Do You Have the Vision It Takes to Have the Body You Want? by Laurie Erdman

Chronic Wellness Superhero, Laurie Erdman, writes a monthly column for FemCentral. If you have a question for Laurie, simply leave it as a comment to this post, or email jennifer@jenniferlshelton.com, with the subject, “Ask Laurie.”

If you ignored Jennifer’s advice about New Year’s resolutions and decided to start 2013 off with a new diet to lose weight, get more energy and just get healthy, you may be wavering in your resolve. I’ve seen statistics saying that anywhere from 70 to 88% of New Year’s resolutions have already been cast aside by the last week in January. They fall victim to cold, dark mornings, “rationalization” and someday.

There is hope, however, even in the darkness of a Northern Hemisphere January. As the Sun is in Aquarius from January 19 through February 17, you have an opportunity to lasso the Aquarian power to buck the system, divert from the crowd and become the visionary of your own life.

I often talk of the power we all have within us to change. When we stumble, like so often happens with New Year’s resolutions, we think it’s simply lack of will power. In fact, we doubt we have any power.

Let me clarify this power thing – failing your resolutions (or any other goal) has nothing to do with will power. Failing your resolutions and goals results from going with the flow.

What I Learned About Power from A Robot
One of my favorite movies is Wall-E; the post-apocalyptic flick about a waste-collecting robot that falls in love with another robot. But it’s not the love story that gets to me. The teaching moment is when Wall-E finds himself on a cruise ship that houses all of the humans who evacuated Earth 700 years before. This is where the movie gets really interesting.

The people move around the ship on hovering pods, watching TV, chatting via video, and drinking their meals from their Big Gulp like cups via a straw. They are so large and out of shape they can barely move. So they don’t, and instead zone out in their own little worlds. I remember leaving the theater wondering how this movie got made with its burning criticism of our super-sized, zoned out, driving, couch potato culture.

The post-apocalyptic humans in the movie are all going with the flow. They have no vision for their life, other than what is sent to them via their video screen. It takes a mutiny instigated by a plant, a sign of life in their post-apocalyptic world, to shake them out of their stupor and envision something better.

It wasn’t willpower that moved the characters out of their pods, but visions of love, life and happiness. To me, that is the Aquarian message: stop doing what the crowd does because it’s not serving your greater life’s purpose of love and happiness.

Risk Being Different
What does Wall-E and Aquarian visionaries have to do with your plans to get healthy and lose a few pounds this year? Everything.

We have all have blocks to change. The one I hear most consistently is fear of being different. Sure there is “I don’t have time” and “I don’t know how to cook” and other such barriers. But ultimately, the chief block I see holding people back from their healthy ideal is the fear of attracting attention to themselves – being different.

Imagine you are at a work meeting. The meeting will span lunch so they’ve ordered sandwiches, pasta salad and cookies. You brought a delicious kale salad and a green juice for your lunch. You have a choice. Do you bring your lunch in, which you know will mean a productive, clear-headed afternoon with a side of criticism and questioning, or do you go with the flow and fill your plate with the refined carbohydrate sugar bombs?  This is the choice with which we are too often faced.

So time to fess up green bean, what choice do you normally make? Choosing the sugar crash is easy, it’s there, and you avoid the question about your “special” lunch with a side of “swamp water.” Right? To choose the energizing option is the scary choice because it means being different. It means drawing attention to yourself. It means being a trailblazer. It means being a visionary in your own life. It means not caring what others think. It means putting your cellular health above fitting in.

That’s a heavy burden to bear.

Harness Your Aquarian Vision
Today is your opportunity to step out of the flow and be your own visionary. Stepping out of the flow is also a step into your power. To get the most out of this shift, take some time today to create a vision of how you would like to feel, look and be in the world. This is the first exercise I have my clients do and this is a perfect time to do it. The planets are working with you.

But don’t forget the uncomfortable part. As part of your vision, don’t forget to see yourself heading to the kitchen to grab that kale salad and green juice and bringing it into the conference room. See yourself sitting at the conference table, energizing your cells, knowing that you will have mental edge over your co-workers. See yourself smiling proudly as they say “eww” and as you take a sweet, refreshing sip of your green juice.

How does it feel to be the visionary of your own life? What is your vision? Share with us in the comments below.

Laurie Erdman, the Get More Energy Expert + Chronic Wellness Superhero trains superSheroes – those gals who are sick and tired of being sick and tired.  She plays at the intersection of nutritional counseling and life coaching to transform fatigue into fabulous and burnt out into balanced.

Don’t miss her upcoming Burnt Out To Balanced Group Coaching Class starting February 12, 2013. Be guided through your fears into a place of love, healing and health. Register here: www.chronicwellnesscoaching.com/feb-b2b-course/

 To get your FREE report: 5 Insider Tips To Eliminating Fatigue and Unleashing Your Inner Superhero, visit her website: www.chronicwellnesscoaching.com. You can also hang out with her on Twitter and Facebook