Your journey is just beginning. Your only limits are those of your inner vision. The more you can image, the more you can imagine, the more you can visualize, the more you can dream….the more you can do!… Elizabeth Bohorquez, RN, C.Ht
Achieving a major lifestyle change is like a good old fashioned rope tug . While a piece of rope doesn't look hold much interest for most of us, rock climbers would certainly disagree. It is their life-line. The rope is an excellent metaphor for the steps you doing here, and I'm sure you'll agree that it does take a lot of personal power to pull lifestyle change permanently into your life.. .
I’d like to share something with you. Part of me has always fantasized about having my own private coach, someone who would tell me exactly what I should do to achieve my goals, motivate me, taking me down the Goal-den path to high achievement of some sort. The kind, loving coach was part of a multitude of glorious images, of course always including everything I desired at the end of the rainbow. Somewhere in the distance sounds could be heard, "Be careful what you wish for....." my Mother's always far too realistic way of breaking my fantasy.
I got my wish when I was about fifteen. I joined the roller skating club and Phil Pinto was assigned to be my coach. He was nothing I imagined and there were no rainbows, at least not then. His job was to take my focus away from my bruised knees in order to keep me skating when I really wanted to give up and go home. It was years before I really liked him, much less admired him. I don't think I fully appreciated his attempts at teaching me self-discipline until I was an adult.
As life would have it, I now find myself being a coach and mentor to hundreds of people. . Nursing is just another form of coaching, getting patients to follow doctors orders and to be self-responsible in their health practices. In my work as a lifestyle change educator and medical hypnotist, I work with people who want to experience functioning at their optimum levels. Many are managing sugar addiction or disorderly eating, in addition to working on other goals. Often as not, the sugar addiction has been blocking their path to these goals, sometimes for years on end., for it is very difficult to have what it takes to reach goals when blood sugars are dipping and rising like roller coasters in a giant theme park.
Any lifestyle change and especially sugar addiction management needs a super-coach, someone who is highly attentive, motivated and understands how to get into the moments and open them up. In my experience, the only coach up to this job is the "Inner Coach". That Coach resides inside our selves, in the subconscious mind. Our job here is to contact that part of us and begin the learning process. In this special work you will begin the process of re-communicating with your Inner Coach on a regular basis. The Coach will help you in disciplining all parts of yourself to turn towards what you really want on your goal-den path and to move past what you don't want. You will be keeping up the energy with a plan designed specifically to meet your specific needs and desires.
Your "Inner Coach" has tremendous advantages in assisting you towards optimum performance. First, this coach knows you best and there is no hiding behind fantasy of any sort. You already know that you live most of your waking hours on automatic pilot or lost in fantasy. Individuals lost in thought either hang out in the past, or future-paced, usually involved in replaying old negative tapes, or fantasy adventures of the future that have little to do with planned goals.
Being able to face the truth is a vital force in licking sugar addiction and optimum performance. Your Coach will be asking you to be willing to see the negatives as well as the positives. For many of us this is the most difficult part of our work because we simply do not want to see it and most certainly do not want to feel it. One of the reasons for this is that we tend to lack the knowledge that negatives are simply doorways to improved outcomes. They are like flags waving for attention. "Look over here! Correct this and find a better way."
Lucky for us our Inner Coach is ever present. No need for meetings, conferences, cell phones or emails. Your Coach is not only ready at less than a moments notice, but has access to all the inner resources you have been accumulating since birth, making those available at any time. Your Coach will be showing you how to reframe them, making them even more useful and powerful.
Your Inner Coach is aware of self-imposed roadblocks, old stale beliefs, thought patterns and automated emotional responses that keep you side-lined and off the goal-den path. The Coach knows all about how many times you've failed at nutritional change, how imbalanced your emotions can be and how many of your goals have been left sitting on the table of the subconscious mind library for so long. Once it's clear that that you are ready to move through those blocks, your Coach will present doable plans for this part of your work, while placing you right in the middle of the needed action. Wow!
Most of us have been very out of touch with this part of ourselves. You will probably need some up front time for re-communicating, designing clear cut goals and giving the Coach what's needed for his part of the job. Like any other Coach or servo-mechanism, it needs care and attention. The next mini-chapters will remind you of those things forgotten, or perhaps introduce you to them for the first time. As you work through these daily exercises, you will begin to notice the path is not as difficult as you thought it would be. Don't be surprised if you feel a kind hand on your shoulder, motivating and urging you towards all you can be. The hand will belong to your deepest and Highest Self, known here as your Inner Coach.
Day 1
"Most of the time we do not know how long it will take to accomplish our goals or our journey, the reason being that most of the time we have never been there before. So sit back & decide to enjoy the ride. You'll be surprised how easy things become from this position of power...Elizabeth Bohorquez, RN, C.Ht
It is time to begin. Each day I will be introducing you to different ways to utilize the tools you were given earlier. These new applications will allow you to practice "exceptional living." as well as sugar addiction management. You now have the opportunity to make the tools truly yours and in so doing you will create and experience excellence throughout your life.
In this particular program you are learning to manage your lifestyle behaviors & emotions through the practice awareness and interactive self-hypnosis "in the moment." Some readers may have eating disorders, phobias, addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorders, chronic disease or a life-threatening diagnosis. Others will be managing the regular stressors of life; looking to reach your goals or aspirations. I do hope you have utilized your Assessments, having outlined some of the first changes you plan to make as you grow towards your personal goals.
Remember that your goals are multi-dimensional. While you are managing issues, you are also self-developing in the direction of many different goals.
You are designing blueprints for future growth. Each and every time you work with the tools and techniques of this program you are etching new neurological tracks for programming your mind and body. Each and every time you place your goal pictures into your subconscious mind following Awareness Meditation Banking or regular practice, the etching becomes deeper. Your outcomes will be speeded along by frequent review of "the blueprint" with creative visualization techniques. There are times when you may feel overwhelmed by the number of changes needed, but do not despair.
Your focus is on your daily work. You already know to recognize and diminish unhelpful emotional states. As you continue to do this "in the moment" your positive changes will be quick and permanent. Lasting changes are best made in small increments. While your basic plan will present much work, keep in mind that you will be mastering your blueprint brick by brick. You will continually return to the drafting table, observing and delighting in the end goals. You do know that modifications will most certainly occur as different levels of the project take on a life of their own. You also know and accept that the end project may look very different indeed from the original blueprint. Do not be put off by this, but instead, celebrate the unfolding of the process while enjoying each step of the way.
Writing goal descriptions is one of the most powerful exercises you can do. Perhaps you will begin a special journal for this work. As you read earlier in this book, it is a good idea to divide your life up into separate goal gardens and choose one important goal for each area.
MIND EXERCISE:
Just as if you had a picture of one of your end goals sitting on your desk, go ahead and describe it in detail. Make it vivid and as complete as possible. Be sure to allow your emotions to arise that connect to this wonderful end goal photograph: ___________________________________________________
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Let's go ahead and place this goal into the subconscious mind library. Take a deep yawn breath and allow your body to deepen. You already learned this work in the Awareness area, so utilize whatever images or sensations work best for you. Now tilt your eyes up 20 degrees and see your end goal picture as it plays on the movie screen. Spend some time with this. Allow it to play out in all it's detail. Bring in emotional states that benefit the goal, perhaps confidence, joy, focus and discipline. You might go back to your emotional crayon area and review the list of possibilities.
