After the vision, the release: Lesson from Alex Haley

The 21 day church fast is officially over but I'm not quite  done yet.

At the beginning of the fast I just happened to be watching the news and came across a segment on the Nightly Business Report where this guy, Lou Heckler was talking about priorities.  What caught my attention was his mention of Alex Haley as the source of his inspiration for over 30 years in helping him keep his priorities right.  Below is his quote from the January 4, 2013 episode.

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LOU HECKLER:  Thirty six years ago, Alex Haley published his amazing family saga “Roots,” tracing his ancestry back to people on slave ships from Africa.  It later became a landmark mini-series on television and caused thousands, maybe millions, of people to start their own roots search.  One of our friends eventually arranged a massive family reunion where he presented each family with a 70-page booklet he had compiled about their history.

I was working in commercial television at the time that Haley did his book tour and he came to our station for an interview.  To what do you attribute your exceptional success the interviewer asked.  Haley thought for a moment and then said this, "Decide what you want.  Then decide what you’re willing to give up to get it."

Do you have sentences in your head that never go away?  I do and none has been more meaningful to me than this one.  I’ve been fortunate.  I have had wonderful success in many areas in my life. 
When I get in trouble though, is when I try to do too much.  I take on task upon task upon task and start thinking there is a big “S” on my chest.   Superman, you can call me.

Then I hear Haley’s voice and I’m reminded that I can’t do everything.  I have to prioritize and discard those things that I simply must give up so I have the time and energy and creativity to complete that which is most important.  I just wish I didn’t have to re- learn this one so often.

I’m Lou Heckler.
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Now that the fast has ended I'm still trying to figure out, as I do every year, what one practice from the fast will I continue.  In the past years it has been about food and my diet but this year it will be about setting priorities...then deciding what has to be given up to get them accomplished.

Next month, we will begin our life style modification in one of the residence halls. I suspect that we will attract many young women who are drawn to the idea of loosing weight before spring break. However, the students that will  consider this more than a new diet and really begin to change their lifestyle  will be  those that not only had a vision or idea of what they wanted to be, but are also willing to give up something to get it. Since, as a teacher,  I have to do the thing that I am asking them to do, I'm also asking that of myself.  What am I willing to give up?

What am I willing to give up in order to have a healthy lifestyle?
What am I willing to give up to have less stress?
What am I willing to give up to be at peace?
What am I willing to give up grow closer to God every day?
What am I willing to give up to be happy?

If you created a vision board in January and identified something that you want to do, be or have then what are you willing to give up?

In February we'll see how our life style modification program is working and see how hard it is to give up habits....especially habits of mind.






 

Healthy Lifestyles begin with a vision followed by baby steps

Along with a colleague and 3 undergraduates research assistants, I am creating a health program for use in the residence halls here at my school, Virginia State University.  We call it Healthy VSU and it has been three years in the planning. The program is partly based on the scientific literature on weight loss and also from research on the physiology of dieting and the psychology of behavioral change. The other part of our information comes from our own experience as African American women. While there may be a thirty year span in our collective ages, our stories about body image and weight loss disappointments and the role of stress and emotional eating sound amazingly similar.

There are many reasons that African American women have been identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as the segment of the American population most likely to be overweight/obese. We could argue that the CDC's  measure of obesity does not take into account other research suggesting that the Body Mass Index (BMI) for black people should be 3 points higher than what it is for white people.  We could also point out that our campus, like many HBCU's (Historically Black Colleges/Universities) is in a low income area of Petersburg, VA and  has a number of fast food restaurants on the main road leading to the campus (5)  and a number of liquor/convenience stores near the campus (4) but no (0) grocery stores that sell fruits and vegetables are within a close distance.

However, we chose to focus on something that we could do something about...the behavioral choices that students make around diet and exercise.  We know that there is a problem. Our students eat on average 0-2 servings of vegetables per day (the recommendation is 9); a substantial number don't exercise at all which results in a greater proportion of our students that are overweight/obese. So, since most of our students are female, we looked at research that targeted African American women for some ideas on successful strategies.  

We found one study that established a registry of college educated African American women who had successfully lost 24% of body weight and maintained most of the initial loss for a minimum of one year. Behavioral strategies used by this group included limiting their fat intake; eating breakfast most days of the week;  avoiding fast food restaurants; engaging in moderate to high levels of physical activity;  and use of a scale to monitor weight on a regular basis.

We combined this information with successful ideas from our own experience, including insights gained from Sacred and Fit participants and information from a focus group of students held last semester. Then, we came up with our own program created specifically for African American women.  In essence, the program has four parts-

Part #1- Creating a VISION that is aligned with your highest good and highest purpose. The vision.seeks to answer the question- What would I like to express through my life and my body?;  

Part #2  Focusing on UNHEALTHY THINKING with inspirational texts and scriptures that help confront attitudes/beliefs. This step begins with an acknowledgement that some habitual thinking about food/exercise and/or my body will have to change- What current thoughts am I willing to give up? What new thoughts must I begin to cultivate? 

Part #3 Creating SUPPORT STRUCTURES so that new healthy behaviors can be incorporated slowly and systematically over time. We are using websites and mobile apps such as BJ Foggs, 3 Tiny Habits to start with baby steps.

and Part #4 - engaging a system of ACCOUNTABILITY and PARTNERSHIP so that no one is left to fight against our obesogenic and appearance-obsessed culture alone. 

Over the coming weeks, I will be reporting on their progress of our pilot group of 30 young women. But in the mean time, I and my colleague and research assistants are doing the program ourselves, starting with visioning our own highest good. Here are some of the statements from our visioning session:
No more dieting...ever!
i want to make a lifestyle change for a larger purpose than being thin.
He is not worth your health.
Being healthy, happy and my right size is better than being sick, depressed, and hungry all the time. 
I want to love my body instead of fighting with it.
Loving myself means loving my body, too.
I want to to scuba dive with grandson when he turns 16 (that statement is mine!).

January is a particularly good time to create a vision for the coming year, but the vision must be f
followed first by a change of thinking- not a change of behavior. Without a change in underlying thoughts new behaviors don't last.   It is a common mistake to imagine yourself in a bikini and then join the gym. Gym owners know that most of the new January signups will be no-shows by March. Instead, imagine yourself healthy and happy. Then, you can do what we are doing, choose one eating habit to start; one eating habit to stop and one increase in physical activity.  Baby steps that will make 2013 your healthiest year yet.

What is your Vision for yourself in 2013?

The church fast has entered week #3. It is not too late to join in.

Self-control: An act of love

A recent church sermon was about "Growing up in God."  The question that came to me immediately was “How do I  measure my own growth?”  There are concepts from psychology that are used to quantify human behaviors and tendencies. For instance, there are surveys that can measure depression or anxiety based on the score. 

My question - If there was a spiritual assessment what would it measure and how would it be scored?  How do you know when you are moving forward, going backward or standing still?

I often say that my goal as a Christian is to be more loving and to love like Jesus told us to love-God, others and ourselves.  As a young Christian I really took that to heart and then saw how difficult it was. Just when you get one enemy covered another one pops up. Also, what happens when you are in the outs with a co-worker or friend or even a spouse (been there). Actually, in those days, I found it hard to like myself, let alone love myself.  I got discouraged until I started to study the list for the fruit of the Spirit and realized that there was a natural progression to love. I had been trying to do calculus before learning times tables.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control”

It is easier to love when you are happy (joy). It is easier to have joy when your mind is calm (peace). It is easier to be at peace when you don’t want what you want when you want it (patience). And sometimes to keep peace you must treat others  as you would rather be treated than how they deserve to be treated (kindness and goodness). NOW THE HARD PART!  The practice of being kind and good requires renewing that commitment regularly, like every day or every moment (faithfulness). Granting grace to yourself is necessary- because you will screw-up  (gentleness). However, you must also have the determination to reach the goal of being your best and highest self and that determination starts with controlling your own thoughts (self-control).
 

Years ago, when my children were small, I had an area of my life that was out of control. My temper. I didn’t hit them but I screamed at them. I knew it was wrong and I felt bad about it.  I prayed about it, I fasted about it and still the urge would come up and I was powerless to stop it. Then I had an idea that led to my retraining.  I gave my children permission to remind me when I was raising my voice and to pinch me.   My son, who was the oldest started to get a little too gleeful about pinching me, so I resorted to paying them a quarter. This didn’t work because my entrepreneurial children saw the opportunity to exploit situations for their financial gain. However,before the exercise ended it dawned on me that I had made some progress. I realized that I  could discern a pause....Just a moment between the stimulus to scream and the act of screaming.  Once I realized that there was that instant in between,  I knew that I had a choice.  I could choose to control the behavior or give-in to the urge. Self-control.

It was much harder to apply self-control to eating and exercise and it would take me many years, to figure it out for myself, but along the way I have become more gentle with myself and with each success more committed to stay the course and staying the course has resulted in more peaceful circumstances in which I feel happy most of the time and in that space, I love myself more, making it easier to love others (even when they do stupid stuff) and this is how I plan to grow my love of God. 

It is easier to control behaviors when you are fasting...but consider how this type of self-denial can be applied during the rest of the year...to more than just food .... eventually to negative thoughts and self-destructive thinking.  Self-control can ultimately be a great act of self-love.
It's fasting week 2- love yourself and keep at it.

In Peace,
 Cheryl

Fasting and Visiioning: Lessons from the Soup Kitchen

 I had been praying about my life's purpose when I was asked to help at the soup kitchen.
I was assigned to the serving table just after the greeter. At exactly 12:30 p.m. the line that snaked out from the church basement on to the sidewalk started to move and we were ready. Just pass the greeter was a long table of steaming food. I would dish out a square of pasta casserole and a spoonful of sauce. "Here's some pasta for you? Would you like some sauce?"  After my tray were french fries, then salad, bread and desert.  About 150 people came through the line. Mostly men, but some women and one women with her three children. It was a free hot lunch provided for anyone who would show up, served every week day at the Broomfield CME Church in Richmond, VA.

 "Hi Would you like some sauce?"

I know from online research that Richmond has about 6000 homeless people and roughly one third are chronically homeless (meaning that they live on the street). I also know from reading the paper that in Wilmington the face of hunger is changing and now includes younger people, including working families, that just can't make the food budget stretch.

"Hello, Would you like some sauce with that?"

A little pasta sauce doesn't sound like much against such daunting need..but then I have a need too. I need to serve and I need to have my life be about more than being busy trying to get somewhere and accumulating more stuff. After 2 years of using the Sacred and Fit principles to create a healthy lifestyle, I've noticed that spending more time in prayer and meditation starts to have a larger effect in your life than eating and exercise. A few months ago, I just KNEW that I was supposed to do something more than hand the homeless guy a couple of dollars. So, I started to pray about places to serve. 

"Would you like some more sauce?"

Doesn't sound like I'm doing much, just spooning on Ragu. But to get here, I had to leave my job in the middle of the day, postpone some tasks till later tonight and add about 40 miles to my commute. Serving this sauce is costing me something precious, my time...and that is a good thing.

I've written on this blog about how, as part of my Sacred and Fit training, I started to eat slower and more mindfully and found that I ate less and better. As I connected my eating to my spiritual growth in terms of sense control and self-control I felt one aspect of growth was becoming more sensitive to the still small voice. So when the word came to serve, I could hear it.

I have two daughters that are making big transitions in the coming days, one has even quit her day job and is moving across the country to follow her entrepreneurial dream. Because they both have deep spiritual practices (and are a zillion times more focused than I was in my 20's and 30's), I am not worried about them. In fact, I am trusting them to trust the still small voice within them.

I can't say that expanding your spiritual practices will instantly solve all of your problems but I can say that aligning your eating with your prayer life, is ONE way to begin a process of quieting your mind and slowing your pace so that you can begin to hear what is most important, like the next step for your life, how to have peace of mind,  how to live with a purpose or go after your vision.

Every January I begin the year with two activities,  I create or add to my vision board, a collection of words and pictures that reflect my  intentions for the new year.  This year's vision board is about Growth, as in growing up as a Christian. Maybe I won't mature to the point of raising the dead or walking on water, but I know that I heard  the word "serve."   So, I'm starting at the Soup Kitchen  and I will keep listening. The other activity is a fast. I have fasted for many years and my goal is always to fast in a way that leads to a fasted life. I fast for a purpose greater than not eating for 21 days but to have a profound effect on the other 344 days. Through my purposeful fast, I've adopted eating mindfully and eating mostly raw food. I've learned to limit exposure to television, violent entertainment and overall contention. I cultivated a desire to keep my clothes organized, my spending on budget and to avoid paper clutter. And I am learning to diminish my need for more stuff (ceiling on desires)  and treat my work as worship.  All of this through fasting and prayer.

If you want to read more about vision boards click here for a past blog posting.

Today is the first day of the 21 day church fast at New Beginning Christian Church in Wilmington, NC. Feel free to join in.  More about S&F fasting basic's can be found here