A Winged Life!

I was sitting with my husband in our little fishing boat on the Lewis river recently waiting for the fish to bite, and waiting and waiting....
It's so beautiful out there. I was trying to take it all in when I noticed a bird soaring above us, so freely, so high. I could almost since it's joy.

As I thought about that bird, I thought about us humans who seem to have no wings at all-to mount up into the life of freedom and joy.

We are terribly conscious of our lack of joy, lack of power and lack of victory.

We experience depression, (a lot of the time caused by anger turned inward) moodiness, boredom, frustration and fear.

We are slaves to destructive habits and unable to master our impulses. We are earthbound because of our own choices and character.

If I've learned anything in the last 30 years working in the weight loss business, I have learned that conquering those things, flying above those things, will get us to our goal and keep us there.

So what do those birds have that we don't have?

BIRDS mount up into a region altogether their own. They soar beyond the reach of their enemies. As long as they stay up in the sky, no one can set limits to their freedom or restrain them.

BIRDS can see farther than creatures without wings. Theirs is a sphere of vision with great distance. The higher they go, the further they see.

BIRDS have a song life! It's a song of joy they sing in their triumphant experience.

To live a winged life, like the birds, it takes a decision! A decision to look at life differently, to look at yourself differently.

So how would we live a winged life with our weight loss program?

WE choose to mount up and make decisions all on our own, against the world, or maybe or co-workers, children or loved ones. We feel free to chose food we want. We say no thank you when we want to and set our own limits...no one sets them for us. I'm sad to say that many of us live and work with our weight loss enemies! Having wings means we don't walk there. We don't allow the circumstances below to affect us soaring!

WE choose to dream BIG! We have big vision for big change and no one can stop it because we are soaring too high. Living a winged life requires great eye sight...the ability to see into the future! The minute we take our eyes of the future, off our dream, off our new truth, we plummet down to earth. There are enough earth dwellers...we've got to soar above!

WE choose to sing a new song! I can't help but think of a few song titles that people with a winged life sing..."I've got a new attitude" "Celebrate good times...come on" "I believe I can fly" "Climb every mountain" ...just to name a few!

Staying on earth, walking among your enemies, continuing to allow food to win, doesn't serve you! It doesn't bring a song of joy to your lips.

A winged life truly is the way to live. A life with vision, discipline and joy.
You have every opportunity to live a winged life...starting this very moment. Make a decision today to soar above it all, have vision for the future and sing a song of joy.

Here's a little imagery for you to read. Allow it to soak in!

Imagine yourself living a winged life. Feeling confident to make choises all on your own. Instead of walking with the crowd, you soar above and choose a healthier, happier life style. You are setting personal limits for yourself and it feels great. You are a person of vision. You dream big dreams and they are about you! Dreams to accomplish your weight loss goals and more importantly dreams about how it's going to feel to live the rest of your life at goal weight! You think about change and you are soaring so high that no one can discourage you. As you set limits for yourself and begin to change, a song of joy comes over your lips that you've never sang before. You've got a new attitude and it's showing in every area of your life. You are living a winged life and nothing is going to bring you down again!

Always encouraging you,
Letha

Let's Summarize...

We've spent the last 5 weeks discussing a very important subject: Being fully engaged. Fully engaged in our own lives. It's not something that just happens, being fully engaged is something that we work for.

The ultimate measure of our lives is not how much time we spend on the planet, but rather how much energy we invest in the time that we have. The number of hours in a day is fixed, but the quantity and the quality of energy available to us is not.

To be fully engaged, we must be physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused and spiritually aligned with a purpose beyond our immediate self-interests.

To recap...here are the four principles necessary to fully engage!


PRINCIPLE 1:
Full engagement requires drawing on four separate but related sources of energy; physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

PRINCIPLE 2:
Because energy capacity diminishes both with overuse and with under use, we must balance energy expenditure with intermittent energy renewal.

PRINCIPLE 3:
To build capacity, we must push beyond our normal limits, training in the same systematic way that elite athletes do.

PRINCIPLE 4:
Positive energy rituals-highly specific routines for managing energy-are the key to full engagement and sustained high performance.

Being fully engaged is a wonderful place to live. To be fully alive in every area of life takes balance and a desire to do so. Days, weeks, months and years are wasted by many people, just going through the motions of life and surviving!

I hope that you have learned something new in these last weeks and will dig a little deeper at experiencing this kind of life; a fully engaged life.


Always encouraging you.
Letha

"Are You Fully Engaged?" Principle # 4

Continued from last week..

a reminder:
To be fully engaged, we must be physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused and spiritually aligned with a purpose beyond our immediate self-interests.

The challenge of great life performance is to manage your energy more effectively in all dimensions to achieve your goals. Four key energy management principles drive this process. They lie at the heart of change, and they are critical for building the capacity to live a productive, fully engaged life.

So…to fully engage the following 4 energy management principles will be key:

This week we'll address Principle #4

PRINCIPLE 4:

Positive energy rituals-highly specific routines for managing energy-are the key to full engagement and sustained high performance.

Change is hard…we are creatures of habit. Most of what we do is automatic and non conscious. What we did yesterday is what we are likely to do today. The problem with most efforts at change is that conscious efforts can’t be sustained over long haul. Will and discipline are for more limited resources than most of us realize. If you have to think about something every time you do it, the likelihood is that you won’t keep doing it for very long.


A positive ritual is a behavior that becomes automatic over time-fueled by some deeply held value.

I use the word ritual purposefully to emphasize the notion of a carefully highly structured behavior. In contrast to will and discipline, which requires pushing yourself to a particular behavior, a ritual pulls at you.

Think of something as simple as brushing your teeth. It’s not something that you have to remind yourself to do. Brushing your teeth is something you feel consistently drawn to.
You do it largely on auto pilot, without much conscious effort.

The power of rituals is that they insure that we use as little conscious energy as possible where it is not absolutely necessary, leaving us free to focus the energy available to us in creative, enriching ways.
Look at any part of your life where you are successful…you have probably built routines around that action.

With your eating, exercise, at work, in your home…the areas that you have routine, you are successful.

This week as you identify rituals in your every day life, consider more that you might add regarding your choices to eat healthy and live a fit lifestyle.

I'll close this topic out next Friday. It's been good sharing the power and importance of full engagement with you.

Working to be fully engaged and always encouraging you,
Letha

Are You Fully Engaged? Principle # 3

Continued from last week...

a reminder:
To be fully engaged, we must be physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused and spiritually aligned with a purpose beyond our immediate self-interests.

The challenge of great life performance is to manage your energy more effectively in all dimensions to achieve your goals. Four key energy management principles drive this process. They lie at the heart of change, and they are critical for building the capacity to live a productive, fully engaged life.

So…to fully engage the following 4 energy management principles will be key:

This week we'll address Principle #3



PRINCIPLE 3:

To build capacity, we must push beyond our normal limits, training in the same systematic way that elite athletes do.

Stress is not an enemy in our lives, it is a key to growth. In order to build strength in a muscle we must systematically stress it, expending energy beyond normal levels. Doing so literally causes microscopic tears in the muscle fibers. At the end of a training session, functional capacity is diminished. But give the muscle 24 to 48 hours to recover and it grows stronger and better able to handle the next stimulus. While this training phenomenon had been applied to building physical strength, it is just as relevant to building “muscles“ in every area of our lives.

From empathy and patience, to focus and creativity, to integrity and commitment. What applies to the body, applies to all other dimensions in our lives.

We build emotional, mental and spiritual capacity in the same way that we build physical capacity.

We grow at all levels by expending energy beyond our ordinary limits and then recovering. Expose a muscle to ordinary demand and it won’t grow. With age it will actually lose strength. The limiting factor in building any “muscle” is that many of us back off at the slightest hint of discomfort. To meet increase demand in our lives, we must learn to systematically build and strengthen muscles wherever our capacity is insufficient. Any forms of stress that prompts discomfort has the potential to expand our capacity physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually so long as it’s followed but adequate recovery.

This week as you face stressful situations, demands on your emotional and personal life and are tested even spiritually, remember that discomfort in those areas brings about growth if you properly cope with them and then find time to recover and refresh yourself as well.

Next week we'll look at principle #4.
Until then I'm

Always encouraging you,
Letha