New Year, New Direction

It's been a long time since I've had a post.  I hadn't been inspired to say anything.  Normally when I get quiet it's not a good thing.  It means I'm depressed and don't want to deal with the world.  While, I admit I've been quiet, I've been anything but depressed.

Life has been taking me in a new direction lately.  A direction I'm excited about and at the same time nervous about.  It's taking me away from the only environment I've known for the last 3 plus year and I think that is a good thing.  For the last 3 plus years I've been focused on the area I struggle the most with - weight.  In that time I've lost 100 pounds and regained 95 of those pounds. 

A funny thing happened when I changed my focus - I started losing weight.  I'm regaining the ground that I've lost. I only have 80 more pounds until I'm back to my 100 pound weight loss!

You might be wondering what prompted this change in direction.  I'm tired of being in the thing I struggle the most with.  Everyday I was faced with where I am with my weight.  I felt like a hypocrite.  I was so heavily involved in the Be Your BEST Foundation and I had been struggling to lose a pound.  The program is about transforming your life and  I've been literally killing myself.  Last month I couldn't workout because my blood pressure was so high that I could have had a stroke.  The doctor asked why I wasn't taking my medicine and my response was that I didn't feel like it. That's definitely not transformation but it was a wake up call.

 I made the choice to distance myself from my struggle.  NOT ignore it as I have done in the past but to focus on something else the fills me up instead of depletes me.

For me that meant giving up almost everything I was doing for the Be Your BEST Foundation.  My heart wasn't in it anymore.  I means finding the courage to do what scares me.  I just started coaching the Self Expression and Leadership Program at Landmark.  I have 4 people that I am coaching on projects. 

My SELP is coming to an end Thursday.  Out of my participation in the program, I've gained the confidence to create a new possibility for my life.  One where I have courage and live my life powerfully.  Before my SELP I would have never thought of myself as someone who could coach others.  Not me.  Who am I?

Now, I can say that I am a person who doesn't want to stay in the box I made for myself anymore.  I don't want to be the person who is just good at details and administrative tasks. My all-time favorite quote is by a man named Leo Rosten, “The purpose of life is not to be happy—but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.”

This is what I want from my life.  I've been too afraid of living to put myself out there and take a chance.  I don't want to do that anymore.  I want to do what fills me up and that is making a difference in the lives of others.

I know I'm going in the right direction because I'm mostly at peace with where I'm at.  The one area I struggle with is that it is pulling me in a different direction than the friends I have made in the last three plus years.  It's hard to feel like the odd person out and be out of the loop.  I know that the people who are supposed to be in my life will remain in my life.  It's just hard because I love the people in my life. 

The thing that I've learned at BEST is that it's not about losing weight it's about transforming your life.  I feel like that I'm finally letting go of where I thought my life should go and letting it go where it needs to so I can have the transformation that I want.  The thing I discovered by doing the Landmark curriculum for living is that I don't have to have all of the answers.  I just have to deal with what's so and make choices as they come.

For now that choice is to mostly step away from BEST for now and focus on what I can do to make a difference in the lives of others in a new way. I'm very good at administrative tasks and details but that is not the box I want to be in anymore.  I tried to force myself to stay in that box because I am good at what I do however once I saw a new possibility that box didn't fit anymore.

I'm excited to see where life takes me in 2015!