Make Me Over May

I've mentioned that, with the arrival of May, I'm moving into the 12th month of my life change. Never in a million years would I have thought I would have reached this weight and this size within a year. I had been trying to lose weight in fits and starts for a year or so before last May, and even though I was moving in the right direction, I couldn't find anything that really lit the fire and got me enthused about it.

Enter the Style Network. This is a U.S. cable network that I had previously ridiculed as the biggest waste of air time on the planet, excluding recent State of the Union addresses. I'm not sure how my television landed on Style one day, but it was a life changing event. They were showing The Biggest Loser reruns and other shows that featured personal makeovers in a "Make Me Over May Style-athon". Seeing other people's successes night after night provided that spark I so desperately needed.

So. In honor of that, I thought it might be fun, but maybe not *G*, to turn my Mondays into Makeover Mondays. Each week, I'll find something to focus on making over, whether it's an internal or external thing. Hopefully before the month is over, one or more of these will be useful to anyone other than me.

For the first Makeover Monday, I'd like to focus on the biggest makeover potential of all: attitude. Changing how we view life and the world around us can be instrumental in our success. Or,at least, our perception of our success.:)

Motivational speaker Brian Tracy follows the philosophy that it's not that "we believe it when we see it", but that "we see it when we believe it." If we believe we are destined to fail, we will see our failures all around us. If we believe ourselves to be successful, we can fill up a page listing all the wonderful things we see ourselves accomplishing.

The concept made sense to me then, and it still does. But sometimes I need reminding, and that's when a little trick presented at the seminar comes in handy. It's a simple mantra, repeated ten times while looking myself in the eye in the bathroom mirror first thing in the morning. It goes like this:

Something wonderful will happen.

It couldn't be more simple, could it? Four little words. After you've repeated this simple little phrase over and over, it kind of plants the idea in your mind that it's going to be a good day and you start looking for all wonderful things coming your way. And guess what?

They always do.

Because you believe good things will happen, you will see them everywhere. What was a nice gesture from someone the day before becomes magnified when it's something wonderful. A parking place near the door becomes something wonderful. A simple compliment like, "Cute blouse", can swell your heart because it's something wonderful. An extra 0.10 mile on the elliptical when you were sure Death was imminent is an even greater accomplishment and something completely wonderful.

You see? It's a matter of perspective and attitude, and after a while you grow to live a life of wonder and joy. Yes, there are problems, ups and downs and turnarounds, but a few whispered "Something Wonderful Will Happen" reminders will usually get your mind refocused.

So far today, many wonderful things have happened. The sun is shining, the temperatures are mild, I had a simply wonderful blackened chicken salad for lunch, and the workday is moving along at a clippety-clip pace without a lot of drama and angst. And that's just scratching the surface. There have been a few grr-r-r moments, too, but with so many wonderful things happening, those moments are merely irritants, as opposed to pattern-makers.

What wonderful things happened in your world today?