Don't stop Your Mental Movie to Early

Is this a familiar scenario?

Scene 1: You are flooded with emotion. For
example: Your feelings get hurt over a minor
altercation with someone you
really care about or you are so excited about
a possible job promotion, or
you are sitting around the house at the end
of a long day, feeling bored and
slightly agitated.

Scene II - You begin to fantasize
about that bag of chips and dip in the
cabinet or the cold, refreshing, comforting
mint chocolate chip ice-cream in
the fridge. You imagine how good that glass
(or bottle) of wine would taste
and how soothing it would feel going down.

Scene III - Your inner chatter starts
picking up speed about the pros and
cons of acting on your thoughts. One inner
voice argues that you deserve
something sweet and delicious - that you've
been working so hard, or you've
been so under appreciated, or haven't
socialized in so long.

Countering that is the voice within that
insists that you had promised
yourself that you were going to stop that
self-destructive behavior - that
your eating is out of control, your body is
in terrible shape, and that you
need to pull your life together.

Scene IV - You see the inner image of
yourself looking out of control, out
of shape and feeling deflated and your image
of how comforting the
"forbidden" food or drink would taste/feel
grows bigger, brighter and more
real for you.

Scene V - You decide that change is
hopeless and that you might as well
"enjoy" your life as you reach for the "bad"
chips, wine or ice-cream.

You may assume that the problem with this
chain of events is that you have
no willpower or that you really are out of
control and destined to fail.
This is absolutely not the problem. The
challenge is actually an inner
challenge and that is that you are ending
your mental movie too soon.

It is the above sequence of images
that is setting you up to perpetuate an
internal battle with your weight, that has
you ending up feeling like a
loser. By ending your mental movie with the
sweet, tempting taste and the
perceived comfort of the items that are
ultimately going to keep you
spinning in a cycle of failure when it comes
to living your life healthy, at
your ideal weight and in control of your life
and eating habits, you are
keeping yourself from achieving your goal.
Your mind responds to images and
internal voices. We may think that we are
moved by the outer world, but it
is only the concepts that we accept to be
true and valid for ourselves that
instigate our actions.

Therefore the only way to have success if
your ultimate goal is to be happy,
healthy and live your life at your ideal
weight is to create a new ending to
the perpetual mental movie that's on
auto-pilot in your brain. As long as
you continue to end your unconscious imagery
with scenes of pigging out and
the familiar feeling of failure, or with the
feeling of being satisfied and
comforted with foods that are causing you
harm physically and/or
mentally/emotionally, or with the pleasurable
taste of these foods, you are
going to continue to act on these images
whether you want to or not.

Remember the subconscious mind is not
rational. It responds to the images
that have been planted there, particularly
those images that are so strongly
imbedded over time due to repetition and
strong emotion. When your mind
sees that picture of you enjoying that bowl
of ice-cream, it just says,
"Wow, that looks good. Let's do it!" It
doesn't think about the fact that
you've just starved yourself all day long and
that you really want to fit
into that adorable blue suit, or that you
vowed to yourself just yesterday
that you were going to lose 30 lbs. by next
summer. All it sees is you
eating the ice-cream, deriving pleasure and
it takes going to the fridge to
fulfill this desire, as an order.

In the aftermath, after the joy of the
moment wanes, you sit in disbelief
over what happened, frustrated with yourself,
and filled with remorse. You
either resolve that it won't happen again and
start exercising furiously or
throw your hands up in despair and decide to
give up. "At my age," you tell
yourself, "what's the difference? I might as
well enjoy my life." A
feeling of sadness sinks in . . .

How can you truly avoid this scene playing
out again in the future? It's
actually simple. Observe your mind and
realize that it's the mental movies
that are running your life-both in a positive
and a negative way. If you
imagine yourself getting up, getting dressed,
brushing your teeth and going
to work-work is going to be where you end up.
But if you create a strong
image of feeling too tired to get out of bed,
chances are you'll call in
sick that day. Unless of course you counter
that image with a brighter
vision of the luncheon you've been looking
forward to that day or a letter
of reprimand from your boss that you want to
avoid at all costs-in which
case you'll probably find yourself getting up
and getting off to work.

It's the images we play in our mind that
lead us to take action. Our
brain always wants us to move towards
pleasure and away from pain. If we
create an image of pleasure-whether it leads
to ultimate pleasure or not-we
will find ourselves seeking that activity. If
we create an image of
pain-whether it leads to ultimate pain or
not-we will find ourselves taking
an action to avoid that discomfort.

Therefore to have ultimate success
with our weight loss goals we have to be
vigilant about creating internal mental
movies that support that goal. That
means ONLY running movies that depict the
true, ultimate pain of eating
harmful foods or living a sedentary lifestyle
and bringing to your
consciousness the result they cause in your
life. By not focusing on the
moment's pleasure of an undeniably enjoyable
taste, but instead
concentrating on the unwanted result, your
mind will naturally move you to
take actions away from those foods.

This will only be effective if it happens
at a subconscious level.
Consciously, of course, you tell yourself, "I
should eat the healthy food."
Or "I shouldn't eat the 'bad' foods." You can
tell yourself these things all
day, but if your inner mental movies don't
support the new, desired action
of actually selecting healthy food and
staying away from junk, you won't do
it.

Remember to make the final scene of
your mental movies strong and powerful
and make sure that scene leads you to take
the action you want to take! End
your movie by going further out in time and
seeing what outcome you are
likely to attract. Beyond the sweet taste,
what lies in store for you if
you eat that food? Addiction? Guilt? An
overweight condition? Tight
clothes? Social Embarrassment? Isolation?

Illness? Disease? Discomfort?
Frustration? A need for excessive exercise?
Make movies of these unwanted outcomes. Make
them bright and close and
clear.

As you run the movie, make it clear to
yourself that this is not your
ultimate destiny by any means, but simply the
direct result of what's likely
to occur, if you indulge in that food. Make
sure that the movie runs in the
present tense. This means that you don't
give yourself the luxury of
thinking that this possible fate is unlikely
or will happen in the very
distant, intangible future. Instead make sure
that your mind gets the
picture that this is the result of going down
a road where you eat certain
foods. Let it know that any action you take
today is much more likely to be
repeated tomorrow than if you had not taken
that action today. This way
when a voice pops in that tries to convince
you that you can eat this "just
this one time," you will clearly know deep
within yourself that there's no
such thing as doing something "just one
time." We are always heading in one
direction or another, and every action you
take just reinforces that
pathway.

Choose the pathway to health,
happiness, looking and feeling your best, and
living in control of your life and your
eating habits. Peer into your mind
and see the movie that's running there. That
is the vision that is
literally running the show of your life. If
you don't like where you're
going, change the channel. Eject that DVD and
insert a new one that depicts
you as the heroine-moving your body with
grace and ease, looking beautiful
and glowing from the inside, choosing the
foods from the earth that nourish
and sustain you, and saying "Yes!" to life!

Celebrate Your Success

In April I had the pleasure of offering a private weight loss seminar to a lovely group of nurses in Hackensack, New Jersey. They were there because one of their fellow nurses had lost 40 lbs. and kept it off for one year after attending my weight loss seminar at Hoboken University Medical Center. I was checking in with one of the ladies, named Sue, yesterday to see how she was doing.

Her response was, "I am doing ok.  I have kept off the initial 10 pounds that I dropped and I am definitely making better choices.  But, I find myself not listening as diligently as I had in the beginning."

The tone of Sue's response felt flat. I could hear her disappointment in herself. It saddened me to realize that she was not experiencing the possible joy in her incredible feat. Only ten pounds in two months? And feeling stable with that?! That is a fantastic accomplishment! How often do you and I, like Sue, negate or make small our achievements and instead focus on what we haven't yet done? No wonder it's hard for us to feel happy and positive. We're constantly convincing ourselves that whatever we are doing isn't good enough. One of the secrets to success is focusing on our successes! It's absolutely necessary, otherwise the subcosncious mind thinks, "OK, I'm a failure, or I'm not good enough, so I'll just do things that perpetuate that self-image."

Taking off 10 lbs. in two months and keeping it off is a wonderful accomplishment. I advised Sue to, "focus on how much better your clothes feel (and don't rush to get a tighter size that eliminates that good feeling).
Feel how proud you can be of yourself to know that you are still making healthier choices, even if you haven't had a chance to listen to the cd recently."

The more you encourage yourself, the more you'll find yourself doing all the right behaviors, including listening to your hypnosis cd. If you were climbing a mountain that takes 8 hours to climb, would you berate yourself because at 11am you were no where near the peak? Of course, not! Permanent weight loss is a process, like climbing a mountain. Look back at where you were one year ago and acknowledge yourself for every shift you've made, even if those changes are only in your mind and subtle behaviors. Celebrate your success - yes, you are good enough, you are worth it!
-Rena Greenberg

You Are Not Your Habits

How often have you compared yourself to someone else, only to fall short in the comparison? Do you imagine that if someone else doesn’t have the destructive habit of perusing through the fridge at midnight that they are somehow more evolved than you?

We are all a collection of habits. We like to pride ourselves on being very intelligent—and we may be—but the truth is that everything we think, say and do today, more than likely we have thought, said or done yesterday. Too me, that realization is a little bit embarrassing, but it also actually gives me hope. Because if I realize that I am truly nothing more or nothing less than a collection of automatic responses based on past and present triggers, it gives me a tremendous opportunity to carve out the life that I want.

What this tells me is that my destiny is not necessarily carved in stone. I begin to ponder, “What if each of us had the possibility for several possible destinies, and the one that actually plays out is solely based on our interpretation of our life’s events, and the habits of thought, speech and action we cultivate?”

This mindset is helpful to me because it also makes me realize how crucial it is to choose thoughts, words and deeds that will lift me up and take me down a higher path. If I thought that I could get away with a nasty, judging thought, or if I take the viewpoint that this one little cookie won’t hurt me, I’m probably right. Indulging in the luxury of a negative thought or a sweet treat probably wouldn’t have much of a destructive impact on my life. However, once I admit to myself how much of a creature of habit I am, my motivation to pull in the reins on myself becomes much stronger.

The understanding that judging my human brother or sister based on the hurt I feel that their actions have caused me, or eating foods that are poisonous to my system, will perpetuate negativity within me, helps to increase my motivation to avoid those choices.

When I realize that the sooner I simply sit with my feeling of hurt with acceptance and self-love, while forgiving the one who I think “caused” this feeling and myself for anything I might have done to contribute, the faster my hurt will heal, and the less likely I am to attract more darkness into my life, then I am on the road to creating a better destiny for myself. When I release my urge for the cookie based on my past experience that once the sugar is in my bloodstream, I am like a hound on the hunt for more, my destiny to live my life healthfully, with more happiness, and at my ideal weight, becomes a much greater possibility.

Whether we compare ourselves to another and come up feeling somehow less than or whether we look at another and secretly pat ourselves on the back for seemingly greater success in one area of life or another, we are bringing down our level of ultimate happiness. This is because either way, when we compare ourselves, even if we come out ahead, there is an uneasiness that fills us at a deeper place within. This is because somehow we intuitively know that we may not necessarily be able to maintain our status. Even if we are thinner, prettier, wealthier, or have more dynamic, well-behaved children, there is always a flip-side to all of our life experiences and achievements.

Therefore true happiness can only be found when we accept the fact that we don’t have to take credit for how special and wonderful we are—but only accept these gifts from Spirit with gratitude, and we don’t have to feel guilty or ashamed of our weaknesses, as these are also “gifts” that we are working through in this life, in order to access greater attributes within ourselves, such as strength, patience, compassion and courage. Isn’t it our greatest challenges that mold us into becoming much more authentic and higher versions of what’s possible for ourselves?

By navigating through our difficulties, like the rock that is ground down and polished to become a gem, we access our greater potential and have the opportunity to create a more profound destiny than might have been possible if we only basked in our obvious gifts of beauty, wisdom, and health.

The problems we face give us a chance to see our habitual patterns of coping with difficulty. Once we witness these habits, we come to see that we are so much more than this collection of routines that we are playing out day to day. All of a sudden, we become aware that we are thinking the same thoughts almost every day, and we can ask ourselves, “Where does that thought lead? How does that thought make me feel? What do I want to do with my hands and my tongue when I have that thought? Is the thought even true? What is another thought that I could think right now that would lead me to a greater expression of myself? What is the destiny I want? What thought would I need to think and hold to make that destiny more likely?”

We are so used to judging ourselves and the people in our lives as good, bad, right or wrong. In truth we are all made of the same stuff. It’s the habits of thought and action that mold us and create our differences.

Every thought and action you take today is likely to be repeated tomorrow unless you step in and decide to choose differently. Our repetitive ideas and behaviors create pathways in our brain and reinforce our identity. We begin to believe about ourselves, “I’m a person who is easily distracted.” “I’m a person who needs coffee to get going in the morning.” “I have no patience with my children or elderly parent.” These statements are only true because if you believe them to be.

When I decide to breathe and concentrate, and choose activities that help me with that goal—like exercising or perhaps doing yoga or meditation, then I am no longer so easily distracted. When I conclude that caffeine is having a negative impact on my life, I will realize that I am stronger than that addiction and can decide to take on a new identity as a person who doesn’t drink coffee. When my desire to look back on my life at my time of death and know myself as an excellent parent or daughter becomes important enough to me, patience with my children and parents will become my new mode of operation.

Expand your vision of yourself. Just because you’ve judged yourself as being fat for the last 20 years, and your whole life has revolved around that judgment, doesn’t mean that’s how your next 20 years have to be. How do you know that the weight won’t just melt off you when you finally accept yourself, your mistakes, acknowledge where your patterns have led you, and re-design your whole life to live it fully at your ideal weight—free from struggle?

To me, the greatest freedom is the realization that when left to our own devices, we are going to continue to react to life the way we always have, but that we also have the amazing potential in any moment (including this moment and this breath!) to make a life-changing shift in our perceptions. Instead of berating yourself for past mistakes, take the opportunity to look at your patterns of thought and action. Separate that from the events in your life that you think caused you to think and act as you do. Those reasons really aren’t going to help you – they are only going to give you an excuse to justify your patterns.

Instead ask yourself, “What if I could re-write the script? I can’t necessarily recruit new actors because my play doesn’t have the ability to do that. But what if I changed the lead actor’s role?” You are the lead actor in the drama of your life! Sit down and re-write your qualities, characteristics and responses. Even though you can’t eliminate the other actors in your play, you can add as many new supporting actors as you like. Invite all the people, real or imagined, dead or alive to come into your reality and support you and coach you.

Imagine yourself now responding to the circumstances of your life with all this inner and outer support. Picture yourself going through the days ahead of you with the awareness that every thought and action you choose to repeat more than once is likely to become a way of life for you unless you intervene. Your thoughts and behaviors are being fed into your subconscious mind, which then gives them back to you in the form of automatic thoughts in your head, words that spring forth from your tongue and actions that come from your hands.

Plant the seeds of thought, word and action that will lead to the responses that you would like to receive from life. When life doesn’t give you what you want, you experience pain and suffering. But rather than trying to fix life, which is impossible over the long term as we can’t control other people or situations, focus on what you can control.

Look to your automatic thoughts, feelings, words and actions, and seek to discover which ones are ultimately creating pain for you. Trace them to gain insight into where your thoughts are leading you. When you think to yourself, “I’ll always be fat. What’s the difference? It’s so much work!” Where does that thought lead you? When the thought becomes automatic (as it does with repetition), what kind of a life is it going to give you?

Of course, we can’t choose every thought. And the good news is, every thought isn’t creative. Only the ones that are accompanied with strong emotion do create. Since mind and body are connected, make a decision to keep your body as relaxed and healthy as possible to increase the likelihood that your thoughts and emotions will be gentle and loving. Focus on the things and people that make you feel good and all that you are grateful for. Notice and forgive your mistakes while acknowledging and celebrating your successes.
If you catch yourself comparing yourself with another, re-frame your comparison by seeking to discover what you admire about that other person and finding and developing that same quality within yourself.

If the rose were complaining that she’s not a tulip, we would laugh at its obvious lack of awareness of its own essential beauty. If the rose were demanding that the tulip be more like the rose, it would be obvious to us what a mistake that would be and how that would detract from the magnificence of the entire garden.

When we compare ourselves to another, whether we fall short or come out ahead, there’s no difference. Either way, the judgment causes us to feel uneasy inside. What a relief it can be to realize that there is nothing that needs to be fixed. The only task at hand is to discover the character traits that we are identified with and to look deeper within to determine whether this identification is preventing us from true happiness. If so, change the script, bring in all the supporting actors you need to help you, embrace an expanded vision of who you are, and step into the highest destiny possible for you.

By: Rena Greenberg