The Gift of Desire...

First, this is a picture of Debbie Ford, from her Consciousness Cleanse course - so a very fitting place to start I would say.  A personal tribute and thank you. Also a goal.  I thought she was beautiful inside and out, never perfect but always committed and trying.  This is what I want for myself.

Day 1 is about the Gift of Desire.

Basically it comes down to picking one goal for your interal world and one for your external world. This is your souls desire and is what will pull, push, motivate, guide and inspire you to release your outdated beliefs and let go of whatever behaviours keep you stuck in the past. The way I understand it is, that our soul only has our best interests at heart. There are no other motives, this is pure and will guide you to your greatest potential.  This is where the ego has no place to live, to guide to lead. The ego doesn't want you to know these things, as it will no longer have a voice or power in your life.

Ok easy to say, but how do we do this? It says to write down what most needs attention in your life right now. What does it look like now? What do you want it to look like? How will your life change? How will those around you be affected? When you have reached the goal, what time/energy and space will now be left behind /available?

For the inside part, what is it that you most want to feel this year?  How will you act if you feel this way all the time? How will the people around you benefit? What would be different in your world?

So now that you have done this, what action can you take in each area that will be a step forward in reaching each of your goals?

So externally, it is my health that needs the most attention in my life. Physically I am overweight, unhappy with myself and not healthy physically. This is not how I want to spend the next 45 years of my life.  I want to be physically attractive to myself and my husband. I want to have fun. I want to live a physically active life.  I want to run daily. I want to be able to hike, travel well, explore and experience life.  I want to eat to live, not live to eat.  I want food to be fuel and my body to be supported as it supports me.  When I have reached this goal, being and living healthy is how I live my life and everything in it.  All the time I spend defeating myself in these areas will be free to do the fun things. Travelling, running, being healthy and not having to cancel the things I enjoy because I am sick, feeling bad, am to embarassed at how I look etc.

Internally, I don't know how to connect with myself. Having been so angry and disappointed with my body for "betraying" me when I got sick, I started to punish it by not taking care of it.  The bigger side of this is connected to not feeling I have any value. I forgot that no matter what else was going on, the blood still flowed in my body, my heart still beat, my hair still grew, my stomach and other body functions still continued, my eyes continued to see etc.,  My body didnt give up on me, I gave up on it.  If I am to be honest, the work and demands I made on it before I got sick, were the reasons I got sick.  Again, I didnt value myself enough to take care of myself and pushed myself beyond what I was capable of.  Talk about being disconnected from myself.  I didnt listen to the small signals/messages so my body gave me a big message and shut me down so I couldnt do any more harm.  When I reach this goal, I will no longer not have any value.  I will have connected my body to my mind. I will no longer treat myself with disdain, anger, frustration and treat it like the enemy. I will love myself, value myself and treat myself like I deserve to be treated.  I know it starts with getting my mind right, so I dont waste so much energy.  This time, energy and self love, will raise me to who I want to be. Who I can be, who I was meant to be. Who I should be.

To me, the steps to reach my goals are starting here today.  Making this committment is my internal action step. Making it public is my external action step.  (I am at home with strep throat, otherwise I would exercise today as my first external step. But that will follow once my fever has broken etc.)

I will end this exercise now, so I don't convince myself I am doing this wrong etc.  This is just the first step where I am today. I cannot wait to look back on this and see how far my journey has taken me.

For the Sun Tzu - basically there are 16 key attributes. What I will explore is how they affect women, and more specifically women in business.  One of the first things the book says before even the lesson is that "Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strength." Lois Wyse .

In general, you must believe you will succeed and that victory is your only option and only successful outcome. Suz Tzu is about the journey from where you are now, to who you can become. It reconciles the ancient truths with the modern realities. The timeless truths, both simple and complex, never go out of style. Men use these to their advantage all the time. Women have steered themselves away by avoiding conflict, staying in your comfort zone, not asking for what they want, being too timid, not sure of which battles to fight and not being true to themselves, at their own expense.

What we need to embrace, is that our unique traits as women are what will make sure we are successful. We need to embrace our intuition, sensitivity, attitude of collaboration, our inate passions, need for independence and ability to build great, cohesive teams.  These are our strengths and we must engage and empower them in order to fully  utilize them.

That is why I believe I need to do this. I don't want to apologize for the strengths I have. I worked hard to achieve them, naturally or learned. I don't want to be less than I am able to be. Ever. I am no longer willing to be subsurvient or deny who I am. Nor do I want to try to be a man, or do things his way.  I have a long way to go, but I believe I will succeed.

The other things I said I would do for myself every day - my gratitude journal and meditation, I will do privately. If however I have any thoughts or ideas that I think will be useful I will share them.

See you tomorrow....