The Connection Between Love and Weight Loss
Self-esteem, the subject we’re going to cover in this chapter is, I believe, one of the most important on the planet. As important as it is, I find that people often overlook it, or do not take the time to figure out how it may be holding them back from a life of happiness, love, great health, and so much more.
The people I know who have mastered this subject real y get to live a life that is out of this world. By the same token, the people who go through life and never truly master this concept are never truly fulfilled. They end up living a life of misery, with emotions up, down, and all around. Does this sound at all familiar?
The bottom line is this: having a healthy self-esteem, and having extremely high appreciation for yourself and even others, wil give you the energy to truly fulfil your dreams. Having high self-esteem will take your weight and your health to a whole new level.
Too often when we get a little overweight, our weight goes up and our self-esteem goes down, and the appreciation we have for ourselves reaches an all-time low. It’s not unlike your emotions. One minute you’re happy and the next minute you’re not quite sure why you’re sad. It’s the same with your self-esteem. One minute you’re on top of the world, you have personal power and inner strength, you love yourself more than anybody else could ever love you, and then the next thing you know, your self-esteem is at an al -time low. You don’t feel good about yourself, you’re beating yourself up, you may even hate yourself, you start to dislike people around you, you feel you can’t succeed, you start to get frustrated, and al the momentum you once had going is now completely gone.
Momentum is critical to success. But when you have low self-esteem or do not appreciate yourself, or even if you swing from high to low self-esteem, it is impossible 111
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to function optimally. Let me say it again: it is impossible to keep your momentum up, and it’s impossible for you to succeed at your weight and health goals if you do not have high self-esteem.
Now you may be sitting there right now thinking to yourself, “I have the highest self-esteem. I don’t need any help from you. I am just going to skip this chapter.” Before you do that, I want you to stop and think again. You will learn techniques and strategies in this chapter that, even if you already have high self-esteem, will help take you to an even more profound level. Remember, there is not a person in this world who does not lose some of their self-esteem at times.
So what is this thing we call self-esteem? Basically, it’s how you see yourself, and how that view influences all of your experiences. It’s the basic requirement for peace of mind and personal satisfaction.
Can you remember a time in your life when you were
“on fire” and felt great about yourself? Go back right now and experience that time. See what you were seeing, feel what you were feeling. Maybe there were sounds you were hearing. Now stop and notice how you feel right now. How good do you feel?
Now what would happen if you had the power to choose that state at any time in your life? What if you could go back and instantly – as fast as you can snap your fingers
-- start to experience those exact same feelings again?
What if at any time you could go back and love yourself more than you could possibly imagine?
Now go back and remember a time when you did not feel good about yourself. You may have been beating yourself up, not loving yourself, talking negatively to yourself; maybe your self-esteem was at an all-time low. Go back and really remember what you were seeing, the sounds you were hearing, the feelings you were experiencing. What were Think, Act, Love, Lose Weight
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you feeling when your self-esteem and self appreciation were at an all-time low?
So what stops you from choosing a healthy self-esteem?
The problem is most people don’t choose high or low self-esteem, it chooses you. The next question then would be, why does it choose you? Is low self-esteem just a monster that decides to choose you? Not likely. It chooses whom it chooses simply because most people have no idea how to create high self-esteem.
I am going to teach you some in-depth but easy to follow techniques that can help you change certain behaviors when it comes to self-esteem. These techniques will help skyrocket your success and take your self-appreciation to the next level. Many people think that to change your self-esteem, you need a massive amount of willpower, that that’s the only way it’s ever going to work. That’s completely wrong.
Any time you’re going to create any changes in your life, willpower alone will never work.
Think about this: How much willpower did you use to create low self-esteem? You probably sat there all night trying your hardest to create low self-esteem. You probably kept saying to yourself for days and days, “I do not love myself. I am not a great person. I can never succeed.” For two days you did this, and for some reason, it just did not work. Five more days went by, and you tried so hard to create low self-esteem.
So did it happen? No, of course not. You did not have to use a massive amount of willpower to create low self-esteem. It just seemed to happen. It was actual y quite easy for you to create it. You did not have to use willpower at all. You were already trained and most likely quite profi-cient at this skill, a skill that we have to make it a priority to change.
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influences all of your experiences. Using willpower will actually create frustration and bring on more and more low self-esteem because it just does not work. Your self-esteem is not a reflection of who you actually are, but an internal representation of yourself, and the way you think and talk to and about yourself.
Change these two things – your internal representations and your self-talk – and you can literally change your self-esteem. A person’s self-image is defined by the intensity of the visual submodalities (the specific characteristics of the visual image) that you’re running in your brain. Let’s take an image that’s dark, small, and far away. Now let’s take an image that’s bright and near. Which image is going to be more attractive? Of course, the one that’s bright and near. Low self-esteem is very often linked to a very intense, negative self-image.
For example, Kathy, a weight loss client of mine, found herself unable to attain her ideal, healthy weight when she knew she was fully capable. She had done it before, but this time she seemed not to be able to stay on track. When we sat down and took a look at her internal representations, Kathy discovered that she was producing a self-image that was negative and upsetting. She was overweight, feeling unattractive, and never able to succeed. She literally saw this vividly colored snapshot -- big, bright, and extremely close to her face. The content of her self-image was very disturbing to look at, and the intensity was at an all-time high, too close in her mind.
Every time Kathy thought of her self-worth she would start to feel less and less positive in regard to herself.
Even when she was losing weight, she was still portray-ing that same negative outlook and engaging in negative self-talk. She could not see herself as a healthy, in-shape person. Other people would even tell her, “You look like you’ve lost weight and you look great!” But the images she was seeing were still of herself as overweight, ugly, and unhealthy. Each time she put herself into a disempowering Think, Act, Love, Lose Weight
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emotional state, she could tell she was starting to go back to the mindset of thinking like an overweight person. The combination of the negative content and its intensity left Kathy feeling helpless.
To be able to create change, we had to go back and look at what was going on in Kathy’s brain when she was in great shape, happy, and healthy. When Kathy was at her best, she would see herself as a very confident, happy, energetic person. The images in her mind were that of a positive Kathy that would motivate her and help her attain her goals. We did some manipulation with her visual submodalities, and the next thing you know, she was back to being a confident, happy, motivated person. She has now lost over forty-five pounds.
There are different levels of self-esteem: high, low, medium, and medium negative self-esteem. High self-esteem has very positive content in an intense form. Low self-esteem has very negative content in an intense form.
Medium self-esteem is seeing your self-image in a medium intensity form. You can change this just by changing the submodalities (the qualities of the images in your head), making them brighter, more colorful, closer, in motion, or whatever would make that image more attractive for you.
The positive content would stay exactly the same, but the form would be made that much more attractive. Medium negative self-esteem appears in the form of a medium negative self-image. To change it, and shift into having high self-esteem, both content and form need to be changed.
The pictures that we run in our brain can be extremely negative or extremely positive. Anybody who is overweight and gets into great shape has learned how to change the pictures and, therefore, their self-image.
When it comes to your weight, it does not matter how overweight you are right now. You may be thinking, “What are you talking about Shane?” But it does not matter, because today is a brand new day. That means you can be Chapter 6: The Connection Between Love and Weight Loss http://www.free-ebooks.net/t/98
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a brand new you; it does not matter what has happened in the past. Who you decide to become today is what is going to shape your character and, therefore, shape your future.
Many times when it comes to our self-esteem, we look outside ourselves. What I mean by that is, we see ourselves as an outside observer, imagining how someone else might see us. Then that view becomes our belief of who we are.
But a much more effective technique is to start seeing yourself through the eyes of someone who loves you. People often see us differently from how we see ourselves, and loved ones often see things that we don’t.
This exercise can really be enlightening by helping you to see yourself the way a loved one would see you.
First, find a comfortable and quiet place. All right, start to relax. Breathe in and out slowly. Take another big breath in, and now let it out. Very good. Another breath in, and now let it all out. Very good.
What I want you to do is think of someone who loves you. Think of someone who without a doubt loves you. It could be your partner, friend, lover, child, grandparent, aunt, or uncle. If you are unable to think of a person who loves you, then think of a person who has assisted you along the way, and you know that this person really appreciates you. Either it’s someone you know loves you or someone you know deeply appreciates you. In either case, simply notice who he or she is for now.
Now you’re going to design an autobiography.
What I want you to do is imagine you’re writing your autobiography. You’re very relaxed and comfortable as you’re writing your autobiography. You Think, Act, Love, Lose Weight
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can imagine exactly where you’re sitting as you write.
• You may realize, right away, in a few seconds or maybe later on, how the words that describe your life begin to easily occur to you. And as you write, you become alert of the thoughts of person who loves you… or respects you. You start to think even more clearly about that individual who you know loves you.
• Now see the person you know loves you. Take your time to see him or her. Look across the room from where you’re writing your autobiography, you can see the person on the other side of the glass door, the person that you know loves you. As you focus on this someone who you know loves you or appreciates you, you become aware that he or she is starring at you, observing you. And you decide to write about this person and the role he or she has played in your life in your autobiography.
Take a minute and describe this someone, what you vision and what you feel about this someone.
Even describe what you hear yourself saying about this person who you know loves you. Write all this in your autobiography.
• See yourself from another perspective. Now that you have a full sense of what it’s like to describe the person who you know loves you, allow yourself to float outside your body at the desk and float your awareness through the room out the glass door, and recognize what it’s like to stand next to the someone who cares you as you are writing.
Just notice what you look like from this awareness of being behind the glass door. And notice how much you currently love yourself. Recognize your actual feelings about yourself as you see yourself through the glass door. You may recognize a vast amount of self-appreciation, or you may only see a little. Whatever you recognize, simply accept this experience.
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• Recognize yourself through the eyes of someone who loves you deeply. Now, enter into the body of the person who you know loves you deeply. Do this in a relaxing and slow way. And when you are fully in the body of the person who you know loves and appreciates you, see through the person’s eyes at yourself as you design your autobiography. Picture yourself through the eyes of someone who appreciates you. See what you look like writing your autobiography. And notice the actions you take.
• Fully accept the qualities and special attributes of yourself that you are aware of, perhaps this is the first time, as you recognize yourself through the eyes of love. And because you’re in the body of a person who loves you, become aware of the thoughts you capture being said about you and the feelings being felt about you. Recognize the tone of speech of the positive, uplifting thoughts you hear as you see yourself over there, writing at your peaceful desk, from the eyes of someone who you know loves you.
• Come back to your own perspective. When you are fully engaged of the qualities and important aspects of yourself that make you who and what you are, allow your perspective to leave the body of the someone who you know loves you deeply, and float back through the glass door gently, and back inside your body at the desk writing your autobiography.
• Write about your out of body experience. Please take your time and write into your autobiography experiencing yourself through the eyes of love or appreciation. As you write about you’re out of body experience, please list several of the qualities and important aspects you recognized in yourself when you saw yourself through the eyes of love.
• Look into the future. As you write, look into your future, both of future experiences you understand Think, Act, Love, Lose Weight
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are coming, and become aware of those unexpected experiences that might surprise you. Think of all the events and places, and days and even years from now, when you’ll safely be able to review, recall, and remember this amazing experience of seeing yourself through your eyes of love, noticing your uniqueness and deeply loving who and what you are in the world.
• Return to this moment. Now, become fully aware, your full consciousness. At your own speed, become awake and alert. Now come back to this present moment and place, feeling better than ever. Hear the sounds in the room. And you can recognize the feelings in your body. And in a second, you can open your eyes as you slowly return to your full conscious awareness and stretch your body.
• Notice the difference. Now you have had the luxury to easily experience the self-appreciation that eludes so many people. Recognize how this exercise has changed the picture of yourself in moderate and not so moderate ways. Recognize how you can now actually picture yourself from a new, happier, and loving perspective. The experience you have just received has provided you with strong personal self-appreciation that is a fast step toward supporting, loving and encouraging yourself.
There is a very simple but profound way that you can build your self-esteem every day at any time. Most people I know that have extremely high self-esteem consistently use this technique. Just one word can literally change your self-esteem in seconds. The key is to use an I statement or an I am statement.
For example, you could say “I am in great shape!” You may be overweight, but the brain can’t tell the difference.
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This is helpful because you put yourself into positive emotional states, and when you’re in these uplifting states, that’s when you’re motivated to work out, eat healthy and, even more importantly, become aware of your thinking patterns.
Most of us just turn off our brains. Why? Because thinking is the hardest job in the world. But that’s exactly what this program is designed to do, get you thinking, noticing what’s going on in your head instead of just going through life completely unaware. When you make the choice to start making I statements and I am statements, your weight will change, your self-esteem will change, your life will change.
So say to yourself right now, “I love myself.” Come on, say it again. “I love myself.” One more time. “I love myself.” I know right now you might be having a hard time saying that.
You’re not used to telling yourself that you love yourself. You are probably better at telling other people you love them than actually telling yourself that you love yourself.
Let’s try this again. Say to yourself, “I am awesome.” Come on, yell it out. “I am awesome!” Now pump your fist when you yell, “I am awesome!” Did you pump your fist? Get that right into your nervous system. When you get your body involved as you say something, it’s a lot easier to feel it. And remember, what you feel is what you will think.
I statements are great for giving you ownership of all your actions. When you use an I statement, you’re standing up for yourself and your identity. You brain will start to say, “I am a great person. I am myself, I am this person that loves myself, and am no one else. I know I may have imperfections, little quirks, but I love myself because I am a great person. I am special, I am unique, I am wonderful.” Nobody can take this away from you.
Just the act of being born on this planet makes you special and unique. You are a gift, and I am grateful to be Think, Act, Love, Lose Weight
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able to work with you. I love you and care about you deeply even though I don’t know you personally. I feel like I do, and I just want to say congratulations for following through with this program.
If you watch good leaders, you will see they have extremely high self-esteem. So what allows these people to have such high self-esteem and lead the way they lead?
Are they born with it? Do they have a gift from god? No, they have just developed the ability to solidify their own identity. They don’t take other people’s identity away from them, but allow others to have their own beliefs, opinions, and differences. They feel very safe with themselves and others, and they’re not afraid to separate themselves with their own visions, ideas, dreams, goals, feelings, and values. They allow themselves to express themselves, and to be different just by being who they are.
A good leader has the ability to say yes or no. If a leader did not have the ability to say no, every yes would be totally meaningless. If you consistently say yes, this takes away your freedom of choice, and will lower your self-esteem as a result of not being able to choose your own life. I see this happen all the time when people have low self-esteem.
Let’s take an example that many of you will be able to relate to. You have been working for two months to get your mind right. You’re on track; you’re really making it happen. You’re working out, eating healthy, you’re in a good emotional state and are on fire for success in your life. We have all had a time in our life when everything just seemed to flow.
Christmas comes along, and you say to yourself, “I am not going to go out and overeat. I am going to say no to those crappy foods. I have set my mind right. I am going to do it this time.” You’re feeling motivated and strong.
Everyone shows up for Christmas, the goodies come out, and you say no. You hear your sister asking if you’re Chapter 6: The Connection Between Love and Weight Loss http://www.free-ebooks.net/t/98
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on a diet. She’s telling you it’s Christmas and it’s okay for you to have a little bite! You stay strong, and you say no.
From the back of the room you hear someone make a small comment about your eating. You choose to ignore it. Dinner comes along. You do well, you don’t overeat, you choose healthy foods, and you feel great about yourself.
Now dessert comes along: the pie, the goodies; everyone starts passing them around. You decline, but everyone is asking why, and if you’re on a diet, or perhaps saying it’s okay to cheat on Christmas.
Finally, you just cave. You can’t handle it anymore. Your brain says you want the pie. At that moment it tastes so good, but as soon as you’re done, you start to become aware of your thinking process.
This has everything to do with your self-esteem. Whenever you’re pressured by other people and you cave in to what you don’t really want to do, it is a sign of low self-esteem. Now you can change this. How do you change a habit? You do the exact opposite. You have to become consciously aware of when this is happening, and learn to say no in these situations. As you become accustomed to saying no, you will notice your self-esteem getting stronger and stronger. Eventually, you will be so strong and powerful that you will be able to say no at any time when someone tries to force you to do something you do not want to do.
This works both ways: if you’re not able to say no, and say yes all the time, or if you’re not able to say yes, and say no all the time. Just remember not to sacrifice your beliefs, dreams, goals, and especially your values for anyone else.
Low self-esteem plays a big role in your weight because overeating is an addiction. If you have high self-esteem, you’re not going to harm your body. The same is true with addictive, compulsive behaviors and co-dependency.
I find that one of the most detrimental influences on the self-esteem of overweight people is their fear of criticism.
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If they are criticized, they have no idea how to handle it.
But this is not just a major issue for overweight people; it’s a big issue for many people across the world in all areas of life. Criticism can break down your self-esteem faster than you can take a breath in, but once you learn how to deal with it, you can build your self-esteem faster than you can absorb the criticism.
The first thing I think is important for you to realize about criticism is that every behavior is useful in some context. Now you may be sitting there thinking that I have totally lost my marbles. How could this be? Bear with me, and let me explain.
The fear of criticism and of rejection can hold us back from having the body and the life we have always wanted. I had a lady in one of my weight loss seminars stand up and say: I just realized why I am so scared of rejection. When I was a teenager, I was extremely overweight, and so were my two sisters. When I turned 17, I lost all of my excess weight, and was starting to look and feel really good. From that time, my sisters started rejecting me. They wanted nothing to do with me. I gained the weight back so I would no longer be rejected by them. To this day, I will do anything to avoid those feelings of rejection. That’s what’s been holding me back for so long in my life. I don’t even really want to get rid of my excess weight because I am so scared I will be rejected again. So I eat and eat, and would rather be fat than have that feeling of rejection.
She said she had to share her story because for the last two days at the seminar she had started to eat healthy again, as she was no longer afraid of rejection. By the way, she has now lost 85 pounds, and has an incredible new man in her life.
Can you believe that we can make such strong associations with emotions connected to past events that it stops us from succeeding? Once you have taken action to control this emotion, rejection is something that you Chapter 6: The Connection Between Love and Weight Loss http://www.free-ebooks.net/t/98
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will never have to fear again. Whatever you set your mind to you will achieve. Make yourself feel powerful. Make it very hard to feel rejection. Everyone has a right to their way of thinking, but if you don’t agree with them, you don’t have to feel badly. It’s important to touch on the fear of rejection in more depth because if you can overcome that fear in every area of your life, your self-esteem will be at an all-time high.
Fear of Rejection
Fear stops us from doing many things. Fear operates as a powerful force in everyone’s life. Of all the emotions, the one emotion that people will do just about anything to avoid is this little word we cal rejection. The word rejection just scares the wits right out of people. What makes you feel rejected? There is nothing — no event or experience or person outside of you — that can make you feel rejected.
You’re the only one that can generate this painful emotion inside of you. Rejection is just something you create in your brain. You give yourself the triggers that set it off.
I want you to get control over yourself. So ask yourself the following questions: What is the price that you will pay if you do not take control of this emotion called rejection?
What opportunities are you going to miss out on? How many people are you not going to meet? What will your health be like? What will your self-esteem be like? How much money are you going to let pass you by? What kind of friendships are you going to miss out on? If you don’t handle this fear of rejection, what is the price you’re going to pay for long-term results in your life?
Make a list of al the benefits that would happen in your life if you could free yourself from this fear of rejection.
Imagine if you could not feel anxiety, not have the chattering of the monkey in your mind holding you back, but instead be100 percent free and clear of it. Imagine that whatever Think, Act, Love, Lose Weight
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you want you constantly keep going after until you get it.
What kind of confidence do you think you would gain? What courage would you develop? What kind of success could you have? What action would you be consistently taking?
What you must do is really get yourself to buy into the extraordinary results you’re going to get from overcoming this fear of rejection.
Outline enough reasons so that when you are dealing with feelings of rejection, your brain links up to the negative and positive outcomes. The end goal is to see the benefits of overcoming the feelings of rejection, and get ready to create that change. You need enough reasons to encourage your brain to say: This is going to take me to the next level of my life. I know all the wonderful things that can happen in my life. This is what I have to do to succeed.
What you want to do now is create a new set of principles that have to happen for you to feel rejected. For example, right now the principles for you to feel rejected may be, you call up a billionaire and he says, “No, I will not mentor you.” It’s like he’s not giving you his approval, and you feel rejected. Or you tell someone your goal of how much weight you’re going to lose and they say, “Yeah right, you’re never going to do it.” Again, you feel like you’re not getting the approval you seek and you feel rejected. Many times when it comes to our weight, we’re looking for approval from other people. You are