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  For a friend of mine, a lack of awareness, forgiveness, or responsibility created a perfect storm of detrimental outcomes that eventually forced him into bankruptcy.

  I ran into this friend recently and asked him how he was doing. He told me he’d had a hard year. He was financially wiped out. He’d gotten a DUI. His dog needed an enormously expensive surgery. His car had been repossessed. All these financial hardships had destroyed his credit, and he had had to declare bankruptcy. Now he couldn’t get a loan for a new car, and he was having trouble renting an apartment. Even worse, he was on the rocks—again—with his girlfriend. My friend was feeling very sorry for himself, but let’s look at how he alone was responsible for his situation.

  First off, the DUI: he shouldn’t have been drinking and driving! Had he not made that bad choice, he would not have had to spend thousands of dollars in legal fees and court costs. That said, it certainly could have been worse—he could have killed himself or an innocent person. As for his dog’s surgery, there is such a thing as pet insurance, and it’s cheap! Maybe $150 a year. Had he been responsible and planned ahead by buying the insurance, the dog’s surgery would have been covered. The car that was repossessed was way out of his price range, but he had decided to buy it anyway instead of doing his homework and buying a car he could afford. As a result, his income took a big hit. And last, the girlfriend situation was avoidable. This was a girl he had been on and off with for months. He was playing out the same abusive dynamic that he had had with his mother. Had he chosen to do the deeper work on himself, he probably wouldn’t have returned to an unhealthy relationship that always left him in the lurch—especially when he was going through a tough time in other areas of his life.

  You may think I’m being unduly harsh: Jillian, where’s your compassion? But is it compassionate to hide the truth? Is it good to foster a friend’s self-destructive behaviors? I don’t think so.

  But let’s get back to you. Are you beginning to see the patterns that are holding you back? Nine times out of ten we unconsciously create a reality we don’t really want, then blame our problems on “bad luck.”

  Bullshit.

  We are powerful beings who create bad situations in an unconscious attempt to teach ourselves something.

  Taking It to the Streets

  Here’s another example for you, and this one’s personal. As I am writing this book, I am homeless, and it is creating a massive amount of stress in my life. A while back I decided to redo my house. I began construction, thinking the work would take only three or so months to complete. I took a three-month lease on a temporary place where we could stay, figuring we would be happily back home by the time it expired. While we were in the makeshift quarters, I decided to rescue a couple of dogs from the animal shelter—bringing my total dog population to four—thinking we would all have a smooth transition from leased home to fully finished house. Not so. The lease has expired.

  So now I am homeless with four pups. All this stress, which I created for myself, could have been avoided. I could have done more research on how long construction takes and then added a few months for safety. I could have secured a longer lease on the temporary house. I could have waited to rescue the dogs until I was firmly ensconced in my house. When I analyze why I made these decisions, I realize it came down to impulsivity caused by anxiety. I was feeling upset about something work related and began all these projects to distract myself.

  It’s fine to redo your house, and it’s fine to adopt dogs, but these are decisions that should be made with much more careful consideration than I gave them. Had I not been anxious and impulsive, I wouldn’t be uprooted and could have managed all the situations seamlessly.

  My lesson learned for the next time? When I am feeling upset, feel the upset. There is no getting around it; it’s going to come out. And should I choose to engage in a project as a coping mechanism, then I must not be impulsive about it. I need to do the proper research to avoid as many stress-inducing hassles as possible.

  WORKING IT OUT:

  WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM?

  I want you to take a moment here and write down all the problems that are plaguing you at this moment, from big to small. Now ask yourself what you contributed in creating your current situation. Did the professor fail you because you never went to class? Did your boss yell at you because you were on YouTube instead of working? Did your girlfriend leave you because you spent more time watching football with the guys than hanging out with her? Did you get mugged because you were hanging out in a bad part of town? Are you one hundred pounds overweight because you are rebelling against your parents for being critical when you were a kid? Did you attract the guy who treats you bad because you are playing out your unhealthy dynamic with your father? Were you diagnosed with lung cancer because you smoked like a chimney for twenty years?

  I’m sure I seem unsympathetic here, but I guess that’s because I am … if you do nothing to change your circumstances. At some point you have to stop acting as though life is happening to you and acknowledge the ways you are happening to it. Once you take responsibility for your side of the street, you grant yourself the power to improve every aspect of your life by simply acting and behaving differently. So do yourself a favor. Wake up already, pay attention, take responsibility, and learn life’s lessons sooner rather than later so you don’t keep making the same mistakes.

  CHAPTER SIX

  GET AN ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT

  Once you have taken responsibility for the things you have done to create your current situation—and forgiven yourself for it, as you’re only human!—it’s time to start the slow and sometimes scary process of laying the real foundation for change.

  I can lay out a step-by-step plan of action for you to follow to reach your goal, but unless you do the internal work, you won’t get anywhere. Your attitudes and beliefs create your reality. What you perceive to be true becomes your reality. And so if you are going to change your reality, you have to give your attitude an overhaul from the ground up. This chapter will deal with your inner ’tude; after that we’re on to the outside realm.

  INNER ’TUDE

  You may have seen me on Loser screaming furiously at contestants who let the words “I can’t” pass their lips. Okay, yes, I scream at them for a lot of things. But seriously, “I can’t” really pisses me off. Why? Because if you say it, you believe it, and it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. But flip it around, and the same is true of saying “I can.”

  It’s true at every level: you attract what you focus on, and you achieve what you believe. If you are constantly saying to yourself that you can’t, that you’re not good enough, that you’re a born failure, then that’s the reality that you’re going to make for yourself.

  I’m not talking about the law of attraction, or any of the mystical magic of quantum mechanics I discussed in Chapter 3. I’m talking about the hard-core reality that your thoughts affect your behaviors, and your behaviors create your reality. This principle applies to every aspect of your life. So gearing your thought process into an “I can” mentality, and steering your mind away from fear-based scenarios, are critical.

  Let me give you a few examples. Suppose you have a boyfriend (or girlfriend) who is controlling and doesn’t give you any freedom. He makes you feel suffocated. So then you don’t want to share any information with him, but that makes him even more insecure and controlling. Or suppose you have a boss who undervalues and mistrusts his employees. In turn, his employees steal from him, half-ass their jobs, or quit—because they have no loyalty to such a person and feel that turnabout is fair play. Or suppose you have an ultra-needy friend who never knows when to stop talking or when to leave. People avoid her like the plague, making her feel more alone and thus more needy. I’ve seen people running on the treadmill who say “I can’t,” then get so panicked and unfocused, they trip and injure themselves, creating a scenario where they literally can’t.

  We create what we fear. On some level I think we do it on pu
rpose. We manifest our fears because they hold our deepest life lessons. And if we don’t realize this, then we will never arrive at a place of triumph where we are able to beat our fears. This can significantly affect the quality of our lives.

  Here’s a fear I struggle with: I can be kind of high-strung sometimes, especially when it comes to work. One of my big anxiety triggers is feeling out of the loop—it brings up major issues about control and trust for me. But in the past, when my business partner would fill me in to put me in the loop, I would stress out about every little thing. So he stopped filling me in on the day-to-day stuff so I wouldn’t freak out on him. But knowing he was keeping me out of the loop on purpose just made me more freaked out. It was a whole crazy cycle. So we made a deal: he would tell me everything, but the second I started to freak out, he’d stop. Now he will point out my behavior, remind me of our arrangement, and literally give me a time-out. I will take five minutes, do some deep breathing, get my anxiety in check, and then come back to the conversation with a level head. By implementing this arrangement, I took responsibility for the fact that my anxiety can get in my way, then put a game plan in place to control my anxiety, maintain focus, and power through. Get it?

  Part of our work is to learn to look at the bigger lesson. I learned from this episode that I need to work on trusting people and releasing some amount of control. If I could do that, I’d get much more done in a day, and it would probably add years to my life.

  Have you noticed that most things you are afraid of come to pass? If you fear being alone, are you perpetually single? If you fear being overweight, do you find it impossible to stop overeating? If you are afraid of being broke, do you find yourself constantly struggling to make ends meet? This exercise is meant to show you that your behavior is at the root of all self-fulfilling prophecies. There is no magic to the way things manifest in life. Ninety-nine percent of the time it’s our conduct and our actions that create our circumstances. It’s not bad luck or serendipity—all these things are a direct result of our attitude and thought processes.

  NOTHING TO FEAR BUT FEAR ITSELF

  One of my Biggest Loser contestants was terrified of getting hurt by his fiancée. All through his childhood his father told him never to trust women. (His father had undergone a terrible divorce.) Well, his warnings had a major impact on this contestant. He fell in love with a lovely woman but became panicked she would betray or hurt him. He might have expressed his feelings to her about his fears and insecurities; she could have reassured him, and they could have worked through his issues together. Instead he reacted unconsciously and began sabotaging the relationship. He acted as if he were indifferent to her and withdrew emotionally, so he would not get too invested in her and would be shielded from heartbreak if she ever did leave. Ultimately, his behavior created the very thing he feared the most: she left him. He was and still is devastated.

  Here’s another story for you. Lisa was a contestant on the Biggest Loser ranch. She was constantly talking about how she hated it and wanted to go home, yet she wasn’t losing weigh-ins or falling below the line. Leaving Biggest Loser is easy—you can literally walk out the door, or you can have a crappy weigh-in, fall below the line, and get voted out. But she never did either of these things.

  Well, I got sick of hearing her complaints, so I confronted her. “Why do you keep saying you want to leave, but then don’t back it up by actually leaving? Don’t you know how many people would kill to be here? What is this behavior of yours?”

  It took some badgering, but I finally got the answer out of her. She didn’t want to leave Biggest Loser at all—she wanted to stay more than anything. But she was feeling out of control. There was so much game playing going on that she felt she wouldn’t be able to stay. If she actually got sent home, she would be devastated, so she began to “protect herself” by saying things like “I hate it here. I can’t wait to leave. I just want to go home.” She was rejecting the rejecter. It’s a textbook defense mechanism where we convince ourselves we don’t like the person who we feel is rejecting us in order to avoid feeling disappointment or loss.

  But rejecting the rejecter is NOT a productive thing to do, and here’s why. By constantly saying she hated Biggest Loser and wanted to go home, Lisa annoyed everyone: we trainers, the other contestants, and the show’s producers. So if Lisa ever did fall below the line, she would likely be the first to be voted off. Eventually, that’s exactly what happened.

  While you cannot control what other people do, you can display certain attitudes and behaviors that influence things in your favor or against it. If Lisa had focused solely on her desire to be on the Biggest Loser ranch, she would have put her energy into her diet and her exercise regimen. She probably would have stayed above the line and would not have been eliminated. If she had taken a different attitude about her experience, and professed her desire to stay and get healthy, the other contestants might have voted someone else out instead of her. This is just another example of how we manifest our apprehensions and anxieties.

  WORKING IT OUT

  WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF?

  Write down your innermost fears and insecurities. This will help you make the connections between what you fear and what you live.

  Look at your present circumstances, and list some of your current problems. Really ruminate on them. Take a deep inventory of your life. For example:

  Did someone leave you?

  Did your kids rebel against you?

  Did your boss fire you?

  Did your coworkers reject you?

  These questions are just a few obvious ones about how we manifest deep primal fears. Your fear doesn’t have to be about your deepest insecurities. The overall point is for you to look at how you create your reality, from the big to the small. Take my friend whose dog needed the expensive surgery, and it crushed his finances. I’m sure that his dog’s illness wasn’t one of his biggest fears—at least until it happened. But had he been more conscientious and responsible with pet insurance, he could have avoided taking that massive financial hit.

  WHAT IN YOUR LIFE IS NOT WORKING FOR YOU?

  List all the things that are currently out of whack in your life. I have listed a few more random examples in the event that you still aren’t getting it—even though I am pretty sure you are.

  Did you get hurt in your exercise class?

  Did you have a fight with your spouse?

  Did you bounce a check?

  Did you wreck your car?

  Look at what you’re doing to contribute to those scenarios. How could your behavior be creating your existing problems?

  Now I want you to break down all the interactions you have or don’t have with people on a daily basis, and examine how you approach every situation, person, place, or thing that intimidates, upsets, overwhelms, or scares you.

  Do you get defensive?

  Do you get cocky and arrogant?

  Do you reject the rejecter?

  Do you become overly controlling and determined to overcome the problem at hand?

  Do you become anxious, impulsive, or flustered?

  Do you do things to distract yourself that end up causing chaos (like rescuing several dogs when you are momentarily homeless)?

  Do you rebel and cause more damage out of spite (like binge-eating to get back at your parents for not loving you unconditionally)?

  Do you numb out and neglect necessary day-to-day responsibilities, like getting car insurance or pet insurance, or making doctors’ appointments?

  Follow me? Recognize your part in creating the problems that keep sabotaging you. Remember how I recognized that my freak-outs were making it impossible for my business partner to keep me up to date about things (which is what I needed him to do to prevent me from freaking out). You are the only person who can end your own crazy cycles of self-destruction. Recognize them for what they are; take this time to pinpoint as many of yours as you can.

  JUST STOP!

  Once you have identified your con
tributions to the self-defeating patterns in your life, you have to stop them and implement replacement behaviors.

  As soon as you see yourself starting to fall back into an old behavior, STOP. Take a step back or a deep breath—whatever you need to do to slow yourself down and become conscious of what you are doing. Before you act, put yourself through a little consciousness exercise. Think about your goal, and how the behavior you’re about to engage in will help or delay its achievement. How can you adjust your behavior and your attitude to better serve you?

  If you know that when you feel lonely, you become insanely needy and pester your friends until they want to lose your phone number, then think of something you can do to counteract that loneliness before it sabotages your relationships. Go for a jog to get your endorphins pumping, so you feel strong and capable. Pick up a hobby or project that you are passionate about, and lose yourself in it for a couple of hours. Consider adopting a pet (but not when you are out of house and home).

  IT’S A REACH

  When you are feeling vulnerable and fearing rejection, rather than rejecting the other person or situation and shutting down, try reaching out instead. If a guy flakes out on you for a date, don’t play games and not return his call for two days. That only breeds more game playing, which gets the two of you nowhere. Instead tell him that you really like him, but it hurt your feelings when he canceled, and it felt disrespectful. If he can’t respect that and change his ways, then you know he is not a person for you to be dating, and you can move on. Most likely he’ll apologize and tell you that he likes you as well and didn’t realize it hurt your feelings, and that in the future he will make efforts to keep his plans with you.