Did you know within three years of winning the lottery or any large windfall of money, 70% of "winners" are filing for bankruptcy? Give it five years, and that statistic rises even higher.
Why is that? Because they are out of alignment.
Most of these folks spent their entire lives believing themselves to be destitute. Powerless over their circumstances and unable to hold onto or make more money.
Lottery winners are much like chronic dieters in that rich people don't play the lotto, and healthy people don't diet. Those things do not go together.
Happy people don't complain all day.
Present people don't scroll Facebook for hours.
Basically, we are who we are. Our energy is in line with our beliefs about ourselves.
If those beliefs are reasonable, we believe ourselves to be decent, whole, healthy people, then we are doing wonderfully. If, on the other hand, we believe ourselves to be worthless hot messes…. well, we have a problem.
Internal locus of control; if you believe yourself to be responsible for your life, you are mostly doing OK. However, if you believe yourself to be reactive in your life, playing the hand you were dealt, so to speak, that is when alignment becomes an issue.
You cannot become something you believe yourself incapable of being. You can not do something you are unwilling to do.
Just like the lottery winner who thinks he finally caught a break and solved all his problems…. Then finds himself three years later worse off than when he won. He didn't believe himself to be a rich man. He saw himself as a poor man who won a lot of money. His identity didn't change with that windfall, which is why he will not keep it. He has no idea how to be someone finically stable when his whole life was spent confirming the belief that he was poor.
We know this to be true with dieters. It is easy to white-knuckle our way through even the hardest of diets. Yes, it takes some willpower, but any idiot who knows how to add calories and avoid carbs can suffer through 20 pounds of weight loss.
But then what?
How do you keep it? You sure as hell don't want to be eating like a gluten-free bird for the rest of your life. You want to live, experience, and feel your best while being in a body you love!
You must find alignment before you start. Be what you wish to become.
This isn't a challenging process; it is just one that is rarely done.
Taking this step makes all the difference. Start with asking yourself what and who you want to be and let that be your map to get you there.
This works with everything, not only finding your ideal diet, but I can't say this enough if treating your body well and liking the body you are in are on your "to-do" list, then 100% do this exercise in the context of what you want to be in relation to how you treat yourself.
Ask yourself what your values are. What type of person do you want to be?
Daydream!
We lose the art of daydreaming as we age. We stop picturing ourselves as flexible beings. Instead, we see ourselves as stuck in our bullshit.
We forget that we can choose again, choose differently at any point in our lives, choose better.
We get so caught up in bitching and complaining we forget we can practice acceptance. It is so much easier that way. We don't have to love everything happening but arguing with reality will have us losing 100% of the time.
Ask yourself, who are you? What are your habits? What is your baseline?
Then, most importantly,
is it in alignment with who you want to be?
I love the concept of the highest self. It is not some fantasy version, it is who you are when you are doing your best. Ask yourself what this version of you does.
When you are your kindest, inwardly, and outwardly. How you eat when you are eating in a way that serves your whole being. This isn't eating 100% clean, it is enjoyment too, eating for pleasure because you can always like what you eat, that isn't reserved for people in tiny bodies…
How you move, how you talk to yourself, how you show up in life. The minute details like what you eat for breakfast, to the larger things like your relationship with your loved ones and job.
Put real thought into every aspect. What do you want from life? WHO do you want to be?
When you leave a room, what do you want people to say about you?
Ask yourself all sorts of questions around any area you feel out of alignment and get to writing. Use what comes out as a roadmap to place your energy and efforts.
I believe deeply any goal is achievable if we get clear enough on two things, why we want it and who we want to be when we get there. That is the only way to keep it.
By doing things, we WANT to be doing to achieve it. (I will keep saying this, why does everyone regain the weight?? They lost it doing some fucked up shit to their bodies. No one LIKES not eating carbs and doing an hour of cardio a day. You want to keep something? You have to fall in love with it).
Too often, we think only about the end, the final product, as if that is the only that that matters.
It isn't.
It is the process.
Who we are when we are doing the work, that is what matters.
If we like ourselves during that time, learn to love and lean into the process, stay in alignment, we will keep it.
If we don't, we may win the lotto, but it won't matter…