Break The Cycle by: Alison Loyd

Break The Cycle by: Alison Loyd

    Have you ever needed to break the cycle? Haven’t we been here before? Is that the same house we saw? Yep, we just went in a big circle. Siri is confused, or confusing you. You can relate, right?

I’ve gone in circles as well, once in a canoe.  I circled myself and a kayak right into a bush. There are of course, a few times you may want to be going in circles; races, bumper cars, and doing donuts on a jet ski.

We go in circles in life.  Maybe it is the weight loss yo-yo game, same fight, different day; all problems, no solution.  Conversation that leads to “we are right back where we started.” I often struggle with stories that I make up in my head. They play over and over and over until I’m feeling like a broken record. It’s a vicious cycle.

How do we break these cycles?

A circle, by definition, is a “continuous curved line, which is always the same distance away from a fixed central point”.

To break the circle requires a change in distance or direction. If you’re taking all lefts, try going right or straight. If you’re me in a kayak, get a tow! If you’re struggling with weight, money, or relationships, do something different!

I see cycles break in my students sometimes. They will have a rough morning, go to Specials, and come back a changed kid. The change in direction breaks the cycle of the morning.

When those stories are playing in my head round and round, I have found that if I change what I’m doing, whether it is my physical activity, who I’m talking to, or switch from stories to songs, that breaks the cycle.

Is your life in a vicious cycle? The Journey Training offers participants tools to change their perspective, a safe place to evaluate their life’s direction. Break that cycle by enrolling in the next Threshold class!

If you’re a Journey graduate needing to break the cycle, consider enrolling in Launch and you won’t just break the cycle, you’ll go into orbit!

 

FREE Mini Journey Training

Discover How To Find More Passion and Purpose In Your Life!

Click here for instant access to FREE Training

Discover It: By Eddie Scyffore

Discover It: By Eddie Scyffore

Prior to coming to The Journey Training I was irritable, controlling and severely discontented; I didn’t know what I wanted but I knew something needed to change. My life was steeped in fear coupled with the incessant need to please others; yet I remained empty with no direction or end in sight. As I mentioned previously, I needed something but I didn’t know what “it” was or how to achieve it, let alone discover it. Pretty hopeless, huh? Yes, I was.

When I entered the rooms of the Journey Training, I immediately saw beautiful and handsome faces to which I concluded “surely they wouldn’t be able to relate to an ex-convict and recovering drug and sex addict.” After all, they looked so pristine and trouble free I thought, but I was soon to discover that my terminal uniqueness was soon to be replaced with a sense of brotherhood and community I had longed for my entire life: the desire to be accepted and loved for who I was, not the illusory of what I assumed others wished or wanted me to be. I was in for a rude and revolutionary awakening. One that would ultimately provide me with a wealth of information and tools to help me discover my “it” in a real and meaning way which up to this point had been elusive.

In his book A New Pair of Glasses Chuck C. provides a very simple philosophy which is reminiscent of the Journey Training, consider now, “uncover, discover, and discard.” Unbeknownst to me I had no idea what I had gotten myself into because that is exactly what I experienced during that life changing weekend. So what does that look like, you might ask? Let’s consider them one at a time, shall we?

Uncover

            This is a frightening prospect for a chronic people pleaser like myself, but if I was going to begin a journey of health, wholeness and emotional sobriety this was where “it” had to begin. Imagine being in a room filled with virtual strangers, not to perform but to uncover making one’s self vulnerable, naked and exposed with no figs to cover a lifetime of hidden shame and guilt. Through clenched fists, a churning stomach and tear filled eyes, I did something I had never done before: I trusted someone other than myself with the truth of who and what I had been and it was the turning point for my personal journey had begun! Light was beginning to shine in my darkened tunnel called my mind.

Discover

            On a giant poster board was the known quote by Albert Einstein which read “insanity is doing the same things while expecting different results.” During my discovery process I have added a slight adaptation to the afore mentioned quote “insanity is doing the same thing knowing full well what the results WILL BE!” Before coming into the Journey Training, it is safe to assume that I was insane. Perhaps not in the clinical sense, but emotionally imbalanced nonetheless. Journey taught me that I could not conquer what I was unwilling to face regardless of how scary it appeared. Looking back, it wasn’t what I was unwilling to face per se as it was, what I would discover once the mask(s) were removed. You see, my pain, in spite of its darkness became a comfortable companion for I had learned to manipulate, maneuver and mask the truth which kept me enclosed within a mental prison of my own making. By discovering I had the right to be myself, while forgiving myself and ultimately loving myself was a radical prospect indeed. One that was greater than the pain of my past.

Discard

            King David once penned “Be still and know that I am God. (see Psalms 40:10a)” In a word “to be still” requires one to “let go” or “discard” former false systems of beliefs or perceptions. In Journey I was given a “contract” which is equivalent to receiving a new identity and purpose. Before I was dispassionate, fearful and weighed down by the guilt of my past and previous convictions. When asked how I perceived myself, I could only respond sheepishly “a jailbird.” Although I was walking in the land of the free, I was still imprisoned albeit the prison was a mental one instead of a physical one. However, by the end of the training I was smiling (genuinely) declaring: “I am a passionate free bird.” I gave myself permission to discard those old tapes which kept me defeated, discouraged and imprisoned. I was free to soar above my self-limiting perceptions.

It has been stated a journey of a thousand steps begins with one. This is not to suggest that it will be easy especially when you battle between your ears. But there is one thing that I can assure you and it is this: since that glorious weekend of uncovering, discovering and discarding, I have begun to walk in my “it,” I am a semester from receiving my college degree at 50. My marriage which at one time was on life support has begun to heal itself as I rigorously apply the tools learned in the Journey Training. The wounded boy who lived in fear has been integrated with his core self and is now living a life once previously believed impossible. And the results I lived to repeat have been traded in for the wonder of tomorrow. I am a liberated and passionate free bird. Now it’s time for you to discover your “it.”

FREE Mini Journey Training

Discover How To Find More Passion and Purpose In Your Life!

Click here for instant access to FREE Training

Food Of Love By: Christina Loveless

Food Of Love By: Christina Loveless

When I was a little girl, I would eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches all the time. They were my absolute favorite meal in the whole wide world. Part of why I loved them was because of how my mom prepared them: she would always carve a little heart in the peanut butter before adding the jelly.  Food of Love!

I knew that heart was there whether I watched her make my sandwich or not. I could taste it. It was made with love.

As I grew old enough to make my own pb & j’s, I continued the loving tradition: spread the peanut butter, make a heart, add the jelly, SQUISH!

Even as a teenager, when I craved the comfort of my old favorite, I would draw a little heart and feel better about myself. I was loved.

I remember the first time I made a sandwich without a heart. I was 21 years old, in my first apartment and my roommate came into the kitchen as I was preparing my late night study snack. He watched as I spread the peanut butter and as I was about to carve out a little heart from the creamy spread, I hesitated and decided it was a childish habit. I simply dropped the jelly on top of the peanut butter and topped it off with another slice of bread. I ate it a little sadly, thinking it didn’t taste quite right.

Fast forward to a few years later, when I was making my first peanut butter and jelly sandwich on gluten free bread. I was anxious, because I knew the bread would be so different from what I was used to. I had been diagnosed with Celiac disease and had to cut out wheat in all its forms to heal my body. As much as I was tired of being sick, I didn’t want to miss out on my favorite foods.

I spread the peanut butter, telling my husband how sad I was about how it wouldn’t be the same as I remembered. With a rush of emotion, I spilled out all about how much I missed the way my mom would draw a heart whenever she made it for me. I slid down against the cabinet, crying. He sat down next to me, with my half made sandwich, and said, “Go on, draw your heart.”

The Food of Love ….how simple. A tiny act managed to turn my day around.

In the years between those two sandwiches, I had struggled with depression, feeling lost, alone, and, most of all, unloved. Now, I’m sure that not drawing a heart in my peanut butter was a symptom of feeling unloved and not the other way around, however that simple act was able to remind me that I was in fact loved. By the man sitting beside me, by myself, and my amazing Creator. He did after all make the peanuts.

As I made myself a sandwich this week, I made a pledge to myself: I will ALWAYS draw that heart in my peanut butter, because I AM LOVED.

Whether I feel it or not.

FREE Mini Journey Training

Discover How To Find More Passion and Purpose In Your Life!

Click here for instant access to FREE Training

Can You Start a Fire?

Can You Start a Fire?

We all have something inside of us that we never knew was there. It is a force…an inner strength that is sleeping, just waiting to be wakened. You may not know it’s there, but it is. All you have to do is find that “why” and it will wake up!  Can you start a fire?

The Biggest Loser allowed me to find out things I never knew about my resolve.
It all happened when I found my “why.”

You may ask, “What is a ‘why?’”
It is that reason…that event when you finally decide to go the distance no matter what. It is when your priorities change and that hurdle that was blocking your way seems a lot shorter and easier to get over! We’ve all found it at one time or another. I found one of my first “why’s” at 15 years old. I didn’t have a girlfriend my sophomore year, but all of my friends did. I went home in May of my sophomore year and returned a Junior 75 pounds lighter! Ask any one of my high school buddies! I remember hearing “Is that Danny Cahill? Oh my gosh! Wow!” It was like finale of season 8 when I came bursting through the paper! I didn’t even look like the same person! A girlfriend was my “why!”

When you find your why, you then apply that force that awakens the fire within you to change!
Imagine two sticks. They just lie there on the ground. There is nothing too powerful about two sticks. But when you rub them together with great speed and force, you create fire. We are all sticks lying there waiting for that “why.” When we find our “why,” we can then tolerate the “how” of doing anything whether it is quitting smoking, saving a marriage, starting a business, and yes…losing weight.

Find your “WHY” today and apply that force that makes two inanimate sticks burn with the intensity to change the world!

Danny Cahill of the Biggest Loser Season 8
The Biggest Loser…EVER with 55.58% body weight lost!

FREE Mini Journey Training

Discover How To Find More Passion and Purpose In Your Life!

Click here for instant access to FREE Training

All I Needed to Know About Life in a Box of Cereal By: Christina Loveless

All I Needed to Know About Life in a Box of Cereal By: Christina Loveless

Lucky Charms. That ubiquitous box of marshmallow goodness that kids love and parents secretly want to eat themselves. A few years back they came up with a jingle, when jingles were still cool, that named out all the brightly colored marshmallow shapes within.

“Hearts, stars and horseshoes, clovers and blue moons, pots of gold and rainbows, and me red balloon!”

Maybe you didn’t remember the whole thing, but I did. I found a little nugget of God’s truth hiding behind the cute marketing campaign.

Searching for truths
Hearts- the heart is a symbol for love, of course and God is love. The heart is first because first and foremost God loves us and we must put Him first in our lives. The rest follows as it should when we do.

Stars- stars represent the goals and plans we have for our future. As the saying goes, shoot for the stars.

Horseshoes- remind us to focus on the goal, to score a ringer.

Clovers- to look for that which is hard to find. A four leaf clover is present in about a 1 in 10,000 ratio. Difficult to find, not impossible. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be worth it.

Blue moons- gratitude. Things may only happen once in a blue moon, so we must savor each and every moment and thank God for all the blessings in our lives

Pots of gold- abundance thinking rather than scarcity.

Rainbows- optimism. Seeing the sun after the storm.

Red balloon- rising above that which seeks to drag us down. Our world is full of things to keep us from joy, just watch the news!

Christina Loveless is a graduate of The Journey Training. Her insight of truths within simple things that are right in front of her are an amazing example of seeing more than is visible. In The Journey Training, trainees consistently become aware of truths that were once hidden – in the world, in their lives, and in others’ situations. Seeing things from difference perspectives is one of the many tools that you will take home from your Journey Training experience.

FREE Mini Journey Training

Discover How To Find More Passion and Purpose In Your Life!

Click here for instant access to FREE Training