I remember a few years ago I worked with a trainer who, in our first meeting looked me in the eye and asked me, straight up, “What do you want your butt to look like? Specifically?”

What?!? Well, he had a point. I needed a vision of what I was working towards if I was going to take action to change. How could I know I had what I wanted unless I was specific in to knowing what that was?

A vision board is a little different in that it captures the feelings and the experience that I desire. Looking at my vision board puts me in the right state of mind.
So, this vision board illustrates what successfully caring for my physical self is going to FEEL like for me….these pictures have a quality of how I want to FEEL when I am doing physical activities. I want to feel powerful, release stress, feel confident, and feel centered.

I don’t have any pictures of weight lifting on the board (or of my ideal butt). And at one point, I asked myself, ‘Hmmm, maybe focusing on THE GYM isn’t the right focus. I enjoy yoga - maybe I need to do more yoga? I turned the page of the magazine and saw the large headline that read “do more yoga” filling the magazine spread. (See the upper left of my vision board)

I also added a picture of a swimmer to my board after I took this picture…maybe the answer isn’t in weights for me…

I’m going to examine my thinking around this workout thing and share what happens when I make some changes – literally from suggestions in my book and in The Secret. So, today I’ll make a vision board.

And I will update you here…
And just so you know…this is my edge. This is something that has been a challenge for me for quite some time.

Okay, I gotta fess up. I use the secret so much in my life and it has worked so amazingly for me. I truly believe in the Law of Attraction and I have had countless experiences of coincidence, opportunity, and manifestation. Heck! I believe in it so much, I write this blog and I’m writing a book!

But there is one area that stumps me…and that’s the gym. Yes, for me it’s a room full of machines and heavy objects. Seems harmless enough – except for the negative beliefs, judgments, chatter, and thinking that I bring with me along with my workout bag.

Put me into a weightlifting contraption and the thoughts in my head sound like this, “Oh, I can’t do this. This is heavy. How many more reps? And another set? I don’t think I’m up for it. I’m tired. I’m thirsty! I feel faint! Boy, this is heavy.”

Part of me is saying, “Come on! What??? You can do it!! Yes, weights are heavy! If they were light it wouldn’t help much, okay?!?”
But the sludge of resistance, fear, negativity seems to swamp that hopeful thinking.

Hey, would Rocky talk to himself that way?

So, yesterday my friend Mark and I were working in a café and talking a little about problems. Our problems, problems in the world, etc. Suddenly we could see we had to change the energy! We decided we needed to do something…like immediately! So we went to heifer.org and we went in on a goat (I think it was $15 each). Before we had finished our coffee, we had done something that made someone’s life a little better.

The rest of the day I felt good thinking about our new goat - not my problems. It wasn’t a BIG thing, but it was SOMETHING. It tied us to someone else (and a goat) on the other side of the planet.

Today, I don’t care what your to do list says, do something good – and do something global. Taking action to make the world a better place can come in so many ways. Don’t worry if “its enough”. Do something small – it’s enough.

www.heifer.org

For one day, I’m staying a little more conscious about what I like…hoping it will take me closer to what I love.

After all, you have to uncover what you love, discover what you’d like to have in your life so that you can use the principles of the Secret to manifest your experience.
Sometimes I think we avoid The Secret or empowering information like that because its too frighening to recognize the fact that we don’t really know what we want. Its easier to be restricted and limited — then we can blame our unhappiness and suffering on circumstances outside of ourselves.

My book about Manifesting the Secret is going to provide you with some ways to help you dig into just what you DO want to experience in your life.

My last post was about how children seem so open and ready to connect to joy (and tears) and that as an adult, that seems to get lost. We operate in a grey zone more often.

So how to get out of the grey? After all, as adults we have drivers licenses, we have jobs, we probably have more access to money — we can stay up late! So, why aren’t we enjoying that freedom? We can choose what we do, what we eat, when we eat, what we wear — but for the most part we get into a comfortable groove of "its fine" or "its bearable" or "what will others think?" and we stay there.

Are you living in a limited bandwidth of expected choices and past decisions repeating themselves?

Or are you manifesting your dreams? Are you tapped into the secret?

I was walking to lunch with my friend the other day. A mother and her two kids were walking the other way - when the kids spotted a half-floating helium balloon tied to a handrail on the sidewalk.

"A BALLOON!" and both kids sprinted towards the saggy thing at full speed, shouting and singing "ITS A BALLOON!"

My friend turned to me and said, "I don’t remember the last time I got that excited…about anything."

Maybe that’s the good thing about having kids around - because they go nuts over things that the rest of us may miss entirely. But how do we reconnect with that joy or excitement as adults? And when did those bursts of joy become suppressed? Somewhere between the morning commute and picking up dry cleaning? Maybe they got lost in an Excel Spreadsheet. Probably much earlier than that.

Your life is still supposed to be filled with that passion and joy. That can still be manifested in your life - its your birthright.

Are you living in your highest and best? Why not?

It’s true. That means that when you have a thought or belief ("This is going to be a horrible day") your brain starts to look for information that will prove that you are right. Not only does it search for supporting evidence, it ALSO filters out everything that does NOT support your belief.

So, you have a belief, your mind goes out like a hunting dog sniffing out more evidence. It obediantly returns with evidence to prove you are right. That strengthens the belief - and causes the mind to find MORE evidence, filtering the thousands and thousands of experiences you have each day and hand picking the ones that fit.

Then, we feel pretty justified in our belief. We ARE right about the world - and have the evidence to prove it.

As I’ve said, i am working on a book about manifesting the secret, but I am also in the process of getting married to a wonderful partner, I just started a new job with new clients, projects and opportunities.

So, the blog writing is definitely for myself as much as anyone else. I need to hear that being an expert or getting comfy can mean closing down or settling for "what has been good enough in the past". I have manifested some wonderful experiences in the past years…so, now what? How to move forward?

But what do I REALLY want? What’s my larger VISION for myself?? What do I want to manifest in my life NEXT?

There is something in all of us that likes to stay niiiice and comfy. Really. We all want to get things fixed just right so that no one bugs us, nothing is irritating, everything is juuuust how we like it — and when it is, we hope to God that it will stay just that way forever.

We want to hang on tightly to having everything just so.

But it doesn’t work. Because everything is changing all the time and that "comfy-ness" gets kinda uncomfortable. The room gets too stuffy or the music becomes annoying. Or the coziness becomes smothering and we get grouchy. Grouchy because everything changed from perfect to not-so-great or very-unbearable.

Grouchy because we resist changing…sometimes it is difficult to leave that once-perfect scenario (even when it is stale or outgrown) and do something new.

What’s stale in your life that you’re still hanging onto? What’s outgrown? Can you picture something better?
Would you be open to something better? Are you ready to manifest something better?