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  This step doesn’t stand alone.

  You can’t just think promotion, you have to kick ass at your job. You can’t just think love, you have to put yourself out there and meet people. You can’t just think healthy, you have to take care of yourself, eat healthfully, have fun, and exercise.

  Everything I’m telling you in this chapter, the prayer, the meditating, the broadcasting, all of it is necessary to make room for cosmic intervention, but when that intervention comes, you’d better be ready. There’s no such thing as luck, so kiss that idea goodbye. Life is about preparation meeting opportunity. When your destiny comes calling, you’d better have taken the proper actions so you can rise to meet it, or you could blow it.

  This action part is the key to why so many of the self-help/law-of-attraction books already out on the shelves are ultimately not very helpful and even potentially harmful. Like a diet book that tells you that you don’t have to count calories, they prey on your apathy and indirectly encourage lethargy and laziness. They’ll talk about the power of positive thinking and tell you that if you just wish it, it will come, but they leave out the part about putting in the effort. In effect, they tell you it is okay to be a passive bystander watching your life rather than living it full throttle.

  This type of entitlement talk is dangerous. Having the right to happiness means having the right to earn it, not having it given to you without effort and action on your part. When people start believing that progress is inevitable and life is easy, they may lose the courage and the determination needed in the face of adversity. This doesn’t mean that our natural state isn’t contentment and happiness; it just means that success in life is a proactive formula. Often we have to fight for what we believe in and persevere. Remember the old saying “God helps those who help themselves”? Make it your mantra.

  Books that promise success without action sell because their messages are easy for people to swallow, but they don’t work. The formula is incomplete. You’ll notice that this book has three parts. That’s because this book is not BS. This is just the first step; it’s important, but without the other two, it’s useless. Sort of like an engine with no gasoline. Dig?

  Even if you are a manifesting machine, visualizing your goals and bringing action to your intentions, sometimes in life things don’t turn out the way you want. In life there are such things as paradoxes, when outcomes contradict our expectations. But if our intentions are good, our actions will be, too, and they will have a positive result, even if it’s not the one we expected or thought we wanted.

  Let’s say that I want McDonald’s to go out of business, and I visualize their stores closing down and being replaced by their opposite, healthy mom-and-pop restaurants. I take as much action as possible to make it happen. I spread the word about McDonald’s use of unhealthy ingredients, I picket outside their restaurants, and so on. Here’s the catch: simultaneously, McDonald’s CEO Jim Skinner is dreaming the exact opposite. He is visualizing billions of people walking through those Golden Arches to buy his burgers and fries. He is starting initiatives like the dollar menu to bring people flocking to his franchises in droves.

  Bottom line: one of us will NOT get exactly what we want. But remember that on a subatomic level, we are all one and all connected. So when our intentions are in alignment with the greater good, positive things will happen.

  Maybe you’re thinking, What’s the point? If I want something and someone else doesn’t, what are the chances I’m going to be the one to get my way? The reality is that when you put that intention and action into the world, it has to come back to you. It might not look exactly how you’d planned. I might not shut down McDonald’s, but my efforts to do so might inspire McDonald’s to offer healthier menu options and alert their billions of customers to pay attention to the foods they are eating and get healthier. I might even end up opening my own chain of health food stores to help to change the world, and I might find happiness in that endeavor, despite the fact that McDonald’s is still a profitable company. And down the road, McDonald’s might do something with their profits that helps to cure a disease like cancer. I doubt it, but hey, you never know.

  There is just no telling what might come of your actions if you take them with deliberate and positive intention, and that’s where you have to trust yourself and the things you do. They will pay off, but possibly in ways you didn’t expect, and you must keep your eyes open so that you can recognize life’s blessings.

  Think on this: no positive thought or hope goes unrewarded. So stay present and focused in each moment and bring your A game to EVERY situation, no matter how unrelated it may seem to your goal. Intend the best and take positive action at every turn, whenever possible. Transformation isn’t a future event, it’s a present activity, and the closest you can come to predicting what your future holds is to start creating it now.

  Before we get to Step Two, I’m going to leave you with a personal anecdote.

  In my midtwenties I wasted several years of my life at a talent agency, pursuing a career as a Hollywood agent. I toiled away miserably, thinking that this career was what I wanted. Well, life took its course, and I was fired. I was devastated—this wasn’t part of my plan. What was I gonna do? How would I make money? Ultimately that circumstance forced me back into personal training, which is where my true fate lay. At first I fought it, but I needed the money, so I took a job as a physical therapy aid and personal trainer at a sports medicine facility. Almost immediately I remembered the strength and joy I’d gotten out of being healthy and helping others do the same. I began to understand that my true calling was in the world of health and wellness.

  By twenty-eight, I was happy again and back to doing what I loved, but I was still somewhat frustrated that I had wasted four years of my life in a career that wasn’t right for me. I believe that everything happens for a reason, but for the life of me I couldn’t see the reason for those lost years. I had started out as a personal trainer, and did it from the ages of seventeen to twenty-three. Why the detour? I put that perplexity aside and stayed focused on the positive; I had made a change and was following my heart now. And soon I realized that my real passion was in getting people healthy in ALL aspects of their lives. And not being one to do things halfway, I wanted an international platform from which to get my message out. So I began to meditate and pray on it. In the years to come, that platform would manifest, and in the process, I would realize the incredible value of my time there.

  It turned out that because of the relationships I had formed while working in showbiz, I started to get a lot of celebrities and industry execs as clients. When I went on to open my own sports medicine facility, it took off largely because of connections I’d made during the four years I’d “wasted” as an agent. Here’s the cherry on top: during my time at the agency, another agent became a friend and was now working out at my gym. He had heard about The Biggest Loser and persuaded NBC to hire me for the job. Had I not worked with this guy for those four years, and had I not been able to build a high-profile clientele, I never would have gotten the chance to be on Biggest Loser. All those seeds of effort paid off—just not in a form I had expected.

  You see, it’s the stuff from Step One that brought opportunity to my door. I had figured out where my passion was, I’d visualized it clearly, and I’d prayed and meditated to create a new reality for myself, focusing my mind intensely on my dream. All of that ripened the circumstances that led to my getting the job with NBC. But once that chance came, rather than sitting back in contentment at landing the job, I worked my ass off to rise to the occasion. Had I not done so, I would likely have bombed at the audition and never heard from them again. Or I would have gotten the job but sucked at it, and my career would have been over before it began. Ultimately, the combination of will, fate, and hard work brings it all together.

  I know I’m on TV, not the average profession, and mine is not the average life, but yours doesn’t have to be either. I promise, the same principles apply to you
, whoever you are and whatever your situation.

  I’m not here to try to change your fundamental beliefs about God or religion, but chances are your beliefs, whatever they are, can happily coexist with what I’ve laid out here. Nor am I out to forever end the science-versus-religion debate—if Einstein couldn’t comprehend God, chances are I’m not going to be able to answer those profound questions either.

  What I do know, though, is that prayer, visualization, manifestation, and meditation work. I have seen it firsthand in my own life and in the lives of my teachers and students, people in all kinds of professions and from all types of backgrounds. (And if my word’s not good enough, I even threw in a little scientific proof for you.)

  Your mind is powerful, but you have to choose to make that power work for you. It can imprison you or set you free, depending on how you think and what you believe. Which brings us to the Step Two of the system: learning to believe in yourself.

  Now that you’ve done the work of figuring out what you want, it’s time to start the internal work of assessment and reconfiguration to believe in your ability to achieve it. I can sit here all day teaching you how to connect with your passion, how to bring your dreams out of the dark. I can talk until I’m hoarse about your incredible power to be the architect of your own reality. I can even give you a step-by-step plan to help you bring action to your life-changing intentions—that’s coming in Step Three. There’s only one catch.

  If you don’t believe in yourself, in your power to change, and in your deservingness, if you don’t REALLY believe you can achieve your dream, you won’t. It’s that simple. We all have the ability to turn ourselves around and start living our dreams; the only reason you’re not living yours right now is that your life experience so far has stripped away your belief in your unlimited potential.

  So in this step I’m going to teach you how to build that belief back up. I will teach you how to reboot your thought processes so you can stop getting in your own way and start letting your power work for you. You’ll learn to channel and move through fear, redefine your self-image in the light of acceptance and love, bolster your positive self-esteem, and develop healthy ego strength. Basically, I’m going to make you unstoppable. Up for it? I know you are.

  It’s a multistep process; it won’t happen overnight, and it involves some hard questions and even harder answers. It’s going to take courage on your part. You’ve got to be ready to take some risks, to get out of your comfort zone; you’ve even got to be prepared to fail, because you will fail—we all do it, and it’s a valuable part of the process, as I will explain. I know it’s scary to think about change, and the possibility of putting yourself out there and failing. It’s common to fear exploring what’s uncertain and unknown. But here’s the thing: until you are ready to confront these fears and fight through them, nothing’s going to change. Remember, what you think and what you believe drives everything you do—or don’t do. So let’s get your head in the game and out of your way.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  TIME FOR YOUR WAKE-UP CALL

  Hundreds upon thousands of self-help books have been sold based on the myth that change is easy. Think great things about yourself as you’re nodding off one night, and in the morning you’ll be a new person, the kind who sees the glass half full. Sure, on rare occasions people can “just change,” but for the most part that’s bullshit. Change is not that easy. We’re all carrying around years of emotional baggage, deeply entrenched sets of behavior and defense mechanisms that repeat and repeat as we go about our lives, often seriously sabotaging us. And in many cases we don’t even know it. To change our lives, we first have to change our behavior, and to do that, we first have to wake up to it. This step is all about identifying the self-destructive things we do every day and getting to the root of the negativity behind them so we can break out and move forward.

  You’re probably thinking, Great, here comes the psychobabble. Calm down. A lot of people scoff at the idea of psychotherapy. Maybe they like the stiff-upper-lip approach to life. Maybe they think psychotherapy is just for psychos. Nothing could be more foolish. Therapy, much like this chapter, is nothing more than a tool for self-discovery, a means to unravel your self-defeating habits and attitudes so you can transform them into behaviors that enable you to live better. Period.

  If you’re still not convinced, watch what you say, because I’ve been in therapy since I was five. My mother started me at such a young age because I was really angry at my dad, and it was coming out in the form of night terrors. Therapy literally changed my life, and I’ve been in it pretty much ever since. Because of my years on the couch, I’ve gotten to know my dark side, and I’ve learned how to keep it in check. At this point my self-destructive behaviors are like old enemies that I’ve done battle with again and again—I know all the angles, all the moves I need to dodge them and prevent them from fucking up my life. “Know your enemy,” goes the saying; after years of help and self-exploration, I know my inner enemies, the triggers that make them rear their ugly heads, and the weapons I have at my disposal to sap them of their power.

  Understanding how you think about yourself and why you react to life the way you do will allow you to change any behavior, knock out any mental obstacle, and create any reality you desire.

  Many of us struggle with this type of self-exploration because we interpret our negative behaviors as flaws. This takes a huge swipe at our ego and might leave us feeling empty or worthless: like we are wrong or bad in some way. So we stay in denial and don’t work on these negative behaviors. The irony is that all people have flaws and destructive patterns, which they play out to varying degrees. What should make you any different? This is part of the human condition, and the ability to acknowledge these shortcomings is the first step toward recovery. To move forward, you must see your shortcomings as opportunities for growth—which is exactly what they are.

  Let me give you an example using a former contestant of mine. He was a great guy, but I could see he had a chip on his shoulder the size of Texas. He needed to feel positively acknowledged by everyone around him at all times; otherwise he would go on the attack, suspecting that this person hated him or that person was ignoring him. Really the people he was projecting all this negativity onto were just going about their own lives. But he did it with everyone: other contestants in the house, me, even the show’s producers. This behavior pattern was effectively negating the opportunity he was being given on the show, because he was alienating the people around him who were there to help. But because he was unaware of his own behavior, he couldn’t stop. And as a result, he was living his life in victim mode and sabotaging his chances of success.

  Well, if you know me at all, you know that I was not about to let this ride. I needed to show him how and why he was pushing everyone away, so he could eliminate this destructive pattern and improve not just his Biggest Loser experience but all aspects of his life. So I set him up one day when we were all at the gym. I worked him and worked him and beat his ass relentlessly for hours, and no matter how well he did, I acted dissatisfied, knowing that denying him the pat on the back he expected would push his buttons in the worst way. Sure enough, not long into the session he lost it, getting angry and upset at me. So I asked him, “Why do you need my validation? Why aren’t you able to be proud of what you are doing without my acknowledging it? After all, aren’t you here for yourself? This isn’t about pleasing me—this is about learning to exercise, learning to eat right, and losing weight. Who cares whether a ‘good job’ or a ‘you make me so proud’ comes out of my mouth? My opinion won’t affect your ultimate goal of weight loss or health either way.”

  He got so mad at me, he actually stormed off set, before the workout session was over. That was only going to mean less of a result for him come weigh-in, and that would affect his ultimate success.

  He had to make a choice. He could ignore the pushy trainer chick, refuse to personalize her mood, and get on with the workout; or he could take everythin
g personally, get really upset, and run away from all of it, leaving anger and drama in his wake. But because he was so in the grip of his unconscious behaviors, sleepwalking through his own life, he wasn’t aware of these options, or how his own choices were hurting him in the long run. He didn’t see that he had the choice to stay on track with his workout and get closer to his weight-loss goals; he reacted impulsively without understanding the nature of those impulses. He had done that in similar situations all his life, without realizing how much he had been hurting himself the whole time.

  Of course I ran him down straightaway to talk to him. Ultimately, I was able to help him understand what he was doing, again and again, in all aspects of his life, and why. It turned out that his dad wasn’t around much during his childhood and wasn’t all that affectionate when he was. He gave his son no praise or adoration, no hugs of fatherly pride. Naturally this was painful, as it would be for any young man idealizing his dad. And it left him with an intrinsic lack of self-worth, a hole he was constantly looking to other people to fill. His dad forgot his soccer games, missed his graduation, and so on, and he interpreted that to mean he wasn’t a good enough son for his father to be engaged and interested. These issues were about his father’s shortcomings, not his, but he wasn’t capable then of realizing that. He had replicated that dynamic in all areas of his own life, projecting his relationship with his father onto all his present relationships in an unconscious attempt to win approval and get validation. But because he was looking in all the wrong places, he continued to find only frustration and inertia.

  Once I helped him wake up to his behavior, he was able to get out in front of it. By recognizing that he was on autopilot, hard-wired to react to his history rather than to his present, he was able to take charge of his daily interactions and prevent these triggers from disrupting his life. He was able to see that whatever he felt in the gym toward me had nothing to do with me, someone he’d known for three weeks, and everything to do with his striving for his father’s attention and approval. The situation was a workout session with a tough trainer, nothing more, nothing less. By uncoupling his past from his present, he was able to build up his self-esteem enough to grieve over not having a more supportive dad, move on from it, and arrive at a place where his approval of himself was enough.