Running Wild
If you’re not a dog person, forgive me … because I’m about to do the third dog inspired post in four days. But the site is called The Secret is Wags? after all ….
Actually, dogs aren’t the only inspiration for this post. I have Greg to thank for it too.
Greg (poster of insightful and inspirational comments on this blog) has embarked on an enthusiastic and industrious get fit program. Yesterday, he sent me an e-mail about a new class he’s taking and all the lunges that they did in the class.
Just reading the word “lunge” made me cringe. I was envious of Greg’s dedication and the results he will surely get, and I was upset that I didn’t feel at all inspired to start a fitness program of my own.
I used to do lunges. Lots of them.
I was fanatical about exercise. When I worked in a job that started at 7 in the morning, I got up at 4:30 or 5 so I could lift weights, and yes, do lunges, before I went to work. Then, during my lunch hour, I went to the YWCA and did aerobics classes or circuit training on an exercise bike. Then after work, I went for a walk and did yoga.
Once I began staying home to write, I exercised even more. At one point, I devoted four hours a day to working out.
I was slender, yes.
But was I happy?
Not even a little.
All that exercise kept my binge eating from turning me into a blimp. The binge eating was a reaction to all the self-discipline it took to do all that exercise.
When I started working so hard (note the word, hard—it is all you need to know about why all my work didn’t pay off), I stopped exercising so much, and I started eating even more.
After I broke my ankle and tore up the ligaments, etc., I did a year’s worth of intense rehab—all sorts of cardio and strengthening, and yes, lunges. When my weight barely changed and my ankle didn’t respond, all my self discipline snapped. I stopped working out.
I was done.
DONE.
Until yesterday, I wasn’t able to articulate why I now can’t bring myself to do more than go for a long walk in the woods with Ducky (which I do not for my health but for Ducky’s). But when I responded to Greg’s e-mail, I wrote this to him: “I had myself on such a short leash for so long that now that I’m off leash, I’m running crazy.”
Aha! Nice of law of attraction to pull that insight out.
If you’ve never had a dog, you might not know this; but dogs who are never allowed to run, who are cooped up in a crate or an apartment or small yard, will, if given the chance to be off leash, generally take off and run like crazy and not respond to commands. If you want your dog to consistently come when called, you need to give your dog freedom on a regular basis. If you make being free no big deal, the dog feels no need to head for the hills when allowed off the leash.
Except for at the trailhead, right next to the road, at the start and end of our walks, Ducky is off leash for an hour and 20 minutes or so. She runs through the underbrush and up and back on the trail, but she’s always within calling distance and usually within sight, and when I call, “Ducky, come,” she races back to me. She will even come back to me when she has a deer in her sights.
So what does this have to do with lunges and more importantly with the law of attraction?
The Spring-back Effect
Abraham-Hicks uses the analogy of a fast-moving stream to explain how alignment with your inner being works. When you’re aligned with who you really are, your nonphysical self, you are flowing downstream … toward everything you desire. (Because everything you desire is downstream.) When you struggle, use self-discipline, and force yourself to do things, you are not aligned. When you’re not aligned, you’re paddling upstream, away from what you want.
All the self discipline I used to stay thin was upstream. It seemed to be getting me what I wanted … on the surface. I was, after all, thin. But like I said, I wasn’t happy. So I wasn’t aligned, and I wasn’t flowing downstream.
When I stopped using self discipline to make myself exercise, it was like letting myself off the leash for the first time ever. I am now that wild and crazy dog getting a taste of freedom. No way am I going to be called back to the leash.
Why hasn’t all this freedom brought me into alignment with the thin person I want to be?
I think it’s because of what I think of as the Spring-back Effect.
When you let go of something taut like a rubber band, it springs back and stings you. Likewise, when you’re out of alignment with what you want but you have years of desire built up for it, the speed you have going on that desire is moving at something like the speed of light. So when you encounter an obstacle (some feeling of “I can’t have it” or “I don’t have it yet”), you become that rubber band, and you fly back from what you want and slam into the pain of your longing.
Am I making sense?
It’s like a pendulum. What you want is in the middle of the pendulum’s swing, the balance point. Self discipline to get something is the wide swing to the left. Saying “to hell with it” and not taking any action at all (mental or physical) is the wide swing to the right.
Because of the momentum built up with long-held desires, the pendulum, when released from self-discipline, will swing far to the other “to hell with it” side before it comes back to the middle.
So how does this help us get what we want?
Two Steps to Aligning Off Leash
First, as I said in Sticking to Joy a couple days ago, we need to trade self-discipline (leashes) for acting from joy. This is what gives us that ready freedom so we have no need to overreact to being off leash. AND joy is what brings us into alignment so we head back downstream.
Second, we need to be okay with where we are. When a dog is running wild off leash, screaming your head off and running after the dog doesn’t get the dog to come back. You have to calm your own energy first, sit down and act nonchalant. Give off the vibe that you don’t need the dog to come to you. Now if you just happen to have a tasty treat in your hand …..
This is the way back to the middle, I think. I’ve been screaming at myself for months for letting myself get so overweight, so out of shape. I think it’s time for me to sit down and accept what I am while at the same time holding that tasty treat. The treat is my feeling of already being the thin person that I want to be.
Abraham-Hicks says: “Be easy about it. Don’t rush into things. Savor them more. Make more plans and be more deliberate and specific about the plans you are making, and in all you do, let your dominant intent be to find that which pleasures you as you imagine it. Let your desire for pleasure and your desire for feeling good be your only guiding light. As you seek those thoughts that feel good, you will always be in vibrational harmony with the Energy that is your Source. And under those conditions, only good can come to you — and only good can come from you.”
I’m feeling my way through this open field of freedom. I’d love to hear your take on it. Any thoughts? Questions? Insights?
I love comments and welcome yours. To leave a comment, click on the “comments” link (it will say “No comments or “1 comment” or more) at the end of the tags in “Posted in” at the end of this post.
Tags: Abraham, Abraham-Hicks, Alignment, Law of Attraction, self-discipline
April 13th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
I love these “dogumentaries,” Ande. And it’s such a good point you make about how a dog — or person — will want to make a break for freedom if they’ve been consistently “on the leash.”
With regard to diets and fitness, there are examples EVERYWHERE of people who whip themselves into a program of great discipline for a while and then just can’t sustain it and go in the other direction. (I’m not saying that’s true of Greg, and I’m not saying that’s true of everyone, of course.)
But for people like you and me, who tend to overdo the self-discipline, thinking that the harder we work at something, the more likely we’ll achieve our intensely-held desire, it’s so important to remind ourselves that it’s just not really about action. It’s about ALIGNMENT, as you say. It’s about focusing on our desire more than on the lack of it, and feeling as emotionally good as we can muster about that subject and all aspects of our experience, for that matter.
I love the way that Abraham makes the distinction between motivating ourselves (arduous and avoidance-centered) and inspiring ourselves with the joyful images of where we want to go.
The message everywhere continues to be: “Eat less! Exercise more!” but I don’t really buy that anymore. I walk and do yoga when I feel like it, which is regularly, but I don’t push myself. (In fact, my gentle regimen would seem laughable to most people.) The gains are minimal from that approach, I’m now convinced.
It’s all about mental focus, and that’s where I’m putting my efforts — if you could call it that — these days.
April 13th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
Dogumentaries … LOL I love it. I may have to steal that from you since I seem to be so prone to writing them.
You’re right that Abraham makes it clear we will get much further with staying in joyful alignment with where we want to go than we will with self discipline. I sure am living the fall out of that kind of rigid self control. I find that I can’t even look at diet and exercise “advice” anymore or listen to “experts.” I know that it’s the same old stuff of someone else’s vibration being reactivated by me if I buy into it. I can choose to align with my own path to fitness. Not sure what that is yet, so for now, I’m doing my best to be joyfully thin within. 
April 13th, 2010 at 3:50 pm
Like you, I can’t even look at diet, exercise, or for that matter, health advice anymore, even when it’s hailed as the new best thing! Different faces, different places, but requiring the same old rigid self-control. There’s got to be a better way and, by golly, we’ve found it!
Haha — you’re welcome to “steal” dogumentaries. I’d be flattered.
April 13th, 2010 at 4:11 pm
I know this is going to sound fake because I was the one who put together this 6 week plan but I actually believe in everything you both said. More Joy, More Gain, not no pain no gain. I agree it has to be from Joy. Jesus even endured the cross for the joy set before Him. This plan is only for 6 weeks and its kinda an experiment for me. I was going to go for another sculpt class tomorrow but have modified the plan to walking 5.5 miles in the hills tomorrow because Im so sore. I really am happy and joyful about this plan and Im not doing it because of self discipline, I am in a place where it really is joyful for me. I love Yoga but will only do it with a certain teacher that is calm and go at your own pace kinda thing. I will not participate in a yoga class that is led by someone with a high school football mentality. When my regular teacher was gone on vacation we had a substitute and at the beginning of the class she made a comment that in her class she was going to kick our a—s and we better be prepared for pain etc and I immediately folded up my mat and went to starbucks… No more football practice for me.
I get the whole thing about not doing anything except from pleasure but this plan gives me pleasure. Normally it wouldnt but i guess im just in a different place. If this plan suddenly becomes a burden, I will drop it like the flu.
One thing that has really changed my actions is that I take 12 minutes every morning to visualize pleasant things about my marriage, my girls, my job and my future. 3 minutes each. 3 minutes exactly because i time it on my iphone. I just visualize already being the person that I desire and I just enjoy that time so much. In my visualization time (i call it prayer time), I visualize myself being thin and light on my feet and I purposely feel the feeling of how I look thin in my new clothes and it feels so good. I think this makes it a whole lot easier for me to do this plan. I just dont look at it as self discipline but just a path. An experimental path. Whether I keep it going or finish it or not, one thing is for certain, I will continue to reach for a better thought and be the person that I visualize I already am. I will feel now how I would then.
April 13th, 2010 at 6:32 pm
It doesn’t sound fake at all, Greg. And I didn’t mean to suggest that you were doing your 6 week plan from anything other than joy. I really do get that you’re inspired to do this. Seeing your inspiration, though, helped me to see quite clearly that I don’t have such inspiration right now.
Your visualization sounds lovely, and you’re doing it the effective way–because it feels good. I’ll enjoy watching all the wonder unfold for you.
April 13th, 2010 at 9:00 pm
I so agree with Ande, Greg. It sounds like you’re having fun with your new plan. You definitely have this stuff all figured out, and you demonstrated that when you left yoga class that one time and went to Starbucks!
There are a few (very few — ha!) forms of exercise that really call to me, and one of them is this Zumba thing that people do to Latin music. I’d like to take a class in that. I’d also like to try running (with the emphasis on TRY), and I ordered an MP-3 player today in order to see if that could be something really fun to do — run through the neighborhood.(Thankfully, we have a very small neighborhood .)
But if either of those things becomes arduous, I’ll let ‘em go pronto.