Over 40, Fit & Fab

Chapter 6, “Whose Story Are You Living Anyway?”

I don’t believe that there is just supposed to be one Oprah in the world, nor one Dali Lama, one Rupert Murdock, Deepak Chopra, Bill Gates or any of the other icons of our time. I believe that most of us think that the people who make those kinds of achievements are somehow a different breed from the rest of us. We are generally prone to view the success of others as an insurmountable mountain compared to achievements we’ve made in our own lives, believing that we somehow lack an integral ingredient that allows those iconic individuals to succeed. Our culture has encouraged us to idolize the rich, famous and successful and we have created a demand in the media for ways to observe the minute details of their lives through tabloids, magazines and celebrity news. Many of us look up to these individuals, fantasizing about their lifestyles and regretting the reality we live in as though there were a void in some integral part of our lives. Our own dreams and aspirations become squashed and repressed as we convince ourselves that we are incapable of achieving what those icons we see on TV and in magazines have achieved. Somehow, somewhere at some time in our lives we have unknowingly talked ourselves into the belief that we are not entitled to greatness; that we are just one of the masses. While we’re on this planet we have every right and all the tools we need to live healthy, wealthy and joyful lives full of abundance. If you are having trouble believing this, then you should ask yourself what stories you have been telling yourself throughout your life that make you feel undeserving of a life of divine sweetness. What are you telling yourself inside your head that leads you to deprive yourself of the importance you were born to achieve?

Studies have shown that we engage in the act of self-talk every 11 seconds and it’s estimated that we have anywhere from 50 to 80,000 thoughts a day depending on "expert" estimates. Just think what the impact is on your state of mind when the majority of those 51,000 thoughts contain messages of doom and gloom. I’m surprised that most of us even get out of bed in the morning! There is a whole collection of negative words and phrases that most of us have owned and used incessantly throughout our lives. They are the words used by those discouraging voices in our heads in an effort to keep us and our lives small and deceptively safe. They include favorites like, “I can’t,” “I haven’t,” “I won’t,” “I’m not enough,” “There’s not enough,” “But”, “I should” “If only” and many more. After years spent digesting this spiel of fear and lack it’s easy to see how we could end up believing ourselves incapable of achieving anything outside of our norm.

There is a bottom line here as I remind you that we are the only ones who can make the choice to throw off the shackles of these kinds of internal messages and to stop believing them. The only power over us that they possess is the power we give them. If we believe that these discouraging voices  are speaking the truth, then we will allow them full reign and turn what they say into reality. The longer we buy into those negative messages, the harder it is to accept that they aren’t true. Ultimately, they can keep us from achieving even the smallest of our dreams as I shared in the last chapter. And there is nothing to be gained from commiserating, complaining and dumping our woes of dissatisfaction and discouragement onto friends and family. They can’t help us change. In fact, we become mighty tiresome playing that broken record of gloom  over and over to them as well as to ourselves.

But I have good news! There is a way to overcome these messages of negativity and fear. During the course of my studies at USM, I learned that we all have what can be referred to as an Inner Counselor (IC) inside of us. This IC has the answers to all of our questions about what paths we have chosen to follow in our lives (at least mine does). The problem is that many of us haven’t the slightest idea that this kind of “power” exists within us since most of us have spent our lives looking to the outside for answers. As ‘tribally’ minded beings, meaning that our human lineage compels us to embrace and pursue a place in a greater community of other humans, we are very susceptible to the mind sets and fashions of our community. If we are told that we are suppose to think and act a certain way and that belief comes from a source that we believe is reliable such as our parents or teachers, then we do so whether it feels right in our hearts or not. It is what is expected of us.

Your inner counselor is that inner voice that speaks to you on behalf of you. It is your greatest advocate, cheerleader, protector, nurturer and confidant. Your IC is at your disposal at any moment of the day at any time in your life. You simply have to ask for assistance and it is there for you, immediately. Whether you absorb and follow the advice that you receive is, of course, once again up to you. The trick or the challenge here is trusting that the message you hear is the work of your higher Self. Just know that if you don’t listen, then you’ll keep asking the same question over and over until you feel like you’re trying to squeeze blood from a stone. You can’t dictate what the answers will be. You can only trust in their truth. We are all capable of accomplishing more and being more but we sometimes veer off of our figurative Yellow Brick Road to Oz and allow the wicked witches in our lives to throw fireballs in our path, keeping us from reaching the Emerald City we seek. If we allow this to happen often enough, then we end up living lives of irrelevance, relegating ourselves to the unspectacular, accepting mediocrity as the best we can hope for. We begin to believe that we are somewhere in the lower part of the food chain with little inherent value. And why is this? What or who has been telling us all these years about who we really are?

Ponder these questions:

Do you know your heart’s desire? Have you done everything possible up until this moment to achieve your heart’s desire? Is there a talent that you have always known you possessed but neglected to explore and develop to its fullest degree? Can you be satisfied spending your life at a “C” average instead of working a little bit harder to get an “A”? Are you out there taking flight daily and flying higher, further, faster, than the day before? Are you totally committed to living your life with enthusiasm, vitality and joy? Or, are you a resident of Victimville?

Here’s an example of what I mean. At the time this situation occurred it wasn’t a particularly significant experience but as I’ve looked back on it later in life, it has been a pretty key lesson for me. In high school, whenever I had an opportunity in a particular class to do an extra paper that would make a difference between getting an A or a B I would always settled for the B because at that time I thought a B was good enough and I really didn’t see the necessity of putting in the extra work. And in truth I was also a little bit lazy. But had I understood that although the difference between getting an A or a B was relatively insignificant at the time, my decision to settle was the beginning of a pattern of settling that would be more and more difficult to overcome as I grew older. Also, as I grew older, the stakes got higher and there were things I was settling for that suddenly did become significant in the grand scheme of my life. So there comes a point in every woman’s life when she has to decide whether she’s going to put up or shut up. I chose to put up.