Hello friends!  How is your Sunday morning going so far?  As I began thinking about my blog this morning, I thought about what you all are doing right now in your life.  So many different scenarios flashed through my mind as I pictured some of you still sleeping while others are hurriedly trying to get your families ready for church.  Maybe you are making breakfast for you and your loved ones or maybe you’ve already embarked out into the world to get a jump start on your To-Do List – that always seems way too full.  Regardless of what you are doing, I find it fascinating that we all choose to approach our lives so very differently, but we all seem to make it through each day and life goes on!

I received a message this week that led to a phone conversation with a long-time friend that I don’t speak with regularly.  While I used the word “friend,” I think it’s important to clarify that we encounter people throughout our lives that are not all destined to become a person that we speak with everyday, but their support, friendship, and love, are felt regularly throughout our lives. Yet, when you do get the chance to visit again, it feels as if you pick up and visit as easily as if you had spoken to each other every single day.

Conversations with this friend have always been growth experiences.  You see, my friend is a professional life coach and has worked with so many wonderful people that are in very different stages of their lives.  What led him to contact me was his continuing observation of my journey.  He shared with me how exciting it has been to watch as my journey develops, but he had noticed a very subtle, yet substantial, shift in my thinking which he wanted to process with me.  What resulted was an amazing 75 minute phone conversation where he listened, supported, challenged, and clarified the thoughts that have been fueling this incredible journey.

Using only my words, he masterfully navigated through the mental renovations of this journey and helped bring clarity to what has been occurring in my thought life.  While acknowledging it seemed I would eventually navigate my way through this process on my own, he shared his desire was to help me do so more quickly.

Our conversation started with a discussion about where I am in life and the recent things that I have been thinking, doing, and achieving.  Next, he led our conversation back to the core of what had started this journey and, together, we processed what empowered these changes in the first place. Then, we moved towards the subtle change in my thoughts as my journey continued.  Finally, he skillfully broke down the things I was saying throughout this conversation and assisted me in clarifying the conversation into usable information for growth and continued success.

Regardless of how much I want to flesh this out (because I LOVE talking), I must keep this brief if for no other reason than length and time.  This journey started as a mental one, but my perception of blogging and my own success had slowly transformed the basis of this journey into a focus on external success – pounds lost.  After our conversation, I went back to old blog entries to see if I could find proof of these changes.  In January, I posted an entry that talks about the mental journey of weight loss.  In that entry, I wrote, “You see, losing weight has been so much more of a mental journey than a physical journey.”  I later also admit, “It fits like a glove that is too small and it doesn’t happen for me naturally. I have to FORCE myself to live within my new life choices.”  However, the signs of my shift in focus are also present.  I mention several goals throughout the entry.  Goals for walking, blogging, and “health goals.”  Yet, if you are paying attention, you can easily see I mean “weight goals” or “pounds lost.”

While doing the difficult work of self-evaluation with my friend, I gained a much more clarified insight into what was happening with my thought patterns and the effects that these changes had brought to my journey.  Again, using only my words, my friend was able to help me clarify that the most empowering thought I ever had in this journey was that I had the power to control my thoughts and live the life I wanted to live.  That I was not a victim to genetics, finances, my current life status, or any unseen external force.  If I didn’t want to be morbidly obese, I had the power to change it!

There’s SOO much that has been happening in my thoughts this week and SOO much I want to share with you, but this sharing will have to come another day.  For now, though, I want to clarify my vision for this blog.  When I came up with the address, I wanted a title that expressed that this journey was more than losing 250 pounds.  Thus, 250pounds2forever.com was born.  However, while the title was very appropriate then, the title has come to mean so much more than I even planned for it.

I’m going to utilize my blog to share about my journey, but I want to do so in a way that I am sharing what is changing my life rather than just announcing that my life has changed.  What changed my life was the realization that I had the power to control my thoughts and to choose the life I want to live.  Everything else has been a side-effect of the decision to control my thoughts and use my new thoughts to change my behaviors.

This is where I am tempted to announce a list of what is going to change as a result of my ongoing enlightenment this week, but I’m not going to do that.  I am an ever-evolving person and this blog is an outgrowth of who I am.  So, I’m simply going to allow this blog to grow and evolve with me.  That being said, I do have one big change that I’m implementing today:  no more weekly weigh in.

As difficult as it will be for me, I’m going to resist the temptation to qualify my success through the loss of pounds.  Am I success if I lose 3.5 pounds this week?  Am I failure if I don’t lose any pounds this week?  Perhaps true success is defined by something more than a numerical representation of my body’s interaction with gravity on any given day.  While I may share certain external successes, this blog is going to focus on where the hardest work is done:  my thought life.

I have the power to change my thoughts and live the life I want to live.  -Me