Fourteen months ago I started writing a quickie, giveaway book to use for marketing myself as a Life Coach. In exchange for an email address, I would send a short, quirky book about The Divorce Diet. I was creating so much content, it was difficult to keep it short. Then I made the big decision .... I would write a longer book .... and sell it!!
I set timelines I stuck to, but there were parts of the book that just weren't right. I would spend time trying to force myself to get the words to say what I wanted them to express, and it wasn't happening.
I stopped forcing myself and trusted that when the time was right, the words would flow out of me.
I see now that I needed to go through all types of healing before I could completely finish the book.
Today, December 13th, I just finished the final draft. Today happens to be the 49th birthday of my brother Kevin. Kevin passed away at age 27. It took years and years and years to grieve his loss.
My Divorce Diet Plan is a book about love. It's about grieving and healing from a terrible loss and it is about love.
I have chills because I finished the book today. I could not have forced myself to finish it a day sooner. My brother had his hand on the pen too.
Off to a publisher ..... Standby for more exciting announcements!!!
{cant remember if I ran spelling and grammar check?}
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Sunday, June 12, 2011
The Exercise Plan | Binge and Purge
Shhhh .... Sneak Preview of an exercise from My Divorce Diet Plan, coming soon!!!
The Exercise Plan | Binge and Purge
GOAL: To go through the grieving process and get it over with!! You are sad right now anyway, so make productive use of the time. If you hold onto painful feelings and negative thoughts they will continue to aggravate your peace of mind, cunningly, calling for attention in indirect ways. Want an example? Imagine yourself in a pool with friends. Hold a balloon under water and then try to enjoy yourself. You need two hands and constant attention to keep the balloon under the water. With all your best efforts it sneaks past your hands to the surface. You can’t give your full attention to a game or even a conversation.
BINGE: In the spirit of an activity associated with food, we are going to binge on feelings!! Your most uncomfortable feelings are now an ice cream sundae, a big fat steak or an extra-large bag of potato chips. Pick your favorite gorge food and have at it. Binge. Binge. Binge.
PURGE: List every Feeling and the Thought that goes with it. Don’t leave anything out. Do not hold back.
ACKNOWLEDGE: Each feeling and thought must be acknowledged – not judged. It just is. It is that simple. Think of your feelings as comfortable or uncomfortable, rather than wrong or right.
The Exercise Plan | Binge and Purge
GOAL: To go through the grieving process and get it over with!! You are sad right now anyway, so make productive use of the time. If you hold onto painful feelings and negative thoughts they will continue to aggravate your peace of mind, cunningly, calling for attention in indirect ways. Want an example? Imagine yourself in a pool with friends. Hold a balloon under water and then try to enjoy yourself. You need two hands and constant attention to keep the balloon under the water. With all your best efforts it sneaks past your hands to the surface. You can’t give your full attention to a game or even a conversation.
BINGE: In the spirit of an activity associated with food, we are going to binge on feelings!! Your most uncomfortable feelings are now an ice cream sundae, a big fat steak or an extra-large bag of potato chips. Pick your favorite gorge food and have at it. Binge. Binge. Binge.
PURGE: List every Feeling and the Thought that goes with it. Don’t leave anything out. Do not hold back.
ACKNOWLEDGE: Each feeling and thought must be acknowledged – not judged. It just is. It is that simple. Think of your feelings as comfortable or uncomfortable, rather than wrong or right.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Resent or Forgive?
If I asked you to name five total fools that annoy you on a regular basis, I suspect you would have decent momentum going by the time you got to the fifth person. Then when more names come flooding in, you might have to trade in some of the names for the first five spots. It is effortless to come up with names of people that repeatedly do things wrong, aggravate us and make us feel a bit better about ourselves from just observing their lifestyle.
If I ask you to list five people that you have forgiven for something minor, would you come up with names as quickly? Would you even need to figure out who deserves the first five spots on the list?
What does this say about us? Are we judgmental, horrible people?
No, we are not. We just need to change our perspective a tiny, tiny bit.
My opinion is, when we shift our thinking about what forgiveness in this example is, we realize we forgive much more than we judge!!! We just do it so naturally, we don’t appreciate the kind, caring, compassionate people we really are.
Exercise:
Think of a gap of time in your routine when there is a lot of interaction with people, even strangers.
Think of all the opportunities you have to resent these people; the possibilities are endless
· Dishes in the sink
· Crumbs on the counter
· Socks, enough said
· Traffic
· Parking lots
· Navigating your shopping cart in a store
· Any form of media
When you think about it – we have reasons to resent people all day long!
Let’s say you came up with ten examples of resent able infractions by your fellow human beings in a one hour time period. Given your normal routine, how many of these things would have actually prompted you to really hold resentment? If your answer is one, that means you decided to forgive nine times, only resented someone once and are much better at forgiving than you realized.
So, I ask again. List five people you have forgiven for something minor. With this tiny change in perspective, I imagine the list of people comes very easily now.
If I ask you to list five people that you have forgiven for something minor, would you come up with names as quickly? Would you even need to figure out who deserves the first five spots on the list?
What does this say about us? Are we judgmental, horrible people?
No, we are not. We just need to change our perspective a tiny, tiny bit.
My opinion is, when we shift our thinking about what forgiveness in this example is, we realize we forgive much more than we judge!!! We just do it so naturally, we don’t appreciate the kind, caring, compassionate people we really are.
Exercise:
Think of a gap of time in your routine when there is a lot of interaction with people, even strangers.
Think of all the opportunities you have to resent these people; the possibilities are endless
· Dishes in the sink
· Crumbs on the counter
· Socks, enough said
· Traffic
· Parking lots
· Navigating your shopping cart in a store
· Any form of media
When you think about it – we have reasons to resent people all day long!
Let’s say you came up with ten examples of resent able infractions by your fellow human beings in a one hour time period. Given your normal routine, how many of these things would have actually prompted you to really hold resentment? If your answer is one, that means you decided to forgive nine times, only resented someone once and are much better at forgiving than you realized.
So, I ask again. List five people you have forgiven for something minor. With this tiny change in perspective, I imagine the list of people comes very easily now.
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