Episode 26 - Graduating to Naturally Slender and Plateau Phobia

Transcript

Woman: This program is brought to you by PersonalLifeMedia.com.

[musical interlude]

Renée Stephens: Welcome to “Inside Out Weight Loss.” I'm your host, Renée Stephens, and together we're accessing the control panel of your mind, body system, bringing ease and joy to your weight loss journey and fullness to the rest of your life. We've got a full show today. We'll talk about graduating to the naturally slender club, the secret gift of the Law of Attraction. Finally, we'll discuss the much maligned plateau.

I wonder what areas of your life are affected by your limiting beliefs. If you hold the one that prevents fun, that “I'm unworthy, that I'm low priority,” I'll bet that some other areas of your life will benefit when you replace it with an empowering belief like, “I deserve the best” or “I'm guided by spirit.”

I learned to read these micro cues because it meant that I might have a chance to predict the mood that he’d be in and prevent him from blowing up at me and prevent a very bad seen from occurring. So I learned really well, I studied and studied. I did become highly sensitive, and managing this sensitivity was, at first, a real problem for me. In fact, my father himself told me that I was way too sensitive. My mother told me I was too sensitive. I got hurt. I didn’t know when to turn on or turn off my sensitivity. I didn’t even know it was possible to turn it on or off.

So we want things like houses and cars and vacations and beautiful, slim, healthy bodies. The Law of Attraction says, “Great!” Here's a formula to get those things. You can get anything you want, anything in the universe with this simple formula. So listen very carefully, I'm going to teach you this step-by-step formula and you must follow the steps to get what it is that you want.

[musical interlude]

So let's go ahead and set our intention for this episode. Slide down inside of your self, sink down and become present with you. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, this time is for you. It’s your intention to renew, to revitalize, to clear the fog from your future and see the light shining on your path. To smell the fresh, spring air of new life, new hope, new possibility or to feel the warmth of the sun or the coolness of the gentle breeze that refreshes you. Put down your baggage, let go of the heaviness of the past and feel the bounce in your step, the lightness to your movement and raise your eyes to the brightness of your future. Set your intention now.

My intent is to bring my message to millions starting with you. My intent is to not only show you what's possible but to take you there as quickly or slowly as you like. My intent is to end the weight struggle and replace it with fulfillment and fun. As you listen, go ahead and open up energetically and connect with all the other listeners of this show across space and time. Feel their presence, sent them your support and feel theirs as it comes back to you 50,000, 60,000 more times magnified. Open up to the power of collective intent, of collective support. While you're at it, send your energy out there to touch those who haven’t yet found this show. To touch those who are still suffering and don’t know the way out yet. Send your energy out to them so that they, too, may find a path, a break path into their future.

We spent the last several episodes on limiting beliefs, on how to find them, and how to change them. Last episode, we discussed the key belief that’s really important to change because it keeps us from something really, really important. It keeps us from having fun. At the same time, it also keeps us from being naturally slender, because it prevents us from putting ourselves first, from putting our self-care first. You know, putting on our oxygen mask first before we help those around us.

So here, we have another double of belief change. By changing this one belief, we not only get to be naturally slender, but we also get to have more fun! Don’t you love how doing this work on the inside benefits not just our weight but so many other areas of our lives as well?

Our listener just emailed, she writes, “I've been listening to your podcast for quite sometime now and review you blog regularly. The things that have hate me the most have been your talks about limiting beliefs. Limiting beliefs that I created on my own prevented me from believing that I was good enough at work, with my husband, friends, and family. It feels good to acknowledge and break away from those. I wanted to say thank you. It's wonderful what you were doing. I'm learning so much and I'm grateful.”

I wonder what areas of your life are affected by your limiting beliefs? If you hold the one that prevents fun, that “I'm unworthy, that I'm low priority,” then I'll bet that some other areas of your life will benefit when you replace it with an empowering belief like, “I deserve the best” or “I'm guided by spirit.” This is the same belief that often causes us to earn less than we deserve and allows us to allow people to treat us poorly.

So if you're like Jackie Gleason, was it Jackie Gleason who said, “I don’t get no respect,” maybe that was Rodney Dangerfield. So if you're like one of those guys who said, “I don’t get no respect.” It's time to look at your beliefs and discover how you can believe that yes, you are worthy, you do deserve the best. Of course, by changing this belief, we have more fun.

OK. We've been talking about graduating to the naturally slender club in the last couple of episodes. We've been talking about, “What the heck does it mean to graduate? What does that mean to be done?” When I was in the program “Readers Anonymous”, I thought that I would be in that program for the rest of my life. I met the person who's now my husband, and he said to me, “You know, Renée, when are you going to graduate?”

I was so terrified when he said that, I thought, “Graduate? Oh, my God! That means that I'll just sink back into my disease. That means I'll just sink back into my compulsive overeating.  There is no graduation, I'm always going to be a compulsive overeater. That’s what I thought, it really brought a great deal of fear. Yet, at the same time, by him simply asking me when I would graduate, the seed of doubt was planted.

Now, you remember the steps to belief change. We have our limiting belief that we identify and the next step is to plant the seed of doubt. Well, that’s what happened on that day, that my now husband asked me, “When will you graduate?” I began to wonder if it might be possible to graduate, to becoming naturally slender, to graduate past being a compulsive overeater, to graduate past the problems that had plagued me for so long and taken over my life. I realized that, perhaps, maybe I might one day be willing to consider it.

Well, that day came as you know, and now I am naturally slender because, as you also know, I've maintained my weight for over--oh, my goodness--20 years now. What will it be like for you at the 20th year anniversary of your weight loss, at the 20th year anniversary of finding peace and freedom? Imagine will it be possible. Imagine what you'll create. Imagine how you'll be enjoying your life. Twenty years, imagine.

So we've been discussing this important topic of what it takes to graduate to the naturally slender club in the last few minutes of the last two episodes and I really want to spend a bit of time on this. So let's discuss this important topic right up front today. What does graduating mean? As we've discussed briefly in the last episodes, it's all about understanding the gifts from this journey. What are they?  They might be things like compassion, wisdom, creativity. I'll give you and example.

My father was an alcoholic and I never knew what mood he’d be in when we met. So living with him was like walking on eggshells. What gift did I get from this experience? Well, I learned to read every micro cue. I became highly sensitive to him, highly sensitive to other people. I learned to read this micro cues because it meant that I might have a chance to predict the mood that he’d be in. It would prevent him from blowing up at me and prevent a very bad scene from occurring. So I learned really well, I studied and studied.

I did become highly sensitive and managing this sensitivity was, at first, a real problem for me. In fact, my father himself that I was way too sensitive. My mother told me I was too sensitive. I got hurt. I didn’t know when to turn on or turn off my sensitivity. I didn’t even know it was possible to turn it on or off. I read meaning into everything and often, it wasn’t a good meaning either. It was as if I was looking for slights, I was looking for insults from other people, and also, interestingly enough, it was as if the whole world revolved around me. I always thought that other people were thinking about me, thinking badly about me, but thinking about me nonetheless.

Boy, was it an eye opener for me when I figured out they weren’t thinking about me, that I really wasn’t very important to most other people. In fact, the vast majority are busy thinking about themselves! But I digress. So guess what, I now regard my sensitivity as one of my greatest gifts. It allows me to tune in to people in a way that others can't. It allows me to do this work and has connected me to my passion. So I can now say that I'm grateful to the experience of having an alcoholic father. I didn’t ask for it, I wouldn’t choose it, but I'm grateful for it.

I feel the same way about my eating disorder and my weight struggle. I didn’t ask for those, I wouldn’t have chosen them. Who would choose to eat from the garbage can or to spend precious years mired in self-hatred? But I'm deeply grateful for it today. It’s made me who I am and allows me to do the work that I do and connect with all of you. It gave me my passion to end the weight struggle, replacing it with fulfillment, freedom, and fun. It gives me a level of understanding and compassion that I'd never have if I hadn’t been there myself.

So that’s what graduation is. It's not never slipping up again, that’s just part of the journey, an opportunity for learning, but it is feeling grateful for the gifts of this journey, our soul’s journey. Which reminds me of the Law of Attraction. But before we go there, let's take a break now to support our sponsors. This is Renée Stephens and you're listening to “Inside Out Weight Loss” on Personal Life Media.

[radio break]

Renée Stephens: Before the break, we were talking about graduating to becoming naturally slender by finding gratitude for the journey that we're on. I wanted to talk to you about the Law of Attraction. You’ve probably heard about it from the movie, “The Secret” and all the publicity that surrounded that. Basically, the Law of Attraction says that we create our own reality by choosing what we focus on. If we're focused on the negative, we get more of the same. On the other hand, if we're focused on the positive, we get more good things in our lives, like attracts like.

So what do you I think of the Law of Attraction? Well, I think, that it's brilliant but perhaps not for the reason that you think. It's brilliant because it is an amazing way of making spiritual truths [sp] and teachings of millennia [sp] accessible to modern Western culture. What do I mean? Well, the secret really isn't a secret at all as they show in the movie. This is something that has been known for thousands of years in different generations.

The Law of Attraction, however, the way that it's phrased in “The Secret,” the way that it’s phrased in modern parlance and, in fact, the Law of Attraction has been around before the movie came out. Ester and Jerry Hicks have been talking about it for years, for example. It was referred to in books such as “Think and Grow Rich” and others of the genre.

But let's talk about the brilliance of the Law of Attraction. The Law of Attraction taps right into our materialism, into our wanting. It's teaching very, very similar, in some ways, identical concepts to great spiritual traditions of the millennia. Some of the concepts are extremely similar to Buddhism, to Christianity, to Islam as a matter of fact. But the Law of Attraction puts it into terms that we--capitalists, materialists Westerners--can really relate to. It connects it, it uses the tool, the hook of our wanting, of our desiring of things. As they say, in the Law of Attraction, everything that we have ever wanted we want because we believe that it will make us feel better.

So we want things like houses and cars and vacations and beautiful, slim, healthy bodies. The Law of Attractions says, “Great!” Here's the formula to get those things. You can get anything you want, anything in the universe with this simple formula. So listen very carefully, I'm going to teach you this step-by-step formula and you must follow the steps to get what it is that you want. So we're hooked because we so want what it is that we want. We so much want it that we can feel it, we can taste it, we can see it. So we say, “Yes! We'll listen to those steps. This will fill my heart’s desire.”

Well, what are those steps? In fact, there's really only one step to the Law of Attraction. It's said in many, many different ways but there's just this one step, and the step is “feel good now.” Feel good by pretending you have what you want already or feel good by being grateful for what you already have or feel good by designing what you want or feel good by helping others. It doesn’t matter how you do it, just feel good now.

This is the same thing that Eckhart Tolle is saying in his book “Be Here Now.” This is the same thing by great Buddhist teachers like Tik Nat Han. It's the same thing that Mahatma Gandhi said when he said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” But Law of Attraction says that in a way that it appeals to our capitalist, materialist culture. I guess, you could call it the [xx] switch. It's a Jedi mind trick to get us to enjoy the journey and it is brilliant.

It works for me, I love the Law of Attraction! It is so much fun! It's fun to think about what I want. It's fun to dream about what I want. It's fun to discern what I want. Oh, my goodness, if I could have the red or the blue or the pink, which one would it be best to have? Not, “Oh, goodness, I can't afford that now” or “I can't have that now” or “Oh, it's terrible that I don’t have the resources for this or the other thing.” Not at all.

Goodness, if I could really have that, would I want it? If I could really have that, how would I want it? If I could be chauffer-driven everywhere I go, would I want to be chauffer-driven everywhere I go? I don’t know, maybe I’d want to drive myself places. I don’t know. That’s the fun, the fun is in deciding what we want. I call it the kid in a candy shop - energy. We get to decide, we get to have so much fun and discerning. If we are bored of that, we can say, “Oh, but let me think about all of the wonderful things that I have in my life now. Let me think about how I feel good about my body today.

Wow! Well, my body allows me to walk and it allows me to speak and it allows me to breathe and it allows me to be with the ones that I love. It allows me to have this experience on this planet, of being alive. Thank you, body, that I have now; I love my body. It allows us--the Law of Attraction says to us, “Enjoy what you have, be grateful for it.” It tells us, “Well, imagine that you already have that, that what you dream of and feel good now.”

So it's a sneaky backhanded, backdoor approach telling us to feel good now. I love that. The Law of Attraction--excuse me for saying this--is like having your cake and eating it, too, appreciating where we are and that we are now on the path to continue to feel good now. We're creating a future that is great by enjoying the greatness of our present.

Oh, yes, we're going to talk about plateaus today. There's so much interest in plateaus. Watching the “Inside Out Weight Loss” Yahoo Group, I see so much interest in plateaus, how to overcome plateaus. It's time to talk about plateauphobia, yes, plateauphobia. So with all of this talk about enjoying the present, about this secret trick of the Law of Attraction that gets us to have a good time and feel good now, what do you think I'll say about plateaus? Can you guess? OK, here it goes. Enjoy them. What do you think? Shall I expand on that a little bit?

First, let's look at what a plateau is. A plateau is maintaining your weight. In fact, it's maintaining a weight that is lower than your weight has been. What do you think of that idea? Maintaining a weight lower than what your weight has been. That sounds suspiciously like what most “Inside Out Weight Loss” listeners tell me that they want. So what's the problem? The problem--if you can call it a problem--is that in fact we want to weight even less. We feel we're on our way somewhere, somewhere that we really feel great when we get there and the plateau seems to be slowing us down. Yet, at its essence, a plateau is simply maintaining a lower weight than a weight that we have recently been at.

So I'd like to leave you on that note. On the next episode, we'll go more in depth about plateaus and how to enjoy them even more. How to overcome them, how to enjoy them, and how to see where they fit in your journey. That brings us to the end of our show today, thank you for being present.

One note to iTunes listeners, iTunes--you may not know this--will automatically unsubscribe you to any podcast to which you’ve subscribed if you don’t listen to three episodes in a row, so you may have to resubscribe to “Inside Out Weight Loss” if for some reason, you’ve missed three episodes in a row. So be sure to renew your free subscription next time you plug in your iPod. There's now not only a Yahoo Group around “Inside Out Weight Loss” but a MySpace group, and I'm looking for a listener to start a Facebook Group as well. So if you're interested, let me know. You can contact me at René[email protected].

Did you know that I have “Guided Journeys” for sale on my site? They're the same focus journeys I use with my private clients that are powerhouses of change. If you do purchase them, I recommend that you use them in this order: lay a solid foundation with the self-sabotage process first, then use the compulsion blow-out on any food compulsions or situational compulsions that you might have. For example, 3 o’clock in the office being bored, going to a party, etc. Finally, use the appetite adjuster to help reduce your appetite all the time. By using the programs in this order, you'll get the most out of them.

If you have a question or a comment for me, call 206-350-5333 and leave a message. I may play your question or comment on the air. For other shows on the Personal Life Media Network, please visit our website at www.PersonalLifeMedia.com. There are loads of intriguing content to feed your mind, body, and spirit.

This is your host, Renée Stephens, and I'm on a mission to eradicate the weight struggle from the planet and replace it with freedom, fun, and fulfillment. Join me as we evolve the world by evolving ourselves. Take good care.

Woman: Find more great shows like this on PersonalLifeMedia.com.

[music fades out]