Frog-Eating and You: Clean Your Plate

facing your shadow self.

conquering your fears.

fighting your inner demons.

learning to be a better person.

all of these are different phrases for the same thing: what we here at iGoddess call Frog-Eating. however, i find that the first three examples make this ordeal seem like some huge, abstract, frightening thing. the fourth is too vague.

with "Frog-Eating," there's no ambiguity there. it might not be delicious, but it's definitely nutritious. it's difficult (anyone who says eating a live frog is easy is lying), gross, but doable. it's just a frog. you're bigger than a frog. you can hold a frog in your hand. you have opposable thumbs, so you automatically win.

from an evolutionary standpoint, anyway.

...at least, as long as we're not talking about tasks which include jumping up to 50 times your body length, because a frog's just quite simply got you beat there.

anyway...

last week iGoddess gave you four items on the Frog-Eating menu, tools to help you Eat the Frog. now, all of those exercises were created to help you learn to eat one particular frog. and if you guessed that the frog was Unconscious Living (or however you phrase a lack of conscious awareness of your thoughts and actions), then you were correct.

all of those exercises had one intention: to help you focus on what you were doing In The Now. to help you step back from yourself --like an objective observer, or an audience to your own life-- and see what the character of You was doing, thinking, saying, and feeling.

the Seek and You Shall Find exercise was designed to bump you off autopilot and put the controls back into your hands so you can pilot your own life. our thoughts are kind of like a radio, and can only be tuned to one frequency at a time. if your frequency is some variation of "life sucks today," then all you will pick up are examples of how life sucks today. that's why the exercise was to tune yourself to see one particular car on the road for a day, a week, whatever. it was to teach you that you can choose what to focus on, at what frequency you truly want to tune into. you can choose, and you can change it at will. so if there's something in your life you don't like, why are you focusing on it??? seek, and you shall find.

the Magical Mind-Reading Mystic Trick exercise was twofold: designed to show you how your thoughts govern your behavior, and that the world judges us on our behavior far more than our words. actions really do speak louder than words. if the universe was created with a Word, then what came first? the Word, or the Thought Behind the Word? because you can't have language without an idea, but you can't convey that thought without language. maybe they are one and the same. humankind can lie. but their actions never lie. and you cannot do something without thinking and believing in it, whether or not that thought, that belief, is conscious. mostly, it's subconscious for the majority of people. actions have consequences, and it is our actions and reactions which shape our lives. so what does the state of our lives, what happens to us, what we earn or don't earn, have or don't have, are or aren't...what does all that say about where our thoughts are?

the Anti-Funk Challenge was designed to help hold a mirror to yourself, to the thoughts and beliefs you direct at yourself. you know the ones: the ones you say to yourself unconsciously, automatically...the ones that are more like programming than real thoughts. and that's exactly what it is: programming. the exercise was to help bring the automatic responses closer to the surface so you could hear for yourself what you say to yourself on a daily basis, even minute-to-minute. did it help you? do you like your programming...or did you find you put yourself down more than anyone else ever could? did you like what you were telling yourself? or did you discover you really want to change what you keep feeding your mind and heart?

and lastly, the Positively Playful Prognostication exercise was a bit of a mutant, but it still was valid. most people, if given a choice, will avoid this exercise like the plague. i finally figured out why, too. people are comfortable in their self-created status quo. they don't like change. and they especially don't like the work involved in changing. it's like suddenly turning a small rudder on a large ship; the ship will turn, but the forces involved in turning that large ship are great indeed, and it will take a while for the ship to even know it's supposed to turn. most people are incapable of maintaining the strength and effort --and discipline-- involved in turning the ship that is their bad habits, laziness, procrastination, et al. and they don't like being shown just how unwilling they are to change, even when faced with undeniable truth of their own responsibility for the state of their lives.

these people are called fucktards.

luckily, the exercise was also designed to show you just how easy it is to build up the strength, momentum, and discipline to change your future by changing your present. and lastly, it was also designed to demonstrate how only a deeply rooted desire not to change is the only thing keeping you from taking your own future and creating it. that's right: you have to want things to stay the same in order to let all those "obstacles" conquer you. that's an ugly fact, and it's a frog most people will flat-out refuse to eat.

only the true, funkalicious FrogMasters ever manage to down that frog. only the masters.

now, i know i promised the other half of the exercises on the Appetizer Sampler Platter. well, here it is, and it's simple.

some of those exercises asked you to write things down. the only one that didn't was the Positively Playful Prognostication (and it's called "playful" because of just how freakin' fun it is once you get the hang of creatively shaping your own future). however, you can write down what you want your future to be. then write down all the obstacles that stand between you and your desired future.

take what you've written, no matter the exercise, and burn it. take a match to it, and watch it go up in flames. fire is cleansing, cauterizing, forging, healing. burn your negativity and scatter the ashes.

then, remembering nature abhors a vacuum, sit down and write something new. if you did the Seek exercise, write down what you want to see in your life, and use all positive language. write it in the present tense, as if you had it right now, at this moment. because when you visualize, you do have it at that moment, so it's accurate and truthful.

if you did the Mystic Trick exercise, describe aspects or characteristics that you'd like to have yourself. for instance, if you want to be punctual, or always honest, or dignified...whatever. just write it down. write, "i am _____!" and then list ways that you think that type of person would behave. write "i do these things," or some version thereof. if you want to be punctual, you'd write, "I am punctual! I leave my house in plenty of time to arrive at work/school/etc. I always have enough time to do the things I need to do. I set my alarm clock when necessary," et cetera.

if you did the Challenge, write new affirmations. if you have a miserable memory and are always losing track of things, write the opposite. "I have a fantastic memory! I remember things quickly and easily." or if you have a case of artists' block, you can write, "my creative thoughts empower me to act and follow through." if you're known for starting projects but not finishing them, you could write something like, "I am focused and motivated. When I dedicate myself to a project, I see it to its completion and am proud of the end result." and so forth.

and if you were brave enough to tackle the Prognostication exercise, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write down the future you see for yourself. get really descriptive. write your "exit strategy," your end result. then right down the action you took immediately prior to achieving your end result. take as much time as you need to write down a backward list of how you achieved that end result, back through time until it leads you to where you are right now, sitting in your chair writing out your future and backwards timeline. then sit back and admire it, because voila! you have just written out your plan to achieve your desired future.

now...i dare you to make it real.

i dare you to make it all real.

show them frogs who's boss!



EAT THE FROG!!!