS TO THE NEW YOU!

Let’s call this the commitment step. 

 If you are listening to this in real time, or even on replay, message me! Let me know what you are inspired to throw the gauntlet down about and step in the arena…. what gets in your way and are you willing to get uncomfortable and create awareness around? 

 Take a minute and figure out what that is for you…

 Now that you have the commitment and you are specific about what you are going to do—now we head into the 3 things you need to do to set yourself up for success (I mean, other than meditate, of course, 😉)

You guys are going to LOVE this! Everyone loves some HOWS…. but be warned—your path will be YOUR path. I will share my journey, and what I know works, but remember, for this to be successful, you need to start releasing judgement of yourself and become the observer!

I like to pretend I’m a scientist or detective of my life. 

Put on that cap—whatever the observer is for you and prepare to watch your brain for all those little judgements, like when you fail, which you most likely will on this path, after all that’s how we learn and get anywhere. You didn’t pop out of the womb walking; you fell down like a zillion time! 

Look for that voice that will say, “See, you can’t do it, you never can, you might as well have another.” Or “You are such a failure; you can never do anything right!”

That voice, the judge B. Name her if you like. Judger McJudgy comes out—and we all know we are harder on ourselves. All those thoughts that you would never say to a friend—at least to their face? You want to start recognizing those, and pulling out your scientist camp and observe those too and start changing the dialog within yourself. 

This brings us to the next HOW: THOUGHT AWARENESS, RETRAINING THE MONKEY BRAINS

Ah , thought awareness and the think-feel-act cycle, I’m embarrassed to admit I either never learned, or didn’t give any thought to until I was, um…..46? Anyone else? I guess this is Psych 101, which I never had to take, so perhaps that explains it. 

Anyhooooo….it was a couple of months after I found meditation in 2017 that I started listening to Corinne Crabtree that introduced me to this and I was like, “WTF? You mean, all I have to do is change my thoughts to lose weight? Perhaps learn to FEEL some emotions?” WHY am I just learning this? 

Oh, let me tell you the big reason—because it’s FREE!!! Big DIET doesn’t want us to know. 

Also—it’s not like a quick pill, right? This is why we don’t see ads out there leading with, “retrain your brain and lose 20 pounds in 10 days!”

This might not be the fast path, but it’s the path that takes us to ever lasting transformation. It takes us from object referral, to self-referral. In other words, we stop looking OUTSIDE of our self to solve our problem, we look inside and begin to make identity based habit changes. 

The gist of this psych 101 is that  if all thoughts lead to feelings, which led to actions in our lives, then indeed we create all of this and we can create new thoughts around whatever we want and create new feelings and therefore actions!  

We take our POWER back. This moves us from victim mentality and puts us in the driver’s seat of our lives. This skill will translate to ANY goal, so LEARN this—how to rewire your brain. 

I like to call this training the monkey brain, you have also heard me refer to this as the Neanderthal Brain, mine being called Naddie (get it—Neanderthal Addie) and once you understand this primitive brain, the logistics of how it works, the think feels act and habit cycle, then you develop some skills to train that little monkey! 

And then? The world is your oyster baby!!

You can Literally create ANYTHING!

I talk a lot about some skills you can develop to increase your awareness of thought on this podcast We talk about a lot of these tools on this podcast and in detail on the GAME CHANGERS episode. Meditation, Magic Morning pages and weight loss thought. See that episode for more details on each, I’ll link it in the show notes for you! 

As a quick summary, the Magic Morning Pages are 3 pages of stream of conscious writing. This just means you let the pen just flow. I use it every day to get my thoughts out of my head—that’s the first step is being able to SEE them. They are so powerful as a self-coaching tool, that I often compare the power on the level with meditation, and you know what that means to me! 

Meditation helps with the thought awareness too because in the process of practicing focusing your mind, you start to be able to see the separation of Self. As I heard Brook Castillo say once, “Meditation is a great practice in sitting in urges,”. You become more and more skilled at sitting in some discomfort as you commit to your practice, because the monkey brain will at first want you to get up and do all the things—again, we just need to train that sweet little monkey, she just doesn’t know she is safe, right where she is. 

And of course the Thoughts—retraining these thoughts which we are also focusing on today and perhaps creating new ones! 

If you can understand the brain and the habit cycle, you are half way there so I’m going to take a moment to review this part again, just to really drill it in—

There are 4 parts to the habit cycle. There is the Cue (what hits those 5 senses) the Craving that results from that Cue (you may insert URGE here, it’s the same thing, then we have the Response, or the action we take from that craving that came from a thought and then we get the reward (or punishment) from the action. This process of the reward to the brain, or punishment if you don’t like it, tells the monkey what is good for us, but the thought is also in there too—between the Cue and the Craving. 

I found some more astounding stats for you!

 When I googled about percentages of thoughts are habitual just to be sure my 90%, I always use was somewhat accurate, I found information from the Nation Science Center that said 95% of our thoughts are habitual, which makes sense because we have so many that we aren’t even really aware of—but here is the stat I thought you would love—80% are negative! 

80%!!!

Oh boy! You can change this—being aware of this is the first step, start looking for them!

Your brain is a magnificent piece of software, designed to keep us safe, fed, and reproducing. Back in the day, and I don’t mean 8th grade, I’m talking back in cave man days, we needed this fight or flight, quick response brain! 

Now, not so much. We don’t need to have a driving desire to get to the bar or eat the pizza to reward the brain, do we? Here’s how it works--

We are born with a clean slate. 4,000 synapses in our brains that are connecting with our sensory our organs. As we grow, our brains are picking up what feels good to our brain, what is rewarded in there, or perhaps by our environment and begins to = also prune away those synapses that you don’t need as it takes information in and figures out how to be more efficient.

 Picture this like 4000 spider webs all connected and as you connect them to each other, “Oh, after I brush my teeth, it’s good to floss.” They start to light up and connect, building the habit, and the neuropathways, and in this case a little habit stack. Pretty soon, you are on autopilot doing these habits so that you can save brain power for things like harvesting food and killing dinosaurs and shit. 

And that’s how we evolve. Doing the things we are trained to by our parents, by our environments—school, peers, sports, books, TV…formative years indeed

By the time you are 30, these cob webs are pruned down to keeping 2,000 of them. 

Don’t worry though, all is not lost, if like me you spent a lot of time building pathways you wish you wouldn’t have. You CAN create new neuropathways, it’s just not as easy as it was once upon a time, especially since often we have really deep pathways in our brains on some other habits developed for the sake of our brains being happy…. which often leaves our bodies not happy. The good ‘old path of Preya. 

We CAN do this thought, and isn’t it SO worth it? To become the person that just walks by the wine at the grocery store and could care less—not even notice it? Or see the chocolate cake and not salivate? 

Do you want to BE the person that can remove the desire for these things that don’t serve you? 

You can, you know. I’ve done it on this journey. I have this proof for myself now, you can see it too. 

We have spent a lifetime getting here, give yourself time to build this new you.  

We have spent the first 30 years of our life training our brain into these habit patterns…and how many of those serve us? There are probably a bunch that don’t and it is going to take time, and awareness and the fortitude to get back up when you fall, learn and try again. 

Here’s an example of the thought process. —You are at your favorite Italian place with your friends and have a salad on your plan, and you smell pizza. That’s the cue –coming in through your nose, right? You cue could also be the restaurant itself, it could be something a waiter says or looking at the menu-but for this example, the cue is the smell of the pizza, which is just a smell. Totally neutral, right? 

Except it doesn’t FEEL neutral, because you have a thought about that pizza. 

What’s your thought when you smell the pizza? 

Hammam…. that smells GOOD maybe? 

Then what is the reaction in your body? 

You get a feeling which causes an action. Maybe you feel a slight stomach flutter of excitement and your brain lights up a bit at the thought of how the pizza will taste. You have given the brain a reward and you haven’t even eaten the pizza yet! 

Ah….that delicious ooey, gooey goodness your thoughts continue….

What’s your reaction here? 

You have the craving, right? Now this is where you can make the decision. You can either eat the pizza, re-enforcing the habit, or you can choose to not eat the pizza, and how you go about NOT eating it is the key. 

If you don’t put your scientist hat on right here, if you ignore all the thoughts that just caused this to happen and your white knuckle your way through, drool escaping the corner of your mouth at the smell of it, your brain going into hyper drive—maybe you even have trouble concentrating on conversation because you are fighting with your brain about how you are NOT eating the pizza! WE are NOT going to have that you keep yelling at your brain, gripping the table, white knuckles for all to see. 

Your friends think you are constipated or something. You grit your teeth and snap that you are fine and to the waiter, “I’ll have the salad please.”

Next week you tell your friends you can’t go out---and it’s because you were so miserable that you have just decided you are going to eliminate the Cue—just not even go to the restaurant. 

Which, of course is one tactic to success, but let’s say that you WANT to enjoy being at that restaurant, and I want you to my friends! We can all enjoy our friends and not eat the cake too, and enjoy that as well!  

This brings us to planning—because in using the pre-frontal context you can start to anticipate this monkey brain and have a game plan for it and actually enjoy yourself! 

Now, I will tell you this, choosing not to drink has completely changed my choice of WHERE I want to go, but not because I’m white knuckling, but because I was using alcohol to tolerate being there—either in the environment, or with the people I was with. 

I don’t require alcohol to be around those nearest and dearest to me, but it turns out I had trained my brain as a way to tolerate having conversation that may be less than stimulating, or maybe to take the edge of an uncomfortable event—like going to an event where you don’t know anyone. 

I was dulling my awareness of all of those emotions that came up made it FEEL easier. In reality, I just wasn’t even allowing myself a chance to show up as me and make decisions that served me and would cause me to grow. 

I still remember the feeling of awe I had when I went through my first award banquet in 25 years without a drink in hand, and enjoying myself thoroughly. And, don’t’ get me wrong, I can have fun sober, I did it every day at work to be sure, but in the Property Management industry, and maybe yours, it’s like you are born with that glass in your hand and I knew it would be a challenge to go to this industry event without a drink. This event was back in 2018 when I committed to the 30 pounds in 90 days that I touched on in the last episode. I think I was around 270 at that time. I asked myself what do I need to do to do this, and taking a break from alcohol was on the top of the list, so I committed to showing up and being uncomfortable, and redefining how I have fun!

I remember leaving the ceremony, having really enjoyed myself, eating well and enjoying the conversation, turning down a zillion drinks, and as per MY style telling anyone who would listen about how I wasn’t drinking because of my health journey, and also that I wanted to be on the mountain in the morning, I LOVED this part of my day so much at that point it was a craving in itself. LOL. Your style may be different. Maybe you will get a sparkling water. 

I noticed that I could train my brain to go to my morning habit stack, which was partially established at this point, I did magic pages, meditated and walked the mountain, I say walk not hike because it’s not fair to call it a hike. LOL…. it’s a little baby bump at the base of a huge mountain. 

When I set out this time, I wanted to do what I ENJOY so that I would keep doing it. 

I pre-planned this event, meaning, I sat down with a pen and paper and came up with everything my monkey brain was going to throw at me to have a drink, because I knew that it was all in my thoughts that I could either enjoy this night, or be miserable and make everyone else miserable, or worse yet, let myself down and drink, and I had committed, so that was not going to happen. 

I wrote out all the things she would say in the moment
 “Just one drink won’t hurt.”

“Look at everyone else drinking and having fun.”

“You can start again tomorrow, big deal, it’s just a couple of drinks.”

On and on. Then I came up with what I was doing to tell myself when these thoughts came up—here’s some of them. 
 “Ah, think how good we are going to feel in the morning when we are up before the sun and catching that sunrise on the mountain! And it’s Saturday so we can just lounge up there and read and write….”

Another was

“I am having fun too! I love these people and I’m so happy I’m here to really enjoy them!”

“I am going to be SO proud of myself for showing up for ME today and having so much fun without a drink!”

You know how each of those thoughts made me feel? Excited, happy, fun…

I had a game plan incase my thought rewiring didn’t work and monkey brain was taking over. I could sneak outside and do a Facebook LIVE about how I was sitting through an urge. I could go to the bathroom and text my accountability group. I could just go for a little walk and BREATH. 

Turned out I didn’t need any of those. Just by thinking about this AHEAD of time, I had a blast, pretty much without thinking, and then me being me, I was telling everyone that would listen how I was doing it! 

What about the pizza in the restaurant, maybe that’s more your thing—what are some things you could do to plan ahead? Can you come up with all the thoughts you WILL have? 

 You know the monkey in your mind, it’s YOUR monkey after all. Think of a situation and sit down and tell her your protocol—maybe a holiday dinner with family where you always eat until you have to pop the button on your jeans and drink too many glasses of wine. 

I can’t say enough how important that pen to the paper is in the process of thought awareness—whatever technique you choose to use. Our minds won’t stay on topic long enough if you try to do this in your head, especially initially. 

WRITE IT DOWN. 

Make a commitment to whatever level you are comfortable with, and then sit down and write—get all the thoughts out now. You know them. Picture yourself THERE. You are at the event. See all these thoughts come up and how you will handle them to ENJOY yourself and it NOT be about food and wine. 

And, if you are thinking it’s impossible to enjoy yourself this way—ask yourself what is so uncomfortable that you need to push the emotion down? 

What is the emotion and why? 

Can you not tolerate the people or situation? Can you change that? 

Question yourself. Get curious about your thoughts and feelings. What are these signals in your body? Are they ones you want to continue to cultivate or do you want to change them? 

I did this with my job when I decided to stay and build the runway—I told myself I was deciding to stay and I could CHOOSE. I could choose to stay and make myself miserable or I could stay and figure out how to live in LOVE at this job that I thought was causing my misery. 

That was one of the biggest lessons I had—staying there and rewiring my brain and seeing the outcome of my days change in the process. 

As I put ME first, as I started to understand how to create a life that evolved around me caring for myself first, which in the end turned around to make everyone else happier too. 

This process you can put in place in each moment of each day and as you become more and more skilled you will see yourself anticipating your brain before the cue is even there, and this is evolution on our path to self-awareness. We start to make more and more of these choices. 

So far, we have talked about thought awareness and planning—using that pre-frontal cortex to anticipate your brain and planning ahead of time. Planning your food, and what you will do with your day also gives you power. 

Having a plan allows me to stay in the NOW. It also allows me to live with intention. I think about how I want to show up before I show up when I make a plan. 

The weeks I am most present, the most in alignment with myself I have a great plan. My brain is clear and everything is on my calendar. This makes it easier to stay in the present moment because as I see thoughts about what I SHOULD be doing or those million other things on my mind, I can immediately let it go because I know it’s on the calendar and I just need to stay in the NOW and trust in myself and the process. 

THIS is an evolution for sure. I want to get better and better at this. Have more future thought and plans, and then being able to release them, and my outcomes getting bigger and bigger because I am getting better at the process of dreaming, goal setting, planning and then ultimately surrendering. Yielding to the excellence within me. 

It takes PRACTICE y’all.

The final part of this process to deliver us to this place where we continue to show up is accountability. Let’s face it—most of us are not good at showing up for ourselves. 

Can you argue with that? If you are good at showing up for you, you are probably not listening to this. Hahaha

You can probably think of times when you ARE good at showing up for yourself though—think about them. Is it when you make a Dr’s appointment, or schedule a massage or haircut, paying your bills on time? Notice how these things impact other people too. There is no shame in using whatever means necessary to hold yourself accountable! Where are you good at showing up? 

How can you work this in? I used to create an appointment on my calendar for my PM meditation at first that said Doctors Appointment. In my mind back then, this was an acceptable reason to leave work and take care of me. Everyone takes time for the Dr., right? I reasoned that it was also not a lie because I was going to have many more doctor’s appointments if I didn’t meditate! Eventually I just told everyone I was going to meditate and tried to get them to join me, but to start? I acted like I was going to the Doctor. 

For me, publicly declaring I am doing something works like a charm too!  Like I’m doing here with you. This is when the game really started changing for me. I knew that because I had told others I was doing it, that I would need to show up and say what was happening with it. It’s like writing the book you guys—I am still going to be Author Addie, my timeline and delivery has shifted again, but I will write this book—and you will all keep asking me about it and I will keep talking about it as I build this next vision and version OF ME.

OOOooooo…vision—that reminds me, one of the most important things you can do when you are pre-planning to anticipate your monkey brain is to SEE yourself executing just as you are anticipating. See yourself having fun! Talking to yourself, turning drinks down, ordering the salad, laughing with your head thrown back in unrestricted love and FUN! Just being YOU. You unaltered by any buffering of emotion, choosing to feel your emotions, increate your awareness and start to make changes to how you think, how you show up in the world. SEE it ahead of time. Take your future self vision down to a micro level—live with intention ALL DAY LONG. 

Accountability groups are a great way to stay accountable too—we have small groups in the Sisterhood that keep for weekly and daily accountability, a larger group where we can engage and share as we go through the process. I started a challenge to keep myself accountable, I mean, I started the challenge, I have to show up for it, right? 

What are some ways you can set yourself up to follow-through when you REALLY don’t want to? Because that will hit—that not wanting to do it any longer—what can you do? Who can you enlist to help keep you accountable? What tactics can you employ? 

Okay, let’s break it down and recap, since this was a LOT, but it is a lot, right? 

Getting in the HOWS so you can be in the NOW. Living with intention takes some intention 😊 

Goals, planning and practice in BEING. 

Okay, get a pen and paper out for this part if you want to take some massive action. You can do this for a single event, or like I did, for my overall goal of being in alignment, which I’m measuring by the scale, because my body health is connected to the health of my mind and soul. 

What is this for you? 

Ask yourself the following:

FIRST COMMITMENT

1. What are you committing to? For how long? What specifically? WHY this thing? Why are you wiling to get up over and over again? 

SECOND—THOUGHT AWARENESS (SEE AND ANTICIPATE THE MONKEY BRAIN)

2. What will happen in your monkey brain when you do this? Write about it—get those thoughts out. Do a brain dump of everything that may get in your way from executing this full of love and without white knuckles.

THIRD—MAKE A GAME PLAN

3. How do you plan to retrain the monkey and create NEW neuropathways? What are some skills you are going to use or develop to learn to rewire your brain? Reframing exercises? Magic Pages? Coaching? 

FOURTH- ACCOUNTABILITY

4. Who can you tell? HOW will you build accountability around your commitment? Be sure to pick those that won’t judge you, that will hold space for you when you need and cheer you on as you rise again, and never judge you when you fall or give you their well-meaning, unsolicited advice. Choose wisely, or choose to let go of other people’s opinions altogether. Until you are in this space, where it no longer matters what others think—seek your like-minded, believing mirror sisters! Do not venture on this journey alone. It’s not necessary, and much harder. Be open to failure and LEARNING from it. This is where success comes from Failure. Fail, fail, fail! Yay!!! Fall flat on your face and get up again and show everyone how resilient you are. 

I would challenge you with this—the level of your accountability is directly reflected in your level of commitment

For example, If I am not really committed—like I wasn’t when I was just talking about my future SELF not drinking or eating flour and sugar. It was a process I went through to get to this point where I am now stating, “I’m DONE.” I have now fully committed, and I am motivated to show up for it—no matter how many times I fall, I will get back up over and over releasing these habits and pursuing my goal using this tip I shared with you today. 

When the Young Jedi and I did a 3 day fast, I remember saying to her when the monkey brain was coming in on day 2, “You know we aren’t breaking this fast because we told the world we are doing it, so why bother suffering over it? Just tell the monkey what’s what. And that we are dining in and move on.” So much less drama this way when you let the monkey know it’s just not happening, and it REALLY believes you. It moves on to try and get rewards other ways though, so make sure you deal with any underlaying emotion that might need to be. Often, I’ll be tired when the monkey rears her head and if I just do my meditation, breathe, or get in child’s pose, I have the rest I need and the monkey settles down. 

Start noticing these thoughts and emotions. Just the act of awareness starts to change the game. 

Now, are you ready to tell the world about your commitment? 

Are you ready to throw down your gauntlet? At what and for what? 

After you commit, make a plan and anticipate it, remind yourself you are committing to saying YES to feeling whatever comes up. You are not saying NO to something, you are saying YES to the new you. To the you that feels all the things. 

Build this vision of the new you that feels so good and generate that positive emotion. 

The new you that is no longer blind to how this world works, how your mind, body and soul work. SEE how this new you get better and better at showing up and is becoming! 

Here’s to the new you and the new me…. creating ourselves each and every day, in each moment we make a decision and not waiting for a NEW year. 

We are no longer the victims of our lives! We are shedding layers upon layers of our ego selves, these identities we’ve built up that so often no longer serve us! 

Sayonara Wine Wench! Sayonara Small town Ice Cream Shops!

I’m ready to hold lighter!

That’s plenty for you to chew on for this week, I think! 

Until next week my witches and bitches! 

Slayer Out!