We have all seen Oprah struggle with her weight. It seems to have been a constant battle for her. Recently, she announced her new Life in Focus Tour with an emphasis on being healthy. She attributes her healthy new weight to WW for helping to stabilize her weight and use the tools to live her best life.
As I read this, I wanted to jump up and down. Yes, the secret is using the right tools for the specific task we want to accomplish or goal we want to reach.
I became keenly aware of the need to use the right tools many years ago when I framed some wall mirrors with wood molding for my daughter’s playroom. I am not a carpenter so the frame did not have nice neat corners.
I couldn’t figure out how to make those nice neat corners until a short time later we hired carpenters to do some work in our house. I watched as they put up molding that had nice neat corners. I asked them how they got the wood to fit so nicely together in those beautiful fitted angles. They pulled out a miter box and showed me that it was a tool created specifically to do that. Aha I thought. With the right tools, anything is possible.
Oprah also admitted that she still had self-doubt about whether she was enough. I loved when she said that it’s something that we all deal with in our human experience and assured people that they are enough.
I have been on a mission to find tools to address issues like this. Why do we all deal with self-doubt that we’re enough? What’s the underlying cause of this belief and is it something we need to live with or is there something we can do about it?
My journey has led me to focus on fear. When I first began this journey, understanding and overcoming fear was not as in vogue as it is today. There were only a handful of books written on the topic and now there are countless books and different strategies to address fear.
One night, my daughter, a friend of ours, and I sat in our living room discussing this topic. Fear felt like something we could not get away from. It was like an entity that chased us down, wrapped its arms around us, and held us back from our dreams and goals. We didn’t solve the dilemma that night but we had a lot of fun. We mocked fear, we barked at fear, and we tried to pretend it didn’t exist. We laughed and laughed as we came up with kooky ways to address the fear we felt in our lives. A few hours later, I heard my daughter barking in her room and when I went to see what she was doing, she told me she was trying to make the fear she was feeling go away.
Alas, that didn’t work. Yet that didn’t stop me from continuing my search for the right tools to address the fear that seems to be taking over our lives…and the world.
I wasn’t confident that I would find them but I knew I had to try. After years of searching and trying on different methods, strategies, and modalities, I feel like I have a much clearer understanding of how and why fear plays such an important role and what we can do about it. I’ve discovered some effective tools and worked my way through a process. I’ve used it myself, tested it on friends, and started sharing it with my clients. It worked so well that I continued to work with more people and refine the process. It’s definitely a process and not a quick fix. It requires someone to be open to a new way, committed to do the work, and a certain level of consistency. Yes, all you need is to use the right tools, and anything is possible.