If You Lose Weight, You Just Might Find it Again!
It’s great that so many people are getting interested in the law of attraction, positive thought, and focusing on desires to bring them into existence. Many books and shows discussing these concepts are relating them to wealth and prosperity. Guess what? These same principles apply to weight reduction, as I discovered for myself.
A little more than ten years ago, it occurred to me that, if I was going to teach people to be healthy in all areas of their lives, I’d better demonstrate this personally. My grandfather gave me a bit of advice when I started teaching. He said, “When you talk, it’s your ears that are the closest to your mouth. So the first person who should be listening to what you say is you.”
Wake Up Call
I was reminded of this as I talked about being healthy to a group in Toronto, Canada, and realized that I was overweight. At the time I was 235 pounds. (At least that is what I told myself. I think it was a bit more.) If I were 6’2”, that would be great. But I am 5’9”, and according to medical charts, I was obese! So I applied the tools I teach for creating lasting change to my situation, including the positive focus.
But I realized that, before beginning that positive focus toward a goal in this or any area, tackling certain issues and taking some action would be required to make my focus effective. In my seminars I always ask if anyone has succeeded in obtaining their desires through focus alone. I am lucky to get one positive response to this question per year! The vast majority of us need to take some other forms of action as well.
For example, you may need to deal with certain fears. If you want to start exercising but are afraid of working out in a gym, no amount of positive thinking is likely to change that. Is it possible that positive thinking alone could change your fear of the gym? Possible, but unlikely.
Facing Reality
So conquer the fear first. Many people need an approach that works, and here is one that I’ve used and taught to others over the years. In my lineage of Huna, the process we use is Ho`oku`u which means to release. The process involves the concept of higher consciousness, as well as energy work. It was practiced in ancient Hawai`i and was one of the reasons why there was so little mental illness at the time the first Westerners came to the islands. Based on the principles of the Higher Self (sometimes referred to as aumakua), we have the ability to make everything in our life pono, or right. Therefore, through a specific connection with the aumakua in the Huna tradition, we are able to release negativity and trapped energies.
Once the fear of action is released, it is time to take action. In Hawaiian one word that is used to describe taking action is hana. Whether it’s shedding pounds, gaining wealth, or finding a relationship, we need to hana and get out there and do something. Positive focus is not the most useful tool at this step. If you sit on the couch all day and just focus on being slimmer, not much will happen. I’ve tried it, just sitting and focusing (maybe it was wishing) on the disappearance of my excess weight. But it didn’t.
So I followed the steps that I knew would work. My personal fear in health was around what others thought. I was afraid, if people saw how unhealthy I was, that it would have a negative impact. Once I conquered my fears using the Huna techniques, I began to take action. I started working out regularly, and I ate the right foods. Sure enough, the pounds started coming off. After a few months, I got to about 195, and I decided I should celebrate! We went out for a big meal, and I had my favorite desert, apple pie a la mode! I told myself that it’s ok; I will work out tomorrow, and I don’t have to worry because I am a changed person, and I will never be that big again.
Of course if you have ever done this, you know that the re-introduction of sugar caused me to sleep in the next morning and have a massive headache. So I skipped the gym and snarfed down more sugar to feel better. Within a week, I was back up over 200 again. “How can this be?” I thought. “I am a changed person! Why am I gaining weight?”
Time to Focus
This is where focus comes in. I had conquered my fear; I was taking action, and I was getting results. I was on the road to health, and I suddenly found myself heading in the wrong direction. Because I hadn’t maintained positive focus on what I wanted to achieve, it was easy to throw me off course.
There were certain things I was doing with my focus that were counter-productive. My internal image of myself was still of the “big me.” Each time I said, “I will never be that big again,” I was literally making a picture of myself in my mind as a large person. The mind does not directly process negatives. Huna teaches that, if you think of the negative of something, you actually get that negative as a focus. Test this for yourself: don’t think about a blue tree. As soon as you hear “don’t think about a blue tree,” you have to think about the blue tree to not think about it. In other words you can’t think about what you don’t want to think about without thinking about it. Think about that!
Positive focus is to focus on what you want. I had to focus on myself as a healthy person. After the image you want is clear, pay attention to your focus on things around you and on your language. Focus around you may include the dreaded scale. In the beginning a scale is helpful to provide feedback. But since muscle weighs more than fat, at some point the scale can be going up in weight while you are going down in fat. Realizing this helps with the focus.
With the language, here are a few tips that I found very helpful. Saying you are going to work out tomorrow is a problem because tomorrow never comes. Linguistically, if you set a goal that “starts tomorrow,” the language is and always will be tomorrow. So start now! There is no tomorrow!
Plan of Action
Finally, if you lose something, you are most likely going to find it again! Think of something that you have lost, like your keys, your cell phone. What happens? You find it. We need to rethink our approach to labeling what we do. I no longer say weight loss because I don’t want to find it again. I like two new labels, which are (1) weigh donation or (2) weight reduction. It feels good to donate, so go ahead and do it. I’m sure that, somewhere in the universe, someone could use a little extra weight. So donate it and reduce it.
Have fun on your Weight Donation Program! I am down to 155 and loving the way I feel and look!, And in fact, I have no more need to donate my weight anymore! My focus has become goals for health promotion!!
Mahalo, Matt James
