Juicy Joy – A Personal Development Book of Authenticity and Self-Love

How is your soul-scrub going? If you’re just now joining us, we’re one third into a massive Let-Go — a spring-cleaning extravaganza on all levels — physical, psychic, and emotional.

I went a bit overboard this past week with the stuff-purging. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. One closet, another closet, a few drawers, a garage . . . until I’d made FIVE FULL-CAR TRIPS to Goodwill. Did my work suffer from this non-stop, OCD-ish, manic purge activity? You bet. Did my kids whine about me not bringing my A-game to parenting them this week? Oh, absolutely.

But was it wicked-worth-it? Hell, yeah! It felt — and continues to feel — FREAKIN’ AMAZING! Who knew how much the clutter-stuff that shares our space could drag down our energy? I mean, I was paying lip service to it when I brought it up last week, but I had no idea. lol

And that meditation for soul-cleansing is always so cathartic. I hope you’ve made liberal use of it, and are feeling the yummy, freeing effects. (If you missed that download last week, see prior post.)

Okay, ready for the next step? This one is a biggie. We’re going to clean out that cobwebby cupboard of beliefs you hold about yourself. I talk a lot in Juicy Joy Training about your “filter.” Your filter is that energetic membrane that separates you from the rest of the world and determines your perception of reality.

We’re constantly deleting perceptions and allowing other perceptions into our consciousness, and what gets deleted and what gets allowed in is determined by our filters. All the beliefs we’ve accumulated throughout our lifetimes (conscious and unconscious) are what make up this filter. Filter-Fixing is the Juicy Joy process by which we eradicate the beliefs that aren’t serving us, and enhance and magnify the ones that are. When you understand Filter-Fixing techniques, you can actually begin choosing what gets deleted and what gets allowed through.

Changing the beliefs that make up your filter changes your life. Today we’re going to look at the beliefs you have about yourself. Is there anything about you that you’d like to be different? The writing processes we do in Juicy Joy Training are called NakedWriting, because the goal is to be as emotionally naked as possible when you do them. So set the intention now to be emotionally naked as you do the following exercise. It’ll customize the JuicyFeel meditation for you.

NakedWriting: Lists About You

Without over-thinking it, make a “Like” list of all the things you like about yourself. Include aspects of your personality, physical appearance, your intellect and abilities, your strengths and weaknesses. Then make a “Don’t Like” list of all the things you wish were different in all those categories.

Look at the items on each list. Which list has more items that you spend a lot of time thinking about and giving attention to? You’re more focused on the second list, aren’t you? Doesn’t it make sense that these aspects of you would be glaringly present in your reality, given all the attention they’ve been getting from you?

These two lists are showing you what’s in your filter regarding your perception of yourself. The things on your “Don’t Like” list are there because you’ve had some situations or relationships in your past that lodged judgments of those things in your filter. Period. They are not true in any objective sense of the word. They’re showing up as “real” in your physical world for no reason other than the fact that they have taken up residence in your filter and you have nourished them with your attention. So let’s do a bit of spring-cleaning on your filter.

Take the list of things you love about yourself and add to it, but this time, don’t be restricted by “reality.” Add any attributes you wish you had. To fully clear your filter of the items on your “Don’t Like” list, you’ll need to reverse each of them by putting its opposite on this list. For instance, if you have “clumsy” on your “Don’t Like” list, you’d add “graceful” to your expanding “Like” list. Make the “Like” list as long and luxurious as you want, adding whatever is important to you. You can include personality traits like confidence or kindness, physical traits like fitness, external labels like job title or education achieved. This list defines your best self, precisely as you would like to be.

Done? Okay, now stretch your mind for a moment and see if you can wrap your head around this crazyass statement: Your best self is your true self. This “Like” list came from your deeper consciousness, your spirit aspect. It’s in alignment with what you believe would bring you the most joy, therefore it’s part of your soul’s plan — the plan that the Universe is always helping you out with. This ideal you is your soul-self, the you that’s been around since the big bang, or whatever you believe started it all.

The version of you with all those judgments on your “Don’t Like” list is a far more recent creation. It’s clearly the impostor. Listening to the following JuicyFeel meditation will spring-clean all those energy-sucking, erroneous beliefs from your filter. It’s embedded with subliminal messages that Eldon Taylor (top dog in the subliminal messaging industry, and very cool guy) put on there for me himself.

Meditation for Spring-Cleaning Beliefs

Spend as much time with this process as you possibly can this week. Do this instead of watching TV or stalking your friends on Facebook. Do it as you fall asleep at night, and in the morning as soon as you wake up. The more you do it, the more natural it will feel and the more you’ll look forward to it. You’ll probably want to make adjustments and tweaks here and there. Go ahead. Let Mirror You evolve into ever-widening realms of fabulousness.

Think about Mirror You throughout your day. Think about how exceptional it feels to be that You and little by little, you will become more and more like Mirror You in your daily life. It will be a natural, easy process. You won’t have to struggle to make the changes. You’ll be led by your joy, not by some nagging, guilty sense that you need to improve yourself.

Have fun with this super-critical step this week, and I’ll bring you some new tools next Friday.

Crazy, right? Everyone says gratitude’s the shZizzle! But in working with my Joy-Training clients, I’ve found that very often there’s a smidge of a belief — way underneath there — that if we’re really grateful, it means we don’t deserve the thing we’re grateful for. Like: “Oh, thank you; I’m so grateful to you; I don’t deserve this . . .” In a super-subtle way, it puts you in a slightly lower position to the thing you’re grateful for. And if you don’t fully believe – on every level – that you deserve a thing, you are most definitely subconsciously blocking yourself from receiving it.

Know what word I like better? “Appreciation.” You can appreciate a gorgeous work of art, for example, without any of that subtext. When you’re appreciating something, you’re merging with the wonderfulness of it. It’s like you share its energy; you’re feeling joy from this thing, period. You’re not feeling indebted to it, the way “gratitude” almost, sort-of implies.

The most insidious side-effect of all this focus on the importance of gratitude is this: It causes a lot of people to look at their lives and say, “Wow, I should be thankful for this.” But what if that feeling isn’t authentic for you? Then you add the “should be thankful” judgement to that laundry-list of judgements you carry around about yourself. And compounding that list does nothing for your self-love. So if you’re feeling like your life sucks right now, I want you stop trying to be grateful for it. It’s too hard. I’m going to show you how to “appreciate” it instead.

Let’s say, for instance, you feel a financial lack right now. You’d like to have more money.

Well, you have some money, right? If I said to you now, “I want you to be grateful for your money,” you could probably stretch and do it, but you’d most likely feel a little resistance when I suggest that. Like: “Ha! Money is the source of all my stress. How can I feel grateful? Sure I have some money, but it’s hard to feel grateful when it’s not nearly as much as I need/want, blah, blah, blah . . .”

But what if I said, “Can you appreciate the money you have?” It’s easier, right? You do have some money, and you did have breakfast, and I presume no one reading this is sleeping under a bridge tonight. So . . . that’s something to appreciate, right?

Maybe it’s not money for you. Maybe there’s something else in your life you feel you’re lacking. What one thing, if it were to materialize tomorrow, would make you feel complete, joyful, like you’d arrived at peace? See if you can identify it as a concept word like money, fitness, success, love . . . .

Now whatever it is, I want you to acknowledge that there is some of this thing in your life. If you want to be thinner, or more fit, or more healthy, you can probably acknowledge that you possess some degree of health in this moment, right? There are people who have less health than you have. If love is what you’re lacking, I want to congratulate you for loving yourself enough to read this post. You do have some love in your life.

Point is: I guarantee you that there are multiple people in this universe walking around right now with half of whatever you have in this area of lack that you identified. Half your money, half your health, half your love.

So you can see that there’s something you can appreciate about this specific area of your life. Not necessarily be thankful about it – not if it hurts – but you can appreciate it, right?

Well, guess what. Appreciation has a causative effect on growth. What you appreciate grows. Even in the financial world, this is the word they use! In the bank, if your money is “appreciating,” what is it doing? It’s growing. You’re getting more of it.

It’s okay to want more of this thing. But only, only, only from the space of appreciation. If you didn’t appreciate it, you wouldn’t want it to begin with! Why do you even want more money? Because you have some money, and you appreciate what you’re able to do with it! If you lived on Krypton and you’d never heard of money, you wouldn’t want it. I want you to internalize this right now. This is an opportunity to make an energetic shift that can have freakin’ miraculous repercussions for you!

If you want from a space of lack, you’ll never manifest jack. Wanting needs to be exciting! Fun! That’s where the creative energy is. In Juicy Joy Training, we wiggle our hips when we say the word “want.” We have a gleam in our eyes.

Wanting a thing = loving it. You can’t know you love it unless you have — or have had — some degree of it. Ergo: Wanting = Having and Loving! Wanting = Having and Loving!

When you get really immersed in the appreciation of having the thing you want, you’ll be dialed into the right frequency to allow more of that thing to flow toward you. That’s the zone of effortless creativity. Appreciation is a form of love, so whatever it is you want more of, the secret to getting it is to deliberately focus your attention on your genuine love for this thing!

There’s a Kafka quote I adore: “By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.” So desires are good! Necessary! They just have to come from love, not lack.

I wish you happy fulfillment of all of your desires. I’m appreciating you this holiday season.

It’s my birthday, and this is what my calendar screams at me each Sept 2: “Hey, Dummy! Your precious, beautiful life is happening! What the frig are you doing with it?” In recent years, I’ve always had a saucy, self-lovin’ retort ready. After all, joy, authenticity, and self-love are my gig. I’ve got to walk my talk. Model my wares.

But today I find myself at a loss to respond. It’s been so much limbo. I’d planned for this year to bring enormous shifts – professionally and personally – and it’s turned out to be something quite different. A year of dipping my toe into stream after stream, never jumping in. A rudderless year of perpetual anticipation.

It’s like I’m on an island, and all my end-goals are on another island. I start building a bridge to take me over there, and then that bridge doesn’t feel exactly right. So I abandon it and start building another one. But then I get the idea for a third bridge, so I start building that one instead. What do I have to show for this year? A kickass collection of half-built bridges. And I still haven’t touched that destination island. (Thanks, Gia, for inspiring the bridge metaphor.)

But has it been a bad year? Not in the least. I’m beyond blessed to have the phenomenal friends, family, and opportunities I have. I wake up profoundly, through-the-roof grateful every single day. And maybe that’s all I need to do right now – just keep being full-force grateful for the mountains of love I’m in the position to give and receive, even as I struggle with career crossroads, a dying mom, and all the personal mini-escapades that cause my life to feel like someone’s pushed the cosmic pause-button on it.

I trust that Universe is behind all of this. I trust that the pause-button has its divinely perfect purpose in the grand scheme of what I’m here to do. I know that if I just keep waking up each day sincerely asking Source how I can most passionately and effectively deliver the gifts I’m here to give, that eventually the play-button will get pushed again. And from that inevitable future perspective, I’ll look back and see, with chuckle-inducing clarity, how everything – including all my half-built bridges – has been a necessary stepping-stone toward that exquisitely sweet moment.

In some ways then, the cycle will probably start all over again. As it should. But in answer to my calendar’s impertinent question about what I’m doing with my precious, beautiful life . . . this time I have to respond, “I’m being it. That’s all.”

I’m liking 2012. I’m the new featured article today on Hay House’s awesome website, HealYourLife.com. I rang in the New Year with lots of laughter, love and cherished family. From right here, right now, 2012 looms like a shiny, radiant bucket of promise and wonder and juicy, juicy possibilities. I’m wishing you every good thing this year. You have all you need to create whatever your heart is most longing for. You are meant to love your life and your self, and you are powerful beyond your imagining. Make 2012 the year that you claim your freedom, your passion, your YOU. I’d love to be part of your journey. 

Read my New Year’s Day article at the link above!

A new year, a fresh start . . . This is the best time of the whole year to intentionally let go of every emotional albatross that’s been holding you back! Many of my students come into Juicy Joy training with a troubled childhood story they’re carrying around like a sack of gravel. Great gains can come from recognizing the factors that led us to create our world-views, but the recognition itself is worthless unless we take active steps to rewire our early programming.

Each of us has many, many factors contributing to our own unique perspective on the world and our place in it, as well as many reasons for our subconscious tendencies to limit our own enjoyment of our successes and blessings. But for people who have suffered childhood abuse (emotional, verbal, or physical) it’s safe to assume that’s a major contributor to their feelings of unworthiness.

If I’m talking to you, let’s try a smidge of inner-child/re-parenting work to see if we can shake loose a bit of that harmful childhood program . . .

(Find this exercise and the rest of this article at Aspire Magazine.)

Happy end of 2011! Happy new beginnings!