Living With the Lights On

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...

Vitamin V - Value                                                                      Do you Value yourself?   Maybe the better question is, "How much do you Value yourself?"   Are you Valuable? Does it matter if you don't Value yourself?   Think about your answer to each of these questions.               The definition of the verb value is, consider (someone or something) to be important or beneficial; to have a high opinion of.                 I remember years of thinking and believing that I had very little value.   That is before I was convinced that I am created like no other person on earth and that I have a purpose as unique as I am.  ...

Vitamin D - The Divine Vitamin -D The Divine.   This is a Vitamin you don't take.   It is one you receive.                  Because the Divine is the source of power behind all powers, the chemistry created when we experience the Divine supersedes all known laws of the body.                   There's no question that faith plays a paramount role in life with The Divine. Yet in order to "have faith," we must have something else first. First we must learn to   trust              The nature of God is unchanging; The Divine wants only what is good for us.   It is true even if we are not doing well. It doesn’t depend on our capacity to do something, it’s really about His ability to do something for us. By trusting Him, we get a confidence from...