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COURSE NAVIGATION
MODULE 7
ADVANCED PRACTITIONER SKILLS
Section 6
A summation of guiding wisdoms and how to apply them to our professional practice.
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Greetings once again, my friends.
This is Mark David, founder of the Institute
for the Psychology of Eating.
Let's talk about timeless wisdom
and professional practice.
Basically in this conversation, what I wish to do is point out, and I've said this in different ways, but there seems to be a hidden architecture to life, to the universe, to the body, to all of it, really. Uh, what I mean by hidden architectures is, is that there are principles and energies that guiding us that we don't necessarily see, that we don't necessarily notice. And what I'd like to suggest to you is that knowledge of this dynamic, yet hidden architecture, can help us, can help us when it comes to navigating the material world can help us when it comes to navigating our business, our professional practice, navigating the world of money, and navigating what it means for you and I to become more effective practitioners. In other words, I'm saying that knowledge is power, and there's certain things that are obvious to us because we can see them, we notice them, and there are things that we don't see because they're invisible. We don't see oxygen, but it's there. You can see love, but it's there. So really what I want to do is take some time to look at some what I think are potentially useful principles and distinctions. Here. I got about 23 of 'em. And let's see if and how we can use these to better ourselves and better our professional practice.
So before I dive in to the specifics, I wanna suggest to you, I wanna postulate that just about everything that is visible is preceded by the invisible. At one point, you were kind of invisible. It didn't exist. Yeah, you, you were, you were whatever came before that tiny sperm and that tiny egg.
So the visible is preceded by the invisible. And if that's true, and I think it often is, um, oftentimes if we wanna create results in the tangible world, it's useful to study and understand the intangibles or the invisibles. I think just the fact that you and I are alive on planet earth. We're here to learn, to grow and to explore our world. And we're here to explore our world in terms of not just our outer world, but our inner world. I believe we are here to listen to the whisperings of life. I believe we are here to learn to progressively see more and more of some of the hidden meanings in the hidden mysteries of life.
I also think we're here to help one another, experience life in a good way, and to help one another heal whatever wounds we may have and help one another grow in whatever ways we need to grow as a coach, as a helping professional. One does that in a very deliberate, conscious, meaningful, and professional and deliberate and well-studied way away.
What a good thing, what a great way to spend one's time and energy, in my opinion. So here's principle number one that I would like to suggest to you, that in many ways, you and I are here. We're alive. We're here to remember.
So yeah, life is about learning. Yes, life is about adding to our knowledge base life is about accumulating more information, more experience, more things. So there's a very additive process to life. At the same time, maybe perhaps a little bit paradoxical. So much of what we come into this world to do is to remember that which perhaps we've forgotten.
I think it is true that ourselves and our soul contains so much of the wisdom of the ages, the memories of our ancestors. You know, we know that as a genetic fact, your cells contain the biological wisdom of the ages. Your cells contain the biological wisdom and literal memories of our ancestors. So that's a fact. It's also noticeable that when we come into this world, we don't seem to know a lot.
We're not that complex. Perhaps we're in a state of forgetfulness. So many religious traditions teach that we're ultimately here to remember our wholeness, to remember our connection to a higher power. There's a story that comes out of, um, I believe it's the mystic Jewish tradition. And the story goes something like this, that before the human soul incarnates on planet earth, before the soul gets here,
this might be from mystic Christianity, though either one. So before the soul gets here, it's tutored by its guardian angel. And our guardian angel. As the story goes, tutors in not only all the wisdom of the universe, but tutors us in what's gonna happen in our life. Some of the key signposts, the key learnings, the key lessons that we're about to learn in the upcoming lifetime that we are about to lead. So the soul is given all the info. The soul is given the game plan. The soul is taught the wisdom of the universe. And what happens is, just as that soul is about to jump into the body and jump into the womb, the guardian angel gives the soul a little, little smack on the mouth. Some say it's a press on the lips. And with that smack on the mouth or that press on the lips, the soul forgets everything it was just told. And it is said that the soul's journey is to remember everything that it was taught, to understand the wisdom of everything that it was taught before. I forgot. Have you ever noticed that in life there's certain things you learn and it feels more like a remembering? Oh, that's true. Oh, I get that. Sometimes some of the wisdom that we learn is, it, it, it just rings a bell inside of us.
I think when we notice that, when we notice that there's certain things we remember, you might've even met certain people in your life who you feel like you remember them and not from this world. So of course, we can never know these things for absolute 100% sure.
But I think there's an empowerment that comes when you and I realize that yeah, we're here to accumulate certain things and know certain things. And we're also here to remember that which is already encoded inside of us. We know it. We come in with a knowing. And oftentimes that knowing just needs us to help it along. It needs life experience.
You know, a lot of, when it comes to healing, our relationship with food and body is remembering our wholeness. Remembering that, wait a second, this isn't my natural state. This isn't who I truly am. We know somewhere inside of us that there's a me that is better than this. We know a me that is fuller than this. We know a me that is more better expressed than this
part of us just knows that I believe it's a remembering.
Here's another principle I'd like to share with you. We are here to heal and learn and grow. So I'm calling this a time, I'm, I'm calling these timeless wisdom principles. You know, your and your, your job is to see if these ring true for you.
That's it. We're here to learn and heal and grow. In other words, your task. My task is to embrace this interesting workshop called My life. 'cause your life is a workshop. Your life is a classroom. And I think we each have our own very beautiful story, our own fascinating story, our own wild story, our own challenging story. It's an epic tale. It's a, it's a movie and it's your life. Yeah, you pay money to go see a movie in the theater, but you're living a movie every day. And I say that affectionately. And I believe that one of the things we do to heal and learn and grow is to make our story right, to abide by it, to embrace it, to live it as fully as we can. To not curse it, to not deny it, to not try to escape it through the kinds of escapes that harm us. Like addictions, like treating our body in a poor or harmful way, like treating our heart and soul in a self attacking or self rejecting way.
We're here to embrace the story that is my life. Even though it was difficult, even though it's been challenging, even though there were wrongs committed, even though there were perhaps crimes committed.
Can you still honor your own journey? Can your client, can you help your client honor their own journey? Can we bless our own journey? Can we forgive all the things we need to forgive about our journey? Places where we came up short, the places where others came up short.
So I think we're here to heal the wounds as best we can that have caused us to pull away from life and pull away from our greater expression and destiny. So when my client comes to see me for weight or body image or overeating, I'm not just thinking, oh, my job is to help you lose 12 pounds, or my job is to help you control your appetite. So you walk out of here and you don't bingey. No. That person is needing to learn something. They're needing to grow in a certain way. They're needing to heal something. They're needing to shine the light on something.
And oftentimes, it's something about my story, something about how my life has gone down, how I've been living it.
That is often impacting our relationship with food. And you've likely noticed by now, and if you've seen this, if you're already practicing in your clients or your patients, or you see it in your friends and loved ones, there's a lot of human beings walking around, dishonoring, dissing, cursing,
not embracing their own journey, their own story.
It's kind of like sitting in a movie and you decide, I hate this movie. And okay, you walk out, it's totally your prerogative. We can't do that with our own life. Really.
It takes, it takes a certain kind of heart and soul and courage and openness to look at our life from a higher perspective and say, can I appreciate this journey? I know it's been hard. Whatever was hard about it. You're right. That was hard. Whatever you wish would've been different. You're probably right. It would've been nice if that was different. It would've been so better to have this kind of body, that kind of body, this kind of money, that kind of parents, this kind of place that whatever.
And it would've been better if this didn't happen and that didn't happen, and I didn't meet this person or that person. It's probably all true on some level. And we have to embrace the workshop, the story called my life. And we have to make it right. Until we do that, we're fighting against ourselves. And the more you fight against yourself, the longer it's going to take to heal whatever unwanted food or body challenge you have, the longer it's gonna take to heal and transform whatever unwanted symptom we have.
We don't heal and learn and grow through cursing our own story.
Principle number three, that I'd like to share a timeless wisdom principle. You and I are here to do work.
We got some work to do. And of course I know, you know, we know that there's more to life than just work for sure. And life requires work of all kinds. On all levels. Yeah, we go to work, you have the job that you work at,
but we're working in all different places. We're working on our relationships, we're working on our marriage, we're working as parents. We're working on being the children of our parents. We do work in our friendship.
We do work on self.
The work we do is all love made. Visible work is a form of love in particular. In particular, my friends, I'm focusing here on, when I say we're here to do work, I just wanna underline that work on self is paramount to our existence. That's a postulation. I'm making that work on self is paramount to our existence. And I wish to acknowledge that. It is very clear that not everyone believes that, and not everyone knows that in order to even disbelieve it.
Not knowing that work on self is really important to do is a cause of a lot of undue pain and suffering. A lot of people are suffering in their relationships, suffering in their life, suffering in their existence. Life is hard because they don't understand. I got work to do on self. I got work to do with self. I've got self-examination to do. I have some rigorous self inventorying to do.
I might have to change the way I see myself, my world, other people, men, women, life, money, purpose, love.
So again, I wanna say that not knowing that work on self is important doesn't exempt you from the consequences of not doing that work.
And I think I believe in my own experience that work on self can be, can be some of the hardest work that you and I can do in this world.
Much easier to go to work and do a job that you hate, then work on a part of us that is hard to change, that we know we ought to change.
And I think because work on self can be so hard, it's why so many people shy away from it. It's why so many people run the other way from it. It's why so many people are quite frankly not interested in it because it's work and you're gonna sweat and you're gonna get your hands dirty and there's gonna be a special kind of difficulty in this kind of work.
Now, I know you're the kind of person that's done work on yourself, and I bet you can look back on your life and say, yes, I've worked on myself and wow, the rewards have really Been great. I bet you can say that the work that you've done on yourself has yielded great rewards.
Now, you know, I mention this to you, my friends because, and you've heard me say this, when it comes to work in practice, a lot of our clients don't understand this principle. They think you're gonna fix them. They think someone is gonna fix them. They think someone should fix them. They oftentimes want the easy way out. What pill do I take? What vegetable do I eat? What button do I push? So, so that I don't binge eat or overeat or emotionally eat? What pill do I take such that all this weight comes off and then it's done.
So we we're a little human. We want the easy way out. And by the way, that makes perfect sense. If there's an easier way to do things, then why not do it the easier way, if the hard way and the easy way are both gonna accomplish the same thing. That's reasonable. And the reality is work on self is work on self, and there's no way to avoid it really. We can choose to avoid it or we can unconsciously choose to avoid it either way. We will have to deal with the consequences of not doing work on self.
So part of it is understanding that, yeah, this can be difficult. Yeah, this can be hard. That's why we have good friends. That's why you have the people you can trust and talk to. That's why we have coaches and mentors and guides and therapists to help each other do work on self. Ain't nothing wrong with that. In fact, some of the best things we can do in the world,
the sooner you're down with that, the sooner your client is down with that, the better. And oftentimes that's a lot of the work that we do with our clients. We have to really invite them in to do the work. And sometimes you gotta do that slowly,
slowly inviting people into work on self. There's no easy way to just get rid of our eating challenges. Yeah, some of them are easier than others. Certain clients will have an easier time than others.
Yeah, sometimes their mood issue and their fatigue issue and their digestive issue is a food allergy. And you identify it and they let go of that food for a few weeks and they see the difference. Okay, yeah, that's a little easier than having to notice that my emotional eating is connected to the fact that I'm withholding the truth. I'm not saying what I really want in this relationship. I'm not saying what I really want in my life. I'm a people pleaser and I keep getting walked all over and nobody loves me. It seems like, huh? I have to look at changing that in me.
That takes a little more work on self, doesn't it?
And it's understandable why people would avoid that. It's hard to change yourself. It really is. It's humbling to see when we are, we're falling short of what our potential is.
And at the same time, we're always learning and growing. Fourth principle I'd like to mention in a lot of ways we're here to unlearn. Mm-Hmm. You know, it's such a weird paradox. We're here to learn and we are here to unlearn. Unlearning is as important because it ain't as obvious.
Lasu said that learning happens by addition. And wisdom happens by subtraction.
Learning happens by addition. Wisdom happens by subtraction, meaning, yeah, you can learn about math by hearing more information about math. You can learn about nutrition by hearing new information about nutrition. But true wisdom happens when we start letting go of toxic beliefs. When we start letting go of ways of seeing the world that actually don't work. When we let go of the blinders in front of our eyes, wisdom happens when we unlearn our judgments, when we unlearn self attack. Wisdom happens when we unlearn old habits and patterns and ways of being with ourself or others that don't work for us.
Not your fault. Don't worry. We are conditioned by the world to learn a lot of nonsense.
It's just the way things are set up. You're taught a lot of nonsense from the beginning. Sometimes the people teaching you that nonsense, they don't know that they're teaching you that nonsense. They think it's smart.
You're gonna learn a lot of nonsense. Watching the TV and watching YouTube and watching the news outlets who are all getting up in arms about fake news or false news. And uh, boy, you know, we're unlearning toxic beliefs of all kinds. We're unlearning how not to worship all the false gods that were taught to worship. You don't realize how much the media, how much the movies, how much the tv, how much whatever you are reading and tuning into and listening to music wise, magazine wise, they're giving you a God to pray to and that God is usually money. It's fame, it's glamorous people doing stupid, glamorous things.
We're being taught to worship power for power's sake. We're being taught to worship perfection. We're being taught to put career above all else. Some of us we're being taught to w***e to just keep accumulating more and more and more and more and more. We're being taught to have a bigger ego. Me, me, me, me, me. We're often taught to win at all costs. Doesn't matter how many dead bodies you leave in your wake, we're taught to worship a certain kind of body in a certain kind of look, in a certain kind of brash, arrogant, idiotic human.
I'm saying those are false gods. So we're here to unlearn.
We're simply unlearning ways of thinking and being that we've adopted from the world. You didn't invent them. Ways of thinking and being that we've adopted from the world that the world gave us that simply don't work for us anymore.
It's a good question to ask yourself. It's a good question to ask your client. What, what are you unlearning? What do you have to unlearn?
It's just a different way to look at learning. Unlearning is just a form of learning. But I will say to you, it is arguably the most powerful form of learning. Because once again, it's where wisdom is born and wisdom is good.
Principle number five that I'd like to share with you in terms of timeless wisdom is that I believe we are here on earth to play a long game. You've heard me use that term.
We're here to play a long game, meaning we're here to see the big picture at some point. We're here to understand that I'm not just living for me in the moment. Yes, there's a part of us that has to live in the moment. There's a part of us that has to be very present because on one level, that's what you have. You have this moment and you have to be present in this moment. But let's face it, we also have to plan. You got a calendar, you look at your calendar, you see what you're doing that week. Maybe you plan out a few months in advance in terms of a trip, in terms of visiting your relatives, your parents, your friends, whoever.
And it keeps getting deeper. We're here for the long term. We're here to be long term learners. We're here to grow long term. We're here to elevate ourselves long term. We're here to learn about love. Not just today, but forever.
I believe that an effective life and a life well live is born from this kind of approach. Understanding that, yeah, life is short, but I'm also going to function as if
I'm gonna be around a while and I wanna be committed long term to myself, to my path, to my journey to the people around me. I'm not gonna get stuck in instant gratification. I'm gonna just do this now because I, you are gonna die someday anyway. So ah, jump in and do what you want. A lot of people make short term decisions based on immediate instant gratification. That oftentimes we begin to,
we begin to feel really bad about that choice soon after.
A lot of times instant gratification gets us in a little bit of trouble. When you're playing a long game, that's the opposite of instant gratification. You are looking for long-term gratification. So playing a long game means we're looking down the road. You're already walking, and we're doing our best to make good decisions that can impact us in the future. That impacts us tomorrow and next week and next month and next year. It means we're honoring father time in a wise way. It means we are earning what we receive. If you're playing a long game, it means you are living in alignment with how life works.
There are truly, yeah, we get gifts, we get given things,
and in the long run we are here to earn what we receive. We are here to deserve what is given to us.
To me, playing a long game means we're working with the wisdom of life, not against it. So when my client comes in to see me, I'm playing a long game, meaning I'm not sitting at the room. My God, I have to help you lose weight right now because then I'm gonna be stressed out and I'm gonna be an ineffective human being because they're stressed out and they're not being an effective human being. How do I know that they're not being an effective human being with whatever their unwanted eating challenges? Because they're coming to see me because they have an unwanted eating challenge and whatever they've tried doesn't work or they don't know what to do.
But oftentimes when we have an eating challenge, we want it gone right away. I get it. Who wants to be carrying around extra weight? Who wants to be overreading or binge eating or emotional eating? Nobody wants that really in the long run. Most people don't. So we wanna get rid of it yesterday and our clients come into us in a state of stress and then a stress response.
You're producing more insulin and cortisol and stress hormones in particularly the stress hormone. Cortisol skews your time perception. Thank goodness it does that cortisol right now. If you were nice and relaxed and we gave you a hypodermic needle filled with cortisol and injected it into your bloodstream within less than a minute, you'll be a little anxious, you'll be a little energized and you'll start to notice time like, Hey, why? Why are we doing this? Why are we sitting here? What's next? What are we gonna do? What's happening? Oh my God, I have this deadline. I have that deadline. Cortisol skews our time perception. It speeds up our time perception because in a true stress response, in a true fight or flight situation, time is running out. Your brain must function as if time is running out because it is. Nature knows you have one to 2, 3, 4 minutes at the most for something to happen. You either live or die when it's a true survival moment. So time is running out. So you have to adopt the opposite state that your client is in. If they're in a stress response about their unwanted eating challenge, they're playing a short game. They've tried intense exercise, they've tried intense dieting, they've tried this trick, that trick, that gimmick, that fad, that whatever, and none of it's worked. So they're playing a short game because they're in stress and anxiety and fear and upset, and they're not in wisdom. Your job is to be in wisdom. So my client comes in to see me. I don't let their metabolism regulate my metabolism. I don't let their emotional metabolism regulate my emotional metabolism, and hence my physiologic metabolism. If I adopt their stress response about their issue, then all of a sudden I'm in a stress response. That's not a good look. That's not your job. Your job is to maintain equanimity. No matter how freaked out your client is about their body, their weight, their eating, you're playing a long game.
If one wants to play a long game, you better relax at some point. Otherwise it's gonna be a stressful game. 'cause the game of life goes a long time.
So you're modeling for your client the behavior you wish them to do. You are being the person you wish 'em to be. You're showing it to them, you're demonstrating it to them.
Do you understand? Can you see how powerful this principle can be when you put it into action as a professional, when you're viewing the journey of another? They're on a long journey. I'm willing to be with my client, theoretically, as long as possible.
Now, do I stay with clients for life? Nah, not really. But I'm thinking I can. And for some clients being with them for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 years or more, that's a long time.
I'm playing a long game with them. Even if I only see a client for three months, I'm still playing a long game, meaning
I'm looking into the future. I am not buying into anyone's need for immediate gratification, therefore, I'm not buying into strategies that are short term useful, but long term not sustainable, which is what a lot of people get into when they get into weight loss strategies. They do immediate strategies that can work in the short term, but are useless in the long term, which in general means absolutely useless.
It's 'cause you lose weight in the short term and then gain it back three, four months later. I call that a waste of time.
And usually that happens is because usually not all the time people adopted a, they're not playing a long game.
They're trying to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. They're, they're, they're not seeing the big picture of where it's going. They're coming from a place of stress. They're coming from a place of fear. They're coming from a place of not being able to relax into their journey. Okay, number six, while we're on the subject of time, time is your ally, my friends in life and in your professional work, you've heard that time heals all wounds. I think in a lot of ways it's true. At the very least time indeed helps heal all wounds, not the least time helps heal our wounds. Once again, people are living in a state of stress and anxiety and fear around their hurts and their ailments and challenges. This is an understandable state to be in. So when you and I are living in a state of stress and anxiety and fear about my weight, about my body issues, about my shape, about my health challenge, I wanna fix myself and I wanna fix myself yesterday. So I'm in a stress response and I'm producing more cortisol, which is skewing my time perception. It's speeding up my time perception as it should. 'cause that is what the stress response is designed to do. So therefore, I'm adopting strategies that are not effective.
As you remember, we heal in a relaxation response and the physiologic relaxation response is a more timeless state than the stress response. It can have a lot of timelessness in it.
Part of our task when it comes to working with a client who is in anxiety, fear, rush, stress force and push and freak out about their unwanted eating challenge or their unwanted body, part of our task is to help such people time shift, believe it or not.
Time shift is simply another way of saying, dude, like, stop acting as if if this doesn't happen, you're gonna die. That's a bad look. You're not gonna die. You're still alive. This ain't gonna kill you.
Let's relax into the healing journey. I understand that this is difficult. I understand that you want to change this unwanted habit or this unwanted body. You know how we do that? We do that by taking a nice deep breath. We do that by taking stock. We do that by doing an inventory. We do that by looking, listening, feeling, sensing, gathering data. And in order to do all that in an effective way, we can't be running around like a little chicken without a head.
That's a weird image, right? Um, we have to be a little more grounded, which means we have to be a little more relaxed, which means we have to be a little more trusting in life, trusting in our self, trusting in our body,
trusting in the world, trusting in a higher power. Whatever it is we turn to, to feel more trust, because trust will relax us, and relaxation will create a time shift
and a time shift creates a relaxation response in return. It's all circular. It all feeds each other.
There's no rush with your clients. There really isn't. If you're an emergency room doctor, fine, there's a rush when it comes to weight and body image and overeating and binge eating and emotional eating and digestion and fatigue and mood. There's no rush. Yeah, we'd like to get this handled as quickly as we can. And tech, technically speaking, there's no rush.
And my client wants to artificially create a rush. I guarantee you that artificial creation of an artificial rush has not helped them. And once again, the proof is they're here to see me.
They haven't figured it out. So we're not gonna do your strategy anymore, Mr. And miss client. We're gonna do a better strategy. That's why you're paying me to have a better strategy than yours.
And the better strategy to help you get where you wanna go and give you the thing that you want
is to do the things that you need to do to start relaxing into your journey, which is gonna mean a little bit of taking away the self attack and the self-rejection. It's gonna be taken away. Some of that nasty internal dialogue. It's taking away this immediacy that you have that I like, like that the world is gonna come apart unless you lose this weight.
It's not, you're fine. These people weigh a lot more than you do. And they're, they're, they're fine.
Okay, my friends. Number seven. You know, in many ways we are wounded healers. And the wounded healer is, it's an archetype. It's a timeless archetype in many ways. You and I, if you're doing this work and helping other people, we're wounded healers. Another way of saying that, you know, it, it's all about how you and I are qualified to help others, to serve others, to understand others, to help people along their healing journey. We're qualified to do that because we've had our own pains and our own booboos and our own wounds, and we've had our own sufferings and we have gone on our own healing journey. And perhaps we're still on our own healing journey. But man, have we been working on this? Goodness, have we come a long way?
So yeah, we've been wounded, but hey, who best to help somebody heal than somebody who's been down that road or has been down a significant part of that road or some of that road.
Just need to be one step ahead. The wounded healer in us is not a perfect healer. It's not a perfect practitioner. It's not a perfect therapist. Wounded healer got some scars for sure. They got some lovely scars. They've had some challenges and they've come a long way.
They're drawn to helping others because they've been there and maybe somebody helped them or maybe they helped themselves. Some wounded healers. They've done it on their own. More power to 'em.
I've had a lot of help on my journey, and there's a lot that I've done on my own. I definitely consider myself a wounded heal. Um, this archetype, the archetype of the wounded healer, asks us to embrace and honor our own wounds and our own booboos, and use them as fuel to serve others. Not use them as, yeah, I used to be this miserable, terrible person. I sucked, but now I'm better. And that person is on the rear view mirror.
No, you're honoring your journey. You're honoring the challenges you've been through. You're honoring the successes that you've had. Again, the wounded healer is not perfect. It doesn't mean they're perfectly healed. By definition. The wounded healer still got some wound, but the truth is, we all have a little booboo here, there or somewhere. That's what makes us human. We're very imperfect. The wounded healer is a beautiful archetype.
You've been on your own healing journey or on your own healing journey. Good for you. And if you're looking to use your own healing to help others, wow, good for you. It's a noble thing. I really believe that. I know it. Principle number eight, you know, you and me as human beings, we cannot fully grasp the magnitude of our own life.
Our life is big. It's, it's, it's got all kinds of nooks and crannies. It's got all kinds of twists and turns. It's got all kinds of unseen drivers and energies and influences. There is a place where it is difficult to see ourselves. There's a place where it's difficult to see our own journey, our own story. And the lessons that life is teaching us just is
as oftentimes you, you probably know this, you've, you've noticed this. It's oftentimes way easier to see someone else's problems or their strengths or their beauty, all of it than it's the CRM.
It's way easier for you to talk to your best friend and solve their problem. You could see their problem, you could see their issue. You can give them the best advice on the planet. But if you have that same issue, you can't even see it. And even if you gave that advice to your friend, it doesn't even make sense to you to give it to you.
Easier to see someone else's problem. That's just the way it is. There's nothing wrong with that.
And once again, that's why life made it such that there are other people in this world besides you, other people in this world besides me, there's a lot of us because we're here to help each other. We're here to reflect back to each other. We need each other in that way. That is how we are designed, my friends. That's why we seek help. That's why we seek out loved ones. That's why we seek out our best friends. That's why you do the work as a professional. That's why people wanna coach or a mentor or a guide or any kind of helping practitioner.
Because as human beings, it's hard to grasp the magnitude of our own life, the challenges, the beauties, the glories, the ins and outs. 'cause we're in it. Of course, the more you practice grasping the magnitude of someone else's life, the easier it is to grasp our own and vice versa. I think the more you start to see the fullness of who you are, the more you start to see the beauty of your own journey, the more you start to accept and acknowledge your gifts and your richness and your wonderful complexity and some of the superpowers you came in with,
the more you're able to do that, the more, the more we step into our power, the more we step into our healing, easier, it is to help another human being easier. It is to just be me and reach my potential.
Principle number nine, you know this life is full of hidden connections.
Hidden connections is the currency of this work, my friend.
Now I say hidden connections.
It's about learning to see that, which we don't normally see, but it's right out there. So I think that there is an invisible web that connects us all.
I mean, heck, you wanna get real about that. The worldwide web on your computer connects us all. You can't see it. It's invisible. Yeah, it's, I'm looking at my machine. But those connections, they're kind of invisible.
They're invisible connections between every, everything in the world between nature, humans, humans, nature, the ocean, the plants, the rocks, the soil. There's invisible connections between people,
between what's going on in my body and what's happening in my mind between what's going on in my life and what's happening in my cells between what's happening at work and what's happening in my liver.
And this is what the sciences are based upon my friends. It's seeing the connections between things that we previously hadn't noticed. Really, that's so much of what science is. Oh, here's connections that you didn't see.
So part of our work, part of what we've been doing, part of what I've endeavored to do, being the teacher archetype in this training with you, is to do my best to point out to you some of the hidden connections. The invisible connections that I see that when I look at them, they ain't invisible to me. They're, they're screaming, but there was a time I didn't notice them and I didn't see them. Now I can't avoid seeing them.
So your job is to train yourself more and more and more and more and more to see the hidden connections. When I'm with a client, I'm listening for the connections. Okay, you have overeating, you have binge eating, you have emotional eating. I'm listening for the connections. Is it just dietary? Does it have anything to do with their eating rhythm? Does it have anything to do with their eating speed? Does it have anything to do with their relationship? Does it have anything to do with what's going on in their inner world? What's going on in their personal world? Is it connected to a past hurt or an undigested experience? So these are connections that are not visible. They're hidden. So I'm alert that they exist and we've been learning to ask the kind of questions and listen for the kinds of responses that help us here
and my friends, that that is what working with food, body health, weight, nutrition, and eating psychology is all about, is about the hidden connections.
And I hope you've seen that. The magic, the absolute magic of transformation, of healing. Our unwanted eating challenges is often revealed when we see these connections, the connections between our unwanted eating challenges and the rest of our life.
It's kind of one way to sum up this training. What are the connections between my unwanted eating challenge, my unwanted food or body challenge and everything else in this world in my life? What's the connections? 'cause once we start to see those connections, then we start to go, oh, okay, here's where we have to work and here's where we have to work and here's where we have to work.
So then we're being practical. We're being smart, we're being wise. We're approaching our clients with a well honed scientific mind
as well as with an open heart
principle number 10, we're here to learn to see and embrace the opposites. That's one of the things you and I are here to do in this world. I'm gonna call it a requisite. You gotta learn this at some point to see and embrace the opposites. You start to learn this at a very young age. You start to learn at a very young age that the universe is basically about polarities or opposites. We got it up and we got it down. You got a right and you got a left for just about everything. You got a positive and you got a negative. We have love and hate. We got light and dark. Look at that. We got male and female. You have anabolic and catabolic processes in the body. We have stress and relaxation. We have movement and stillness.
We have hot and we have cold, we have sharp, and we have dull. We have consciousness and we have unconsciousness. The list goes on. The world is presented to us. Existence is founded upon polarity or opposites.
That is the foundation of physics. It's the foundation of biology.
Now, when it comes to the human mind, we often get attached to a particular polarity. Yeah, I love pleasure. Don't like pain, love moving fast. I don't like moving slow. I love peace. I don't like conflict. Mm-Hmm. Love females don't like males. Yeah. Uh, I just hooked on stress. Yeah, relaxation. Not quite. I like instant gratification. I don't like delayed gratification.
You know, a part of our human nature is seeking the light is seeking life. Another part of us doesn't quite do that. It's just understanding that that's all. And it's understanding that yeah, there's gonna be love and hate. It's gonna come, it'll be a package deal in some way, shape or form. We're going to encounter ease and we will encounter resistance. There are days when I accept myself and days where I reject myself. Our job is to begin to notice this and embrace this paradox oftentimes of life. Learning to accept the world for for what it is. Learning to accept ourselves for who we are
as part of you that really wants to do the right thing for yourself and a part of us that gets a little lazy.
We're human. We're here to embrace the opposites.
My client is very cooperative and my client is often not very cooperative. Why? Because they're human. That's all really, you could explain it just like that.
My client often has breakthroughs and then there's times when they're stuck
and the times when they have a breakthrough do I love them more? And when they're stuck, I hate them more.
When your client is having a breakthrough, you think, oh, I'm so wonderful. I'm so great. And when they're stuck, you think, oh, I'm terrible at this. No, it's learning to embrace the opposites because always around the corner, often around the corner is the other polarity of whatever we're noticing or experiencing at the time. It's okay. It's life.
Principle number 11, the truth shall set you free. And I've heard this term for years and it sounds fun, like it sounds, sounds good, sounds nice. Um, at one point I got it. Did you ever have that happen? You hear something for years and years and years and years and years and one day you actually get it and it lands and you're like, oh my goodness. So the truth shall set us free. I think it's more true than we realize. Truth is a powerful force. There are so many truths that transcend our limited knowing truths that life is trying to teach us. Life is trying to teach us some fundamental truths. Just so I can give you some examples of this, particularly as it relates to our work.
The truth shall set you free when you or your client realizes that I am lovable as I am. You're lovable as you are right now.
You don't need to lose this weight or that weight or change this or change that. You're lovable as you are. I get that you want to change stuff,
but if you are believing that who I am right now is completely unlovable, which is what many people do, then they're living in a false notion. And that false notion creates pain and suffering. That pain and suffering creates stress and upset. And that stress and upset drives us to find solutions that are quick and ineffective.
And then when we try those quick and ineffective solutions,
we then feel worse about ourselves because those solutions don't work. We're trying to make ourselves more lovable, lovable through this diet, through that exercise, through this gizmo, through that trick, whatever. It's who you are is lovable period. Who your client is right now for who they are lovable.
Here's another truth. Your body is not your enemy, nor has it abandoned you. A lot of people are in blame. I've seen this. People who don't have the body weight or shape that they want, they don't have the health that they want. They get very angry at their body. Not everybody, some people, and the body becomes their enemy. They think that the body has done them wrong. Bodies against them, bodies abandon me. And that's not true. Body's your best friend. It's standing by you and aligning with you and being your buddy. Even as we speak,
soon as people realize that their body is not their enemy, their body is actually their best friend and they should be kissing it all over. Good things happen. You know what else is a deeper truth, I believe, is that we are not broken and therefore there's nothing in us to fix.
You know what I mean by this? Yeah. There's things you wanna change. There's things you want to transform. That's fine. There's things you want to be different, that's fine. But we are not as humans as souls, as beings inherently tainted or broken.
We're whole and complete as we are, and we're going through our earth journey. Oftentimes, yeah, encountering some difficult challenges, but who we are, who you are as an essence is not broken. So yeah, go about the business of helping yourself, transforming yourself, healing yourself, changing yourself from a place of, Hey, I'm a good human. I'm okay. This is the real me. Here's my life. This is me. I'm not broken. I just got a challenge here.
Another truth. We need to learn certain lessons to spite how hard.
It's a lot of lessons that we resent. Your client is coming to see you. Oftentimes, they have a lot of resentment. Might not even show it might, you might not even notice it. They might not even notice they have resentment towards their own body. They have resentment towards whoever it is that they feel hurt them or wounded them or abandoned them. They might have resentment towards life. They might have resentment towards, God, I don't wanna go through this. I should have had this. I should have had that. Look at what that person has. Look at how that person looks. We need to learn certain lessons despite how hard they are. And those lessons somehow are good.
The truth really does set us free.
Number 12, you know this thoughts, beliefs, and images can have a harmful viral nature.
Of course, they can have a very positive, wonderful, beautiful nature and they can have a harmful viral nature. Thoughts, beliefs and images, thoughts, beliefs, and images can literally cause the mind to obsess and self harm. These are powerful. The images that you see, the beliefs that are presented to you, the thoughts that are being programmed into your mind. I should be perfect. I should look like this when I look like this. And then I will be happy. Oh, here's the image of what life should be like and who I should be like and what I should look like. And we adopt these as if they are deep religious truths. And really what they are is they're these ugly little viral creatures that have infected our brain.
It is your responsibility to determine when you are afflicted with such viral energies. It's your responsibility as a practitioner to notice when your client is afflicted with such viral energies. It is our responsibility to grow stronger than these energies. Meaning to begin to protect our mind from them and to detoxify from them. It's no different than detoxifying your body. It's no different from going out in the freezing cold and putting on something warm to protect your body. Of course, you're gonna protect your body, well, protect your mind, protect your soul. Protect your heart from the viruses that are being put forth by the world.
If you're learning this work to help others, then it's your responsibility to help others in this regard.
Because this is some of the most powerful work you could do with clients, my friends, is to help them change what is going on inside the mind. I really mean that. That's some powerful work you could do with another person.
Principle number 13,
our mind is a tool and we must learn to use that tool effectively. I'm calling this a timeless wisdom principle.
This is what the science of yoga teaches us. Our mind is a tool. Tool. Learn to use it effectively because it is the one tool that woo, it's your tool.
Just because you have a mind doesn't guarantee it's gonna function well. As you know, gotta learn to operate your mind. Otherwise it will tend, it will tend to go to its default settings or it will go to the default settings of the world.
Default settings of the mind as dictated by the world is often self-attack. Self-hate, self-judgment, self-criticism, obsession, attention to nonsense, attention to things that don't matter. Distractions from what is important,
mindless conversation, mindless gossip,
using the mind to focus on trivia
at times when it needs to go deeper. So one of our primary concerns in life, whether you believe this or not, I'm suggesting, is to harness your mind.
That's one of your primary concerns. One of your primary concerns is to have enough money so you can survive. Truly. You need money to survive. You need money to go buy stuff. You need money to put a roof over your head. So one of your primary concerns in life is to acquire money. That is a primary concern. Yet another primary concern is to harness your mind and use it effectively.
If your mind isn't able to be used effectively, it can turn against you and you can end up losing your mind. Literally, people do lose their mind it, it's just they lose it. It goes completely out of their realm of operation.
And that's sad when that happens. Sometimes you could see them on the streets.
So one of our primary concerns in life is to harness the mind. And that takes work and it takes practice and it takes vigilance and it takes commitment and it takes playing a long game and it takes self-honesty.
So we're learning how to use it rather than it using us. It's really what it is, left to its own device. It'll do whatever it wants to do. It'll go on its default settings and it will, it will attach itself to all kinds of nonsense. This is what their mind does. Our thoughts, IE, what your mind is thinking powerfully shape and define our reality, my friends. So whatever your mind focuses on, that's what's gonna expand. That's what's gonna have power and energy. If your mind focuses on how awful you are and how awful you look and how unlovable you are, guess what? Your existence is awful and unlovable because you're focusing on that. And that's what's expanding. That's what's taking over your internal universe. And that's the glasses you are putting on. That's the filters you will see the world from. And that's the filter that the world will begin to see you from.
Everything we've been learning in this training, by the way, is some version of using your mind more effectively. How to understand nutrition, how to understand eating psychology, how to understand my eating challenges, how to see them from a higher perspective. How to understand my journey, how to speak to clients, how to ask questions. How to ask questions of the universe on behalf of my clients. So you have been training your mind as a tool
to help other people with certain kinds of challenges.
Literally, you've been sharpening your mind, you've been training it to use it as an effective tool to help people with all the eating concerns and the health concerns and the body concerns and the food concerns that we've already covered.
And you're here to very specifically help your client learn to use their mind effectively, to harness their mind effectively. Because I promise you, your client who is dealing with an unwanted eating challenge, their mind is torturing them.
Nobody wants to be tortured by their own mind and they're being tortured by their own mind because they don't know how to get out of it. Truly. They don't know how to get out. So that's where you come in. That's why you've been learning the things you've been learning and that's why you do what you do to help people learn to use their mind effectively, to harness it, to detox it,
and to show them a better way to focus the energy of their mind so that it serves them. Especially when it comes to food and body and health.
You remember this. This is one of the core principles of our work, and I think it's one of the core principles in life. We're here to learn, to navigate our discomfort by nature. The nature of who you are, of who we are with the nature of human existence and of being in a body is simply that there will be discomfort is the way of life. Remember that the universe occurs as polarities as opposite. There's comfort and there's discomfort. You know what a comfortable bed feels like. You know what a comfortable pillow feels like, and you know what a uncomfortable pillow feels like. You and I, we prefer comfortable pillows. Whatever that means for you, I'm okay with that. I want you to have a comfortable pillow. I want me to have a comfortable pillow. Every once in a while, you're gonna be in a situation where the pillow ain't comfortable and there's probably not a lot you can do about it in such ties, we have to learn how to manage our discomfort.
When we effectively manage our discomfort, we can move beyond it.
When we're managing our discomfort in ineffective ways,
that discomfort tends to get locked in and we cause ourselves even more problems and more pain and more suffering. People have discomforts in their life, in their relationships, in work, in being a man, in being a woman, in being a sexual being and figuring out who am I and what am I supposed to do? People have discomfort about their past. People have discomfort about how they look. And oftentimes we manage that discomfort by, I don't know, fill in the blank. We manage it by dieting. We manage it by exercise. We managing it by calorie restriction, by going low fat.
We manage our discomfort, oddly enough, by self attack and self shame.
We manage our discomfort by chronically dieting or obsessing about food and nutrition.
Ultimately, those are ineffective ways to manage our discomfort.
They feel maybe a little bit good in the moment, but they're not effective.
And it's not 'cause there's anything wrong with us, it's just 'cause we're learning how to navigate our discomfort.
So I hope you're getting by now, that this is one of the keys, one of the keys to understanding our unwanted food and body challenges. Your client who has an unwanted food and body challenge, chances are they've been managing their discomfort in a way that just doesn't work for them. They're trying their best. So you and I and our clients, we're here to learn good ways, healthy ways, clever ways, sustainable ways, wise, ways to manage that which is uncomfortable, to do the best we can.
My friends, it's as simple as that. I'm not saying it's easy, but in principle it is literally oftentimes as simple as that. Not always, but so often.
You know, my friends, this is a big one. And and and it relates to, you know, how there's invisible connections between everything. I'd like to suggest to you that existence itself, life itself is metaphoric and poetic in nature.
Life is metaphoric and poetic in nature. Love is like a rose.
That's a metaphor, that's a poetic statement.
Love isn't exactly a rose. A rose is a rose, and love is love. But you understand when we say love is like a rose, that can take us into some beautiful imagery. It can take us into a deeper understanding. It can take us, take us into a very sweet conversation about love and about flowers.
The body itself is very metaphoric.
Our experience of the body is very metaphoric. So what do I mean? What's an example? Metaphoric or poetic? Oftentimes my friends metaphor, how we digest food is often how we are digesting life. I'm not saying all the time, oftentimes how we digest food is how we're digesting life.
Uh, you're having trouble digesting food, you know, how's things going the rest of your life? What else might you have trouble digesting or assimilating? How our body's immune system is working.
How our immune system protects us is often how you and I are protecting our own heart and soul.
A lot of times my physiologic immunity is not so strong because my emotional immunity isn't strong.
I'm not advocating for myself. I'm letting people walk all over me. I'm not speaking my needs. I'm not saying the truth of who I am. I'm not acknowledging that there are certain tender places in me that I need you to be more considerate of.
Oftentimes how we relate with food is similar to how we relate with life. Yeah. People rush through meals. Yeah, you might be rushing through life. Yeah. I love healthy eating. Yeah. People also love healthy eating. They, chances are they love healthy living. If you get perfectionist about food, chances are you're getting perfectionist about other things in life. You get perfectionist about the body. You're getting perfectionists about relationships and other people and how you think they should be in act and do.
Another way is saying, well, this is how we do one thing thing is how we do all kinds of other things.
So it's fun to think in metaphor. It's fun to think in poetics because it is oftentimes useful. Not always, but oftentimes useful. Sometimes it's very useful.
How we love ourselves oftentimes is how the body loves us back. How can you expect that you beat up on your body in your words and your thoughts, and oftentimes your actions and you keep expecting your body to love you the way you want it to love you to be perfectly this and perfectly dad, and look like this and look like that. And you want your body to love you, but meanwhile you're hating it.
Would you do that to the partner that you have? Well, I want you to love me, but I hate you.
No, that would sound pretty silly, wouldn't it? But we do that with the body oftentimes. Principle number 16, love is a great power and perhaps greater than we think, especially when it comes to the work that we're doing here. I'm relating all this to the work. Love is a great power and maybe greater than we think.
You've noticed this, that how we love each other can be profoundly healing. There's hopefully and likely been people in your life who at different times in different ways have loved you in a good way that was good for you, and therefore it was healing for you. It was growthful for you. It was transformative for you.
How you, how you and I love our clients. Meaning how we show up with an open heart with them, a caring heart and accepting heart.
That can be deeply healing for our clients. I mean that that can be deeply healing.
Very simply put my friends, we're here to love ourselves along our journey, to love our shortcomings, our challenges, and the parts of us that we consider unlovable. You know that hating yourself into transformation is a logical absurdity. And whatever strategy you use in and around that is always going to fail. It's, it's predictable.
You gotta make sure your client understands this. At some point, you know, and this might very well be the core challenge. The core dis-ease. For so many people who have unwanted food and body challenges, they simply withdraw. Love from self. Sometimes it's that simple. People stop loving themselves, and when people stop loving themselves, it's like, I don't know. Have you ever had somebody you've been in a relationship with that you had a loving relationship and all of a sudden they kind of stop loving you and you feel it in their actions, in their words, and the look on their face and everything that they're doing. They're not loving you anymore. That that's a terrible feeling. Ouch. It hurts.
We do that to self. At some point we can pull away love from self. We withdraw love from self. We deny love to self.
You will then feel like that same person when somebody else pulls away love from you. But in a lot of strange ways, this is far worse. We don't always notice it when we pull away love from self. It can lead to all kinds of unwanted food, body, and health challenges.
Small acts of embodiment, small acts of self love, small acts of self nourishment, baby steps. You've heard me say that throughout this training. It's so important. Baby steps means playing a long game. Playing a long game is a true way to love someone. I mean, think about it. The people you are truly committed to for the long term. What bigger way can you show your love than being committed to someone for the long term?
You know, they know that you're gonna love them till the end. There might be challenges and ups and downs, but there are certain people in your life. You're in it for the long haul. You know that isn't that powerful. It's a powerful way to show love.
Imagine when we help our clients do that for themselves.
It's a huge victory.
Number 17, in terms of timeless wisdom principles, life is a flow. Forgive me if that sounds trite. I'm not meaning it in a trite way. So when I say life is a flow, when I'm saying is things change. They morph, they shift, they transform. There's a movement. There is a current that flows through us, that flows through the world. That flows through existence. Different traditions called this current that flows through differently. The Hindus called it the shati. The Daoist called it the Dao.
Some people call it the life force. Some people call it God. But there's a force that flows through existence. A power, a current, your life is a flow. Your body is a flow. Your metabolism is a flow. From the time you are born till the time you die, there's a metabolic flow, meaning your body changes, your chemistry changes. It morphs. We never quite know where the flow might be taking us or what exactly it means. But we do know that the flow will continue moving on like a river.
Yeah. Sometimes you know that when summer comes, you know what the flow feels like in your body. When wintertime comes, if you're like mean and you don't like the cold, you know what the flow feels like in your body. You know, as you age, the flow in your body feels different. You know what a certain kind of certain time of month, the flow of your body and your energy is very different. So just as our metabolism is a flow from the time we're born, we change, the body shifts. It morphs, it grows, it gets sick, it grows some more. Our relationship with food is a flow. It's ever changing. It morphs, it shifts. It has its ups and downs. It has its unexpected turns. Stop trying to make it the same thing all the time. Stop being perfectionist. Perfectionist. Perfection means there is no flow. Perfection is counter to nature. It is counter to existence. It is counter to the Dao, it's counter to God. It does not exist.
What exists is the flow changing, it's changing, it's morphing, it's shifting. Sometimes it's bright and feels good. Other times it's dark and feels challenging.
Our task when it comes, especially to you and your client and their relationship with food, and when it comes to your own life, our task is to trust the flow more and more and more and more and more to be able to go with it. When my client comes to see me, I am working with their flow. How did it go last week? What happened? How was the homework? Tell me about it.
I'm working with my client's flow. I'm listening to it, I'm respecting it. I'm helping them adjust to it. Oh, okay. Wow. Here's what's happening in your life. Yeah. There is a lot of stress going on. Yeah, it makes sense that you're emotionally eating. Yeah. You know, you need to stop beating yourself up for that. You're not a willpower weakling. You're just going to a lot right now. If I was going through what you were going through, I would've gained a lot more weight
and the weight's gonna come off. It's okay. We're learning to trust more and more and more of the flow. That is our life. The alternative to that is to not trust it. It's fine. You could choose to not trust it. And when you choose to not trust, you'll be living in untrust. You'll be living in mistrust. You'll be living in distrust. Distrust is an alarm state, depending on the intensity of the distrust or the mistrust or the non-trusting. It's a stress state and that trust state produces stress chemistry.
That will alter your physiology in subtle or not so subtle ways, including your digestion and your assimilation and potentially your calorie burning capacity and your appetite regulation. It will affect your natural weight and your natural shape.
We are that powerful. Our internal universe, what we believe, how we conduct ourselves in this world. It's that powerful what's going on in our internal world as you trust that flow of life more and more. Which is another way of saying trusting your journey, but it's not just your journey. There's a flow that is moving through all of us. It's moving through the world.
The world would have you believe that we can't trust each other, that we can't trust ourselves. One of the biggest false, toxic beliefs that we are given by the world is you. People can't trust each other, nor can you trust yourself. We, the experts will tell you whatever you need to know about anything. But you definitely can't trust yourself. You definitely can't trust your body.
Can't trust other humans. Can't trust life, can't trust foreigners. Can't trust men. Can't trust women. Mm-Hmm. I don't believe it. Humans are better than that. We just get a little conditioned in the wrong direction.
Let's talk about money for a second. Um, principle number 18, money is clearly money and it's energy.
Money is very practical. Money's money. But it's also on a metaphoric poetic level. Invisible level, it's energy. We talked about the current that flows through life. There is a flow. There is a current that moves through life interesting that we call money a currency. Interesting that you have electrical current money is a flow. If you can actually, if this was possible, if somebody was keeping score your entire life of all the money that was flowing in and out of your hands, all the money that came into your life and that you spent, that came into your life, that you were spent, that someone gave you and that got spent on something or the money that was spent on you. It's this fascinating flow. And if you go watch that money flow, it go from here to there, to there, there, there, and it'd be all over the place.
Money is a flow.
Money is value. That's the energy of money. Money contains money has symbolic value.
Money by itself does not have actual value.
Okay, fine. If it's a gold coin, it has actual value. But even then, you know, we ascribe a value to it. So you have a paper money, a hundred dollars bill. It's has a symbolic value. However, we are here to value what we do, particularly as it pertains to money and making money.
The way to make more money that's in alignment with the universe is to give more value. Money equals value. Money equals symbolic value. Play by the good rules, give good value.
Yeah, there's challenges. Yeah, we gotta work hard. And at the bottom line, give good value.
You wanna charge, you know, $500 for a beautiful sweater that you made. Well make it a $500 sweater.
Give it real value. Create something with value. And at the same time, we have to value what we do. Especially when it comes to wanting more actual money. You have to value what you do. You cannot wait for someone else to value what you do. For you to have value, you have to value all the small successes you have, all the baby steps you've taken. You have to value your education. You have to value your experience as a person.
You have to value your gifts. You have to value who you are. Value is something that you feel. It's a feeling when you feel the feeling called value. What I have has value. Who I am has value. What I offer to people professionally has value. The love I offer has value. The care I offer has value. The distinctions I offer have value. When you feel that, that is to me the foundation of the beginning of creating real value in the world, in the physical world of form, of money, in the form of exchange.
I hope that makes sense my friends. It's, it's the invisibles.
Number 19, I would like to suggest to you that service to others is an unseen currency of the divine. Serving others, giving to others. Being in a helping profession is an unseen currency of the divine. Meaning that there's a magic available to us to meet to you when we become helping professionals and choose to serve others. This magic just it. It just shows up. You and I become conduits. We become conductors for an unseen wisdom and power. When you choose to be a helping professional, I believe we are used by the universe. I believe we are used by life in a good way. You will be employed by, uh, by the invisible forces and powers of life, so to speak. When you're gonna be asked to do good things, unexpected things, we will be gifted and rewarded oftentimes in unexpected ways. Really what I'm saying is when you choose to be in the helping professions, you kind of have to trust it is not a job that the world ascribes glory to. If you want glory, become an Olympic athlete and win day gold medal.
If you want glory, don't be an Olympic athlete and get a bronze medal. Trust me, you're not gonna be happy. Nobody wants the bronze. So what I'm saying is the world often puts forward, okay, here's what's glorious. Here's what we value. And what I'm saying is you have to value you.
It's a deep inner connection between you and you and what you believe in you and a higher power you are in your own soul.
Number 20, our ongoing task in this world, my friends, our ongoing task in this world, agreeing to be here.
You are here, you're here. I know it 'cause you're listening, I'm talking. Maybe you're smiling and if you're here, you might as well truly be here. If you're sitting down eating dinner, you might as well be sitting down eating dinner. If you're lying in bed watching tv, you might as well lie in bed and watch tv. If you're sitting at work, you might as well work. If you're in relationship, you might as well be in relationship. If you have a body that thrives on good food, you might as well eat good food. If you have a heart and a soul that thrives on love and thrives on, thrives on truth and thrives on meaning, then you might as well have love and truth and meaning. So agreeing to be here, I believe is a very, very big secret to a life well lived.
Agreeing to be here, my friends. You know what that means? It means agreeing to life, to your life, to the life that you have lived already, to the life that you are living right now. And the sooner you do this, the better. And for most of us, it's an ongoing lifelong choice that you have to make again and again. 'cause there are times when we don't wanna be here fully.
This is the work you're here to do with your clients, my friends, your clients. A lot of 'em don't wanna be here. So they're partially here and they partially take care of themselves and they partially nourish themselves and they're partially in their body. Why? 'cause they don't quite agree to this body. So why would I be in it? Why would I nourish it? Why would I take care of it? I don't like it.
Why would I be in a relationship? They hurt. I got wounded, I got damaged. Even though I want a relationship, I don't want a relationship. I want to be here. It's too painful. I want to be here. People are not nice. I don't want to be here. This is too much work. Agreeing to be here means we look around and we agree to what it is. We agree to our body. This is my body. It's the one you have right now. This is your life. These are the people. This is where you live. When you help your client agree to the body that they have right now, they then have the best chance to shapeshift it or morph it. If that's what they're looking to do or to heal it. If that's what they're looking to do. You have to own the thing you have first before you can lose something about it. You have to own the weight before you lose it. You have to want the body you have
before you can have the body you want.
Plain and simple.
A few more principles, my friends. Number 21. The body's a beautiful mystery. You don't know when it's gonna feel better or worse. Get sick, get heal, get tired, have energy. You don't know when that's gonna die.
The body has a wisdom and a brilliance to it. That is unfathomable on every level. On the level of science. On, on. Just we don't know the body. We know, uh, a 10th of a percent if that much of what there is to know about the body. So the body's taking us along a very interesting, unpredictable, fascinating journey that oftentimes is it's very hard. Body can be a hard place to live for a lot of people or for some people at different times. At some point when you're dying, body ain't a fun place to be.
So we know this. The body can teach us some very hard and uncomfortable lessons at the same time. You need your body and your body needs you.
Your body needs you, you, your body needs you to wake up. 'cause the body's often asking a lot of us, it's asking us to pay attention. It's asking us to notice. It's asking us to be conscious. It's asking us to be aware. It's asking us to step into the light. It's asking us to listen to it.
Body needs you. We oftentimes ask a lot of our body want it to look like this, be like that. Have all this pleasure, have this, have that, have this. Okay, what are you doing for it? But really dieting the body and pushing it and forcing it and shoving it into nonsense exercise that it doesn't wanna do and you don't wanna do. And feeding it in ways that it doesn't want to be fed. Just so you can force it to be different, look different, act different. Way different or shape different, huh? Nobody's happy.
Your body gives you a lot. It's given us a lot.
We just have to remember. It's a beautiful mystery. You can't always control it. Like get over it. You can't make demands of it all the time. You can't insist that it be something that it actually isn't.
You can't beat the hell out of it because you decide that you disapprove of it in terms of its looks or its shape or its weight, or its color or its height or its, I don't know what,
it's just a mystery
as is relationship. Relationship is quite a beautiful mystery. Our relationship with others defines who we are. You can't help it. We can't help it. We are deeply drawn to relationship. You're here on earth because of relationship. Your parents, it wasn't for them getting together. You wouldn't be here. You're here because your ancestors. It wasn't for your ancestors. Your parents wouldn't be here. So we are the product of relationship one after the next.
And we often learn lessons in relationship that perhaps are some of the most difficult ones and the most beautiful ones in life. Relationship gives us some of the best and some of the hardest lessons. So therefore it is a paradox. It's a weird package deal. And you know this my friends, why I'm mentioning this is that so, so, so, so, so, so, so many of our food and body concerns are connected to in some way our relationship to relationships, to people, our parents, to men, to women, to our partner, our husband, our wife, our girlfriend, our boyfriend, our kids.
The person that had done us wrong.
So many of our food and body concerns are connected to our relationship to relationships. I want a relationship, but I could only have a relationship. I could only have love if I look like this. That's sort of thing. That's what I'm saying.
That's why I am all about pushing to the pedal to the metal and learning more and more about relationship. Because when it comes to working with people's food and body challenges, wow, does that come up a lot, my friends?
Finally, we're here to find the light. I am postulating and I'm certainly not the only guy to say this. We're here to reconnect with something greater, to a higher power, to a higher code. We're here to move beyond the nonsense, the false beliefs of the world. You and I are here to represent something greater, to become more conscious, and to demonstrate that consciousness, to enact it in the world, to deliver it to the world.
Life is a seems to be a constant process of waking up, waking up. And once you wake up, my friends, you can't go back to sleep. You know how they say ignorance is bliss? It's kind of true.
Ignorance can be a form of bliss. And once you become more wise and you see things, yeah, it could actually be a little bit more challenging. That is the cost of being conscious.
But there are all kinds of other benefits. We're here to find the light. We're a lot of darkness inside the human mind in the world.
And that darkness can be rather quickly dispelled. That's the good news. The light is far, far, far greater than the dark. It's not even close, really isn't.
Some final thoughts, my friends? Consistency. Really. Consistency is, I believe the secret sauce for professional success. You just gotta be consistent.
It's, it, it's, it's taking me years to get where I wanna be. Uh, you know, that's not even true. Um, I've just been very consistent in my professional life, consistent in learning, consistent in wanting to grow as a professional, consistent in wanting to understand people better, consistent in wanting to have as much experience within my profession as I can. Um, consistent in wanting to help help people and learn better and better ways to help them.
Consistency is everything. And when in doubt, in any given moment with a client, smile and give your gift.
Always look to find the place in you that cares beyond all your doubts. Yeah, you and I have our doubts about me, about this, about that, about myself, about is always gonna have your doubts and insecurities. Find a place in you when you're with your client that cares beyond whatever your insecurities and doubts are that's bigger than your insecurities and doubts.
When in doubt, pray or ask for, ask powerful questions of life.
Remember that your client has a ton of answers. Your job is to help them discover those answers for you to discover those answers.
Always feel free to coach as if it's your last session ever. And on this journey, my friends, you gotta trust it. You gotta be a lifelong learner and you just gotta keep trusting.
Those are my thoughts in this conversation. There's a little bit of a different turn than what we've been doing and I hope it was helpful for you, my friends. Next up, we're gonna revisit weight. We're gonna see if we can deepen into it a little more because as we're reaching sort of the end of this educational journey together, yeah, sometimes it's a time to go a little deeper. Once again, I hope you learned something. I hope you found anything I shared helpful. And I'll see you on the other side. I.
Basically in this conversation, what I wish to do is point out, and I've said this in different ways, but there seems to be a hidden architecture to life, to the universe, to the body, to all of it, really. Uh, what I mean by hidden architectures is, is that there are principles and energies that guiding us that we don't necessarily see, that we don't necessarily notice. And what I'd like to suggest to you is that knowledge of this dynamic, yet hidden architecture, can help us, can help us when it comes to navigating the material world can help us when it comes to navigating our business, our professional practice, navigating the world of money, and navigating what it means for you and I to become more effective practitioners. In other words, I'm saying that knowledge is power, and there's certain things that are obvious to us because we can see them, we notice them, and there are things that we don't see because they're invisible. We don't see oxygen, but it's there. You can see love, but it's there. So really what I want to do is take some time to look at some what I think are potentially useful principles and distinctions. Here. I got about 23 of 'em. And let's see if and how we can use these to better ourselves and better our professional practice.
So before I dive in to the specifics, I wanna suggest to you, I wanna postulate that just about everything that is visible is preceded by the invisible. At one point, you were kind of invisible. It didn't exist. Yeah, you, you were, you were whatever came before that tiny sperm and that tiny egg.
So the visible is preceded by the invisible. And if that's true, and I think it often is, um, oftentimes if we wanna create results in the tangible world, it's useful to study and understand the intangibles or the invisibles. I think just the fact that you and I are alive on planet earth. We're here to learn, to grow and to explore our world. And we're here to explore our world in terms of not just our outer world, but our inner world. I believe we are here to listen to the whisperings of life. I believe we are here to learn to progressively see more and more of some of the hidden meanings in the hidden mysteries of life.
I also think we're here to help one another, experience life in a good way, and to help one another heal whatever wounds we may have and help one another grow in whatever ways we need to grow as a coach, as a helping professional. One does that in a very deliberate, conscious, meaningful, and professional and deliberate and well-studied way away.
What a good thing, what a great way to spend one's time and energy, in my opinion. So here's principle number one that I would like to suggest to you, that in many ways, you and I are here. We're alive. We're here to remember.
So yeah, life is about learning. Yes, life is about adding to our knowledge base life is about accumulating more information, more experience, more things. So there's a very additive process to life. At the same time, maybe perhaps a little bit paradoxical. So much of what we come into this world to do is to remember that which perhaps we've forgotten.
I think it is true that ourselves and our soul contains so much of the wisdom of the ages, the memories of our ancestors. You know, we know that as a genetic fact, your cells contain the biological wisdom of the ages. Your cells contain the biological wisdom and literal memories of our ancestors. So that's a fact. It's also noticeable that when we come into this world, we don't seem to know a lot.
We're not that complex. Perhaps we're in a state of forgetfulness. So many religious traditions teach that we're ultimately here to remember our wholeness, to remember our connection to a higher power. There's a story that comes out of, um, I believe it's the mystic Jewish tradition. And the story goes something like this, that before the human soul incarnates on planet earth, before the soul gets here,
this might be from mystic Christianity, though either one. So before the soul gets here, it's tutored by its guardian angel. And our guardian angel. As the story goes, tutors in not only all the wisdom of the universe, but tutors us in what's gonna happen in our life. Some of the key signposts, the key learnings, the key lessons that we're about to learn in the upcoming lifetime that we are about to lead. So the soul is given all the info. The soul is given the game plan. The soul is taught the wisdom of the universe. And what happens is, just as that soul is about to jump into the body and jump into the womb, the guardian angel gives the soul a little, little smack on the mouth. Some say it's a press on the lips. And with that smack on the mouth or that press on the lips, the soul forgets everything it was just told. And it is said that the soul's journey is to remember everything that it was taught, to understand the wisdom of everything that it was taught before. I forgot. Have you ever noticed that in life there's certain things you learn and it feels more like a remembering? Oh, that's true. Oh, I get that. Sometimes some of the wisdom that we learn is, it, it, it just rings a bell inside of us.
I think when we notice that, when we notice that there's certain things we remember, you might've even met certain people in your life who you feel like you remember them and not from this world. So of course, we can never know these things for absolute 100% sure.
But I think there's an empowerment that comes when you and I realize that yeah, we're here to accumulate certain things and know certain things. And we're also here to remember that which is already encoded inside of us. We know it. We come in with a knowing. And oftentimes that knowing just needs us to help it along. It needs life experience.
You know, a lot of, when it comes to healing, our relationship with food and body is remembering our wholeness. Remembering that, wait a second, this isn't my natural state. This isn't who I truly am. We know somewhere inside of us that there's a me that is better than this. We know a me that is fuller than this. We know a me that is more better expressed than this
part of us just knows that I believe it's a remembering.
Here's another principle I'd like to share with you. We are here to heal and learn and grow. So I'm calling this a time, I'm, I'm calling these timeless wisdom principles. You know, your and your, your job is to see if these ring true for you.
That's it. We're here to learn and heal and grow. In other words, your task. My task is to embrace this interesting workshop called My life. 'cause your life is a workshop. Your life is a classroom. And I think we each have our own very beautiful story, our own fascinating story, our own wild story, our own challenging story. It's an epic tale. It's a, it's a movie and it's your life. Yeah, you pay money to go see a movie in the theater, but you're living a movie every day. And I say that affectionately. And I believe that one of the things we do to heal and learn and grow is to make our story right, to abide by it, to embrace it, to live it as fully as we can. To not curse it, to not deny it, to not try to escape it through the kinds of escapes that harm us. Like addictions, like treating our body in a poor or harmful way, like treating our heart and soul in a self attacking or self rejecting way.
We're here to embrace the story that is my life. Even though it was difficult, even though it's been challenging, even though there were wrongs committed, even though there were perhaps crimes committed.
Can you still honor your own journey? Can your client, can you help your client honor their own journey? Can we bless our own journey? Can we forgive all the things we need to forgive about our journey? Places where we came up short, the places where others came up short.
So I think we're here to heal the wounds as best we can that have caused us to pull away from life and pull away from our greater expression and destiny. So when my client comes to see me for weight or body image or overeating, I'm not just thinking, oh, my job is to help you lose 12 pounds, or my job is to help you control your appetite. So you walk out of here and you don't bingey. No. That person is needing to learn something. They're needing to grow in a certain way. They're needing to heal something. They're needing to shine the light on something.
And oftentimes, it's something about my story, something about how my life has gone down, how I've been living it.
That is often impacting our relationship with food. And you've likely noticed by now, and if you've seen this, if you're already practicing in your clients or your patients, or you see it in your friends and loved ones, there's a lot of human beings walking around, dishonoring, dissing, cursing,
not embracing their own journey, their own story.
It's kind of like sitting in a movie and you decide, I hate this movie. And okay, you walk out, it's totally your prerogative. We can't do that with our own life. Really.
It takes, it takes a certain kind of heart and soul and courage and openness to look at our life from a higher perspective and say, can I appreciate this journey? I know it's been hard. Whatever was hard about it. You're right. That was hard. Whatever you wish would've been different. You're probably right. It would've been nice if that was different. It would've been so better to have this kind of body, that kind of body, this kind of money, that kind of parents, this kind of place that whatever.
And it would've been better if this didn't happen and that didn't happen, and I didn't meet this person or that person. It's probably all true on some level. And we have to embrace the workshop, the story called my life. And we have to make it right. Until we do that, we're fighting against ourselves. And the more you fight against yourself, the longer it's going to take to heal whatever unwanted food or body challenge you have, the longer it's gonna take to heal and transform whatever unwanted symptom we have.
We don't heal and learn and grow through cursing our own story.
Principle number three, that I'd like to share a timeless wisdom principle. You and I are here to do work.
We got some work to do. And of course I know, you know, we know that there's more to life than just work for sure. And life requires work of all kinds. On all levels. Yeah, we go to work, you have the job that you work at,
but we're working in all different places. We're working on our relationships, we're working on our marriage, we're working as parents. We're working on being the children of our parents. We do work in our friendship.
We do work on self.
The work we do is all love made. Visible work is a form of love in particular. In particular, my friends, I'm focusing here on, when I say we're here to do work, I just wanna underline that work on self is paramount to our existence. That's a postulation. I'm making that work on self is paramount to our existence. And I wish to acknowledge that. It is very clear that not everyone believes that, and not everyone knows that in order to even disbelieve it.
Not knowing that work on self is really important to do is a cause of a lot of undue pain and suffering. A lot of people are suffering in their relationships, suffering in their life, suffering in their existence. Life is hard because they don't understand. I got work to do on self. I got work to do with self. I've got self-examination to do. I have some rigorous self inventorying to do.
I might have to change the way I see myself, my world, other people, men, women, life, money, purpose, love.
So again, I wanna say that not knowing that work on self is important doesn't exempt you from the consequences of not doing that work.
And I think I believe in my own experience that work on self can be, can be some of the hardest work that you and I can do in this world.
Much easier to go to work and do a job that you hate, then work on a part of us that is hard to change, that we know we ought to change.
And I think because work on self can be so hard, it's why so many people shy away from it. It's why so many people run the other way from it. It's why so many people are quite frankly not interested in it because it's work and you're gonna sweat and you're gonna get your hands dirty and there's gonna be a special kind of difficulty in this kind of work.
Now, I know you're the kind of person that's done work on yourself, and I bet you can look back on your life and say, yes, I've worked on myself and wow, the rewards have really Been great. I bet you can say that the work that you've done on yourself has yielded great rewards.
Now, you know, I mention this to you, my friends because, and you've heard me say this, when it comes to work in practice, a lot of our clients don't understand this principle. They think you're gonna fix them. They think someone is gonna fix them. They think someone should fix them. They oftentimes want the easy way out. What pill do I take? What vegetable do I eat? What button do I push? So, so that I don't binge eat or overeat or emotionally eat? What pill do I take such that all this weight comes off and then it's done.
So we we're a little human. We want the easy way out. And by the way, that makes perfect sense. If there's an easier way to do things, then why not do it the easier way, if the hard way and the easy way are both gonna accomplish the same thing. That's reasonable. And the reality is work on self is work on self, and there's no way to avoid it really. We can choose to avoid it or we can unconsciously choose to avoid it either way. We will have to deal with the consequences of not doing work on self.
So part of it is understanding that, yeah, this can be difficult. Yeah, this can be hard. That's why we have good friends. That's why you have the people you can trust and talk to. That's why we have coaches and mentors and guides and therapists to help each other do work on self. Ain't nothing wrong with that. In fact, some of the best things we can do in the world,
the sooner you're down with that, the sooner your client is down with that, the better. And oftentimes that's a lot of the work that we do with our clients. We have to really invite them in to do the work. And sometimes you gotta do that slowly,
slowly inviting people into work on self. There's no easy way to just get rid of our eating challenges. Yeah, some of them are easier than others. Certain clients will have an easier time than others.
Yeah, sometimes their mood issue and their fatigue issue and their digestive issue is a food allergy. And you identify it and they let go of that food for a few weeks and they see the difference. Okay, yeah, that's a little easier than having to notice that my emotional eating is connected to the fact that I'm withholding the truth. I'm not saying what I really want in this relationship. I'm not saying what I really want in my life. I'm a people pleaser and I keep getting walked all over and nobody loves me. It seems like, huh? I have to look at changing that in me.
That takes a little more work on self, doesn't it?
And it's understandable why people would avoid that. It's hard to change yourself. It really is. It's humbling to see when we are, we're falling short of what our potential is.
And at the same time, we're always learning and growing. Fourth principle I'd like to mention in a lot of ways we're here to unlearn. Mm-Hmm. You know, it's such a weird paradox. We're here to learn and we are here to unlearn. Unlearning is as important because it ain't as obvious.
Lasu said that learning happens by addition. And wisdom happens by subtraction.
Learning happens by addition. Wisdom happens by subtraction, meaning, yeah, you can learn about math by hearing more information about math. You can learn about nutrition by hearing new information about nutrition. But true wisdom happens when we start letting go of toxic beliefs. When we start letting go of ways of seeing the world that actually don't work. When we let go of the blinders in front of our eyes, wisdom happens when we unlearn our judgments, when we unlearn self attack. Wisdom happens when we unlearn old habits and patterns and ways of being with ourself or others that don't work for us.
Not your fault. Don't worry. We are conditioned by the world to learn a lot of nonsense.
It's just the way things are set up. You're taught a lot of nonsense from the beginning. Sometimes the people teaching you that nonsense, they don't know that they're teaching you that nonsense. They think it's smart.
You're gonna learn a lot of nonsense. Watching the TV and watching YouTube and watching the news outlets who are all getting up in arms about fake news or false news. And uh, boy, you know, we're unlearning toxic beliefs of all kinds. We're unlearning how not to worship all the false gods that were taught to worship. You don't realize how much the media, how much the movies, how much the tv, how much whatever you are reading and tuning into and listening to music wise, magazine wise, they're giving you a God to pray to and that God is usually money. It's fame, it's glamorous people doing stupid, glamorous things.
We're being taught to worship power for power's sake. We're being taught to worship perfection. We're being taught to put career above all else. Some of us we're being taught to w***e to just keep accumulating more and more and more and more and more. We're being taught to have a bigger ego. Me, me, me, me, me. We're often taught to win at all costs. Doesn't matter how many dead bodies you leave in your wake, we're taught to worship a certain kind of body in a certain kind of look, in a certain kind of brash, arrogant, idiotic human.
I'm saying those are false gods. So we're here to unlearn.
We're simply unlearning ways of thinking and being that we've adopted from the world. You didn't invent them. Ways of thinking and being that we've adopted from the world that the world gave us that simply don't work for us anymore.
It's a good question to ask yourself. It's a good question to ask your client. What, what are you unlearning? What do you have to unlearn?
It's just a different way to look at learning. Unlearning is just a form of learning. But I will say to you, it is arguably the most powerful form of learning. Because once again, it's where wisdom is born and wisdom is good.
Principle number five that I'd like to share with you in terms of timeless wisdom is that I believe we are here on earth to play a long game. You've heard me use that term.
We're here to play a long game, meaning we're here to see the big picture at some point. We're here to understand that I'm not just living for me in the moment. Yes, there's a part of us that has to live in the moment. There's a part of us that has to be very present because on one level, that's what you have. You have this moment and you have to be present in this moment. But let's face it, we also have to plan. You got a calendar, you look at your calendar, you see what you're doing that week. Maybe you plan out a few months in advance in terms of a trip, in terms of visiting your relatives, your parents, your friends, whoever.
And it keeps getting deeper. We're here for the long term. We're here to be long term learners. We're here to grow long term. We're here to elevate ourselves long term. We're here to learn about love. Not just today, but forever.
I believe that an effective life and a life well live is born from this kind of approach. Understanding that, yeah, life is short, but I'm also going to function as if
I'm gonna be around a while and I wanna be committed long term to myself, to my path, to my journey to the people around me. I'm not gonna get stuck in instant gratification. I'm gonna just do this now because I, you are gonna die someday anyway. So ah, jump in and do what you want. A lot of people make short term decisions based on immediate instant gratification. That oftentimes we begin to,
we begin to feel really bad about that choice soon after.
A lot of times instant gratification gets us in a little bit of trouble. When you're playing a long game, that's the opposite of instant gratification. You are looking for long-term gratification. So playing a long game means we're looking down the road. You're already walking, and we're doing our best to make good decisions that can impact us in the future. That impacts us tomorrow and next week and next month and next year. It means we're honoring father time in a wise way. It means we are earning what we receive. If you're playing a long game, it means you are living in alignment with how life works.
There are truly, yeah, we get gifts, we get given things,
and in the long run we are here to earn what we receive. We are here to deserve what is given to us.
To me, playing a long game means we're working with the wisdom of life, not against it. So when my client comes in to see me, I'm playing a long game, meaning I'm not sitting at the room. My God, I have to help you lose weight right now because then I'm gonna be stressed out and I'm gonna be an ineffective human being because they're stressed out and they're not being an effective human being. How do I know that they're not being an effective human being with whatever their unwanted eating challenges? Because they're coming to see me because they have an unwanted eating challenge and whatever they've tried doesn't work or they don't know what to do.
But oftentimes when we have an eating challenge, we want it gone right away. I get it. Who wants to be carrying around extra weight? Who wants to be overreading or binge eating or emotional eating? Nobody wants that really in the long run. Most people don't. So we wanna get rid of it yesterday and our clients come into us in a state of stress and then a stress response.
You're producing more insulin and cortisol and stress hormones in particularly the stress hormone. Cortisol skews your time perception. Thank goodness it does that cortisol right now. If you were nice and relaxed and we gave you a hypodermic needle filled with cortisol and injected it into your bloodstream within less than a minute, you'll be a little anxious, you'll be a little energized and you'll start to notice time like, Hey, why? Why are we doing this? Why are we sitting here? What's next? What are we gonna do? What's happening? Oh my God, I have this deadline. I have that deadline. Cortisol skews our time perception. It speeds up our time perception because in a true stress response, in a true fight or flight situation, time is running out. Your brain must function as if time is running out because it is. Nature knows you have one to 2, 3, 4 minutes at the most for something to happen. You either live or die when it's a true survival moment. So time is running out. So you have to adopt the opposite state that your client is in. If they're in a stress response about their unwanted eating challenge, they're playing a short game. They've tried intense exercise, they've tried intense dieting, they've tried this trick, that trick, that gimmick, that fad, that whatever, and none of it's worked. So they're playing a short game because they're in stress and anxiety and fear and upset, and they're not in wisdom. Your job is to be in wisdom. So my client comes in to see me. I don't let their metabolism regulate my metabolism. I don't let their emotional metabolism regulate my emotional metabolism, and hence my physiologic metabolism. If I adopt their stress response about their issue, then all of a sudden I'm in a stress response. That's not a good look. That's not your job. Your job is to maintain equanimity. No matter how freaked out your client is about their body, their weight, their eating, you're playing a long game.
If one wants to play a long game, you better relax at some point. Otherwise it's gonna be a stressful game. 'cause the game of life goes a long time.
So you're modeling for your client the behavior you wish them to do. You are being the person you wish 'em to be. You're showing it to them, you're demonstrating it to them.
Do you understand? Can you see how powerful this principle can be when you put it into action as a professional, when you're viewing the journey of another? They're on a long journey. I'm willing to be with my client, theoretically, as long as possible.
Now, do I stay with clients for life? Nah, not really. But I'm thinking I can. And for some clients being with them for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 years or more, that's a long time.
I'm playing a long game with them. Even if I only see a client for three months, I'm still playing a long game, meaning
I'm looking into the future. I am not buying into anyone's need for immediate gratification, therefore, I'm not buying into strategies that are short term useful, but long term not sustainable, which is what a lot of people get into when they get into weight loss strategies. They do immediate strategies that can work in the short term, but are useless in the long term, which in general means absolutely useless.
It's 'cause you lose weight in the short term and then gain it back three, four months later. I call that a waste of time.
And usually that happens is because usually not all the time people adopted a, they're not playing a long game.
They're trying to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. They're, they're, they're not seeing the big picture of where it's going. They're coming from a place of stress. They're coming from a place of fear. They're coming from a place of not being able to relax into their journey. Okay, number six, while we're on the subject of time, time is your ally, my friends in life and in your professional work, you've heard that time heals all wounds. I think in a lot of ways it's true. At the very least time indeed helps heal all wounds, not the least time helps heal our wounds. Once again, people are living in a state of stress and anxiety and fear around their hurts and their ailments and challenges. This is an understandable state to be in. So when you and I are living in a state of stress and anxiety and fear about my weight, about my body issues, about my shape, about my health challenge, I wanna fix myself and I wanna fix myself yesterday. So I'm in a stress response and I'm producing more cortisol, which is skewing my time perception. It's speeding up my time perception as it should. 'cause that is what the stress response is designed to do. So therefore, I'm adopting strategies that are not effective.
As you remember, we heal in a relaxation response and the physiologic relaxation response is a more timeless state than the stress response. It can have a lot of timelessness in it.
Part of our task when it comes to working with a client who is in anxiety, fear, rush, stress force and push and freak out about their unwanted eating challenge or their unwanted body, part of our task is to help such people time shift, believe it or not.
Time shift is simply another way of saying, dude, like, stop acting as if if this doesn't happen, you're gonna die. That's a bad look. You're not gonna die. You're still alive. This ain't gonna kill you.
Let's relax into the healing journey. I understand that this is difficult. I understand that you want to change this unwanted habit or this unwanted body. You know how we do that? We do that by taking a nice deep breath. We do that by taking stock. We do that by doing an inventory. We do that by looking, listening, feeling, sensing, gathering data. And in order to do all that in an effective way, we can't be running around like a little chicken without a head.
That's a weird image, right? Um, we have to be a little more grounded, which means we have to be a little more relaxed, which means we have to be a little more trusting in life, trusting in our self, trusting in our body,
trusting in the world, trusting in a higher power. Whatever it is we turn to, to feel more trust, because trust will relax us, and relaxation will create a time shift
and a time shift creates a relaxation response in return. It's all circular. It all feeds each other.
There's no rush with your clients. There really isn't. If you're an emergency room doctor, fine, there's a rush when it comes to weight and body image and overeating and binge eating and emotional eating and digestion and fatigue and mood. There's no rush. Yeah, we'd like to get this handled as quickly as we can. And tech, technically speaking, there's no rush.
And my client wants to artificially create a rush. I guarantee you that artificial creation of an artificial rush has not helped them. And once again, the proof is they're here to see me.
They haven't figured it out. So we're not gonna do your strategy anymore, Mr. And miss client. We're gonna do a better strategy. That's why you're paying me to have a better strategy than yours.
And the better strategy to help you get where you wanna go and give you the thing that you want
is to do the things that you need to do to start relaxing into your journey, which is gonna mean a little bit of taking away the self attack and the self-rejection. It's gonna be taken away. Some of that nasty internal dialogue. It's taking away this immediacy that you have that I like, like that the world is gonna come apart unless you lose this weight.
It's not, you're fine. These people weigh a lot more than you do. And they're, they're, they're fine.
Okay, my friends. Number seven. You know, in many ways we are wounded healers. And the wounded healer is, it's an archetype. It's a timeless archetype in many ways. You and I, if you're doing this work and helping other people, we're wounded healers. Another way of saying that, you know, it, it's all about how you and I are qualified to help others, to serve others, to understand others, to help people along their healing journey. We're qualified to do that because we've had our own pains and our own booboos and our own wounds, and we've had our own sufferings and we have gone on our own healing journey. And perhaps we're still on our own healing journey. But man, have we been working on this? Goodness, have we come a long way?
So yeah, we've been wounded, but hey, who best to help somebody heal than somebody who's been down that road or has been down a significant part of that road or some of that road.
Just need to be one step ahead. The wounded healer in us is not a perfect healer. It's not a perfect practitioner. It's not a perfect therapist. Wounded healer got some scars for sure. They got some lovely scars. They've had some challenges and they've come a long way.
They're drawn to helping others because they've been there and maybe somebody helped them or maybe they helped themselves. Some wounded healers. They've done it on their own. More power to 'em.
I've had a lot of help on my journey, and there's a lot that I've done on my own. I definitely consider myself a wounded heal. Um, this archetype, the archetype of the wounded healer, asks us to embrace and honor our own wounds and our own booboos, and use them as fuel to serve others. Not use them as, yeah, I used to be this miserable, terrible person. I sucked, but now I'm better. And that person is on the rear view mirror.
No, you're honoring your journey. You're honoring the challenges you've been through. You're honoring the successes that you've had. Again, the wounded healer is not perfect. It doesn't mean they're perfectly healed. By definition. The wounded healer still got some wound, but the truth is, we all have a little booboo here, there or somewhere. That's what makes us human. We're very imperfect. The wounded healer is a beautiful archetype.
You've been on your own healing journey or on your own healing journey. Good for you. And if you're looking to use your own healing to help others, wow, good for you. It's a noble thing. I really believe that. I know it. Principle number eight, you know, you and me as human beings, we cannot fully grasp the magnitude of our own life.
Our life is big. It's, it's, it's got all kinds of nooks and crannies. It's got all kinds of twists and turns. It's got all kinds of unseen drivers and energies and influences. There is a place where it is difficult to see ourselves. There's a place where it's difficult to see our own journey, our own story. And the lessons that life is teaching us just is
as oftentimes you, you probably know this, you've, you've noticed this. It's oftentimes way easier to see someone else's problems or their strengths or their beauty, all of it than it's the CRM.
It's way easier for you to talk to your best friend and solve their problem. You could see their problem, you could see their issue. You can give them the best advice on the planet. But if you have that same issue, you can't even see it. And even if you gave that advice to your friend, it doesn't even make sense to you to give it to you.
Easier to see someone else's problem. That's just the way it is. There's nothing wrong with that.
And once again, that's why life made it such that there are other people in this world besides you, other people in this world besides me, there's a lot of us because we're here to help each other. We're here to reflect back to each other. We need each other in that way. That is how we are designed, my friends. That's why we seek help. That's why we seek out loved ones. That's why we seek out our best friends. That's why you do the work as a professional. That's why people wanna coach or a mentor or a guide or any kind of helping practitioner.
Because as human beings, it's hard to grasp the magnitude of our own life, the challenges, the beauties, the glories, the ins and outs. 'cause we're in it. Of course, the more you practice grasping the magnitude of someone else's life, the easier it is to grasp our own and vice versa. I think the more you start to see the fullness of who you are, the more you start to see the beauty of your own journey, the more you start to accept and acknowledge your gifts and your richness and your wonderful complexity and some of the superpowers you came in with,
the more you're able to do that, the more, the more we step into our power, the more we step into our healing, easier, it is to help another human being easier. It is to just be me and reach my potential.
Principle number nine, you know this life is full of hidden connections.
Hidden connections is the currency of this work, my friend.
Now I say hidden connections.
It's about learning to see that, which we don't normally see, but it's right out there. So I think that there is an invisible web that connects us all.
I mean, heck, you wanna get real about that. The worldwide web on your computer connects us all. You can't see it. It's invisible. Yeah, it's, I'm looking at my machine. But those connections, they're kind of invisible.
They're invisible connections between every, everything in the world between nature, humans, humans, nature, the ocean, the plants, the rocks, the soil. There's invisible connections between people,
between what's going on in my body and what's happening in my mind between what's going on in my life and what's happening in my cells between what's happening at work and what's happening in my liver.
And this is what the sciences are based upon my friends. It's seeing the connections between things that we previously hadn't noticed. Really, that's so much of what science is. Oh, here's connections that you didn't see.
So part of our work, part of what we've been doing, part of what I've endeavored to do, being the teacher archetype in this training with you, is to do my best to point out to you some of the hidden connections. The invisible connections that I see that when I look at them, they ain't invisible to me. They're, they're screaming, but there was a time I didn't notice them and I didn't see them. Now I can't avoid seeing them.
So your job is to train yourself more and more and more and more and more to see the hidden connections. When I'm with a client, I'm listening for the connections. Okay, you have overeating, you have binge eating, you have emotional eating. I'm listening for the connections. Is it just dietary? Does it have anything to do with their eating rhythm? Does it have anything to do with their eating speed? Does it have anything to do with their relationship? Does it have anything to do with what's going on in their inner world? What's going on in their personal world? Is it connected to a past hurt or an undigested experience? So these are connections that are not visible. They're hidden. So I'm alert that they exist and we've been learning to ask the kind of questions and listen for the kinds of responses that help us here
and my friends, that that is what working with food, body health, weight, nutrition, and eating psychology is all about, is about the hidden connections.
And I hope you've seen that. The magic, the absolute magic of transformation, of healing. Our unwanted eating challenges is often revealed when we see these connections, the connections between our unwanted eating challenges and the rest of our life.
It's kind of one way to sum up this training. What are the connections between my unwanted eating challenge, my unwanted food or body challenge and everything else in this world in my life? What's the connections? 'cause once we start to see those connections, then we start to go, oh, okay, here's where we have to work and here's where we have to work and here's where we have to work.
So then we're being practical. We're being smart, we're being wise. We're approaching our clients with a well honed scientific mind
as well as with an open heart
principle number 10, we're here to learn to see and embrace the opposites. That's one of the things you and I are here to do in this world. I'm gonna call it a requisite. You gotta learn this at some point to see and embrace the opposites. You start to learn this at a very young age. You start to learn at a very young age that the universe is basically about polarities or opposites. We got it up and we got it down. You got a right and you got a left for just about everything. You got a positive and you got a negative. We have love and hate. We got light and dark. Look at that. We got male and female. You have anabolic and catabolic processes in the body. We have stress and relaxation. We have movement and stillness.
We have hot and we have cold, we have sharp, and we have dull. We have consciousness and we have unconsciousness. The list goes on. The world is presented to us. Existence is founded upon polarity or opposites.
That is the foundation of physics. It's the foundation of biology.
Now, when it comes to the human mind, we often get attached to a particular polarity. Yeah, I love pleasure. Don't like pain, love moving fast. I don't like moving slow. I love peace. I don't like conflict. Mm-Hmm. Love females don't like males. Yeah. Uh, I just hooked on stress. Yeah, relaxation. Not quite. I like instant gratification. I don't like delayed gratification.
You know, a part of our human nature is seeking the light is seeking life. Another part of us doesn't quite do that. It's just understanding that that's all. And it's understanding that yeah, there's gonna be love and hate. It's gonna come, it'll be a package deal in some way, shape or form. We're going to encounter ease and we will encounter resistance. There are days when I accept myself and days where I reject myself. Our job is to begin to notice this and embrace this paradox oftentimes of life. Learning to accept the world for for what it is. Learning to accept ourselves for who we are
as part of you that really wants to do the right thing for yourself and a part of us that gets a little lazy.
We're human. We're here to embrace the opposites.
My client is very cooperative and my client is often not very cooperative. Why? Because they're human. That's all really, you could explain it just like that.
My client often has breakthroughs and then there's times when they're stuck
and the times when they have a breakthrough do I love them more? And when they're stuck, I hate them more.
When your client is having a breakthrough, you think, oh, I'm so wonderful. I'm so great. And when they're stuck, you think, oh, I'm terrible at this. No, it's learning to embrace the opposites because always around the corner, often around the corner is the other polarity of whatever we're noticing or experiencing at the time. It's okay. It's life.
Principle number 11, the truth shall set you free. And I've heard this term for years and it sounds fun, like it sounds, sounds good, sounds nice. Um, at one point I got it. Did you ever have that happen? You hear something for years and years and years and years and years and one day you actually get it and it lands and you're like, oh my goodness. So the truth shall set us free. I think it's more true than we realize. Truth is a powerful force. There are so many truths that transcend our limited knowing truths that life is trying to teach us. Life is trying to teach us some fundamental truths. Just so I can give you some examples of this, particularly as it relates to our work.
The truth shall set you free when you or your client realizes that I am lovable as I am. You're lovable as you are right now.
You don't need to lose this weight or that weight or change this or change that. You're lovable as you are. I get that you want to change stuff,
but if you are believing that who I am right now is completely unlovable, which is what many people do, then they're living in a false notion. And that false notion creates pain and suffering. That pain and suffering creates stress and upset. And that stress and upset drives us to find solutions that are quick and ineffective.
And then when we try those quick and ineffective solutions,
we then feel worse about ourselves because those solutions don't work. We're trying to make ourselves more lovable, lovable through this diet, through that exercise, through this gizmo, through that trick, whatever. It's who you are is lovable period. Who your client is right now for who they are lovable.
Here's another truth. Your body is not your enemy, nor has it abandoned you. A lot of people are in blame. I've seen this. People who don't have the body weight or shape that they want, they don't have the health that they want. They get very angry at their body. Not everybody, some people, and the body becomes their enemy. They think that the body has done them wrong. Bodies against them, bodies abandon me. And that's not true. Body's your best friend. It's standing by you and aligning with you and being your buddy. Even as we speak,
soon as people realize that their body is not their enemy, their body is actually their best friend and they should be kissing it all over. Good things happen. You know what else is a deeper truth, I believe, is that we are not broken and therefore there's nothing in us to fix.
You know what I mean by this? Yeah. There's things you wanna change. There's things you want to transform. That's fine. There's things you want to be different, that's fine. But we are not as humans as souls, as beings inherently tainted or broken.
We're whole and complete as we are, and we're going through our earth journey. Oftentimes, yeah, encountering some difficult challenges, but who we are, who you are as an essence is not broken. So yeah, go about the business of helping yourself, transforming yourself, healing yourself, changing yourself from a place of, Hey, I'm a good human. I'm okay. This is the real me. Here's my life. This is me. I'm not broken. I just got a challenge here.
Another truth. We need to learn certain lessons to spite how hard.
It's a lot of lessons that we resent. Your client is coming to see you. Oftentimes, they have a lot of resentment. Might not even show it might, you might not even notice it. They might not even notice they have resentment towards their own body. They have resentment towards whoever it is that they feel hurt them or wounded them or abandoned them. They might have resentment towards life. They might have resentment towards, God, I don't wanna go through this. I should have had this. I should have had that. Look at what that person has. Look at how that person looks. We need to learn certain lessons despite how hard they are. And those lessons somehow are good.
The truth really does set us free.
Number 12, you know this thoughts, beliefs, and images can have a harmful viral nature.
Of course, they can have a very positive, wonderful, beautiful nature and they can have a harmful viral nature. Thoughts, beliefs and images, thoughts, beliefs, and images can literally cause the mind to obsess and self harm. These are powerful. The images that you see, the beliefs that are presented to you, the thoughts that are being programmed into your mind. I should be perfect. I should look like this when I look like this. And then I will be happy. Oh, here's the image of what life should be like and who I should be like and what I should look like. And we adopt these as if they are deep religious truths. And really what they are is they're these ugly little viral creatures that have infected our brain.
It is your responsibility to determine when you are afflicted with such viral energies. It's your responsibility as a practitioner to notice when your client is afflicted with such viral energies. It is our responsibility to grow stronger than these energies. Meaning to begin to protect our mind from them and to detoxify from them. It's no different than detoxifying your body. It's no different from going out in the freezing cold and putting on something warm to protect your body. Of course, you're gonna protect your body, well, protect your mind, protect your soul. Protect your heart from the viruses that are being put forth by the world.
If you're learning this work to help others, then it's your responsibility to help others in this regard.
Because this is some of the most powerful work you could do with clients, my friends, is to help them change what is going on inside the mind. I really mean that. That's some powerful work you could do with another person.
Principle number 13,
our mind is a tool and we must learn to use that tool effectively. I'm calling this a timeless wisdom principle.
This is what the science of yoga teaches us. Our mind is a tool. Tool. Learn to use it effectively because it is the one tool that woo, it's your tool.
Just because you have a mind doesn't guarantee it's gonna function well. As you know, gotta learn to operate your mind. Otherwise it will tend, it will tend to go to its default settings or it will go to the default settings of the world.
Default settings of the mind as dictated by the world is often self-attack. Self-hate, self-judgment, self-criticism, obsession, attention to nonsense, attention to things that don't matter. Distractions from what is important,
mindless conversation, mindless gossip,
using the mind to focus on trivia
at times when it needs to go deeper. So one of our primary concerns in life, whether you believe this or not, I'm suggesting, is to harness your mind.
That's one of your primary concerns. One of your primary concerns is to have enough money so you can survive. Truly. You need money to survive. You need money to go buy stuff. You need money to put a roof over your head. So one of your primary concerns in life is to acquire money. That is a primary concern. Yet another primary concern is to harness your mind and use it effectively.
If your mind isn't able to be used effectively, it can turn against you and you can end up losing your mind. Literally, people do lose their mind it, it's just they lose it. It goes completely out of their realm of operation.
And that's sad when that happens. Sometimes you could see them on the streets.
So one of our primary concerns in life is to harness the mind. And that takes work and it takes practice and it takes vigilance and it takes commitment and it takes playing a long game and it takes self-honesty.
So we're learning how to use it rather than it using us. It's really what it is, left to its own device. It'll do whatever it wants to do. It'll go on its default settings and it will, it will attach itself to all kinds of nonsense. This is what their mind does. Our thoughts, IE, what your mind is thinking powerfully shape and define our reality, my friends. So whatever your mind focuses on, that's what's gonna expand. That's what's gonna have power and energy. If your mind focuses on how awful you are and how awful you look and how unlovable you are, guess what? Your existence is awful and unlovable because you're focusing on that. And that's what's expanding. That's what's taking over your internal universe. And that's the glasses you are putting on. That's the filters you will see the world from. And that's the filter that the world will begin to see you from.
Everything we've been learning in this training, by the way, is some version of using your mind more effectively. How to understand nutrition, how to understand eating psychology, how to understand my eating challenges, how to see them from a higher perspective. How to understand my journey, how to speak to clients, how to ask questions. How to ask questions of the universe on behalf of my clients. So you have been training your mind as a tool
to help other people with certain kinds of challenges.
Literally, you've been sharpening your mind, you've been training it to use it as an effective tool to help people with all the eating concerns and the health concerns and the body concerns and the food concerns that we've already covered.
And you're here to very specifically help your client learn to use their mind effectively, to harness their mind effectively. Because I promise you, your client who is dealing with an unwanted eating challenge, their mind is torturing them.
Nobody wants to be tortured by their own mind and they're being tortured by their own mind because they don't know how to get out of it. Truly. They don't know how to get out. So that's where you come in. That's why you've been learning the things you've been learning and that's why you do what you do to help people learn to use their mind effectively, to harness it, to detox it,
and to show them a better way to focus the energy of their mind so that it serves them. Especially when it comes to food and body and health.
You remember this. This is one of the core principles of our work, and I think it's one of the core principles in life. We're here to learn, to navigate our discomfort by nature. The nature of who you are, of who we are with the nature of human existence and of being in a body is simply that there will be discomfort is the way of life. Remember that the universe occurs as polarities as opposite. There's comfort and there's discomfort. You know what a comfortable bed feels like. You know what a comfortable pillow feels like, and you know what a uncomfortable pillow feels like. You and I, we prefer comfortable pillows. Whatever that means for you, I'm okay with that. I want you to have a comfortable pillow. I want me to have a comfortable pillow. Every once in a while, you're gonna be in a situation where the pillow ain't comfortable and there's probably not a lot you can do about it in such ties, we have to learn how to manage our discomfort.
When we effectively manage our discomfort, we can move beyond it.
When we're managing our discomfort in ineffective ways,
that discomfort tends to get locked in and we cause ourselves even more problems and more pain and more suffering. People have discomforts in their life, in their relationships, in work, in being a man, in being a woman, in being a sexual being and figuring out who am I and what am I supposed to do? People have discomfort about their past. People have discomfort about how they look. And oftentimes we manage that discomfort by, I don't know, fill in the blank. We manage it by dieting. We manage it by exercise. We managing it by calorie restriction, by going low fat.
We manage our discomfort, oddly enough, by self attack and self shame.
We manage our discomfort by chronically dieting or obsessing about food and nutrition.
Ultimately, those are ineffective ways to manage our discomfort.
They feel maybe a little bit good in the moment, but they're not effective.
And it's not 'cause there's anything wrong with us, it's just 'cause we're learning how to navigate our discomfort.
So I hope you're getting by now, that this is one of the keys, one of the keys to understanding our unwanted food and body challenges. Your client who has an unwanted food and body challenge, chances are they've been managing their discomfort in a way that just doesn't work for them. They're trying their best. So you and I and our clients, we're here to learn good ways, healthy ways, clever ways, sustainable ways, wise, ways to manage that which is uncomfortable, to do the best we can.
My friends, it's as simple as that. I'm not saying it's easy, but in principle it is literally oftentimes as simple as that. Not always, but so often.
You know, my friends, this is a big one. And and and it relates to, you know, how there's invisible connections between everything. I'd like to suggest to you that existence itself, life itself is metaphoric and poetic in nature.
Life is metaphoric and poetic in nature. Love is like a rose.
That's a metaphor, that's a poetic statement.
Love isn't exactly a rose. A rose is a rose, and love is love. But you understand when we say love is like a rose, that can take us into some beautiful imagery. It can take us into a deeper understanding. It can take us, take us into a very sweet conversation about love and about flowers.
The body itself is very metaphoric.
Our experience of the body is very metaphoric. So what do I mean? What's an example? Metaphoric or poetic? Oftentimes my friends metaphor, how we digest food is often how we are digesting life. I'm not saying all the time, oftentimes how we digest food is how we're digesting life.
Uh, you're having trouble digesting food, you know, how's things going the rest of your life? What else might you have trouble digesting or assimilating? How our body's immune system is working.
How our immune system protects us is often how you and I are protecting our own heart and soul.
A lot of times my physiologic immunity is not so strong because my emotional immunity isn't strong.
I'm not advocating for myself. I'm letting people walk all over me. I'm not speaking my needs. I'm not saying the truth of who I am. I'm not acknowledging that there are certain tender places in me that I need you to be more considerate of.
Oftentimes how we relate with food is similar to how we relate with life. Yeah. People rush through meals. Yeah, you might be rushing through life. Yeah. I love healthy eating. Yeah. People also love healthy eating. They, chances are they love healthy living. If you get perfectionist about food, chances are you're getting perfectionist about other things in life. You get perfectionist about the body. You're getting perfectionists about relationships and other people and how you think they should be in act and do.
Another way is saying, well, this is how we do one thing thing is how we do all kinds of other things.
So it's fun to think in metaphor. It's fun to think in poetics because it is oftentimes useful. Not always, but oftentimes useful. Sometimes it's very useful.
How we love ourselves oftentimes is how the body loves us back. How can you expect that you beat up on your body in your words and your thoughts, and oftentimes your actions and you keep expecting your body to love you the way you want it to love you to be perfectly this and perfectly dad, and look like this and look like that. And you want your body to love you, but meanwhile you're hating it.
Would you do that to the partner that you have? Well, I want you to love me, but I hate you.
No, that would sound pretty silly, wouldn't it? But we do that with the body oftentimes. Principle number 16, love is a great power and perhaps greater than we think, especially when it comes to the work that we're doing here. I'm relating all this to the work. Love is a great power and maybe greater than we think.
You've noticed this, that how we love each other can be profoundly healing. There's hopefully and likely been people in your life who at different times in different ways have loved you in a good way that was good for you, and therefore it was healing for you. It was growthful for you. It was transformative for you.
How you, how you and I love our clients. Meaning how we show up with an open heart with them, a caring heart and accepting heart.
That can be deeply healing for our clients. I mean that that can be deeply healing.
Very simply put my friends, we're here to love ourselves along our journey, to love our shortcomings, our challenges, and the parts of us that we consider unlovable. You know that hating yourself into transformation is a logical absurdity. And whatever strategy you use in and around that is always going to fail. It's, it's predictable.
You gotta make sure your client understands this. At some point, you know, and this might very well be the core challenge. The core dis-ease. For so many people who have unwanted food and body challenges, they simply withdraw. Love from self. Sometimes it's that simple. People stop loving themselves, and when people stop loving themselves, it's like, I don't know. Have you ever had somebody you've been in a relationship with that you had a loving relationship and all of a sudden they kind of stop loving you and you feel it in their actions, in their words, and the look on their face and everything that they're doing. They're not loving you anymore. That that's a terrible feeling. Ouch. It hurts.
We do that to self. At some point we can pull away love from self. We withdraw love from self. We deny love to self.
You will then feel like that same person when somebody else pulls away love from you. But in a lot of strange ways, this is far worse. We don't always notice it when we pull away love from self. It can lead to all kinds of unwanted food, body, and health challenges.
Small acts of embodiment, small acts of self love, small acts of self nourishment, baby steps. You've heard me say that throughout this training. It's so important. Baby steps means playing a long game. Playing a long game is a true way to love someone. I mean, think about it. The people you are truly committed to for the long term. What bigger way can you show your love than being committed to someone for the long term?
You know, they know that you're gonna love them till the end. There might be challenges and ups and downs, but there are certain people in your life. You're in it for the long haul. You know that isn't that powerful. It's a powerful way to show love.
Imagine when we help our clients do that for themselves.
It's a huge victory.
Number 17, in terms of timeless wisdom principles, life is a flow. Forgive me if that sounds trite. I'm not meaning it in a trite way. So when I say life is a flow, when I'm saying is things change. They morph, they shift, they transform. There's a movement. There is a current that flows through us, that flows through the world. That flows through existence. Different traditions called this current that flows through differently. The Hindus called it the shati. The Daoist called it the Dao.
Some people call it the life force. Some people call it God. But there's a force that flows through existence. A power, a current, your life is a flow. Your body is a flow. Your metabolism is a flow. From the time you are born till the time you die, there's a metabolic flow, meaning your body changes, your chemistry changes. It morphs. We never quite know where the flow might be taking us or what exactly it means. But we do know that the flow will continue moving on like a river.
Yeah. Sometimes you know that when summer comes, you know what the flow feels like in your body. When wintertime comes, if you're like mean and you don't like the cold, you know what the flow feels like in your body. You know, as you age, the flow in your body feels different. You know what a certain kind of certain time of month, the flow of your body and your energy is very different. So just as our metabolism is a flow from the time we're born, we change, the body shifts. It morphs, it grows, it gets sick, it grows some more. Our relationship with food is a flow. It's ever changing. It morphs, it shifts. It has its ups and downs. It has its unexpected turns. Stop trying to make it the same thing all the time. Stop being perfectionist. Perfectionist. Perfection means there is no flow. Perfection is counter to nature. It is counter to existence. It is counter to the Dao, it's counter to God. It does not exist.
What exists is the flow changing, it's changing, it's morphing, it's shifting. Sometimes it's bright and feels good. Other times it's dark and feels challenging.
Our task when it comes, especially to you and your client and their relationship with food, and when it comes to your own life, our task is to trust the flow more and more and more and more and more to be able to go with it. When my client comes to see me, I am working with their flow. How did it go last week? What happened? How was the homework? Tell me about it.
I'm working with my client's flow. I'm listening to it, I'm respecting it. I'm helping them adjust to it. Oh, okay. Wow. Here's what's happening in your life. Yeah. There is a lot of stress going on. Yeah, it makes sense that you're emotionally eating. Yeah. You know, you need to stop beating yourself up for that. You're not a willpower weakling. You're just going to a lot right now. If I was going through what you were going through, I would've gained a lot more weight
and the weight's gonna come off. It's okay. We're learning to trust more and more and more of the flow. That is our life. The alternative to that is to not trust it. It's fine. You could choose to not trust it. And when you choose to not trust, you'll be living in untrust. You'll be living in mistrust. You'll be living in distrust. Distrust is an alarm state, depending on the intensity of the distrust or the mistrust or the non-trusting. It's a stress state and that trust state produces stress chemistry.
That will alter your physiology in subtle or not so subtle ways, including your digestion and your assimilation and potentially your calorie burning capacity and your appetite regulation. It will affect your natural weight and your natural shape.
We are that powerful. Our internal universe, what we believe, how we conduct ourselves in this world. It's that powerful what's going on in our internal world as you trust that flow of life more and more. Which is another way of saying trusting your journey, but it's not just your journey. There's a flow that is moving through all of us. It's moving through the world.
The world would have you believe that we can't trust each other, that we can't trust ourselves. One of the biggest false, toxic beliefs that we are given by the world is you. People can't trust each other, nor can you trust yourself. We, the experts will tell you whatever you need to know about anything. But you definitely can't trust yourself. You definitely can't trust your body.
Can't trust other humans. Can't trust life, can't trust foreigners. Can't trust men. Can't trust women. Mm-Hmm. I don't believe it. Humans are better than that. We just get a little conditioned in the wrong direction.
Let's talk about money for a second. Um, principle number 18, money is clearly money and it's energy.
Money is very practical. Money's money. But it's also on a metaphoric poetic level. Invisible level, it's energy. We talked about the current that flows through life. There is a flow. There is a current that moves through life interesting that we call money a currency. Interesting that you have electrical current money is a flow. If you can actually, if this was possible, if somebody was keeping score your entire life of all the money that was flowing in and out of your hands, all the money that came into your life and that you spent, that came into your life, that you were spent, that someone gave you and that got spent on something or the money that was spent on you. It's this fascinating flow. And if you go watch that money flow, it go from here to there, to there, there, there, and it'd be all over the place.
Money is a flow.
Money is value. That's the energy of money. Money contains money has symbolic value.
Money by itself does not have actual value.
Okay, fine. If it's a gold coin, it has actual value. But even then, you know, we ascribe a value to it. So you have a paper money, a hundred dollars bill. It's has a symbolic value. However, we are here to value what we do, particularly as it pertains to money and making money.
The way to make more money that's in alignment with the universe is to give more value. Money equals value. Money equals symbolic value. Play by the good rules, give good value.
Yeah, there's challenges. Yeah, we gotta work hard. And at the bottom line, give good value.
You wanna charge, you know, $500 for a beautiful sweater that you made. Well make it a $500 sweater.
Give it real value. Create something with value. And at the same time, we have to value what we do. Especially when it comes to wanting more actual money. You have to value what you do. You cannot wait for someone else to value what you do. For you to have value, you have to value all the small successes you have, all the baby steps you've taken. You have to value your education. You have to value your experience as a person.
You have to value your gifts. You have to value who you are. Value is something that you feel. It's a feeling when you feel the feeling called value. What I have has value. Who I am has value. What I offer to people professionally has value. The love I offer has value. The care I offer has value. The distinctions I offer have value. When you feel that, that is to me the foundation of the beginning of creating real value in the world, in the physical world of form, of money, in the form of exchange.
I hope that makes sense my friends. It's, it's the invisibles.
Number 19, I would like to suggest to you that service to others is an unseen currency of the divine. Serving others, giving to others. Being in a helping profession is an unseen currency of the divine. Meaning that there's a magic available to us to meet to you when we become helping professionals and choose to serve others. This magic just it. It just shows up. You and I become conduits. We become conductors for an unseen wisdom and power. When you choose to be a helping professional, I believe we are used by the universe. I believe we are used by life in a good way. You will be employed by, uh, by the invisible forces and powers of life, so to speak. When you're gonna be asked to do good things, unexpected things, we will be gifted and rewarded oftentimes in unexpected ways. Really what I'm saying is when you choose to be in the helping professions, you kind of have to trust it is not a job that the world ascribes glory to. If you want glory, become an Olympic athlete and win day gold medal.
If you want glory, don't be an Olympic athlete and get a bronze medal. Trust me, you're not gonna be happy. Nobody wants the bronze. So what I'm saying is the world often puts forward, okay, here's what's glorious. Here's what we value. And what I'm saying is you have to value you.
It's a deep inner connection between you and you and what you believe in you and a higher power you are in your own soul.
Number 20, our ongoing task in this world, my friends, our ongoing task in this world, agreeing to be here.
You are here, you're here. I know it 'cause you're listening, I'm talking. Maybe you're smiling and if you're here, you might as well truly be here. If you're sitting down eating dinner, you might as well be sitting down eating dinner. If you're lying in bed watching tv, you might as well lie in bed and watch tv. If you're sitting at work, you might as well work. If you're in relationship, you might as well be in relationship. If you have a body that thrives on good food, you might as well eat good food. If you have a heart and a soul that thrives on love and thrives on, thrives on truth and thrives on meaning, then you might as well have love and truth and meaning. So agreeing to be here, I believe is a very, very big secret to a life well lived.
Agreeing to be here, my friends. You know what that means? It means agreeing to life, to your life, to the life that you have lived already, to the life that you are living right now. And the sooner you do this, the better. And for most of us, it's an ongoing lifelong choice that you have to make again and again. 'cause there are times when we don't wanna be here fully.
This is the work you're here to do with your clients, my friends, your clients. A lot of 'em don't wanna be here. So they're partially here and they partially take care of themselves and they partially nourish themselves and they're partially in their body. Why? 'cause they don't quite agree to this body. So why would I be in it? Why would I nourish it? Why would I take care of it? I don't like it.
Why would I be in a relationship? They hurt. I got wounded, I got damaged. Even though I want a relationship, I don't want a relationship. I want to be here. It's too painful. I want to be here. People are not nice. I don't want to be here. This is too much work. Agreeing to be here means we look around and we agree to what it is. We agree to our body. This is my body. It's the one you have right now. This is your life. These are the people. This is where you live. When you help your client agree to the body that they have right now, they then have the best chance to shapeshift it or morph it. If that's what they're looking to do or to heal it. If that's what they're looking to do. You have to own the thing you have first before you can lose something about it. You have to own the weight before you lose it. You have to want the body you have
before you can have the body you want.
Plain and simple.
A few more principles, my friends. Number 21. The body's a beautiful mystery. You don't know when it's gonna feel better or worse. Get sick, get heal, get tired, have energy. You don't know when that's gonna die.
The body has a wisdom and a brilliance to it. That is unfathomable on every level. On the level of science. On, on. Just we don't know the body. We know, uh, a 10th of a percent if that much of what there is to know about the body. So the body's taking us along a very interesting, unpredictable, fascinating journey that oftentimes is it's very hard. Body can be a hard place to live for a lot of people or for some people at different times. At some point when you're dying, body ain't a fun place to be.
So we know this. The body can teach us some very hard and uncomfortable lessons at the same time. You need your body and your body needs you.
Your body needs you, you, your body needs you to wake up. 'cause the body's often asking a lot of us, it's asking us to pay attention. It's asking us to notice. It's asking us to be conscious. It's asking us to be aware. It's asking us to step into the light. It's asking us to listen to it.
Body needs you. We oftentimes ask a lot of our body want it to look like this, be like that. Have all this pleasure, have this, have that, have this. Okay, what are you doing for it? But really dieting the body and pushing it and forcing it and shoving it into nonsense exercise that it doesn't wanna do and you don't wanna do. And feeding it in ways that it doesn't want to be fed. Just so you can force it to be different, look different, act different. Way different or shape different, huh? Nobody's happy.
Your body gives you a lot. It's given us a lot.
We just have to remember. It's a beautiful mystery. You can't always control it. Like get over it. You can't make demands of it all the time. You can't insist that it be something that it actually isn't.
You can't beat the hell out of it because you decide that you disapprove of it in terms of its looks or its shape or its weight, or its color or its height or its, I don't know what,
it's just a mystery
as is relationship. Relationship is quite a beautiful mystery. Our relationship with others defines who we are. You can't help it. We can't help it. We are deeply drawn to relationship. You're here on earth because of relationship. Your parents, it wasn't for them getting together. You wouldn't be here. You're here because your ancestors. It wasn't for your ancestors. Your parents wouldn't be here. So we are the product of relationship one after the next.
And we often learn lessons in relationship that perhaps are some of the most difficult ones and the most beautiful ones in life. Relationship gives us some of the best and some of the hardest lessons. So therefore it is a paradox. It's a weird package deal. And you know this my friends, why I'm mentioning this is that so, so, so, so, so, so, so many of our food and body concerns are connected to in some way our relationship to relationships, to people, our parents, to men, to women, to our partner, our husband, our wife, our girlfriend, our boyfriend, our kids.
The person that had done us wrong.
So many of our food and body concerns are connected to our relationship to relationships. I want a relationship, but I could only have a relationship. I could only have love if I look like this. That's sort of thing. That's what I'm saying.
That's why I am all about pushing to the pedal to the metal and learning more and more about relationship. Because when it comes to working with people's food and body challenges, wow, does that come up a lot, my friends?
Finally, we're here to find the light. I am postulating and I'm certainly not the only guy to say this. We're here to reconnect with something greater, to a higher power, to a higher code. We're here to move beyond the nonsense, the false beliefs of the world. You and I are here to represent something greater, to become more conscious, and to demonstrate that consciousness, to enact it in the world, to deliver it to the world.
Life is a seems to be a constant process of waking up, waking up. And once you wake up, my friends, you can't go back to sleep. You know how they say ignorance is bliss? It's kind of true.
Ignorance can be a form of bliss. And once you become more wise and you see things, yeah, it could actually be a little bit more challenging. That is the cost of being conscious.
But there are all kinds of other benefits. We're here to find the light. We're a lot of darkness inside the human mind in the world.
And that darkness can be rather quickly dispelled. That's the good news. The light is far, far, far greater than the dark. It's not even close, really isn't.
Some final thoughts, my friends? Consistency. Really. Consistency is, I believe the secret sauce for professional success. You just gotta be consistent.
It's, it, it's, it's taking me years to get where I wanna be. Uh, you know, that's not even true. Um, I've just been very consistent in my professional life, consistent in learning, consistent in wanting to grow as a professional, consistent in wanting to understand people better, consistent in wanting to have as much experience within my profession as I can. Um, consistent in wanting to help help people and learn better and better ways to help them.
Consistency is everything. And when in doubt, in any given moment with a client, smile and give your gift.
Always look to find the place in you that cares beyond all your doubts. Yeah, you and I have our doubts about me, about this, about that, about myself, about is always gonna have your doubts and insecurities. Find a place in you when you're with your client that cares beyond whatever your insecurities and doubts are that's bigger than your insecurities and doubts.
When in doubt, pray or ask for, ask powerful questions of life.
Remember that your client has a ton of answers. Your job is to help them discover those answers for you to discover those answers.
Always feel free to coach as if it's your last session ever. And on this journey, my friends, you gotta trust it. You gotta be a lifelong learner and you just gotta keep trusting.
Those are my thoughts in this conversation. There's a little bit of a different turn than what we've been doing and I hope it was helpful for you, my friends. Next up, we're gonna revisit weight. We're gonna see if we can deepen into it a little more because as we're reaching sort of the end of this educational journey together, yeah, sometimes it's a time to go a little deeper. Once again, I hope you learned something. I hope you found anything I shared helpful. And I'll see you on the other side. I.
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