Living With the Lights On

Stop Thinking  There Is Something  Wrong With You I remember thinking and believing that there was definitely something wrong with me.  I couldn't stop rehearsing all the mess-ups I had done.  In the midst of the replays I felt awful, so I would find something to eat. At least the food tasted good, so I felt better, until I found that I had eaten ten cookies! Then the shame and self-loathing ramped up to a deafening level.   Have you ever experienced this hamster wheel of self-condemnation?  If so, let me throw you a life line.  Let me show you where to start. In just a few simple steps I can help you re-frame the thoughts you are thinking, which will change the way you are feeling, which will change the actions you are taking and give you different results.  Did you know that your mind and body are functioning just as they were designed to?   What I have learned is that I can implement small manageable st...

The Present of His Presence Does your life feel full of chaos? Is this week in limbo between Christmas and the New Year full of  feelings of anxiety, doubt and regrets?  I would love to help by offering some thoughts.   (Remember, it is our thoughts, not our circumstances that create our feelings.) Here, try these thoughts:  "I am wonderfully made" "I am deeply loved" "I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus" "He is with me always, not matter how I am feeling or acting" Practice believing what He says about you. This is the first step in transforming how you see yourself and how you treat yourself.   I have created a simple six steps in six days challenge for regaining well-being for 2019 and I would love to share it with you. It is totally free!  This is perfect timing to build momentum for the new year.   This challenge will give you the same simple steps I took to get off the yo-yo di...

Winning the Battle Between Your Ears Do you feel like life catches you off guard? Do you find yourself in doubt afraid and confused? Sometimes we feel like we're under attack - that's because we are!  The battle is waged in our minds, and the enemy's goal is to weaken our outlook and our relationship with God.   But we have been given the power to fight back.  We must fight back one day at a time, one battle at a time, one thought at a time.   If you want to move forward, then you must be willing to change your mind - one thought at a time. God shows us in His Word a better way to think.  Are you willing to trust Him with your thoughts? Let's be transformed by the renewing of our mind and let's get started in 2019! One of the first places we can begin is with our thoughts about ourselves and our thoughts about our bodies and the food we choose.   I have a free tool I want to share with you.  It is a pod...

Your Future is Your Property Your future is your property and it is built one thought at a time.   How does it feel when you read this?   We are quickly approaching the beginning of a new year and we can create a year like no other for ourselves.   Here are a few steps I recommend for creating your future: Think about what you are thinking.  How are you thinking about you?  If your daughter or son had a friend that spoke to them like you speak to yourself, would you think they were a good friend? It is important to understand where we are with our thinking. Just like using GPS, we need to know where our starting point is.  Now that you have your beginning location, think about your destination.  It is your thoughts that will get you there.  If you want to lose some weight or organize your home or build your relationships, the way you think is the way to get there.  Speaking of The Way, how does HE s...

When You Fall Off The Wagon What does it mean to you when you hear the idiom "fall off the wagon?" Does it mean that you ate something unplanned and off protocol?  What do you make it mean about you?   What if I told you that you didn't fall of the wagon and there really is no wagon? In my past, when I had been on a strict diet and ate something off the diet,  I would have thoughts of self criticism and judgment.  My mind would find all the things that were wrong with me from a place of laying in the dirt since I had "fallen off the wagon." My thoughts of self criticism led to feelings of disappointment which led to actions of giving up and gave me the results of more eating off plan.  Is't it interesting how our mind works when we tell it we have failed? We create more of the same. So, what would be a better way of dealing with an unplanned- off plan food choice?  First, find out what was the last thought you had before you ...

Do We Really Need to Love Ourselves? There are lots and lots of messages out there about loving ourselves.  Some say it is the most important thing. Others say it is selfish.   What do you think?   Let me offer some thoughts to consider.   God's Word tells us, "We love because God loved us first." 1 John 4:19.  If God loves us, then we must be lovable. 100%!  Another verse tells us that He loved us while we were still rebellious, so Him loving us doesn't depend on our behavior. Does not loving ourselves agree with these truths?  Hmm, something to think about. A thought pattern I had in earlier years was, "If  I don't love myself,  I will behave better so that I will then be able to love myself."  Can you relate?   This performance based acceptance is shaky ground.  Let's look some firm understanding. Love is a feeling.  When we feel love we act in certain "l...

The New Normal How do we decide what normal eating is? Who decides?  Is it us or is it culture? Is it my thoughts, or society's thoughts? What is the association we are creating with our thoughts about food being part of our life events? Do we really need pizza and beer to make watching football more enjoyable?  Do we need to have sugary treats to celebrate the Holidays? I personally, had to spend time questioning my involvement in spreading this confusion during family gatherings. One of the qualities I wanted to be known for was to be a good cook.  I had to decide what I thought a "good cook" meant to me.  Was it to bake foods that were loaded with mind altering substances? Or, could I decide that preparing food that was actually higher on the nutritional scale is of more value? Hmm, what an interesting question.  What is my new normal? Another question I asked myself is, "How am I going to feel after I eat those mind-altering foods?  W...

Responsibility = Response Ability Have you ever thought,"I wish I would respond  to challenges rather than react ?" Me too.  When I react I often end up with regret. This happens in conversations with loved ones, with food choices, with procrastination and buffering.   I want to get good at responding and not reacting . Just like with every other thing I want to get better at, practice is the key. When I practice taking responsibility for choosing my thoughts,  I am able to create emotions that give me the ability to take the action of responding .  It all begins with my thoughts! If I decide to think there will be no healthy options to eat at Thanksgiving, it will lead me to the feeling of frustration.  From frustration I will react by giving up on my food choices and my results will be regret.   When I take responsibility for choosing a different way of looking at Thanksgiving food choices, I have the ...

Leave Two Bites Challenge Are you in? Beginning with your next meal, I am challenging you to leave two bites on your plate, each meal for seven days. What!? Isn't that wasteful?    Wouldn't it be better to just not put as much on your plate? I would like for you to consider the message you send to your beautiful body with the three thoughts above.  The first thought, leaving two bites, sends the message :  I can stop eating whenever I decide I want to.  I can do something to serve my goals even when I don't really want to.  I can slow down enough to listen to my body's leptin, full signal.   The second thought, Isn't that wasteful, sends the message:  food is more important that my body.  Hmm, do I really think that? The third thought,  just put less on your plate, is a option, but it doesn't create the practice opportunity to show yourself that you can choose on your behalf. Intentionally stop eating ...

Fresh Perspective We can decide how we want to think about circumstances.   Wait! What!? One of the most significant learning opportunities I have had is when I saw the training of the Life Coach School and my studies of the Word of God lining up together.   I began seeing that my circumstances really are not what make me feel stressed or unhappy.  It is my thoughts that create my feelings.   But what about the hurt and pain?  What about the negatives in our world?   Am I supposed to just make up thoughts that create positive emotion all the time?  If we only experience positive emotion all of the time, would we even know it was positive?   Or, is the human experience here on earth supposed to be a balance of negative and positive emotions? Is there a purpose in the negative that we will miss if we are always wanting to be happy all the time? If we are willing to allow ourselves to feel negat...

Write It Down  Instead of Eating It In all my years of yo-yo dieting, I remember feeling like I was eating out of control.  It was as if I couldn’t stop.   This hit me on day when I was at the funeral of one of our son’s friend. Needless to say, the feeling of sadness was consuming.  Or I thought it was.   Did I want to feel sad? Of course! What I found myself doing was trying to cover or buffer that feeling. After the service, I had one cookie, then another, another…..I can’t even tell you how many I had!  I know it was more than five. Food was an easy choice for me to cope with the uncomfortable emotions. Eating the cookies dulled the pain, but only temporarily.   This experience really caught my attention.  What is going on!? I was out of control! The more I learned about buffering I also learned that my brain was actually operating exactly as it was designed to.   When we consume food, our brain receives a rewa...

A Letter to My Younger Self I was talking with a friend of mine and trying to express the changes I have seen in myself and what exactly happened to enable those changes to happen.   We discovered that it was when I began to love myself, I began to understand how much I am loved and that I have a very valuable purpose in this life.   I told him that my wish is that I could write and teach in such a way that I might help others discover their own value and that it not take them 40 years like it did me. He suggested that I write a letter.   Here is the letter I would write to my younger self, if I could: Dear Peggy,             This letter is the best gift I can give you.   I will try my best to write in words that you will understand.   I will tell you what the truth is. The truth about you, the truth about God, the truth about your enemy,the truth about your thoughts and the truth about your li...

Food for Our Thoughts In this blog, Living with the Lights On, we have talked about the importance of being a watcher of our thoughts.   We have seen that what we think about, our brain will find evidence to support.   We have also recognized that what we think about will determine how we feel How we feel will cause our actions. Our actions always give us our results.   The great news is - any and all thoughts are optional! We have a brain that can make decisions to direct out thoughts.  Thank God! What difference would it make if we knew the Fruit of the Spirit was not only food for thought, but food for OUR THOUGHTS?  How would we feel if we knew that each Fruit of the Spirit was a gift we already have?  We only need to access it.   How do we access it?  By directing our thoughts toward it.   The interesting thing is - is often it takes "uncomfortable" circumstances...

Four Types of Eating In my program which I developed through my training in the Life Coach School, there are four types of eating: Fog Eating, Storm Eating, Fuel Eating, and Joy Eating FUEL EATING is when we re eating food that provides our body with high-quality fuel to perform. It is a decision we consciously make to put fuel in our bodies that will give us energy and nourishment to perform physically.  Most Fuel Eating requires planning and thinking ahead.  You want to Fuel Eat 90% of the time.  Fuel Eating is done  according to where you are on your hunger scale.   JOY EATING is when we eat anything we love to eat and actually taste it.  Paying careful attention to eating ideally accompanies joy eating - try savoring and slowly chewing to really get the full enjoyment from your food.  You want to Joy Eat 10% of the time.  This could be one small treat each day or two joy meals per week.  The rule with joy eating is...

Potluck Panic! When it comes to sticking to an eating protocol, or eating healthy food choices,  isn't it interesting that some of the most challenging places to follow through is at our church potluck dinners? When I am working with my clients,  we discover that the statement I just made is, in fact, just a thought.  And every thought is optional.   Choosing our thoughts intentionally is the most powerful thing we can do for ourselves and our well-being.   The important think to note is that all of our feelings are created by our thoughts.  If we feel "panic" is comes from a thought.  That thought could be, "There won't be anything at the potluck that I can eat."  That may seem like a fact, but facts are true for everyone and they can be proven in a court of law.   When choosing our thoughts, we can know that we have the most powerful tool on earth, our prefrontal cortex. This is the part of us that is mad...

Got Confidence?  Have you ever wished you   had more confidence? Have you ever known anyone who didn't?  I know confidence is a concept that seemed to allude  me.  The more I chased it the less I seemed to have.   What I didn't know was what true confidence is:   Confidence is the willingness to feel any emotion.   What?! When I decide to get my Certification as a life coach,  I knew it was going to require hard work, effort, dedication, discomfort and a host of many other emotions that I don't particularly enjoy feeling.  What I didn't know is that when I honored my goal in every little step, the inedible byproduct was confidence.    Here are the simple steps: 1) Decide on a goal.  Start small.  It could be making your bed every morning for a week. 2) Honor that goal.  Follow through no matter what. 3) Recognize your accomplishment, every-time.   Simple,...

You Will Find What You Are Looking For This is so true. It is also scary powerful. The more I practice this the more I realize that this is pare of "being transformed by renewing my mind."   When I choose a thought that includes negative self-talk or negative other-talk,  that is exactly what I am directing my mind to look for.  It is like typing that thought into my mind's google search bar. My mind is so efficient that it then goes to work searching for evidence to support that thought.   The interesting thing is, that my thought will also cause an emotion, that will cause action, reaction, or inaction, that will then give me the results I was looking for in the first place.  WHAT?! So, If I start with thoughts like, "I wish I was thinner." I am directing my mind to compare myself with others which leads my brain to find my shortcomings.  I will find evidence that my body isn't good enough.   Comparing myself to ot...

Vitamin F - Forgiveness The lack of forgiveness and the need for forgiveness is one of the biggest challenges I think many of us face. There is a huge misunderstanding when it comes to forgiveness . Here's the question: What is forgiveness? Think about it for a minute. I think a lot of people have a confused definition of this. I think when most of us think about forgiveness, we think what it means is telling someone else something or accepting someone's apology or having a conversation with someone that tells them that what they did or didn't do was okay. That is not what forgiveness is. That has never been what forgiveness is. Forgive, it's a verb. Here's the definition.  Stop feeling angry or resentful toward someone for an offense, flaw, or a mistake.  Cancel a debt. What that second one is if someone owes you something, you cancel it. I think it's very interesting that those two definitions are so similar.  When you look at the defi...