If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook these days, you probably have pieced together that I spent an amazing and enlightening weekend in California with the Chopra Center… and had an AMAZING time. Over the next several days, I plan to give you a peek into my experience, but today’s story seemed more important.
There are several things I want to tell you about this adventure: the powerful lessons I learned, the brilliant words Liz Gilbert shared, and what it was like meditating for the very first time. I’m going to get to all of that (and maybe a little bit more)… but today, I want to tell you about my moment of clarity, about my breakthrough.
It happened on Saturday. We had just heard a great session from Mallika Chopra. She spoke of the power of intent, and even hosted a book signing. After getting my book signed, I walked into the next session on Ayurvedic living, taking my seat, and tried to focus on the session. But, I was struggling.
It stemmed from something ridiculous. After seeing an unflattering picture of myself in the morning… I felt terrible. It had been weeks since I felt connected to my weight loss journey. I knew I was up about four pounds and not doing a damn thing to stop it, and sometimes, it takes a picture for me to realize what the heck is going on. I was feeling like a hypocrite and a failure and couldn’t shake the image of what I looked like in that picture. Keep in mind, bad angles suck… and I gave up asking people to retake pics a long time ago. Normally, I just shake it off, but this one singed in my brain for some reason and I was having a hell of a time getting past that image.
As I sat down in the conference room, I wasn’t in the mood to sit silently. There was nothing silent about what was going through my head. I didn’t want to stay to listen to the doctor speak of what I should be eating and what I shouldn’t be eating, while her educated opinion would have been helpful to me during an average day. In this moment, I felt like a complete phony, and I couldn’t take it.
So, I did what I do… I picked up my pen and the journal I had brought with me and I started to get it out of my head and onto some paper. There’s something INCREDIBLY powerful about writing for me, and that is exactly what I did. In the front row of the room. During the session I could have certainly benefitted from, I instead chose to ignore the speaker and have my own personal session in a polka dotted journal.
And, you guys… I stepped out of the room about 5 minutes after I walked in and headed to the ladies room. You see, there was this plush couch in the waiting area in the ladies room. One of the girls I met described it as the most comfortable seat in the house… and that’s where I wanted to be.
I didn’t pick it because of the beautiful symphony of toilets that flushed in the bathroom or to be the greeter to everyone who needed a bio break. I picked it because I wanted to be comfortable, I wanted to be tucked away, and I wanted to write. And it was one of the best hours I spent in Carlsbad.
And, that’s exactly what I did. I wrote, and I wrote, and I wrote… I captured 12 pages during that hour. It started with some ridiculous cursive chatter about 4 pounds… and me whining about how that was embarrassing and the end of the world, and then it morphed into something much more beautiful than I could have imagined.
As I’ve mentioned before, it’s never really about the weight. It’s not. It about how tall I stand. It’s about how I see myself in the mirror. It’s about the self-talk that follows. And, on a weekend where I truly felt transformation underway, I wanted to let go of that four pounds and the mental gymnastics it inspired that day.
Twelve pages later, my tone had changed. My life goals had taken shape. And, I walked out of that ladies room feeling like a million bucks… a woman with a mission.
In that hour, I didn’t lose four pounds. In that hour, I didn’t write up a detailed meal plan about what I was and was not going to eat in upcoming weeks. In this moment, I wrote up what could possibly be the most important plan of my life, and it had nothing to do with weight and everything to do with the type of life I want to live.
That, my dears, I call a BREAKTHROUGH… and quite possibly the reason I traveled to Carlsbad this weekend.
xoxo