Use what you gained to clean up your messiest stuff that won't seem to go away.
 
I want to invite you to what you already know and show you a simple way to apply it to the thing that mystifies you—that area of life where you sometimes call yourself hopeless and you shake your head (or fist) (or entire self, mentally, like a mean cartoon parent). In this brief post, I’ll show you a quick, potent way to frame what you’ve already cleared or conquered or mastered (perhaps surprising your old self) and bring it to the stubborn spot. It literally involves making 2 lists. That's it.
 
What's your rough spot? Money, for me, is that tricky life challenge, the thing that’s been (and continues to be) a life’s journey to bring into alignment. I’ve gotten okay with this: all human beings have something, and I’m a human being. I invite you to get okay with the thing that most throws you off, and to apply the following trick to that: relationship, sex, food, health, your body, pain, work/career, socializing, some creative pursuit or field of knowledge, emotional well-being, communication, letting go—whatever it is.
 
What I saw, in one of those inspired flashes (you know the ones), was that the same mindsets I’d learned and consciously taught myself to hold toward food could be true for money, so I wrote down some statements that roughly express mindsets I’ve adopted with food, knowing they’d be true for money too. I made this first list seeking to consciously focus just on food (as best I could).
 
Why food for me? This is the best point of departure for the exercise: something that was somewhat problematic earlier in life (and probably along the way, perhaps even after some major clean-up), but that you've been able to bring into alignment (perhaps some time ago, that you've likely continued to make adjustments around as you go).
 
You’re not a newbie. Honor your own experience and wisdom gained. Consider what you’ve cleaned up, healed, gotten a handle on that used to be not so pretty or not so easy to manage. Make your equivalent list from the food list that follows, using language that feels right to you. These statements express what's real and true for me now that did not use to be:

• I’m willing to give time and energy to my healthy relationship with food.
• I’m willing to use resources to get my hands on good food (through shopping, gardening, bartering, receiving).
• I’m willing to prepare food that truly feeds me.
• I’m willing to clean up around food (as in taking care of dishes, leftovers, compost).
• I’m willing to let food nourish me.
• I’m willing to make healthy food choices.
• I’m willing to enjoy food, to relish it, to let it bring me pleasure.
• I’m willing to eat the right amounts of food.
• I’m willing to notice when I’m off with food and course-correct (without attacking myself).
• I’m willing to eat consciously.
• I’m willing to love food.
• I’m willing to let food love me.
• I’m willing to distinguish between fake and real self-care around food.
• I’m willing to keep growing a relationship with food, tweaking as I go, responding to the realities of the moment—as opposed to running on old ideas, holding on to obsolete concepts of what does and doesn’t work for me, insisting on the old stories of food, or of me and food, that actually don’t fit anymore.
• I’m still willing to eliminate foods that I love, introduce foods that aren’t familiar, organize my current diet around what makes me feel good now, do whatever I need to do to maximize my well-being in relation to food.
• I’m willing to let food be guilt-free.
• I’m willing to let food taste good.
• I’m willing to be functional with food, healthy with food, happy with food.
• I share food with others in an easy, loving way. This brings me joy.
• I’m willing to have a history with food. I’m willing to be on an evolutionary journey with food. I’m willing to keep getting current with food.
• I’m so happy for how blessed I am with food in my life.
• I love food. I’m willing to love food.
• I love myself and my perfectly imperfect relationship with food.

Once I had this list, it was easy to go through it again substituting the word money anywhere the word food appeared (with small tweaks here and there, where a slightly different wording made more sense). I sought to feel each assertion again as if it were brand new—and it truly was; it was downright illuminating to imagine bringing to money the same lessons learned with food.
 
So here we go again. But not again, really—for the first time. This is the first application of kinder, simpler thoughts of allowing and aligning, in this case with that stubborn, still problematic life challenge—money for me and, for you, whatever you know it to be:

• I’m willing to give time and energy to my healthy relationship with money.
• I’m willing to use resources to get my hands on good money (through working in my most aligned way, opening to unexpected sources, investing, receiving).
• I’m willing to prepare for spending and receiving money in ways that truly feed me.
• I’m willing to clean up around money (as in taking care of banking tasks, bills, taxes).
• I’m willing to let money nourish me.
• I’m willing to make healthy money choices.
• I’m willing to enjoy money, to relish it, to let it bring me pleasure.
• I’m willing to charge and spend the right amounts of money.
• I’m willing to notice when I’m off with money and course-correct (without attacking myself).
• I’m willing to receive money consciously.
• I’m willing to love money.
• I’m willing to let money love me.
• I’m willing to distinguish between fake and real self-care around money.
• I’m willing to keep growing a relationship with money, tweaking as I go, responding to the realities of the moment—as opposed to running on old ideas, holding on to obsolete concepts of what does and doesn’t work for me, insisting on the old stories of money, or of me and money, that actually don’t fit anymore.
• I’m still willing to eliminate spending that I love, introduce money strategies that aren’t familiar, organize my current revenue and spending around what makes me feel good now, do whatever I need to do to maximize my well-being in relation to money.
• I’m willing to let money be guilt-free.
• I’m willing to let money feel good.
• I’m willing to be functional with money, healthy with money, happy with money.
• I share money with others in an easy, loving way. This brings me joy.
• I’m willing to have a history with money. I’m willing to be on an evolutionary journey with money. I’m willing to keep getting current with money.
• I’m so happy for how blessed I am with money in my life.
• I love money. I’m willing to love money.
• I love myself and my perfectly imperfect relationship with money.

 
That’s it. For me, this was profound. I took my time feeling it, and it gave me a great sense of expansiveness, relief, opening to new possibility (all of which I consider signs of alignment from my guidance system!). Do it for real with your substitutions. Do it out loud or in writing, not just in your head. Nail it. Clearly bring to view the opening to a new, wider, more beautiful, perhaps truly liberating vista.
 
I want to close with expressing appreciation for Michael Beckwith and his teachings about radical visualizing/visioning that begins with feeling into and getting centered in some aspect of life where you feel great (connected, allowing, in the flow), then visiting your scary place while you hold that energy; and for Sarah McCrumm and her teachings about money, which opened me to the crazy idea of easy, healthy, sweet connections possible for me in that thorny realm.
 
 Love & blessings, Jaya

He
Easy and EXCELLENT food rules! The first 4 apply anytime, then there are 2 gems for eating in the company of others. I originally published this around the holidays, as eating can become so loaded when we're also managing interpersonal or social anxiety.
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1. Eat more slowly. Every rule that follows will support you in this, and eating slowly will support your experience of the following rules. If you're concerned with amounts you eat or number of calories, think of needing to eat for a certain amount of time to feel satisfied. If you're shoveling it in at high velocity during that whole window, yikes—lots more food going down.
2. Engage with the food more sensually. Most important, really taste it. Experience the varying flavors and textures; look for the subtleties. Beyond that, you probably have something in the vicinity of four other magical senses you can check in with as part of your mealtime experience. Note that you're always more present when you're connected to your senses and what they're registering here and now.
3. Chew thoroughly. Keep chewing when you think you're done. A bit more chewing before you swallow? Always good.
4. Put down your fork (spoon, chopsticks, whatever) between bites. I found this to be a serious discipline at first! Who puts their fork down between each and every bite? Who even wants to? What I found I love about doing this is that the act of constantly putting down and picking up the eating utensil keeps me conscious more than anything else, thus allowing me to recall and stay with (or keep coming back to) the other conscious-eating tips.
5. Don't talk while you eat. Let others talk. If there's food in your mouth, it's time to chew, maybe swallow—not talk. (Hey, no one else needs to monitor your chewing.) Stop eating for a while if you want to insert yourself in the conversation.
6. Monitor your feeling states while you eat, and respond to them appropriately. If you notice the conversation (or anything in the room) is creating an anxious response in your body, stop eating, or slow way down. You'll enjoy the food more and digest it much better if there's no anxiety in the mix, or any clunky feeling of any flavor. Also, you're likely to lose track of all conscious eating if you eat while the pain body is activate. So pause, or creatively stall, and mind the pain body. Short-version of how to do this: breathe into the feeling wherever it registers in the body. Just breathe normally, directing the breath consciously—no one will know what you're up to.

Take full responsibility for your well-being as you eat. People will do what they do, and that doesn't need to keep you from eating in a way that nourishes you and feels good. Consider whether you want to say or do something to shift the scene, from naming the elephant in the room to changing the subject. You might even step outside for a bit.

If you know before the meal that there's a topic in the air pretty sure to create distress or discomfort for you or others present, you might ask all concerned for some judicious mealtime agreements. I, for one, think political talk—especially when people have, uh, robust opinions about the political hot topics of the day—is a very bad idea at the dinner table.

Note that items 1 and 3-5 originally came to me from Deepak Chopra in the five-hour audio program, Magical Mind, Magical Body. On a sidenote, this is where I first heard the term self-referral, though he spends little time defining or teasing it out. That's why this topic has its own chapter in my book Scooch!

Happy feasting!
Love & blessings, Jaya
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Here's a post on 20 empowering tools & mindsets for successfully changing your diet.

This article appears in July of 2012 in the (amazing) Ithaca food co-op's newspaper, GreenLeaf. Because I wrote it for the co-op, the focus is on making dietary changes or dealing with dietary restrictions. Every one of the 20 points (even the one about snacks!) applies to anyone making or wishing to make any life change.

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Whether you've received some diagnosis (say, hypoglycemia, diabetes, or celiac disease) that requires a change in your eating habits, or you simply decide to experiment with food choices to see if a change of diet might give you a different experience (as I did — successfully! — with trying an anti-inflammatory diet to reduce pain levels), you may find the prospect of radical dietary change a daunting one. You may feel ill-equipped to face it.

The concepts that follow can be applied to any realm of life, to any place where life invites you to step into change that scares you ... even as you see the greater well-being and better life such change may offer.

1. It's empowering to hold a consciousness of choice. Even if it's life-and-death (as with diabetes, for instance), changing your diet is still a choice. Dying is an option. So if you choose to live, choose it with gusto and conviction. Choose the diet that will give you a vibrant life.
   
   
2. Having chosen, get 100 percent behind your choice. I never stand in front of a case of pastries wondering if I should have one because the decision's already been made; there's nothing to debate. (If you've made the choice to be monogamous, isn't it insanity to walk around checking out others? You'll only feel a constant dissatisfaction and bring a flimsy presence to your relationship.)
   
   
3. Remember what you're up to. Have clear intentions around health and well-being. Write them down. Post them. Read them often. Remind yourself every day what you're doing and why. Be in a grand experiment!
   
   
4. If dietary changes mean misery and deprivation to you, you'll feel miserable and deprived. Focus instead on how lucky you are to have this information, to have the option to control your own diet. Try on a spirit of exploration and curiosity, a conviction that if this change is what most serves you, you'll figure it out and life will support you in the process.
   
   
5. Don't expect yourself to have a great attitude all the time, but do catch yourself when you're in misery and deprivation and shift to something else. There's hardly anything in life we just turn on and it stays on. Your conviction will likely waver. Just keep coming back to your intention as quickly as you catch your mind straying.
   
   
6. Remember that others on the planet have it worse than you. Consider those who would gladly trade their food (or lack thereof) for your dietary restrictions. I don't mean you should access the vicious inner parent and hiss reminders about children in Ethiopia. But if you can always think of someone who's worse off than you are, this can bring you back to appreciating what you've got (which is empowering).
   
   
7. Stay open. Keep learning, keep experimenting, keep talking to people to get their ideas and suggestions. If something tastes off or incomplete, then you're probably not done — spicing can be corrected; ingredients can be added. For me, giving up dairy has meant creamy avocados, flavorful fresh herbs, the clean crunch of sauerkraut.
   
   
8. Get comfortable with your discomfort. You can't get through a human life without it, and if your m.o. is to prevent all discomforts, this only leads to more! So when life brings up unavoidable discomfort, why not sit squarely in it and get okay with where you are? You're there anyway. Comfort and pleasure will surely cycle back around, and discomfort has gifts to offer while it's here. (You may grow some muscles you didn't have before, and muscles of any kind are totally appealing.)
   
   
9. Consider giving up snacks, especially if finding snack foods seems problematic. Snacks are one of the ways we comfort ourselves as quickly as discomforts come up. They can also keep us from hydrating properly — why not reach for a glass of water when your body needs something between meals?
   
   
10. If dietary restrictions make you feel like all pleasure has been drained from your life, this is a sure sign it's time to redefine. Has food always been your primary source of pleasure? What's gotten lost that you need to get back to? What have you never yet sampled? Pleasure comes from many arenas: it may be time to explore.
    
    
11. Stay aware of cause-and-effect. If I'm thinking I'd like to put cheese on something just this once, I ask myself, Do I want to be a constellation of pain centers tomorrow? I love my job, and it's important to me to be fully present to my clients; I do this more effortlessly when my body feels good.
    
    
12. When you feel discouraged, don't do anything that actually harms you, and do anything you see to do, however small, that helps you. With food, this may simply mean eating to feed yourself within your dietary restrictions whether it's a great delight or not. Sometimes food is just fuel — can your inner gourmet live with that? And courage is a renewable resource, so go to bed with the idea you'll find your creativity and tenacity in the morning and get more information and support.
    
    
13. Don't talk to anyone who treats you like a victim of dietary restrictions. If you let him, Eeyore will gladly join you for breakfast and you can both sag glumly over your gluten-free, sugarless, hold-the-cream cream of buckwheat. Find true allies instead. Find people who inspire you because they've made successful changes, people who have great recipes, people who say “You can do it” and “How can I help?” instead of “Poor you — I could never do that.”
    
    
14. Have mini-goals that you can actually meet and set up a reward system that doesn't sabotage your process and truly feels rewarding. (In my twenties I used to reward myself for not eating sugar with a major chocolate binge that happened to coincide with the full moon and disorienting hormonal shifts. Yep, total looney tunes.)
    
    
15. There's a lot of wisdom in the 12 Steps' one-day-at-a-time mindset. Giving something up forever, especially if you love it and can hardly imagine life without it, is very hard to do. Giving it up for today is completely doable. Bring it to NOW. One day, one meal, one moment at a time.
    
    
16. Think of when you've navigated major change: When you took some higher education or training program? Got into a serious relationship? Had children? Started a new job, your own business, some creative endeavor that blasted your prior efforts out of the water? Was it stressful? Yes. And was it worth it? Yes, yes, and yes again. Make a list of all you've already changed or given up. Honor your own strength. Believe in your capacity for change.
    
    
17. Don't tell yourself lies. “I can't do this.” “This is terrible.” “I don't have time for this.” “I could do this if only … [something were happening, or something else weren't].” Recognize such thoughts as lies, and recognize their power to undermine your efforts. Acknowledge you don't know how, acknowledge it feels hard right now, but do not tell yourself, as if it's a fact, that you can't do what most any human on the planet can do.
    
    
18. Remember you never have to know how. The how always reveals itself in the process. Just be clear about what you mean to do, and let the how take care of itself.
    
    
19. Believe that the Universe is conspiring in your favor. List every benefit you can find to making these changes. This challenge is here to grow you, not to thwart you; it's here to move you toward greater thriving. List the benefits again in six months, because you'll be amazed by how the list has grown. Life is not against you. Life is for you, and this change will bring in something you needed in order to step more fully into the next highest version of yourself.
    
    
20. Start now. Don't wait till some event has come and gone or you've had one more chance to have your favorite sundae in that cute little shop in Provincetown. Why prolong decision or action? Do you really need more evidence or more preparation? Once you have clear intentions, the only thing that can stop you is your own movement in another direction. Proceed toward your intention, today.

Love & blessings, Jaya

Here's another post on 6 tips for conscious eating.
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Here's a post with a cool process for leveraging changes made before to fuel the next change you'd like to implement into your life. I used food mindsets I changed to provide an illustration.