As I watched one of Michael Mackintosh’s videos from the Inner Self Image program this morning, I was inspired to figure out what beliefs I have that are limiting me in different aspects of my life.

The best way I could think of to figure out my current  limiting beliefs was to look at all the areas of my life where I have less of something than I would like to have.

Areas of limitation:
(see if any of these are also true for you)

• money
• loving relationships
• places to hang out
• things I feel comfortable doing
• jobs available
• I’m sure there are more, but I can’t think of them right now

The more I study spiritual literature, the more I realize that each one of us is an infinite being and that our beliefs and attitudes are the only things that can place any sort of limitation in our experience.

So based on that, it seems that my current limiting beliefs are that there is only a limited amount of money available, that my relationships can only be so loving, that I have a limited number of places I can go to hang out, that there are only so many things I feel comfortable doing, and that there are only a limited number of jobs available, etc..

Today, while I do my Inner Self Image meditation, I plan to visit these belief systems and reaffirm that they are indeed only belief systems and not really true.

Your inner self image is the image that you hold in your mind (and your heart) about who you are. All of your beliefs, attitudes, actions, relationships, everything you’ve ever done and everything that has ever happened to you combines to make up your current inner self image. In short, it is who you perceive yourself to be.

What’s so important about your inner self image?

According to Michael Mackintosh, your inner self image is responsible for almost everything that happens in your life. Think of it like a blueprint of your life.

For instance, let’s take someone who is shy, who believes that social interactions are scary, that people are out to get him, that he is socially awkward, etc. All of these beliefs together form an inner self image which has a tremendous effect on how that person acts, what types of activities he does, how he feels, and ultimately what happens in his life.

This person is likely to develop social anxiety, to avoid social situations, avoid dealing with people as much as possible and eventually become depressed due to a lack of social support.

By the way, that person used to be me, and even though I’ve come a long way, I still feel that I have a lot of residual beliefs and attitudes about people and social situations that I would like to change.

The concept behind Michael Mackintosh’s Inner Self Image program is that anyone can change their inner self image and by doing so, drastically change their life.

The program is actually very simple, but Michael calls it one of his most powerful programs and says it is foundational for anyone who wants to make positive changes in their life.

I’ve just started doing the Inner Self Image program about 4 days ago, and judging from the results so far, I would have to agree that it is very powerful. I’ll be sharing some of my results and more about the program with you over the next few weeks, so stay tuned…

I’m half-way into the 7th week of this mission…originally I had planned to do it for 4-6 weeks, but I haven’t reached my goal yet (having six-pack abs), so I’m going to continue until I do.

I am definitely making progress, albeit slower than I had planned. One thing I hadn’t planned on was how much planning I would actually have to do to accomplish my goal. I’ve found that if I don’t have a good plan of what I’ll eat and what I won’t eat at the beginning of the day, it can be very difficult to eat healthy.

There is also the planning of what I will get at the grocery store, how much to buy, and how long it will likely last. It can take a lot of planning when you start to eat differently.

So this weekend I will be focusing on planning, while continuing delving into my Shrink Yourself notes…

As I’ve said in some of my recent blogs, I went through the 12-week Shrink Yourself program a few years ago, and it helped me to finally break past my “plateau” weight of 185 and lose another 30 pounds.

I wanted to share a quote from Dr. Roger Gould, the creator of the Shrink Yourself program:

In the Shrink Yourself program, I will help you unravel your pattern of emotional eating, the same way that I would help you if you were a patient in my office.

When you turn to food for comfort, or when you overeat, you may not even be hungry. You are probably just feeling a gnawing, nagging emptiness that makes you reach for something to fill you up and over time you have found that food is the easiest answer.

Week by week, we will get to the bottom of what that emptiness is about; we will uncover what exactly you are trying to fill with food.

From years of work with my patients I can tell you that you don’t need another lecture about what to eat or how much to eat; so I won’t give you that. Each week is designed to provide you with an insight and they all build on one another so that you arrive at your own conclusions about what YOU need to stop overeating.

For me, alcohol was the biggest thing that I had to cut back on. Not only was it accounting for so many empty calories, but at the same time, it weakened my willpower and I would end up eating more junk because of that.

When I went through the Shrink Yourself program, I actually stopped drinking alcohol for a period of about 6 months, which is something that I never could have done by willpower alone. I used to drink almost every day. It was essentially an addiction…The Shrink Yourself program helped me to make the psychological changes I needed to be able to not only avoid alcohol and other junk foods, but also to deal with the reasons I was driven to drink and overeat, in healthy ways.

I owe a lot to the Shrink Yourself program and I highly recommend it to you if you have struggled to get to your goal weight.

I have also decided, in honor of the Shrink Yourself program and my Mission: Six Pack Abs quest, to abstain from drinking alcohol until at least the end of the month. I don’t drink nearly as much as I used to these days, but when I do, I feel that it’s holding me back from reaching my six-pack abs goal.

Unhealthy Tanning

Slather sunscreen all over your body and then go lie on the beach for hours at a time. Yes, this may be the fastest way to get a tan, but it can come with some major consequences.

First, according to this article on Mark’s Daily Apple, sunscreen only prevents you from getting burned, it doesn’t protect you from DNA damage and skin cancer.

Second, sunscreen blocks your body’s ability to synthesize vitamin D from the sun…and vitamin D is one of the most important factors in the overall health equation.

Third, who really wants to sit and bake in the sun for hours? It gets really hot…it dehydrates you…and you inevitably end up with one or two burn marks where you didn’t put enough sunscreen.

Healthy Tanning

Skip the sunscreen. Go out and lie in the sun every day that you can, for about 15-20 minutes (more if you are darker-skinned). Expose as much of your body as you can without the neighbors complaining. Be sure to limit yourself to 20 minutes or less, especially if you are fair-skinned.

I’ve been doing this routine almost every day (when it’s not cloudy) for the past 5 or 6 weeks and not only have I built up the darkest tan I’ve ever had, but I feel great from all the vitamin D I’ve been getting.

Plus, there’s the added bonus that darker skin makes muscles look more defined, so that will definitely help my six-pack.

A quote from the Shrink Yourself program:

At some point in time part of you saw that food offered something other than nutrition; it offered relief, comfort, emotional satisfaction. From then on part of you was hooked and you haven’t been able to escape the cycle since.

But why is it so hard to stop emotional eating or to really take control of what you eat?

The reason that you have had such a hard time getting rid of the habit is not because you don’t have enough self-discipline or willpower, as some people may suggest. We live in a world where we will always be surrounded by food and you can’t go cold turkey. Willpower is NOT enough.

In order to truly eliminate emotional eating you have to unlearn the pattern and end the conflict. You have to break the connection between food and comfort.

I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve told myself that I was going to start eating better, or drinking less, or eliminating something from my diet, etc. But it’s so easy to fall back into old and familiar habits – habits we’ve built up over years and years.

That’s why trying to go cold turkey doesn’t usually work. We need to make changes in our psychology, changes in the way we act, think and feel about food. We need to recognize how we’ve been using food inappropriately to stuff our feelings down.

By far, the best way for doing this that I have found has been the Shrink Yourself program. Just so you know, I’m not getting paid to endorse this program. The reason I’ve been talking about it so much lately is because of the HUGE difference it has made in my life. I used to be 30+ pounds heavier than I am now, and I tried everything imaginable to try to lose weight, but I could never get below about 185 pounds.

Once I started the Shrink Yourself program, the weight just started to come off. And the amazing thing was that I didn’t even feel like I was trying to lose weight. I just felt like I was living my life again, rather than constantly living in a struggle against the part of me that wanted to keep overeating and “overdrinking”.