Bariatric Girl

It’s true!

What others think about us IS none of our business.

I was watching Craig Thompson’s “90 seconds to success” and he sums that up beautifully here:

90 Seconds to Success – None of Your Business

The following is an excerpt from one of my talks so it’s written more like I’m speaking than a blog but I’ll leave it as it is. Some of the key points are referenced from Jack Canfield’s The Success Principles.

If having others believing in you and your dream was a requirement for success, most of us would never accomplish anything. We need to base our decisions about what we want to do on our goals and desires, not the goals, desires, opinions and judgments of your parents, friends, spouse, children and co-workers. Quit worrying what other people think about you and follow your heart. Most of the time nobody’s thinking about you at all! They are too busy worrying about their own lives and if they are thinking about you at all, they are wondering what you are thinking about them! Think about it….all the time you are wasting worrying about what other people think about your ideas, your goals, your clothes, your hair, and your home could be better spent on thinking about and doing the things that will achieve your goals.

Find someone that has what you want and ask them how they got it. Think enough of yourself to ask questions. All they can say is no…but sometimes they say yes. You never know unless you ask. I never saw anyone as good at this as my friend Ramon. Ramon doesn’t care if a door looks like it is locked. He opens the door anyway. If he goes in the wrong door, he says “I’m sorry” and turns around but you can’t imagine how many doors he’s walked through by doing just that. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by asking. Whenever you ask anyone for anything remember the following.

SWSWSWSW which stands for: some will, some won’t, so what, someone’s waiting. Out there somewhere, someone is waiting for you and your ideas. It is simply a numbers game. You have to keep asking until you get a yes. The yes IS out there waiting.

Never give up on your dream. Perseverance is all important. If you don’t have the desire and the belief in yourself to keep trying after you’ve been told you should quit, you’ll never make it.

Ask, believe and step back and receive.

If I were to list some things I consider important….
Stop black and white thinking. When you have to accept each person in your life either all or not at all, you lose out on so much. You don’t have to marry them….take the good, take the useful things from people you meet in your life. Respect other’s style of life. I could be up here handing you the keys to the kingdom and you decide you don’t like one thing about me and you throw out the baby with the bath water.

Make a sincere grateful list every day. If you need help in thinking of a list, think about the most precious things in your life being yanked away right now. Then imagine getting them handed back to you. Do you think at that moment that you would be worrying about grazing?

Do you remember the hope you had the night before surgery? Some of you are in despair over 20 or 30 pounds when you’ve lost 100, 200 pounds. What is wrong with that picture?
You’re stinkin thinkin. Turn your attitude around. It is (after all) the only thing you can change.

We have been eating to fill a hole in ourselves…we have been looking for “it” and “it” has always existed inside of us. If you look for “it” in other outside things, like perfect weight, the perfect car, the perfect significant other, you are setting yourself up for failure because all of the outside things fade away as soon as you get them. If you never get them, they are always out in the future and you are never living for right now. Right now is all we have. The past is gone, the future is not yet here. You can have every one of those things but if you are not at peace within, if you don’t love and accept yourself, none of it will work to make you truly happy. Nothing outside of us can make us happy. Nothing.

You don’t always have to be right. When you have to be right, someone else has to be wrong. Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?

Don’t put someone else down in order to make yourself feel important. In this sick way of thinking everyone has to have someone to look down at to feel positive about themselves. This is the root of all bigotry, racism, sexism and prejudice in the world. True self worth does not come from looking down on anyone or anything else…it comes from awakening to our connection with everyone and everything. We are all precious souls that come from the same place. Granted some are sicker versions than others but when we come across someone who is “sick” we should feel compassion and then turn around and feel grateful that you are further down the road than they are. As long as we are judging and shaming ourselves we are feeding back into the disease, we are feeding the dragon within that is sucking the life out of us.

The goal in recovery it not to become perfect..the goal is to make life an easier, more enjoyable experience. We need to realize that even though our experiences in childhood have caused us to think of ourselves as and feel like lowly caterpillars, we are in truth butterflies who are meant to fly.

We are all butterflies, we are all spiritual beings.

This healing is a long gradual process, the goal is progress not perfection. What we are learning about is unconditional love. Unconditional love means no judgment, no shame.

When I use the term “judge”, I am talking about making judgments about our own or other people’s beings based on behavior. In other words, I did something bad therefore I am a bad person, I made a mistake therefore I am a mistake. That is what toxic shame is all about. Feeling that something is wrong with our being…. that we are somehow defective because we have human drives, human weaknesses and human imperfections. Our behavior has been dictated by our disease, by our childhood wounds, it does not mean that we are bad or defective as beings. It means that we are human, it means that we are wounded.

You cannot try to be happy….

JUST BE HAPPY.
I call it “going straight to happy”. It means that if you start to act happy, happiness will come. It you just sit around and think “I wish I was happy, I need to be happy”, it just doesn’t work. That’s the best explanation I can give for the following phrase:

You cannot think yourself into acting right but you can act your way into right thinking.

Oh how important that is….
Have a blessed day and look inside and find the happiness that has been waiting to be released.
I think I hear Bobby McFerrin singing right now….”Don’t worry, be happy”

Don’t worry, don’t worry, don’t do it.Be happy.
Put a smile on your face.
Don’t bring everybody down.
Don’t worry. It will soon pass, whatever it is.
Don’t worry, be happy.I’m not worried, I’m happy..

Sing it Bobby….