One of my most powerful realizations happened when I was 8 years old…I wrote in my journal (in fact I still have it in some box somewhere) that it was clear to me that I was here for a reason.  And that reason was not about me at all.

Suffice it to say, that the journey since then has had significantly less clear moments – but mostly moments that forced me to pause and say, “so what is THIS all about anyways?”  And time and time again I arrive at the same conclusion.  We’re all here to help one another and our unique stories, our particular version of the lesson, is THE one that we are meant to express.  Isn’t it interesting that many times when someone loses a loved one to a disease or illness that they are then inspired to form a charity or non-profit and spend their lives educating other about that situation or illness?  Our greatest gifts to give not only come from the heart but they are borne out of our greatest struggles.

I used to think that my first book would be about success. Would be about making it in a tough world and prevailing.  I had, after all, been working on my own rags to riches story when I persevered after my divorce.  I experienced dark, low points, been on welfare as a newly single mother, I experienced risk, and I felt that I had arrived on some level when I started my first company, Inspire, less than 5 years later.  Who would have known at that time that instead my first book would be about the continuation of that rollercoaster ride and that I would hit a new bottom of the hill with the loss of that business and my subsequent bankruptcy?  I guess looking at it, the book is still about success and making it in a tough world and prevailing.  Just not the version I could ever have imagined.

The thing that is interesting to me though is not just the unexpected twists and turns in the path, but how something like this upcoming book, Rebounding, would get borne out of it.  I don’t ever watch the news much, I’ve much too strong a filter for negative media, but there was a day that it dawned on me that with all the economic struggles our country is experiencing, that there are many many other people that are probably similarly scrawling in their journals, expressing their disappointment, hurt, and confusion about how to move forward and piece their lives back together again.  Is it possible, I asked myself, that someone else might benefit from hearing my story of struggle?  In hearing my voice simply explore what I was learning?

I ask you today to look into your life and observe it from the hillside for a moment…what is unique about your journey that connects you to others?  What is it about your life that others might benefit from knowing about?  How much could you help someone else by sharing your struggles with them, and relating to their humanness simply by sharing your own?  None of us is perfect but we are perfectly imperfect and that is something we all have in common.  I challenge you to look for ways to connect with others with the most vulnerable sides of your own nature and experiences.  What arises may just surprise you as I have been surprised.

Yes, you’ve heard it many times, but its true:  action breeds action!  I’m reminded of that this morning, because I have had a 2010 full of action so far but last night felt more like a crash and burn victim.  All of the sudden yesterday evening, I was crushed under the weight of all kinds of negative emotion, overwhelm, feelings that really weren’t going to contribute to anything good I can tell you that.  I wanted to eat comfort food, stomp my feet and yell, “wahhhh!”  Now, where did all THAT come from??

Well, what reminded of me of how much easier it is once you are in action mode to stay in action mode, is that this morning when I woke up, I had no resistance, none of those negative feelings carried over, and I was able to jump out of bed and get exercising.  Inertia might have been my response to an emotional speed bump like that one last night had I been in a different space.  If I felt this morning as if I had to start up from a dead stop, trust me, there would have been no 6:30 a.m. exercising going on at my house!  But coming from action mode, it was no problem to regroup and restart myself.  I was really proud of myself but to tell you the truth: it was easy.  Now the flip side of that is:  an object at rest tends to stay at rest.  So, my call to action to you this morning, all you fellow rebounders…ask yourself which you are:  at rest or in motion?  Which do you want to be?  If you are at rest and want to be in motion, creating positive stuff in your life and kicking it into high gear, then stick with me this year and we’ll do it together!  I have no intention of letting go of the tremendous momentum I feel coming into this year.  It’s too good!

Okay, so I leaped into 2010 very excited and maybe just a little overwhelmed?  Lots to do and just seemed in moments, like too little time to do it in.  And doesn’t it all seem like it needs to be done NOW?  And even though logically you know it can’t be, sometimes I have a tendency to want to push the fast forward button so that I can feel the results now rather than be in process….hmmm, so I’m the only one, huh?  That’s okay – as Freud says, “We’re only as sick as our secrets” so that’s not a secret now, so I can breathe – whew….

The very purpose for this blog leading up to the release of my book, Rebounding, was to create an opportunity to share ME with YOU and own the space that I was in, with all its messy imperfections.  We can have a tendency to think that people that write books and articles, that coach other people or speak, feel like they have it all figured out.  HA!  Actually, I’ve discovered it is quite the opposite, those are the people that know that there is SO MUCH they don’t know, and we’re all basically in the same boat, so maybe, just maybe if they share their experiences, someone somewhere will be just a little better off.  They also are the ones that decide that baring their souls somehow offers them solace for being imperfect.  After all, if the world knows that I’m imperfect, flawed, bankrupt, and floundering, then there is no longer fear attached to “what they think”, right?  That is what I am finding in the midst of this all – the perfect right and freedom to be raw and myself with all my stuff front and center.  Rather than making me feel more vulnerable, it is making me stronger, more confident, and much less likely to get caught in those moments of wanting to fast forward through all the painful process of it all.

I’m actually finding that it is the PROCESS that is most important.  Yes, even more important than the results.  The results can be nice too but FREEDOM is found by making today the day that success in being you is found.  I never knew such freedom actually existed, to tell you the truth.  It is giving me the freedom to try to do things differently and stop procrastinating on the hard stuff – after all, what exactly do I have to lose?  If I’m no longer hinging my happiness on some idea of future outcomes, than I am perfectly allowed to BE RIGHT WHERE I AM.  YIPPEE!!!!

My call to action to you today, on this first post of 2010, is to think about how you would, could, rebound confidently into this new year, the new decade if you unhinged your idea of happiness from a future event, condition, circumstance – detached yourself from “what they think” and boldly declared this your year, maybe even your DECADE, of “No Excuses”?  I’ve declared it my year of NO EXCUSE living and I intend to lap up each precious moment and take flying leaps of faith in my powers of resiliency, capability, and problem-solving.  Hello, 2010!

I’ll tell you one of the best parts of being involved with Isagenix is the amazing personal development opportunity.  David Wood, a master trainer for Isagenix, made me see that the story that I tell myself around my life is what largely determines my thoughts and my actions.  Acting out of fear, anxiety, or lack is normal if your reality is perceived to one that is fearful, anxious, and full of scarcity thinking.  But if you change your story….ahh, well that just becomes another thing entirely.

I realized today that I was telling myself a story about waiting.  My story was that I had to wait to have my business where I wanted it and my financial picture stabilized to be my best.  I realized that I was creating a lot of “should’s” and “well, when I…” thoughts that were really holding me back from embracing this very moment right in front of me.  As a result, I wasn’t taking some needed action in accordance with my core values.  Entitling myself to being my best RIGHT NOW is my new story.

My new story allowed me the space to make some remarkable progress this week.  I was able to reconnect with several people that I had been holding back with, to get back into my ideal exercise routine, break way from a stress eating cycle I had been in, to spend time organizing my office and creating my ideal work space, to have a remarkably fulfilling day with my children and husband just hanging out, to follow through on several committments that I had gotten lazy about….in other words, it energized me in an incredible way and allowed me to push past the old cycle of GUILT>>>PROCRASTINATION>>>AVOIDANCE>>>GUILT to create something altogether different. 

Is it possible that instead the REALITY is that business isn’t where I want it to be and my income not stabilized BECAUSE of the STORY I was telling myself about it?  Yes, not just possible but entirely probable.  The story comes first…

So, what is the story you are telling yourself about waiting for your best life?  My guess is that if you identify the story, you’ll identify the key to changing it too! 

My old self was inactive, frustrated that she wasn’t writing regularly, overweight, and less than kind to herself.  I continue to run into that self now and again, plunging back into old patterns that no longer serve me.  The difference is now, when I do run into her, I can see her and I can remind her that she’s changed.  I can even show her before and after pictures!  I can take her to my manuscript, my blog, my journals and say, “See, if you’re so frustrated about not writing, what is all this then??”  Proof positive that I can let go of those old patterns and entitle myself to feel good about my progress.  Despite my recent losses…I need to feel good about my gains.

I had a few of those moments over the last couple months, I must admit.  The decision to file bankruptcy was not an easy one for me and it propelled me back to tons of old emotional baggage that I really hadn’t dealt with in awhile.  Yesterday, I chose to turn in my leased Mercedes and give it back to the dealership.  Yes, it took me about a month to work up to that one.  I mean, really, who wants to give up their 2008 Mercedes and trade it in for a less-than-new ride?  But that was just the surface and I really was more attached to my progress and momentum than I was the car, so that made it infinitely easier, almost exciting, when it all came down.  I was so determined to complete the project that I even hopped in my “new” car afterwards and drove immediately to the DMV, so focused was I on washing what wasn’t real and sustainable out of my life and allowing something new and truer in. 

Little did I know that that would be the one day that the DMV would be closed for training…leading me on a path to visit another office in a not-as-desirable part of town, a part of town that I had frequented eight years ago when I was a newly single mom, receiving public assistance and Food Stamps.  For a half a second, it was depressing going back – had I really just spent eight years in vain?  Rising above my lack to succeed, establishing over a $1.5 million dollar real estate portfolio, creating my own company, finding my leadership voice…only to come right back??  Only to lose it all??  My baggage spoke heavily for a moment, pulling me down with the weight of it – depressing my spirit and momentarily creating the illusion that I hadn’t gotten anywhere at all after all that WORK.  “Wow,” the baggage said. “What a loser!”  (I’m not saying that taking assistance when you need it makes you a loser, but in that moment I felt like a loser because I had worked so hard to rise above and it felt in vain.)

Whew, well thank goodness, that only lasted about a minute because my new self, the one that absolutely knows without a shadow of a doubt that in my losses I have gained incredible lessons…and that in my ability to share my stories, I will be able to help many many other people…that new self piped up quickly.  “Give it a rest, already – that’s simply not true! Enjoy this moment because it is a moment of liberation, of freedom, from all the old patterns and ways of trapping yourself that you carried before!”  And that is so true!  In the last ten years alone, I have experienced:

The death of a marriage

The birth of a child

The death of three grandparents

The birth of another child

The birth of a career

The death of a career

The birth of a business

The death of a business

The birth of an abundant bank account

The death of an abundant bank account

The gaining of 50+ pounds

The losing of 50+ pounds

The birth of a new business

The birth of a kick-ass credit score

The death of my kick-ass credit score

The birth of a book

The birth of a new marriage

AND last, but not least,

Seven physical moves and changes of address!!

I have to say up til this very moment, I have never done that inventory and I’m sure at least a few of those things….say, um, death, divorce, moving, business loss, and bankruptcy…file in somewhere near the top of “Life’s Greatest Stresses” list.  Yes, its time to give myself some credit and kick that old self and those lousy patterns to the curb!!  If nothing else, I preserved my sanity (well, that could be called into question, I suppose…) and lived to tell about it!!

The call to action for you, my readers today, is to grant yourself some grace and ACKNOWLEDGE what you have accomplished and see your old self for what it is….old and tired.  Let go and let’s flow!

Quitting is something akin to failure in the traditional sense, it seems, but letting go of something that is no longer serving you makes good sense to me.  “Never say die” applies to the old school determination of plowing through, slogging through the tough stuff day by day and I get that.  I’m certainly not advocating throwing your responsibilities into the wind and giving up prematurely, before you have done what you could to uphold your end of the bargain.  But oftentimes, I see something other than that going on in myself and in those around me.  I see an almost idiotic attachment to the idea of the struggle itself, to the idea of never giving up, as if killing yourself in the process is somehow required to be a good person. 

I have had a tendency to hang on to what is making me struggle long beyond what normal, common-sensical folks would call reasonable…and from there it is a slippery slope into the unreasonable.  A reasonable business-minded individual would have declared bankruptcy about 10 minutes after their doors shut in 2008 – it took me over a year and a half to call “uncle.”  Maybe I was worried that I would look the failure I already felt I was.  Maybe I was worried that I hadn’t tried everything.  Maybe I just had no framework to offer a bankruptcy – no family history, no business mentorship, no emotional way to figure out what that would mean when I was too new to it.  Whatever the reason, my delaying the inevitable has caused my family more grief, my marriage more stress, my body more abuse (surely that 450 calorie soy chai latte will eventually make it all better…) than ever needed to be caused.  Give it up already!

If I had just one New Year’s resolution brewing, I feel it is this one…one that I still just working out in my own crazy “keep-trying-to-make-it-better brain:  Let go of what isn’t working and just see things for what they are, not what you want them to be or what you are trying to get them to be.  Keep investing instead in what IS working, what is naturally working without forcing it to work.  Okay, 2010….here I come, ready or not!

Talking to people about my upcoming book, Rebounding, and listening to people’s stories has really served to remind me what a universal experience it is to grieve a setback or a loss, especially one that is financial in nature.  When I bring up what I’m going through, many times I see a look of relief on the person’s face as they reveal to me an experience they had, maybe recently maybe 25 years ago.  An experience that they may not have shared with me otherwise.  Why not?  Because we tend to define ourselves in terms of our financial status – we’re successful when we are doing well financially and when we aren’t, we’re not.  And we certainly don’t want anyone to know when we’re not.  The relief that comes along with being able to talk about it for many people is a huge step in the right direction.  It helps to bring closure and

understanding and moves them into a stronger rebounding position.  Many say they have never fully recovered.  Maybe it is because they have never fully allowed themselves to acknowledge that it happened in the first place and publicly made it part of their life.  Shame is a powerful emotion and can stop us up in ways that we don’t even realize.

I want to encourage my readers here to share this forum with those they know that may be having a hard time responding to the current economic conditions in their life, or have recently lost their jobs, their spouse, their life as they know it.  Let’s make it okay to be public with who we really are and what is really going on.  Let’s remove the shame so that we can allow for a moving on that is concrete and that we share with others.  Let’s make it safe to be human, to be imperfect.  Sure it might take some courage at first, but I promise that the pay off is the self-respect that everyone deserves.  Rebounders Unite!

The first day of December…Let’s make it one of playing to our strengths and rebound right into December in grand style!  It dawned on me today that I’ve had a tendency to spend more time dwelling on what I haven’t been 100% at than what I have…and yes, it is effecting me.  It is so easy to be our own worst critics – we learn judgment and criticism from a very young age and it is so very tempting to turn that on ourselves all day long.  Before you know it, all we are is overweight, underpaid, and very very underappreciated.  I know there was a time where that was all I could see – even though I knew stepping out for moments that there was so much more than that to see.

Returning to a place of strength means giving myself the respect that everyone deserves.  Sounds simple, right?  And yet it is so not simple!   We would easily say to someone we respect that we could see struggling to complete a project, “Oh, well, why don’t we find you some help?”  and yet it takes moving mountains sometimes to find help for ourselves when we are struggling.  Or shall I say…it takes that for ME to find help for myself.  Somewhere inside is that small voice that says, “You shouldn’t struggle.  You should be able to do this all by yourself.  Why aren’t you more capable?”  Some people call that voice the Imposter, some the Inner Critic – I just think of that voice as the Meany.  I, for one, can be very mean and cruel to myself.  Playing to my strengths?  Ha!  How could I see the forest of strengths when the Meany is fast and sure to point out all the rotting trees in my path first??

I say, use this first day of December to be kind to yourself and work on only seeing the great things about yourself for a change.  Not only can it help you rebound faster, further, and better than ever – it is a muscle that needs to be strengthened and flexxed!  Who cares that you don’t have everything that everyone else does?  Or can do everything that everyone else can?  Or take longer to do it than anyone else?  WHO REALLY CARES??  Regardless of what they have or do, YOU are worth every bit of respect that you can muster up for yourself and hey, so am I!  Sure it will feel uncomfortable to think about…Hello…shouldn’t that be your signal that you don’t do it enough????  Go practice already and tell me how it goes.  Tell me your strengths – I want to hear ‘em!

Anyone that really knows me, knows that I am enthralled with a blank notebook.  Any notebook, any time.  My kids are very familiar with the “Let’s go buy notebooks!” impulse and now even get excited with me. As it turns out, 98 cents can still buy you a brand new world!

Well, let’s think about it a minute.  In a blank notebook you could plan a new business.  You could design a new home.  You could plan an itinerary for an exciting new trip.  You could create a new budget (okay, yes, that sounds less than exciting).  You could initiate a new fitness program or create a list of to-do’s that lead to the completion of a project.  There are so many possibilities!

And the truth is, we all need blank notebooks in our lives.  They represent HOPE. And the affirmation that indeed anything can start with you and a piece of paper.  The recordation of an idea, a thought, that proceeds action.  Action that leads wherever you want it to!  WOW!  Those simple moments of creating on a clean slate are powerful because it is in that space that any potential that you have is possible of being explored.  The past is the past – whether that holds small failures or massive, fall-flat-on-your-ass failures – it is over.  And a clean notebook is just waiting for you out there to begin again…I challenge you today to stop what you are doing and dream on some blank paper somewhere.  Move on, fellow rebounder, move on!

Begin with the end in mind!  I’ve probably hear that expression 15 times in the last week and when I woke up this morning, it was sitting on my heart.  I knew that if I allowed myself to glide through the day, overeating, overdrinking, and over-escaping I wouldn’t be able to feel this holiday as the day of gratitude that it truly has the potential of being.  It’s always easy for me to be grateful for what is good.  I can say honestly that there isn’t a day that goes by that I pause and recognize how grateful I am for my healthy family and for the love of friends and family around me.  What I’m often not so good at recognizing is gratitude for the things that are challenging me and helping me grow and be a better person. 

Well, today my dog Sadie and I took a gratitude run first thing and 1/2 way through I was in tears and in awe for all that I have been blessed with.  Recalling all the victories of this year, being able to start a new wellness business with Isagenix, is near the top of the list.  It is something my husband and I have been able to share in, and it has challenged me as a new endeavor, but has made me stronger on every level.  Even in the midst of losing so much and having such a huge financial setback, there IS hope and rebounding is a dynamic process that begins with my ability to be grateful for what is right in front of me.  Without my struggle, I may not have been open to Isagenix coming into my life on that level.  I do truly believe that God never gives you what you can’t handle, and He always gives you what you need right when you need it!

I feel blessed that I can share this day with both my new Isagenix family by having dinner with Michele Castle and her children, someone that has blessed me in so many ways, and my extended family by joining them for dessert.  So even though the day is sure to include some eating, setting the tone by taking time out and creating an intention around recognizing even the challenges has made all the difference already today for me!  I may be bankrupt, but not of spirit!

Happy Thanksgiving to All – make today a remarkable day to rebound with gratitude and joy!