Breaking Habitual Patterns

Each Sunday night or Monday morning, I find that I make promises to myself about the week ahead. This week, I'll only eat salads for lunch or I'll exercise every morning or I won't have a single drink until Thursday night. Most of the time, I make it through Monday with my promises intact. Tuesdays are iffy - if I'm on a roll and feel strong about my convictions, I can usually make it through a Tuesday. Wednesdays are harder. If I haven't already blown it, my willpower usually starts weakening by Wednesday. I've been so good, I tell myself. It's been a rough week, I deserve it. I'm bored, I'm tired, I'm cranky... oh the ways we justify our behavior. And once I allow myself one indulgence, all my promises to myself go out the window. I find myself bargaining: the "If I drink a glass of wine today, I won't have one tomorrow" kind of thing. I'm an all or nothing kind of gal and it's easier for me to indulge in bad habits than embrace good ones. So I frequently feel like I'm stuck in a bickering match between the devil and the angel that take up residence in my mind.

In Getting Unstuck: Breaking your Habitual Patterns and Encountering Naked Reality, Pema Chodron talks about how to break habitual patterns and live in the present moment. She compares the habitual pattern to something akin to the symptoms of a rash. A rash makes us want to itch, but itching only provides temporary relief and can actually make the rash worse in the long run. For instance, we experience an emotional hook or an urge which then leads to a chain reaction of thoughts which intensifies the feeling and then we try to move away from this feeling with the habitual pattern. We are constantly distracting ourselves, but this distraction can actually make our lives worse rather than better.

How can we break this cycle? The trick is to stay with the feeling or urge without reacting to it. She gives 4 steps to the process of breaking our habitual patterns:

1. Recognize the initial emotional hook or urge


2. Refrain from strengthening the urge (refrain from following the thoughts and the habitual pattern that results from the urge)


3. Relax into the underlying feeling


4. Resolve to repeat this pattern again and again

How do you get unstuck? We would love to hear from you! Please leave a comment below

Expanding our Consciousness

Have you ever had one of those moments when you thought things could not possibly get any worse and then they did? I had one of those moments just last week. I know that I've mentioned my upcoming wedding a few times in my posts, but I'm not sure if I mentioned that I decided to have a destination wedding. Well, guess which country I chose to have as the destination? Mexico.

Poor Mexico. They've had a rotten year. First the Mexican drug war made national headlines. That was bad enough, and the coverage stressed me out a little, but this stress was manageable because I knew that the violence was mainly affecting border towns. My wedding was going to be in tourist Mecca, right near Cancun. I felt it was unlikely that the Mexican government would let one of its main tourist hotspots turn into a dangerous place to visit.

Then the swine flu made national news. People were suddenly dying from this strange flu, and visitors who got the flu were spreading it in their home countries, upon their return from Mexico. This became the headline of every news story for days; the possibility of a pandemic was even discussed. I couldn't believe it. Now, I was getting seriously worried. I tried to remain calm, telling myself that it was still early, that this would probably blow over in another few weeks. I talked to the resort, where our wedding is booked, and they reassured me the flu was mainly in Mexico City. I took a deep breath and figured that if this was the worst that could happen, it was good that it was happening now and not nearer to my wedding date.

That's when the earthquake hit Acapulco. I just looked up into the sky and half laughed, "Really? Are you serious?" I was beginning to think that I was being punished for some unseen thing that I had done in this life or some past life.

Sometimes life does seem that way doesn't it? It's easy to get caught up in the "why me" state of mind. This happens especially when we think at the micro level -- when we are deep in our own universe, we don't see past our personal and limited consciousness of the world. In truth, this series of disasters wasn't happening to just me. It was affecting thousands of people, not to mention many who were faring a lot worse than me. Some were dying, while I was perfectly fine (besides being stressed). Only after I had taken a step back was I able to take in the bigger picture and put these events into perspective.

Eckhart Tolle talks a lot about this idea of expanding our consciousness. When I last wrote about his audio program, Bringing Stillness into Everyday Life, I mentioned that I would be writing much more about his work. I have to keep coming back to him, because there is just so much to what he is trying to communicate. I have listened to his programs again and again and have still not absorbed everything. His work is as profound as it is simplistic. It's hard for the mind to wrap itself around what he suggests, because our ego clings desperately to what is familiar. We naturally rebel, finding it too easy to continue living and suffering in our own micro universe. Yet what would it mean to start living this new consciousness? If we were truly connected to everything, what other things would we have to change about our lives?

Do you have an experience you'd like to share? We'd love to hear from you! Please leave a comment below

Prepare your Mind to get in Shape

I've been thinking a lot about the challenges of getting in shape and the reasons why we sometimes lack the motivation to see our goals through to completion. And I think it has a lot to do with our state of mind. It's hard to find motivation to work out if we feel negative about our bodies, but it's hard to improve our body image if we feel unsatisfied with how our bodies look. I always find it much easier to motivate myself to keep going once I start to see some results. But seeing results usually takes time. So how do we keep our motivation to work out and diet until this tipping point? Well, this is where "mind fitness" comes in. It's very important to include some kind of mind motivation into your workout program. This could be in the form of guided meditations, positive affirmations or hypnosis.

I also find doing a meditative movement exercise really helps my state of mind. Try Tai Chi, Qi Gong or Flow Yoga, also referred to as Vinyasa Yoga. Or check out one of my favorite workout series, developed by fitness expert Patricia Moreno, called intenSati. intenSati combines the best of group fitness with the elements of yoga and life coaching to create a new workout that is exactly right for our times, combining both physical and spiritual disciplines to create excellent results.

How do you keep your mind fit? We'd love to hear from you! Please leave a comment below.

Tips to get You Bikini Ready

So, I've been unofficially gearing us up for bikini season . . . not to mention gearing MYSELF up for my upcoming wedding! I've talked about eating well and making your workouts fun. And don't forget the Instinctive Weight Loss Hypnosis audio I mentioned a few weeks back. Like many things in my life, I sort of fell off track with listening to the self hypnosis audio programs regularly. It's hard to find a block of time to dedicate to this. But I have lost 7 pounds since starting this journey and I do owe partial credit to this program. From this day forward, I am going to re-dedicate myself to reserving a block of time to listening to these downloads. I've also been looking into joining a bootcamp fitness class to really jump start my toning and strengthening goals. But I've found that these types of programs can be really expensive and I wish they would come to my house!

So instead of investing some of my wedding budget in a bootcamp class, I've decided that all I need is a workout buddy. Someone to motivate me and push me when I'm not feeling in the zone! I found these bootcamp workout downloads that I can try with a partner. The great thing about downloads is that they are portable. So the sky is the limit as to where we can work out. We could go to the park and work out there if we wanted to. I can download the workout to my laptop and we can watch it there or I can hook up my computer to my TV and get the big screen effect. I can also download to my iPhone if I don't feel like lugging my computer around. It is the ultimate convenience!

Tips to help you get bikini ready:

• Get a fitness partner: Fitness partners can help motivate you and also hold you accountable.


• Create weekly goals: Be specific and try to choose goals that you know you can accomplish


• Reward yourself: Once you reach a goal, give yourself a small reward. Preferably not in the form of food. This can be a simple reward like treating yourself to a candlelit bath or downloading a favorite song. You can give yourself bigger rewards for bigger goals accomplished


• Try to give up one indulgence: If you know you have one particular weakness that you can't help but overeat, try to take it out of your meals all together. Allow yourself one cheat day a week where you eat that item, but don't overindulge!


• Eliminate high fructose corn syrup and highly processed foods from your diet: Try to eat whole grains, and fruits and vegetables as much as possible. Your body can more easily digest natural foods.
  
• Don't under eat and try to divide your meals into 4 or 5 meals a day. I've taken to saving some of my lunch and eating the rest of it 3-4 hours later. This really works!

Do you have any tips to get bikini ready? We'd love to hear from you! Please leave a comment below

How You Can Get Marisa Tomei's Great Body as Seen in "The Wrestler"

A couple of weeks ago my friend invited me to join her for a three hour hula hoop class. At first, I was mortified. I am kind of a hopeless case when it comes to coordination. I mean, I can barely do the hula hoop exercise on my Wii Fit! I could just picture myself looking like a pathetic dork in front of a class of people who were gyrating geniuses. But at the same time, I thought it might get me out of my exercise rut. Even though bikini season is right around the corner and I'm getting married in September, I've been finding it really hard to stick to my routine. Maybe if I learned something fun, I would actually WANT to exercise. Plus, I heard that hula hooping was how Marisa Tomei got that killer body for "The Wrestler".

So I went to the class and now I'm hooked! I mean, it was challenging and a little frustrating because I just couldn't get some of the tricks that they taught us. But at least I learned to keep the hula hoop up for more than five seconds! I even bought a hula hoop from the instructor so I could practice on my own. The trick is to get a large hula hoop if you are an adult. The smaller hula hoops are for children or for more skilled hula hoopers. I've been practicing most mornings and I'm really getting the basics down pretty well. It's really enjoyable to put in a CD and just hula hoop to the music. It's almost meditative and it is so much more fun than my normal routine!

When I told a coworker what I had been up to, she reminded me that we had a couple of hula hoop videos in our library. I was so excited because I wasn't sure when they were going to be offering another class! I just downloaded the Hoopnotica: Hoopdance Basics. This video teaches you how to keep the hoop spinning on your waist, hips, above your head and also how to take the hoop on and off your body in a beautiful spiral. Once I master these moves, I'm going to download the advanced video Hoopnotica: Hoopdance Workout. This video teaches hooping on your upper body, hooping on your thighs, additional corkscrews and angles. Plus it includes a 20 minute work out.

If you are getting bored with your workout routine, I really recommend that you try hula hooping or some of our other dance oriented workouts like Latin Groove, Bollywood Dance Workout and Brazilian Body

How do you keep your workouts fun? We would like to hear from you! Please leave a comment below.

6 Diet Tips from Dr. Weil

Growing up in a large family with a modest income, we didn't always have a lot of food around. My mother was sort of a health food nut who frequently bought bulk ingredients to make homemade bread and exciting things like Brunswick Stew. Well, let's just say it was not exciting to me at the time. My dad was sort of the opposite. When he would get his paycheck each Friday, he would frequently bring home hot dogs, chips and coke or pizza and soda. Whenever I would go out on work calls with him, he would always let me buy a Snickers bar which became my favorite indulgence. Those were the types of food that equaled celebration in my mind. I would hate the healthy foods we frequently had around and would look forward to each paycheck. Not only that, since I had a lot of competing mouths around me, I would have to eat as much as I could before my brothers and sisters could get their hands on the treats that were left.

As you can imagine, this sort of mindset about food was not very beneficial as I started to care about my health and weight. While I've made a lot of good adjustments to my diet, I still find myself living out this pattern in my life. I will eat well all week long, and then I get bored and want to celebrate. And you can imagine what celebration still means to me. Well, my tastes have broadened beyond hot dogs but it's still fattening foods that tempt me, and lots of it! I have a friend who orders fish or chicken every time we go out, while I just can't help but order the lasagna or the steak frites. I'm paying good money for this food and I want to enjoy it. Pour me another glass of wine please!

So how do I reconcile the conflicting desires to maintain a healthy body and my warped view of fattening food as a means of celebration? In Dr. Andrew Weil's Guide to Eating Well, Dr. Weil says "it's important to maintain the pleasurable aspect of eating. If you eat in a way that deprives you of pleasure, it will inevitably end in failure." But for him, there is no opposition between healthy food and food that gives you pleasure. The myth that eating in a healthy manner means giving up the food that you like- that's absolutely not true! He claims there are some common misconceptions in what we've been taught about carbs and low fat diets. Below are a couple of tips that I found interesting:

• The majority of our calories SHOULD come from carbs. We've been in an anti-carb era... this is wrong, but there are better and worse carbs.


• In general try to eat carbs that are lower on the Glycemic Load Scale. Whole wheat bread is not a whole grain food. When you pulverize the starch of a grain, you get huge surface area, which rapidly converts to blood sugar and can lead to insulin resistance and other health problems.


• Fats are misunderstood -- good fats are the mono-unsaturated fats: olive, nut, avocado. Extra-virgin olive oil should be your main cooking oil, particularly good quality, since the phenols it includes are protective. Canola oil is also good. Avoid saturated and polyunsaturated oils, which promote inflammation and cancer.


• You should also focus on sources of Omega 3's: oily fish; fortified eggs, walnuts, flax seeds, and hemp seeds, or take a supplement.


• The problem with low fat diets is that fat is a main source of flavor. Without adequate fat, food becomes uninteresting.


• We need less protein than people think. People eat protein in excess and it overburdens our liver and kidneys. Eat more vegetable protein than animal protein because animal protein often has other things in it like concentrated environmental toxins.

Download his video for more great tips on eating well without sacrificing pleasure. Now if I could only learn some portion control!

Do you have any nutritional tips you would like to share with us? We would love to hear from you. Please leave a comment below

Seeking Fulfillment

So the last few weeks I’ve been talking about ways to better organize your life. I’ve been obsessed with this in my own life because I’ve felt overwhelmed with the list of things I needed to do to get to this undefined place where I would finally feel fulfilled. I wasn’t aware that this was my ultimate goal… I thought I bought into the idea that life is about goal achievement and once you accomplish one goal, you just set another one and so on and so forth. So when I first started feeling anxiety about my list, I thought I just wasn’t going about it in the right way. I thought maybe I just wasn’t committed enough. If I could learn the secrets of other successful people, perhaps I could master the focus to accomplish all of my goals and become just as successful. And I did learn some great new techniques and these techniques did help. David Allen’s central theme in particular was a kind of breakthrough in my goal setting.

But there was still something missing. I couldn’t define it. This anxiety, this weight kept tugging at my heart. What was it all for? What were these goals driving me toward? I thought I would be happy with each goal accomplished just for the sake of accomplishing something. But what happened instead was this momentary high followed by deep anxiety about needing to set my next goal. Was this really what I wanted from life? I wasn’t really happy. Actually, I was sort of miserable.

Then I started to listen to Eckhart Tolle’s Bringing Stillness into Everyday Life and I had an “Aha” moment. Now, I’ve read and listened to a lot of advice about mindfulness and living in the present moment. But Eckhart Tolle’s teachings take this concept to a whole new level. He talks about many things in this program, but I wanted to highlight just a couple of his thoughts. He says people are always trying to get to this future moment that will somehow make their lives better. We call this progress. But actions that arise out of suffering or anger will just bring about more suffering and anger. This is why the world at large is suffering. Most people are lost in the content of life and if you are lost in the content of life you will never be fulfilled because it is a bottomless pit… always wanting more content. His program really made me stop and think about my life and goals in a profound way. There is a lot to examine here and a lot to write about. I will certainly return to this topic in a future post.

Do you have a good “Aha” moment you would like to share with us? Please leave a comment below.