Hello. Happy you stopped by. You won’t miss one juicy tidbit if you sign up for updates in the box on your right. Don’t forget, it all starts with “My Cats Have Seen Me Naked” – a permanent healing message for you who struggle with bodily image.

I operate my life out of a basis that it’s mental, good, and individual. From that perspective, I watch some of the things I do and don’t do. I watch me keep me real, real busy doing tasks. I like tasks. I like checking them off my To-Do list. I’m in a business (Virtual Assisting) that allows me to make To-Do lists for my clients and then check them off. This gives me great joy in the productivity and accomplishment of my tasks.

And then I look at the things that never make the To-Do lists. And I recognize that frequently those things that never make the list are the things I think are of the utmost importance in my life! Now, folks, that’s just a little bit self-destructive. “Once I quit coughing.” “If I didn’t have so much to do for my clients.” “As soon as I find a new housekeeper.” It’s the business of Martha that keeps the desires of Mary at bay, she say with a wry wiggle of her eyebrows.

I know it. I know what to do about it. Why don’t I do it? I’m going to keep my answer to myself at this point, but I want to throw out a question to you: do you procrastinate like this about the really important things in your life too?

I’m beginning to think about (arrrgggghhhhh!) New Year’s Resolutions. Throw up! It’s what made me blog about this. Just wonder if I’m the only procrastinator out there?

I got a new Virtual Assisting client today. Soon as I receive her agreement, I’ll point you at her killer blogs!

One of my biggest crosses to bear is doubt. Fear doesn’t faze me much any more. I can just say “Oh I’m experiencing fear. Well, that means: shoulders back; do it anyway!” But doubt…that little sucker just plagues me.

I began to notice how deeply buried inside my mind it was nearly ten years ago. Recognition is the first step, you know. Before that, I was in a stew of a fog about why I was so uncomfortable. I began to recognize my discomfort fell into two tubs: doubt and fear. As I said, I have a grip on fear, but doubt…. that’s story #2.

Once I recognized that there were doubtful thoughts going on inside my mind, I next had to find some kind of a fix. What to do? Who to talk to? Where to go? I had already learned a lot. I had already unfolded quite a bit of understanding. Could I take what I had learned, what I understood and actually use them to get a grip on my doubtful thinking?

For me, asking questions IS MY SAVIOR so I began to ask myself questions. What IS this doubt? What do you think will happen if you allow it full sway? If you want to do x and you have doubt about it, can x ever materialize? In the area of obesity, doubt has the loudest, brashest, most insidious shouter of a voice. As I’ve cleaned up many other areas in my life, this doubt voice about healing obesity through mental means alone really began to stand out. I could see it clearly.

“Shut up!” “Quit it!” “Oh no you don’t!” These are some of the things I said to my Doubt Voice to get it to quit. “You’re better than this doubt, Patty.” One of my favorite Mary Baker Eddy quotations is “Error discovered is 2/3rds corrected and the rest dies from inattention.” I HAD discovered it. I called it by it’s name every time I recognized it. Over the years, the Doubt Voice has gotten weaker in some areas and in some cases, has quit entirely. But in this area of obesity, it’s still yakking. Whenever I point myself at proving that All if Mental, Good, and Individual in this area, it begins to talk. Now of course, I know there is no “it.” That “it” is ME talking to me.

So what do I do now all these year later? I reason with myself. I ask me questions. I try to take it to the extreme limit. Like “What if you never prove it’s all mental, good and individual in this area. Does that mean that without a proof, your premise is wrong?” No, it means I’m still in the middle of proving it’s accuracy.

I can manifest whatever I want in my business, in my home, in my life in general and I do it through a strictly mental process. Obesity is my weakest link. I’m working to do it in this pew too. When My Cats Have Seen Me Naked is published, you can read about just how you can do it too, and maybe your success will happen before mine. I’d like that.

My Cats is 50% proofread. Soon! Soon!

Over the years, I’ve come to think of myself as “strong, persistent, smart, healthy, resourceful.” Are you beginning to get the picture? I don’t permit myself to go toward “incapable, weak, and their like.” When I was evacuated from my home due to the Slide Fire last October, in my mind that became “no biggie; I can do this.”

You all know that I live with the principles that all is mental, all is good, and all is individual. Someday soon, the beta reading for My Cats Have Seen Me Naked will be completed (hey, we’re peddling as fast as we can!),it will go to the publisher and then you can read more about mental, good and individual. Based on those principles, when I was evacuated, I made every effort to live my life as I normally do inside the sanctum sanctorum of my own home.

There must have been a moment of reversing cause and effect during that evacuation. In fact, I believe I know exactly when it happened. I was out shopping for veggies for a soup I was making that day. I was outside in the “fallout” from the Santiago fire and I can remember thinking “Ah, this muck in the air can’t affect me!” I did not clean it up enough, and the result was it seems to be affecting me. I’ve been coughing my guts out ever since that day (Monday, Oct. 29th) and it’s been a motherless mother huncher to correct!

There has to be a pony in there somewhere though, so I began to look at what is truly happening: I am choking and have a difficulty swallowing. So I asked myself, “Pat dear, what is going on in your life that you simply do not want to swallow any more?” And the answer came back in a blinding flash: I am bone weary of thinking that I am fat, that I cannot change this mistaken sense of myself due to it’s lengthy history, and that I might (oh, the despair!) never make this correction. Not one to give in to that kind of despair-thinking, I immediately told myself “Don’t be silly. You can quit swallowing these mistaken ideas about yourself. You can quit choking over them. You can relax and allow yourself to return to your normal state of perfect health.”

And I am, folks. I’m feeling so much better this week. I’m able to focus on work again. I’m able to speak better without the laryngitis. One rather embarrassing component involving panty liners is also disappearing, thank God.

I wanted you to know. Oh, and I’m losing weight again too. I find it fascinating that letting go of mistaken ideas always results in weight loss for me. Hoo Yah! Beats the crap out of dieting.