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  It’s scary to expose our feelings and open ourselves up, so it will take time to adopt these new behaviors. But you will realize that it’s the only way to build true intimacy and a fulfilled, enriched life. And even if you are rejected, you’ll survive it with the knowledge that you cleaned up your side of the street and did the right thing.

  SWAP IT OUT

  Maybe you’re the kind of person who, when anxious, obsesses and reacts impulsively in ways that only add fuel to the fire. If so, then think of something you can do in response to anxiety so you don’t make matters worse. Take a bubble bath, go for a half-hour massage on your lunch hour, try journaling, or do something comforting and gentle. But you must counteract the anxiety so that you can stop your problematic self-destructive behavior in its tracks. You could do what my editor does—go kick and punch someone—but only in a contained environment, and only if you’re sparring. Take a kickboxing class or study martial arts. Not only will it help you feel empowered and strong, but it will also help you “kick” that anxiety to the curb.

  In Step Three, which is all about action, we’ll get into things you can do to stay on track in a lot more detail. But I want you to start seeing now how all the advice I’m giving is tied together; I’ve crafted the plan so that you can rely on every part of it to help you get out of your own way and create the life you deserve.

  ROLE CALL

  Another way we limit ourselves is by boxing ourselves into roles we think we’re supposed to be playing. We are all the main character in the movie or novel of our lives, whether we like to admit it or not. At some point we assign ourselves a role based on the patterns we have been playing out since childhood: we’re the victim, we’re the martyr, the hero, the dumb pretty one, the smart ugly one, the nice guy who never gets the girl, blah blah blah. You know what I’m talking about.

  Well, it’s time to throw those roles out the window. They’re nothing more than constructs that our imagination created from other people’s issues and that we internalized in childhood. Although they seem real in your head, they are NOT REALITY, and they limit our lives in unforgiving ways.

  Your self-confidence comes largely from your self-image. And your self-image and your role in the world dictate what you expect of yourself and for yourself. If you have a negative story, then you automatically assume a negative future.

  Your experiences and memories define your self-image. If you had a critical parent who was always driving you toward perfection because inside he or she felt imperfect, you might have internalized their insecurities, so that you think you are never good enough. You approach your life believing that nothing you do will ever be up to par. This self-image begets more experiences of inadequacy, in a vicious cycle that continues in perpetuity. So here we are back with the self-fulfilling prophecies again. You achieve what you believe. There is no variation on this truth. If you embrace limiting stories, you will play out the same scenario for the rest of your life—until you wake up and say enough is enough.

  It is the prison of your mind that causes your suffering, not the dead-end job or the loveless relationship—those are merely symptoms of your character’s story.

  It’s not easy to change the way you see yourself. If you grew up experiencing loss, failure, or rejection, or believing that you’re lazy, or a loser, or whatever—it’s hard to break those beliefs because you don’t have any other frame of reference. But I swear to you, whatever limiting ideas you have about yourself are not true. At some early point you took on this story, for whatever reason, and it repeated itself because you believed it to be true.

  There’s an anecdote I came across in a self-help book years ago that I have never forgotten, and it really underlines what I’m talking about:

  A father and his young son are at the circus. The son sees a huge elephant shackled with flimsy, rusted chains. Turning to his dad, he asks, “Isn’t that elephant strong enough to break free from those chains?”

  “Of course he is,” his dad answers. “It’s just that he’s been chained like that since he was too small and weak to break free, and now he doesn’t know the difference.”

  I hate to say it, but buddy, you are the elephant in this story.

  You CAN leave the job you hate. You CAN leave the alcoholic spouse. You CAN go back to school. Want to know what’s holding you back? Absolutely nothing but you!

  WORKING IT OUT:

  BREAKING FREE OF LIMITATIONS

  Here are a couple more questions to help you break free from the limitations you may be placing on yourself without even realizing it:

  WHAT’S YOUR STORY?

  What is your role in your own life story, and how is it imprisoning you and holding you back? Are you fat because you think you’re lazy? Are you poor because you think you’re a loser? Are you staying in a dead-end job because you think it’s too late to change careers? Are you alone because you think you’re not special enough to find someone to love you? I have to stop before I scream, “Not true!” But you get the idea. Write down all the ways in which your self-definitions keep you from the life you want.

  IS IT A TRUE STORY?

  Is there any truth whatsoever to your story? Think long and hard about it. Are you physically incapable of walking out the door and filing for divorce? If you’re staying for the sake of the children, consider this: kids know when they are in an unhappy home. Ultimately, it may be better for them if you remove yourself from a bad marriage.

  Are you really too lazy to start an exercise regime and lose weight? That’s doubtful. Are you really too much of a loser to earn money? Probably not. Are you really too old to go on job interviews or go back to school? Um, not unless you are like 103. Are you some kind of freak that no one on earth could ever love? NO!!

  These are just examples. Whatever your self-imposed limitations may be, now is the time to identify them so you can kiss them goodbye. You need to tell a new story, preferably one where you are living a passionate, meaningful life, full of love and vintage muscle cars. And don’t go telling me it’s complicated, because it’s not; it’s simple. All it requires are a few new ideas and a few courageous steps to put your life back on track. Will it be easy? Hell, no! That is a false promise I won’t make you. But it’s totally possible and utterly worth it. Seeing the fallacies that are at the root of your negative self-image is the only way to free yourself to live your higher calling.

  THE ART OF FAKING IT

  Your self-image is the crucial factor in where your journey takes you. And it is never neutral; it either moves you forward or holds you back. If you believe yourself to be a worthless failure, the decisions and choices you make will come from that belief, and you will probably end up failing. Believe the opposite, and yes, that too is what you will get.

  Once you understand this fact, you are free to find new attitudes and beliefs about yourself, which will in turn change the choices you make and the results you achieve. It’s going to take time and practice—you can’t change your self-image overnight. But keep working the steps of this program, and it will get easier. The small victories and successes that you achieve through educated, determined diligence will dramatically help you to redefine your self-image.

  On Biggest Loser, when I take a contestant who thinks she is lazy and weak into the gym, put her through a grueling two-hour workout, and maybe get her to run her first mile, she instantly becomes a new person. (It’s true for male contestants, too.) In that moment she experiences a new reality, one where she is strong and accomplished. In that short time her backstory is shattered, and a world of possibility opens up to her. She realizes that if the belief that she is weak and lazy isn’t true, then other self-defeating ideas and beliefs that she has been holding on to may also be untrue. From this place of possibility the sky becomes the limit.

  Now, presuming that these small successes and victories will take time to manifest and germinate, you’ll have to “fake it till you make it.”

  You must’ve heard that one before. Try it.
The reason it works is that if you keep taking positive action, before long it becomes habit, and eventually you will believe in it. It’s sort of a cart-before-the-horse thing, but it WORKS. With the right course of action—education, time, practice, and patience—you will be successful. And confidence in success begets success. But more on that action front later. We’ve dealt with your inner ’tude—now it’s time for a look at your view as you look out.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  OUTER ’TUDE

  We’ve been talking a lot about your attitude toward yourself. But what about your attitude toward life and the world around you? How do you handle the curveballs life throws you? When something bad happens, do you choose to learn from it and gain depth and insight? Or do you allow it to crush you, seeing the defeat as validation that you do, in fact, suck?

  Learning to transform your negative attitudes doesn’t stop with your inner view—you also have to be honest about how your attitudes about the outside world are holding you back.

  It is possible to take an adversity and turn it into an opportunity for success. And I’m not talking “glass half full” crap. I’m talking about literally rewiring your internal circuitry and shifting the way you see the world, so you are resilient and programmed to survive any failure, blast through every obstacle, and overcome any setback.

  Let’s address some of the most common pitfalls we can stumble into as we navigate and interact with the world around us: worry, fear, and failure.

  QUIT YOUR WORRYING

  Anxiety is useless. It serves absolutely no purpose except to rob you of valuable energy that could instead be channeled into creating your new life. Seriously, you tell me what good can come from worry and stress. I don’t know about you, but I can do without sleepless nights and high blood pressure and sweaty palms and tension headaches. They just make everything worse. I’ve struggled with anxiety my whole life and have learned a few things about how to knock it out.

  PRESENT!

  Root yourself firmly in the present moment. Often when we flip out, the thing we’re flipping out about is something we fear will happen in the future. Anticipation is scarier in many cases than reality. Very often the thing we’re so worried about never even happens, and if it does, all the advance worrying in the world won’t make it any better.

  So when you start to stress out, ask yourself how things really are right now. At this moment, do you have a job? At this moment, are you healthy? Are you getting by financially, and is there a roof over your head? Are your loved ones alive and well?

  Sure, bad things might happen. I’m not saying you should go into major head-in-the-sand denial about that possibility. Nor am I saying you shouldn’t plan ahead and take necessary precautions to safeguard yourself and your loved ones. What I’m getting at is that you can’t let problems that don’t yet exist ruin your life. Remember the old saying “Cross that bridge when you come to it.” Or better yet, as my company’s producing partner Ellen Rakieten always tells me, “Don’t bleed until you’re shot.” If and when a bad thing happens, you will manage the situation as productively as possible, but until then, stay present and deal with the task, and moment, at hand.

  BE A RESOURCEFUL MOUSE

  When a problem arises, it’s important to focus on the solution, not the problem itself. There’s a great book you may have heard about called Who Moved My Cheese? The title comes from an experiment conducted with mice in mazes. Every day for weeks the mice would run through their mazes and find a piece of cheese in the same place. Then one day the researchers moved the cheese. Some of the mice had little mouse freak-outs. They went to where the cheese had been and scratched at the walls and paced around in circles. Because they were so busy freaking out, they never found the cheese in its new location. In real life this would have meant starvation and death, otherwise known as exactly the thing the mouse was freaking out about.

  Now, some of the other mice reacted completely differently. When they didn’t find the cheese where they expected to, they took a beat and then retraced their steps, sniffed around, and experimented with alternate routes until they found it.

  Which mouse are you going to be?

  Are you going to stress out and shut down? Or are you going to use your skills and resources to find a solution? The second one is the right answer.

  Your first step is to reduce the problem to its simplest form. If you’re worried about catching swine flu because you have a chronic disease that puts you at greater risk for it, then Google it and research the measures you can take to protect yourself. Stay out of Mexico, where this flu originated, for one. Don’t fly unless you have to do so, and take natural supplements to boost your immune system.

  If you’re scared you might lose your job, focus on doing better at work. Or if that part is out of your control and layoffs are abounding at your workplace, then start searching the want ads and hitting the pavement and filling out job applications.

  Being proactive is a major stress buster. If you really think about it, there are small steps you can take to keep the bad things from happening, or to deal with them when they do. Once you have exhausted all your proactive options, you can look for ways to calm your mind.

  GIVE YOUR BRAIN A BOOST

  Find activities that relieve your stress, behaviors that release mood-enhancing serotonin. They’ll help distract you so you don’t turn the situation over and over again in your head. ’Cuz that’s what obsessive crazy people do. I know—I was one. I spent years as a congenital worrier—and I always worried best between midnight and four A.M. It was not fun or remotely productive.

  There are lots of things you can do to temporarily take yourself away from your stress. Exercising. Deep-breathing techniques. Any activity that you enjoy and that is life affirming: gardening, knitting, working on your car. If you love it and it calms you down, do more of it! Whenever I get super-stressed, and I’ve already done everything I can to proactively attack the situation head-on, I go for a ride on my horse or take a spin on my motorcycle. Find the activities that nurture your soul and occupy your mind, that take you to a “happy place,” so that you can prevent your anxiety from crippling you.

  If this isn’t enough to convince you, then ask yourself: if a beloved friend or family member came to you stressed out, scared, or beating themselves up over something, what would you do? Most likely you’d tell them everything’s going to be okay. You might suggest they take a long hot bath. You might give them a massage. You might send loving texts and reassuring e-mails throughout the day. You wouldn’t emotionally beat the crap out of them. (At least I hope not.) So why the hell wouldn’t you do the exact same thing for yourself?! For some reason a lot of us think it’s soft or self-indulgent to be kind to ourselves. Actually, learning to be loving and nurturing toward yourself will help you come through every hardship stronger and wiser.

  GET A SECOND OPINION

  I bet you’ve heard the old saying “You can’t see the forest for the trees.” (I just love clichés. They remind us just how obvious and simple most of life can be—if we let it.) Well, very often when we’re stressed out about a situation, we are too close to it to have any real perspective. It helps to get a second pair of eyes to look at the landscape. Reaching out to someone for advice is beneficial emotionally as well as strategically. Not only will you feel supported and not alone in your predicament (we can all use that from time to time), but you will also get a calmer, cooler picture of your situation from someone who is not attached or engaged the way you are.

  When we are too emotionally fired up about a situation, we can’t assess it realistically or take rational, productive action. If you reach out to someone who isn’t personally involved in or attached to it, you can vent, process, weigh options, and basically get your head straight so you can decide on a course of action—even if that action is to be still for the moment and do nothing.

  A quick caveat: be mindful of whom you approach for this second opinion. If you have a friend who agrees with eve
rything you say, that’s probably not a great person for you to mull things over with. Be thoughtful about whom you seek advice from. We will discuss this in greater detail in Chapter 9, but for now seek out someone you trust who has a calm, cool head, preferably with some knowledge of the situation you are mulling over.

  These are a few ways to help you release your worries, anxieties, and inner conflicts, so you can stop them from sapping your energy, and free yourself for things that are much more productive and rewarding. Worry is begotten by fear, and fear is one of the biggest saboteurs out there, so that’s what we’re going to tackle next.

  USE YOUR FEAR TO MAKE YOU STRONGER

  There are hundreds of books out there that tout “fearlessness.” The word alone conjures images of human beings defying the laws of nature, doesn’t it? It just sounds so cool! Well, you can forget about becoming fearlesss—don’t even bother trying! Every living thing, from the smallest insect to the most powerful CEO, feels fear. It’s at the very core of nature, so if you think you can escape it, think again. The trick is not to escape your fears but to confront and use them to drive and teach you. Only by getting to the bottom of your fears can you find their valuable lessons and move forward stronger than before.

  Fear can lead you straight to panic and confusion, or to clarity and meaning. It can paralyze and destroy you, or it can be your greatest source of motivation. I’ve seen it bring out the very worst in people (myself included!), and I’ve also seen it drive people to overcome the most extraordinary obstacles (I’m going to include myself here, as well). Quite possibly one of the greatest achievements in life is to learn how to let your fear guide you to clarity rather than to madness. Believe it or not, it’s entirely up to you.