A Recipe for Delicious Living

Courtney Townley

Just as there are a few special ingredients that make-up your favorite meals, there are a few things that, sprinkled along the path of your Genesis Transformation journey, are sure to make your transformation process delicious too!
As most of you reading this know, Genesis is about so much more than just fat loss.  Most people start the process with fat loss as their primary goal, but what they discover along the way is so much bigger than fitting into a favorite pair of jeans.  Fat loss, we learn, is a bi-product of health, and health is a by-product of paying attention to what we feed into our lives day in and day out.  It is difficult to be in optimal health when we have no management tools for chronic stress, we do not feel supported in our relationships, or we can’t say a nice thing to ourselves to save our life (pun intended).  To truly and forever change the way we take care of our bodies, there is no denying that a little introspective work must be done.  It is not always pretty or fun to look at the aspects of our life that have lead us to where we are physically, but once we do unveil those deeper truths, where we want to go and who we want to become is so much more clear and the path to getting us there is far more direct.
I can honestly say that the most gratifying part of being a Genesis Coach, is not seeing clients lose weight, but rather, watching clients discover how much power they really do have to create the life they have always imagined.   By the end of the GT journey there is an empowering awareness that vision, balance, self-responsibility, self-respect, and the ability to dance with difficulty are a few of the best ingredients for creating a delicious, healthy and vibrant life.
Vision: When clients come in for an initial consultation, they usually express their desire to feel better, to look better and most acknowledge wanting to improve their overall health.  Coaches take that “vision” very seriously and it becomes the coach’s vision of them.  The coach sees the client at their goal weight from the word “go” (really…it is part of our training).   Problems arise when clients can’t see themselves at their goal weight, or they don’t believe they can ever get there.  Without a clear vision of where you want to go, the process will be slow and arduous, to be sure.  Get specific on how much greatness you really want for yourself and visualize yourself embodying that greatness.  Do it daily.  Visualization has an amazing power to make us believe that a higher version of ourselves is achievable.  There is a reason the Genesis motto has always been, “The body achieves that the mind believes.”
Balance: Too much of anything (except maybe love) is rarely a good thing.    We often think of inflammation in our systems being a direct result of simply the foods we are ingesting but inflammation can also be greatly influenced by how we live.  Too little sleep, too much stress (physical or mental), too much negative self-talk, even too much inactivity can lead to inflammation in our bodies and that can greatly affect fat loss efforts.  What areas in your life feel unbalanced right now, and how might you go about correcting that?
Self-Responsibility: No one can take your journey for you.  This is your process and it is imperative to your success that you assume full responsibility for the areas where you fall short and the areas where you excel.  The job of your coach is to guide you NOT to control you.  Great leaders are those who take full responsibility for their actions.  Through GT you are learning how to “lead” your life in a healthy fashion.  “Be thoroughly who you are and be responsible for who you are,” said Sheri Lynn during a recent conversation with me.  I love that!
“Dancing with Difficulty”: I adopted this phrase from the inspirational author, SARK because it reminds me that I always have a choice in how I handle set-backs and frustrations; I can react or I can dance with the difficulty (I love to dance, yet this still proves to be a huge challenge for me).   Obstacles always arrive in the midst of a transformation process, but how we deal with those challenges can make all the difference in the world.  Calming yourself down enough to deal with set-backs rationally and maybe even a sense of humor can alter the time it takes you to get back on your feet dramatically.  “You don’t drown from falling in the river; you drown from staying submerged in it.” (Paulo Coelho)
Self Respect: I believe that most people embark on a transformation process because deep down their self respect is whispering to them to protect the one thing they will ever own.   It is self respect that urges us to do a little more than we thought we could do; it begs us to explore our potential.  Each week we commit to walking our transformation path, our self respect builds.   And in the end the respect we have for ourselves is the greatest gift of all.  Looking good in your favorite jeans is just an added bonus!