What do YOU want to CREATE? - Blog 7/2/14

In the Forward of Dr. A's Habits of Health, Robert Fritz writes about the process of CREATING HEALTH.  Here's an exerpt:

"Dr. A's Habits of Health  may be one of the most important books you will ever read.  By following Dr. Wayne Andersen's advice, you'll be able to redirect lifelong patterns that are leading you down the wrong path and replace them with new, helpful practices that will enable you to build better and better health over time.

But this isn't yet another book trying to motivate change through fear, warnings, shame, and images of disaster.  Dr. A knows the difference between a process that allows you to create the state of health you truly want and a process that merely addresses health problems.

There's a profound difference between architecture and building demolition.  Creating, like architecture, involves taking action to have something you want come into being.  Problem solving, like building demolition, involves taking action to have something you don't want go away."

If I can encourage EVERYONE to read this groundbreaking book then you will SEE exactly where my philosophy on creating health in our lives has come from.  I didn't make it up.  I can't and won't take any credit for reframing our health journey in this wonderful hope-filled optimistic way.  I simply FOUND it in his book and I APPLIED it to my life because it MADE SENSE.

If my blogs seem hope-filled and optimistic it is because I have fully embraced the principles I have found readily available with Dr. A's Habits of Health.  And they are available to EVERYONE. 

This process is a CREATIVE process.  For my whole "dieting" life before Take Shape For Life came along, I was trying to "solve a problem" and that "problem", really always pointed back to ME!  Hence, even in the PROCESS of "dieting" I was subconsciously telling myself that I WAS THE PROBLEM that NEEDED TO BE SOLVED and the only way to SOLVE THE PROBLEM THAT WAS ME was to DEMOLISH me, to chip away at the FAT and MAKE IT GO AWAY which would then SOLVE MY ME PROBLEM.

Ick!  Ugh!  I can hardly type those words without a grimace on my face and alarm bells ringing in my head!  I am SO far away from that mentality that it seems foreign to even revisit those thoughts.

You see, what happens when we try to get something OUT of our lives that we DON'T want is that it looks something like this pattern, which Dr. A. describes beautifully in Chapter 3 as an "oscillating yo-yo pattern".  This involves the following, and I quote:

"1.  Emotional conflict leads you to act.
2.  Because you've acted, you feel better - even if the situation hasn't changed much.
3.  Feeling better takes the pressure off, lessening the emotional conflict.
4.  Less emotional conflict means there's less reason to continue doing the things that reduced the conflict in the first place.
5.  Since you feel better, you no longer feel a pressing need to follow through on your actions.
6.  And the original behavior returns."

Does this sound like you?  It sounded like me for ALL of my "past dieting experiences" in my ENTIRE life!  Until Take Shape For Life and the creative hope-filled inspiring concept of the process of CREATING HEALTH in my life was introduced to me.

This is basically "problem solving vs. desired outcome".

We have two choices, Dr. A. says, at this point.  We can

1)  Think in terms of trying to fix your bad health (ie a problem orientation)
or
2) Shift your focus to creating health (an outcome orientation)

You want "MY" secret to gaining health and remaining here?  It isn't MY secret.  It is fully explained in chapters 3 and 4 of Dr. A's Habits of Health.

Now, if you don't have the book, what ARE you waiting for?

Rinse and Repeat!