I spent my day yesterday listening to inspiring things and trying to figure out my head a little more. I have a bunch of books and CD’s that I don’t ever read or listen to. Sometimes I will start something and get pretty far with it and then I will put it away, even though it is totally helping me. This again is how I sabotage my happiness and my life. What I am learning though, is that even though I don’t finish a lot of what I start, I am getting a feeling for so many different ideas and opinions and a little inspiration from a wide variety of people. I am realizing that it is not such a bad thing that I do that, but that it is actually good for me because I never stay small minded and opinionated about any one thing.

Just when I think I am going to take off on what one person says and apply it to my life, I hear or read something else that interests me and helps me. This has helped me to really keep an open mind and be able to see that no matter what I have listened to or read or what religion it came from, they are all basically preaching the same message, but in different ways.

I am a mix of so many different inspirational people, who have all helped me on my journey from all different backgrounds. Here is a list I thought up of, beginning with what I began with in 2009

• The Bible
• Beth Moore – did a few of her bible studies
• Tanja Djelevic – from my work out DVDs
• Patricia Moreno – Intensati
• Will Tuttle – World Peace Diet
• Leo Tolstoy
• Marianne Williamson
• Debbie Ford
• Thich Nhat Hanh – I love this guy and all of his books and audio, he is amazing
• Larry Rosenberg – Breath by Breath
• Rudolf Steiner – should delve more into this
• Gabriel Cousins – raw food guru, wrote Spiritual Nutrition and The Rainbow Green Live Food Cuisine
• Wayne Dyer
• Louise Hay

The list could really go on and on. I love that I have this part of me that so badly wants to grow and learn and change. I love that and I love the fact that what I consider to be self-sabotaging, has lead me to explore so many different viewpoints and spiritual leaders. What my mind perceives as bad is actually working things out for greater good.

Anyway, so yesterday I was browsing what I had and I was led to Anthony Robbins. I have some audio teachings of his as well as the book Awaken The Giant Within and for some reason or another I was drawn to the audio Unleash The Power Within.

Any time I put on his audio teachings or open up his books they completely inspire. It is like he completely opens my eyes to the fact that yes, I need change and yes, I totally want to change but somehow, after I put away his book or turn off the audio I am left with, but where do I start and what do I do? It is like how he says, we know that we should change and we should all over ourselves all the time, but real change only will occur when we shift that should change mentality to a must change mentality and begin to take massive action toward the change we want.

I realized that I know that there is a great power within me, capable of doing so many great things and completely transforming my life, but I still continue to ask myself what is it that I want? I can see how all of his principles completely make sense and I know I want to apply them and see a change, but what do I really, truly want?

A part of my doesn’t want anything. A part of me just desires to be happy and content with whatever is going on. A part of me believes that it would be selfish to want anything or have abundance. A part of me fears that this is unspiritual, which is why I was always afraid of Anthony Robbins to begin with.

So I listened to Anthony Robbins Unleash The Power Within and felt really fired up until I realized that I don’t even know what I want. I am a mother too so I also feel that that makes me feel guilty for wanting anything as well. I want my kids to be happy, I want my family to be happy, I want people to be happy and enjoy their lives and I want happiness for myself too, but I do not want that happiness to be attached to anything. So fear rears its head again and I wonder if it is bad what Anthony Robbins is saying. Maybe we should just be happy without needing to add anything to ourselves (me over analyzing things because I found a bit of light and truth in his message and I am afraid to change).

After the day came to a close, I was laying in bed with Serafina and I decided to put on Marianne Williamson’s CD teaching Handling Fear – Fear of Success. As I was listening to that last night I was applying it to what I was thinking earlier that day about what Anthony Robbins was saying. She says that we all have that mind of the ego that says to us, Who are you? Who are you to have that career? Who are you to be loved? Who are you to enjoy your life? Who are you to lose the weight? Who are you to feel good and be awesome? And I realized that that is exactly what is going on with me. There is a voice that is inside of me, constantly whispering that message, who are you?

She said it is as though we are afraid that it would be unspiritual or that God would be mad at us for being awesome and having an amazing life. We feel guilty for wanting anything and fear that it might be bad, but really it is quite the opposite. When we are shining our light and living a life that we love, that is when the power of God is able to work through us and is what frees us others as well. It is not proud, bad or wrong, it is humble of us to make that decision to free ourselves and let our light shine.

I was so glad to hear that because I know that it really is true. There are so many things that I start to do and see results from doing them and I am making the changes that I want for my life when all of a sudden I derail the whole thing and then feel defeated and tell myself that I can’t have that thing or that it is bad. I do that so often in my life.

My crazy head was spinning last night, wondering what is it that I really do want? I was searching myself for an answer and the response I got from within was that I want to be healthy and I want to be happy and I not only want health and happiness for myself,  but I also want health and happiness for others as well. Bottom line. That is what I truly want. I think that I am pretty happy and healthy, yet I know that I still have a subtle way of self-sabotaging my health and happiness out of fear of change.

One area of my life that I can see where I sabotage and the message ‘who are you?’ comes in my life is around eating. Even though I have come a long way with my eating disorder, I do not feel fully recovered from it. I so badly want to just be able to eat regular meals and well-balance meals. I tend to sabotage this by trying to eat all raw or restricting myself of certain foods (mainly for spiritual reasons) and then I always overeat at night. It is a pattern that I have been in for a long time now, years and years. I make rules for myself throughout the day and then at night I overeat just enough so that I can feel guilty about it. The next morning when I wake up, I feel the guilt and the pain that I caused myself by sabotaging my health and then I do the same thing over again the next day. It is not such a great big thing, but it is still something that blocks health and happiness from flowing in my life.

That is the definition of insanity isn’t it? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting to get a different result. However, I do not actually think that I am insane or at least that I am the only insane person on this planet because I think that we all do this in some area of our lives out of fear of change.

So, that is just one little thing that I want to begin to work on. I need to apply Anthony Robbins principles to that area of my life and make a change. He talks about the pain/pleasure principle and that anything that we do, we do it because we are either trying to gain pleasure or avoid pain. Makes sense. So I suppose the reason I continue this pattern of behavior is because it is familiar and I know what to expect with this pattern and associate pain with change because it is unfamiliar. I also often eat to comfort myself or when I am stressed out (like many people do, right ladies?) which is another thing that I do not want to do anymore. What I have to do is associate pain with the overeating, rather than pleasure and seek out a new way to meet my need for comfort and relief from stress. I need to face that voice of fear that says, who are you to be healthy and happy?

I am really beginning to see so many areas of my life where this fear comes into play and really desire to remove it from my life. It almost seems overwhelming because as I was realizing all of these things that are blocking my authentic slef and holding me back from the life that I want, I saw that the list was rather long. There are so many things that I would like to change but I know that I have to take it just one thing at a time. So that is what I am going to focus on starting today. I am going to sit down and eat regualr meals with my family instead of continuing on these crazy diets and setting rules for myself or making some food ‘good’ and others ‘bad’. It seems scary to me because I am afraid of giving up the control and allowing change to occur but I know that it is something that I want to do for myself and for others.

What has this got you thinking about? What does the ‘who are you?’ mentality keep you from? What area do you think you could begin to take power over?