Living on Purpose !

This statement is going to sound like such a cliché and it is, but I would like to take a minute and talk about LIVING ON PURPOSE.  

Webster’s dictionary defines Living as:

1.  having life;  being alive; not dead: living persons.

2.  in actual existence or use; extant: living languages.

3. active or thriving; vigorous; strong: a living faith.

4. burning or glowing, as a coal.

5. flowing freely, as water.

Purpose is defined as :

1.  the reason for which something exists or is done, made, used, etc.

2.  an intended or desired result; end; aim; goal.

3.  determination; resoluteness.

4.  the subject in hand; the point at issue.

5. practical result, effect, or advantage: to act to good purpose.

 

         So for purposes of this blog, I am going to define Living on Purpose  as “active, thriving, vigorously pursuing an intended and desired result or goal.

             I don’t know about you, but I have not been living each day on purpose.  Nope.  I have been going through the motions.  Life has been challenging the last couple of years and as a result, my vision has been clouded.  I have temporarily lost sight of who I am and where I was taking my life.  It happens to us all.  Totally unintentional but nonetheless sabotaging.  When life throws us a curve ball or we hit a bump in the road, it is so easy to get sidetracked from the goal.  Sometimes, it can take months or years to recover from an obstacle.

             Others of you haven’t had any upsets but have maintained a slow and steady course and reached the intended goal.  Now, you are just going through the motions of daily routine.  But, are you living on purpose?   Are you living intentional?  That is the question I have been asking myself for many weeks now.

Aristotle said it best “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.” 

            All of us have desires of what we want or wanted to do with our life.  But very few people actually follow through and achieve their goals.  Have you given up on those dreams or are they still alive?  Has circumstances changed the vision you had for your life?  What do you have left that God can use?  What are you good at?  What do friends complement you for?  What do you love to do with your free time?  Is there something special your spouse or family members like you to do for them?

            These are the things you can use to make a difference and begin to live each day on purpose.  Sometimes it feels like we are all used up.  Maybe you feel like you have squandered a big portion of your life on people or things that didn’t really matter.  Or perhaps you have lived your life on purpose and have made a difference to those around you.

            All I know for sure is that in order to live each day to the fullest, we must first start each day like Aristotle said, with intention.  Intension then translates to an action which translates to a habit.  As nice as it would be to live carefree and commitment free that type of life is usually one without direction and purpose.  Some of the most successful people in the world are people who were organized, planned and set goals for themselves.

I have noticed in my own life, my lack of intension.  It’s time to dig deep, clear the cobwebs from my eyes and get my vision back.  I don’t know what that looks like yet but what I do know is that I have talent, and God given abilities and with him on my side, I can be anything I want to be!  How about you? 

                                                    Will you join me? 

                                                                                                                 

SEX

There are few women who love sex as much as I do but if you are single please listen to what I am about to say !

Girls:  If you want a guy to like you and then fall in love with you, do NOT have sex with him !!!  

Guys:  If you find a girl attractive and ask her out on a date, do NOT have sex with her!! If she has sex with you right from the start, then 9 times out of 10, you will dump her anyway !!!

Why am I saying all of this?  I am saying this because almost EVERYONE is looking for love and few people are finding it because they go about it backwards.  Do you ever wonder why dating sites such as eHarmony.com and Match.com are successful?  It is because the people who use those dating sites have to fill out an informational sheet about themselves.  Potential mates have to take the time to read that information before they contact them.  More time is taken getting to know each other through dating sites then if you were to meet someone that you barely knew for dinner.  The reason is because physical attraction usually supersedes getting to know who a person is and sex is the driving force to attraction.

For most of you who know me, you will know that I have been physically fit for most of my adult life.  Men have found me to be physically attractive and as I mentioned, I like sex.  However I have been unsuccessful in the majority of my relationships.  It took me years to realize that men where dating the physical person I was without ever understanding the mental and spiritual person I was.  It wasn’t their fault that they didn’t know me very well, it was my fault.  I made it too easy.  They were attracted to me, I was attracted to them and we had sex.  Period.  However, I was always lonely.  The attraction and excitement eventually wears off and then what do you have left?  In my case, very little because men didn’t understand there was more to me then my body.  When they realized I was pretty deep and intense, they left.

There is more to all of us then our physical appearance.  It doesn’t matter if you are attractive or unattractive, there is an emotional, intelligent creature in all of us that desires to be known and understood and loved for who we are.

What you need to look at is whether or not you like who you are as a person.  It is easy to fake it and get physical gratification for momentary happiness.  But if you are looking for a long and lasting relationship, you might want to think twice about how you go about finding it.  It really starts with loving yourself and being willing to wait for the person who wants to know who you are on the inside besides just what you can offer on the outside.

Sex was always supposed to be the icing on the cake.  True, intimate, mind blowing, rock star sex, (you can have intimate, mind blowing, rock star sex) comes only when two people are comfortable with themselves and with each other.

Several years ago, I went through a breakup that changed my life.  I thought the guy I was involved with was my perfect match. We share fitness together, we ate all the same healthy food, we had the same work schedule, we were very compatible.  Throughout the entire course of our relationship (it lasted 6 months) I kept feeling that I needed to just be his friend and not be his lover.  The reason was because he was 8 years younger than I was and he had never experienced many of the things I had already experienced in life.  This meant we wanted different things for our future.  But I was confused because we had this amazing connection and we were very physically compatible.  I couldn’t bring myself to face the truth that we had no future together.  I wanted to believe that we did.  

In the end, I was the one who lost.  I was the one heartbroken and I was the one who lied to  myself because I wanted to believe he loved me when really he didn’t know me very well.  My feelings where hidden from him.  The sex and connection was so good it controlled me.  In the end, the truth about our relationship is what surfaced.  Don’t get me wrong, we had a great friendship and that coupled with great sex made for one of my best experiences ever.  However, our lives where headed in different directions.  He is now married with a beautiful family and I couldn’t be happier for both him and his wife.  But I could have spared myself a lot of pain if I had been willing to face the truth early on in the relationship.

What I am trying to say is, wouldn’t you rather know in the beginning if someone wants to be with the true person you are?  Wouldn’t you rather spare yourself the rejection and humiliation that comes from a break-up?  Eventually, everyone’s true identify surfaces and if you take the time in the beginning to get to know someone without sex confusing reality, you might just find the relationship you where looking for.

My current relationship has been horrendously difficult.  Although we waited for about two months before having sex for the first time, we still struggle with knowing and liking each other.  Sex is still the easiest fix for us.  We have that part down.  The liking each other is what we don’t have.  Maybe, even as a married person, I need to take sex out of the picture and find out if my husband can like me for who I am.  Maybe he will but then again, maybe he won’t.  That is what I need to find out.  Just because we are married doesn’t mean we will stay married right?  People get divorced all the time and we have been close too many times to count.  Which is why I am writing this blog.  I am taking my own advice and going back to square one.  Being true to myself and making sure my spouse is in this relationship because he loves the person I am on the inside and just not the person he see’s on the outside.

What about you? Can you stifle the short term self gratification for the long term result?  I hope you can.  It will be worth it.  God knew this. That is why he wanted us to wait until we were married to have sex.  He knew that commitment is the preferred end result and if we have sex before we have the commitment, chances are a commitment may never come.

Crossing Over

I don’t know one person that is satisfied with every area of their life.  On the contrary, most of us have things we would like to change.  Whether it is our lifestyle, body type, relationship or financial status, we all have something that could use a make- over.  But change is hard and most people never become the person they desire to become because it is “too hard.”  It is either “too expensive” to eat healthy and join a gym, it’s “too depressing” to loose weight, “too hard” to say I am sorry for my part of the misunderstanding or just “too painful” to deal with the reasons we are where we are in life.  Regardless of what YOUR issue is, any change, no matter how small or how big is hard and it is painful.  Would it help if you had a guarantee that the pain would be worth it?  Would it help if I told you after you lose the 20 extra pounds you’re carrying around that you would find the man or woman of your dreams?  Could you do it then?  If it was a guarantee?

            I am here to tell you it is a guarantee!  I have been through many painful experiences in my life but I will share two with you.  The first is delivering my son!  For those of you who have never delivered a baby, you cannot possibly understand the pain involved in the process.  Those of you who have know what I am talking about.  Labor is the most intense pain I have ever experienced and during the delivery process, I told myself I NEVER wanted to go through it again, and my labor including delivery was only four hours long.  That is very short in comparison to most women’s labor and delivery.  Holding my new born son was worth it 100 times over.  Any mother would admit being willing to go through the pain again if it meant having their children.

            Eighteen months after the delivery of my son, I had to make the hardest decision of my life.  To this day, nothing has ever compared to the pain of having to make the following decision.  I left him.  Most people cannot ever understand how a mother can leave a child and honestly, it would have been impossible for me if I had not believed he would have a better life without living with me. Someday I will write about the circumstances that caused me to leave, but right now, the point is, difficulty often changes a person for the good. (My son and I are extremely close and he is about to start Bible College).

            Here is a scenario that most people can relate to. This is what typically happens for those who start a weight loss program.  Day one goes as planned.  Everyone wakes up excited about their new diet.  Day two is still going as planned but headaches are starting to set in.  By day three, four or five, fatigue and headaches are getting more unbearable.  This is the time when people give up and quit!  But what if I told you that headaches and fatigue is part of the process, but if you persevere, it will pass and then your body will begin to let go of the extra weight!  The problem is that most people cannot see past the pain!!  I have seen it a thousand times!  However, I have also seen the clients who did NOT give up and went on to lose over 60lbs. and 90lbs.  That is why I continue doing what I do because the people who are not afraid of the pain succeed and there is nothing better than watching their life transformed!

            The reason I am writing about this is because of a scripture I read the other night.  Something clicked for me. It is the familiar story about the disciples and Jesus in the ship when a storm came and almost destroyed the ship and killed the crew.  It is the place where Jesus speaks to the storm and says “peace be still” and the storm subsides.  (Full story found in Luke 8:22-26).

What was not familiar to me was verse 22. “……let us go over unto the other side…”  immediately after the decision was made to go over to the other side, the trouble came.  Crossing over to the other side is typically a reference to going to the next level or taking the next step. It’s about progression.  The disciples hit a storm that almost killed them and capsized the ship.  God was the deciding factor, as he always is.  With God, nothing shall be impossible! (Mark 10:27)

            My point is, that anytime you make a decision to go to the next level in your life and grow as a person to make positive changes, inevitably you will encounter difficulty!  It is a principle of the bible that does not change.  The reasons are many.  For one, difficulty always tests your determination.  How much do you want it?  What are you willing to do for it?  You must be able to stay the course no matter what obstacles come.  The other reason is because you will never fully appreciate success until you have sacrificed to achieve it.  It is the old adage that we cannot know happiness without sorrow.  It must cost you something to change. 

            The good news is that the struggle doesn’t last.  The obstacles can be overcame and the good times far outweigh the bad times.  If you can remember that struggle and challenge is a part of the process, it is easier to keep going without being distracted from the goal. 

            Finally, remember that only the strong survive.  What are you made of?  If it were easy to change everyone would be skinny vogue models right?  The truth is that it is NOT easy but the reward after you walk through the difficulty is something money cannot buy and no one can take away from you!

Just do it !!

           

Self Esteem

One of the things I have been interested in lately is the idea of self esteem.  Specifically how one obtains it and how one keeps it in the face of adversity.  I work in the fitness industry, as you know, and I have encountered many women, who, after getting married and having children, seem to lose their sense of self.  This is something that has always troubled me as a fitness professional and also as a women.  I have wondered many times what happens in this transformation from a single attractive woman to an overweight, self-conscious dependent wife.  It has boggled my mind until I recently came close to ending up the same way. 

            I didn’t grow up with self esteem.  I grew up with a lot of rules to live by and breaking the rules meant that love was withheld.  I was often punished harshly for not following the rules.  I lived my early year’s consistently wondering whether I was “good enough” and whether or not I would be accepted by my peer group.

            I found myself and consequently my self esteem when I was about 28 years old.  I went through a deep troubling grief that changed me.  Because of this period in my life, I was able to really figure out who I was, what I believed and what I wanted out of life.  Sounds simple enough but it actually was life changingly difficult.   However, grievous this time was, it was worth it because I finally found myself.  (Side note, change usually only comes out of pain).

                        One of the things I found that improved my self-esteem was fitness.  The ability to control my outer appearance and lift weights felt so great.  I had no idea that I could change my body and actually feel good about myself.  However, I have noticed that in relationships, our partner’s value for us seems to decrease over time and this greatly effects our self-esteem.  Women go from being the object of desire to undesirable.  It is not done purposefully but rather due to busyness of life, children, responsibilities and sometimes just carelessness.

            I watched myself get lost on that downward spiral of self acceptance as I slowly compromised my food choices, my workouts and the little things I did for myself.  As it was happening, over the course of 3 years, it was as if I was a spectator looking through a crystal ball, knowing how it all would end but feebly unable to stop the cycle. All the while, living out what I watched other women doing.

            So now that I am on the other side of that cycle, back to my old self again, and taking control of my life, what is the lesson?  It seems obvious enough, “don’t compromise.”  For better or worse, I have kept my sense of self and it has served me well, but it has been a lonely journey because now that I know who I am, I am less willing to sacrifice and change to fit into someone else’s life.   Although, if one is to truly enter a loving relationship it is impossible not to compromise.  There must be a balance and I think I have found it.  The key is to love yourself no matter what and do the things that make you feel like a woman.  I did a little research on “finding balance between self and family” and I found women who are successful in managing their active lifestyle in fitness, family and career do so by being highly organized and prepared.  They often get up early in the morning, before everyone else wakes up to do their work out or go for a run.  They also maintain a strong set of priorities that enables them to stay on task without getting easily sidetracked.  I also noted that many women who have found success in their family and self balance have supportive husbands that help with the distribution of chores and errands.

            I know it can be done, the question is, can you love yourself enough to want more then what you currently have?  Do you want to look better then you do now?  Do you even know what it feels like to be a sexy self assured woman?  I believe God equips us with the power to become anything we wish to become.  However, if you cannot imagine yourself as anything more then you already are, you will remain as you are.  BUT…if you want more out of life and you want to transform your life from the inside out, it is possible, you just have to chose it and then be willing to follow through with the sacrifices it takes.

            Good Luck and send me your questions or comments.  I would love to hear from you!

WHAT EVERY GUY IS LOOKING FOR IN A GIRL (Part 2) For the Girls !

 

     For several years, I have worked in a male dominated industry.  I have spent many hours listening to men voice their complaints about their girlfriends or wives.  I have also been asked many questions from these same men about women and sex.  Some like it, some do not, and most of them stop performing after marriage! In this blog I will share a couple questions I have been asked by women and my response to those questions.  Men also want to know the answers to these questions, and hopefully this will show each of the sexes the opposite’s perspective. I think many people share the same thoughts and feelings but once someone enters a relationship, communication about such sensitive issues is strained. 

    For any woman who is married, has been married or planning to get married, SEX is an issue that is sure to be a huge one in your relationship.  Often times, the issues revolving around sex almost always have a negative effect on any relationship, many of which include affairs, pornography, alcohol or drug abuse, neglect and divorce.  It is my hope that the questions asked and the answers help shine a light on your situation and open up the lines of communication.  Sex in a relationship is VERY VERY important.  So let’s talk about it.

Q1:  I am a mother of two.  I am home during the day with the kids while my husband works.  When he comes home from work, I leave to go to work and do not get home until 3 am.  I HAVE NO TIME FOR SEX.  Once a week is even too much with my busy schedule.  My husband and I are in counseling right now because his sexual needs are not being met and I am tired of him hounding me all the time.  When I do have extra time, I want to sleep, not have sex!  What is it with men?  Don’t they get it?

A:  Well, if I may say, I think it is us women who don’t get it.  Since the majority of homes are two income households, schedules can be difficult at best and in your situation completely opposite.  However, if a woman is too busy or too tired to connect sexually with her husband, then something should change.  A man’s #1 need is to mate with his wife.  It is not just about sex.  It is about the nature in which God made a man.  He made them to need a woman.  God said in Genesis that “it was not good for a man to be alone” so he created woman as a helpmate for a man.  THEY NEED US !  If you have effort to be available for his sexual needs for at least two weeks and see if things don’t change between the two of you !  My guess is when he gets what he needs then you will get what you want!

Q2:   My husband and I have sex a couple times a week.   seems to be satisfied with that.  However, I am not satisfied with the sex.  I feel like I am merely an object for him to use and when he is finished, I feel even more objectified.  I am starving to feel like a woman.  I want to be touched and cherished and wanted, not just as a body but as a woman.  My husband seems to get mad at me when I tell him how I feel. 

 

A.  You are not alone! Many and I do mean many, women feel this way but, there is hope.  As much as it pains me to say this, you are going to have to go first and teach him what you want by giving him what you desire.  If you want to be kissed passionately, then cuddle up next to him and start kissing him first.  If you want him to massage you then roll him on his stomach and begin to massage him first.  Get my drift?  Most men do not know what women need from them.  Furthermore, they have very little practice with tenderness.  As a man, they were taught to be macho, strong, and smart.  They were NOT taught to be affectionate, caring, kind, gentle and intimate.  Unless they had a loving mother who taught them these things, chances are they flat out do not know “HOW” to give you what you want and need.  Think about that for a minute and see if I am right.  It is time for us women to go first and teach our men how to treat us in bed.  If you will try it, I promise that you will have a happier marriage and when his needs are met, your needs will be met also.