Episode 16 - The Power of Relaxed Intent, part I
Have you ever wondered why it seems that sometimes the very thing we want the most eludes us. Has this been true of your weight loss journey? It seems that the more we grasp at that slim body and peace with food, the more it slips through our fingers. Today learn the key to making the Law of Attraction work. We learn the power of surrender and relaxed intent in manifesting everything from partners to parking spaces, not to mention the body we’ve been dreaming of.
Transcript
Transcript
Renee Stephens: Welcome to Inside Out Weight Loss. I’m your host Renee Stephens, and together we’re accessing the control panel of you mind/body system, bringing ease and joy to your weight loss journey and fullness to the rest of your life. On the next two shows we’ll go through two powerful exercises to bring your New Year’s evolutions into reality. In the first we’ll be learning the power of surrender and relaxed intent. And in the second episode I’ll actually walk you through an exercise of relaxed intent, to allow you to achieve your desire even more quickly and easily. So go ahead and set your intention for this episode. Drop inside for a moment and become present with you. You’ve come to this show for a reason. There’s something here for you, something important. This time is for you. So wherever you are, whatever you’re doing open yourself up to get exactly what you need to take the next positive step forward. Whatever it is, go ahead and set your intent now.
Renee Stephens: Have you ever noticed that sometimes when we want something so much it’s almost as if the very wanting of it prevents us from getting it.
Renee Stephens: The trick is to turn it around so that it’s the presence of something else. You know, the example I shared in an earlier episode when I said, “Don’t think of a pink elephant with purple spots, especially on its big floppy ears right now?” What comes to your mind? The purple elephant. Don’t think of eating your favorite food. What comes to mind? Eating your favorite food.
Renee Stephens: My intent with this show, as with all shows is to end the weight struggle and free as many people as possible to live their best lives, to live their dreams. My intent for this particular episode is to enable you to dissolve what’s been holding you back and move more clearly into living your dream, because I know that it’s possible. I know you deserve it. And I know that you can. So how is your support system going? If you’ve been listening to Inside Out Weight Loss for a while, you know how important it is to set your self up for success. Does your support system need a refresher? Who have you recruited to support you? Who in your life is there pulling for you and understands the kind of transformation that you’re wanting to make, and that you indeed are making now? If you haven’t already joined the Inside Out Weight Loss Yahoo group, I encourage you to do so. There you’ll find many, many alike minded people. You can find an individual support buddy or simply support or be supported by the group. You can set your intention, you can share your dream, and know that others are there encouraging you.
Renee Stephens: Lets review for a moment what we’ve learned so far. We’ve been walking through the steps to end your weight struggle, to stop fighting with ourselves. We learned the component parts of motivation. And I’d like to pause for a moment here and say a word about sharing your dream, your towards motivation, the motivation that pulls you towards it because it’s so compelling, so bright and beautiful in your future. And one of the things that I’ve noticed with the people on the Yahoo group and with the people that have been sending me email and indeed with my clients as well is that sometimes we set our intent and we accidentally state our intent in the negative. Let me give you an example; we might say, “My intent for today is to not eat snacks or sweets between 1 and 4 PM because I know that’s my challenging time of day.” So think about it. What happens… Reviewing in your mind previous episodes… What happens when we state our intent, our dream or our desire in a negative? What do we say? “My intent is to not eat between 1 and 4 PM.” What we’re doing basically is giving our subconscious mind the direction to eat between 1 and 4 PM, to do exactly what follows the “no” or the “not” in the statement. We’re actually bringing attention and energy to what we don’t want. So what’s the alternative? You guessed it. To turn it around and state it in the positive. And this can actually become a bit of a game, how to state things in the positive. It doesn’t mean that we never say something in the negative. Of course we do, that’s natural. And sometimes it’s worthwhile saying what we do not want. However, there’s an incredible power to following that negative with a positive statement. Now I know that this can be challenging. You think, “Well gosh, you know, what I really want is to not eat, so how do I state that in the positive? It’s an absence of something.” The trick is to turn it around so that it’s the presence of something else. You know, the example I shared in an earlier episode when I said, “Don’t think of a pink elephant with purple spots, especially on its big floppy ears right now.” What comes to you mind? The purple elephant. Don’t think of eating your favorite food. What comes to mind? Eating your favorite food. So what would you like instead? What would you like instead of eating between the hours of 1 and 4 PM? Maybe you would like to feel calm and relaxed. Maybe you’d like to be focused. Maybe you would like to take a break and go outside or take a walk around the building or take a break to call a friend. Something like that, for example. Whatever it is, think about what you would like instead.
Renee Stephens: Another good example would be where a client of mine recently said in session, she said, “You know, I notice I’m always tense when it’s time to eat and I’m always in a hurry. I’m in a hurry all the time. 99.9 percent of my life I’m rushing around. And so, I get a lot done in my life as a result of that, I’m a multi tasker extraordinaire and incredibly effective and productive, but I find that I’m even rushing through my meals, and I don’t want to rush through my meals. I’m eating so fast that I want to continue to enjoy the experience of being at the meal, so I get myself a second helping, well, just to extend the experience.” And she said, “I don’t want to rush anymore.” And so, after a little bit of thought I said, “Well what is it you want to do instead?” And she said, “Well, I’d like to be relaxed when I’m eating. I’d like to be relaxed and eat calmly and slowly. I’d like to easily eat slowly and in a relaxed way. I’d like to really enjoy and savor my food whenever I eat it. I’d like to…”, another thing she didn’t want to do was snack while she’s preparing her meal. So what would you like instead? She said, “Well lets see, I’d like to be relaxed and wait to better enjoy my food during the meal time when I’m sitting at the table.” So think about that. Think about stating your intention, your desire and your dream in the positive. It’s alright to start in the negative as long as you immediately turn it around to the positive and end with a statement in the positive. You will be amazed and delighted by what you find when you make this simple change. And as I mentioned I believe in an earlier episode, this is a great parenting strategy, it’s a secondary bonus. If you tell your kids what not to do, the surest thing that they will do is exactly what you said not to. Not because their rebels or they have it in for you or whatever you might think, but really because children are so in that space of the subconscious mind that they simply get the directive that you give them. They ignore the ‘no’ because that’s what the subconscious mind does. And they sense where your energy is, and because they’re so aligned with you they actually go towards fat.
Renee Stephens: Okay, enough on that, lets finish our review. We talked again about motivation strategy, about what the components of motivation are. We then talked about how to create the single most powerful force for change in the universe; inner alignment. We talked not about good and bad foods, or shoulds and shouldn’ts, but rather which foods will make your life easier and your journey more enjoyable. We then walked through step by step how to make decisions about what and how much to eat and learned the mindset of lasting change; the learning mindset. In the last episode we talked about setting your New Year’s evolutions. We talked about how to manifest lasting positive evolution in your life, and the three P’s of manifesting, persistence, patience and practice. So what are the steps after that?
Renee Stephens: We’re going to take a short break now to support our sponsors who make this show possible. This is Renee Stephens, and you’re listening to Inside Out Weight Loss on Personal Life Media. We’ll be right back.
Renee Stephens: We’re back now. Before the break we were talking about your New Year’s evolutions, and the importance of persistence, patience and practice that we learned on last weeks show. And now what I’d like to talk to you about a concept that’s actually extremely important to manifesting whatever it is that you want in your life. Have you ever noticed that sometimes when we want something so much it’s almost as if the very wanting of it prevents us from getting it? Think about that. Have you ever really, really, really desperately wanted something, and it’s as if the very intensity of your wanting prevents you from having it? Now this seems counter to the law of attraction. If you know anything about the law of attraction, The Secret and the various work around that, it says that you get what it is that you put your energy on, what you think about. So this seems to go completely against it. How can that be? Think about a few examples. Some that come to mind for me are friends that I’ve known or even times in my own life for sure when I have really wanted to have a boyfriend, for example, I’ve been single and I’ve wanted to have a boyfriend, or maybe you know someone who’s wanted to have a boyfriend or a girlfriend really, really badly. In fact you could almost characterize them as desperate. And it’s as if their very intensity and need and demand to have the boyfriend or the girlfriend is what prevents them from actually manifesting that. Other times people may, a couple may want to get pregnant. Then they try and they try and they try, and they aren’t able to conceive. And then they’ll decide to adopt, and bingo, along comes a pregnancy, and so now they have the blessing of two children, a pregnancy and an adopted child. And so there seems to be something about the letting go piece of it that’s really important to manifesting your dreams. And I’m talking about this in the context of weight loss, because guess what? It’s really important. I see this pattern again and again and again in weight loss. We become desperate for change, and in fact the people I’ve noticed who have the greatest intensity, the greatest demand for change are the ones who struggle the most. For example, my clients who suffer from eating disorders, binge eating disorder or bulimia, compulsive overeating, as I did, I was a binge eater and a compulsive overeater as you probably know by now. And the demand is so strong, the desire is so strong to be thin that it actually seems to prevent us from becoming thin.
Renee Stephens: I remember as a teenager I used to clip out images from Vogue magazine and other fashion magazines of skinny waif-like models and put them all over the mirror in my bedroom so I looked at them all the time, the covered most of the mirror, most of a wall in fact they covered. And I so much wanted it, but it’s as if the very wanting of it caused me psychic stress that caused me to overeat and was counterproductive. And so I was trapped in that binge, starve myself, work out like a lunatic cycle again and again and again. The more I focused on it, the more it seemed to evade me. I say to my clients often that it’s as if with weight loss the more that we try to grasp it and squeeze it in the palm of our hand, the more that it slips through our fingers. So what is that about, when we just can’t get what it is that we want so much? It’s the demand for change. The Buddhist’s would actually call this attachment. And many Buddhist practices, such as meditation, focus on detachment, on letting go. And so it’s really the same concept here. Lets borrow that concept and notice how powerful that it is to let go, to surrender. George Leonard and Michael Murphy wrote a book called The Life We Are Given, and it details something called integral transformative practice. It’s a practice that consists of affirmations, movements, Tai Chi like movements, as well as community support all in the interest of manifesting specific intentions that one sets for one’s self in the context of the practice. And in this book, The Life We Are Given, there’s some really interesting concepts and Leonard and Murphy call this, in fact it was Leonard who coined the term “focused surrender.” Focused surrender means that state of wanting and focusing, and yet surrendering and letting go simultaneously, of that with which we desire. Now does this make sense? It seems almost counterintuitive. How could we let go of what we want? And I like to think of it as the difference between a demand for change and an invitation. A demand for change is when we must absolutely positively have something. Whereas an invitation is when we open our hearts, open the doors of our soul and our psyches to let it in, to let in that which we desire, without the demand, without desperation, but instead…notice the switch from the negative to the positive…without demand or desperation, but instead with openness, relaxation and surrender.
Renee Stephens: I’d like to tell you about an experiment that was conducted by a gentleman named Dwayne Elgin of the Stanford Research Institute between the years of 1973 and 1975. Dwayne wanted to test the power of intention. He utilized a magnetometer, that’s an instrument, a highly sensitive instrument designed to record and notice any differences in the magnetic field. And it records those differences or changes on a moving sheet of paper, much like a seismograph records movements in the earth’s surface. So Dwayne’s idea was that he could, with the power of his intention alone, influence the magnetometer. He hypothesized that if in fact intention were real and that he truly could focus his intention, then he could certainly move this tiny lightweight needle of the magnetometer. And so what he did is he would focus all the force of his will on the instrument trying to influence it and make the needle move. He continued this concentrated effort for 20 or 30 minutes, focused, focused, focused, watching the needle tracing almost a straight line, but with no results. He did this again and again and again, and finally exhausted and exasperated, he’d say to himself, “I give up.” And at that precise moment, the needle would start indicating a change in the magnetic field that in some instances were so significant that the needle went entirely off the scale. To get such results by normal means would take a force estimated to be one thousand times stronger than that of the earth’s magnetic field. Even physical distance didn’t lessen the effectiveness of his intentionality and his surrender. In one example he was actually several miles away in his home and he was able to influence the magnetometer at that moment, that precise moment of surrender. It wasn’t the focus and the concentration and the intensity that caused the move, but rather the moment of surrender, and perhaps even the combination of the clear intentionality and the relaxation, the release of surrender. So what can we learn about this or from this in terms of our weight loss journey? That it is in the letting go that we are able to receive.
Renee Stephens: We’re almost out of time for today. On the next episode I’ll walk you through an exercise that I designed to allow you to be in that state of what I call relaxed intent. That’s the magical state that will allow you to achieve and manifest your dreams, to let go of your demand for change and open up your invitation to your dreams. Before we go I’d like you to practice between now and the next episode. Imagine having your dream. And then imagine not having it and being completely okay with that. I want you to toggle between the desire of having your dream, and then a relaxation of, “Yeah, okay, if I don’t have that immediately, if I don’t get that…”, imagine what it would be like to completely accept yourself as you are now. To completely say, “Okay, it’s alright. If I don’t have that I’ll be okay.” And I’ll tell you kind of a funny anecdote from the hugely important to the banile, I use this technique all the time to manifest parking places. Now I want you to know that this is no simple feat. I live in San Francisco, and my car isn’t exactly what you would call petite. In fact, I often drive a minivan with a bunch of kids in it, carpooling them from one place to the next, and I’ll often park on very busy San Francisco streets. So manifesting a parking place is no small feat around here. And I use this technique and have amazing parking karma. I’m really good at manifesting parking places. And what I do is I visualize the parking place, I imagine the parking place exactly where I would like to have one in the vicinity, I’ll give myself a block or two if that’s appropriate. And then I imagine what my backup plan is. “Oh it’s okay. That’s what I want, but it’s alright. If I don’t get it, I’ll be alright”, and I just take a deep breath and relax. And so I kind of toggle between imagining getting the awesome parking place and not getting it. I know this seems like a very silly example, and yes, in fact it is. But it’s still a great example of how this technique can work. Toggling between intentionality and surrender and relaxation. So try it. If manifesting a parking place is a bid deal for you where you live, then this is a great exercise. Or maybe it’s something else that’s important for you. Manifesting the quickest line at the grocery store for example, that’s a great one to use this on. So between now and our next episode, I’d like you to practice this; simply toggling between wanting it, wanting it, wanting it, and then relaxing. And on the next episode I’ll walk you through an exercise of relaxed intent, to allow you to achieve your dreams even more quickly and easily than you had imagined.
Renee Stephens: We’ve come to the end of our show today. Thanks for being present. Remember you’ll get double or more out of what you put in to this journey, but you must put in to get out. Join the Inside Out Weight Loss Yahoo group. There’s a link on my blog at www.personallifemedia.com/renee. Post a comment to the blog as well, and read the comments of so many other listeners. Remember your job, your Inside Out Weight Loss job is to enjoy the journey of being naturally slender. Do you have a question for me? Would you like me to answer it on the air? Call 206-350-5333 and leave a message. I may play your question or comment on the air. For other shows on the Personal Life Media network, please visit our website at www.personallifemedia.com. There’s loads of intriguing content to feed your mind, body and spirit. This is your host Renee Stephens, and I am on a mission to eradicate the weight struggle from the planet. Join me as we evolve the world by evolving ourselves. Take good care.