Well, here it is! The last day of the year. What a wonderful year 2014 has been! I can honestly say that 2014 has been the best year of my life so far. I am also confident that 2015 will be better. I believe that it will be exponentially better.

How can I be so confident? Am I delusional? No. I am aware and I am in the flow of living the lovingME lifestyle. What is this lovingME lifestyle that I am always talking about and how do you know if you are living it? Tomorrow, I will spend some time describing what I mean.

Today, I ask us all to reflect on this year and what we want for 2015. Not resolutions, a revelation of what it is we truly desire.

How are your mornings? Do you hit the snooze button a few times or do you bound out of bed ready to go? Are you dreading the day or ready to get up and live it?

Everyone has days when they are a bit more tired and less ambitious than other days. There is a cyclical nature to life. However, if you aren’t getting up most days with enthusiasm and excitement for the day, then are you really living or have you slipped into existing? It’s okay if you have, it is more common than uncommon. The great news is that it isn’t permanent.

When you start loving yourself and living the lovingME lifestyle, things open up in a way that most have never seen before. Little steps can bring big changes.

I help people make the transformation into living as I have done. That is a big order but it is doable and so very worth it for all involved. It’s your life, you get to choose.

One of the sneaky ways that we tend not to love ourselves is in what we eat. This is usually under our radar because we don’t want to think of what we eat as having anything to do with how we feel and what we do with our lives. We don’t want to think of what we eat as having anything to do with treating ourselves with love and respect. In fact, we are often encouraged to indulge as a way of being good to ourselves. Oh go on, have a treat, have another drink, have some cheese when you know it doesn’t agree with you. Have some more coffee and knock out that project. Don’t be a zealot, live life.

The most damaging lies are those that are surrounding a truth. No, being a zealot does not behoove you most of the time. Being overly concerned about every crumb that passes your lips will consume you and end up detracting from your health. But eating that cheese, just this once, knowing that it historically has been problematic, succumbing to peer pressure, holiday or you deserve it pressure, just isn’t smart. Or productive. Or loving. Or respectful.

So stop and think before you mindlessly or even defiantly eat that which you know will detract from your health. If you do it anyway, watch yourself do it. Be conscious of the results and then weigh the pros and cons. Be grateful for the learning experience and the chance to better understand yourself and to do better.

And if you really don’t know what promotes or detracts from your own personal health, find out. Each of us is different. My coaching clients and I spend significant time on this early in the process. It is that important.

How is your energy these days? We have just made it through Christmas. I say made it through because I know that is how many of you are feeling right now. It is the weekend, thank God, so you probably don’t have to work again until Monday. Except there are some things that you really should do sometime this weekend because they didn’t get done before Christmas. But we will worry about that later.

Right now, we have the whole weekend to relax and prepare for the new year! Or to hit the sales. Let’s see what we can find that we didn’t know we couldn’t live without. We also continue to follow our holiday eating plan, which includes foods we haven’t eaten all year and really don’t taste all that great but they are around and hey, it’s the holidays. We have another week of that! We will worry about the new program after New Year’s.

For some reason, though, the energy isn’t there. All you want to do with your time off is to sleep, watch TV, read and lay on the sofa. In your sweat pants. But that’s not all that different than the rest of the year. You are simply tired. Next year seems like just a continuation of this one. Why should I get my hopes up, you think. Every year is the same. I try and I seek and I learn more and nothing changes.

Intellectually, you know what you need to do. You can even do it for a while but soon enough, the old ways sneak back in. Remember the year you decided to get a trainer and you lost weight and toned your body like never before? You were able to do things that you weren’t aware you could do. You pushed yourself and it felt fantastic. You saw major results in that area. Then you dumped your trainer.

Now here you are again. Is it time to get a trainer for the bigger part of you? For the real you, the core you, your spirit? Is it time to put some energy and focus into tapping into and maximizing the life that you have been given and the purpose for your existence? I am here when you are ready.

Having rewards is important. Allowing or giving yourself big or small accolades, treats and prizes is a wonderful thing and helps you to stay motivated along your journey. But it is important to choose the reward wisely and with awareness.

We must learn to ask, is this reward helping me or hindering me? Is it really in line with my goal? So many times we say I am going to have this cookie because I have been so good with my eating. I am going to buy this motorcycle because I have stayed on my budget this week. I am going to skip today’s session of working toward my dream because I have done it every day for weeks.

None of those things are awful or unforgiveable by any means. They can even be healthy and positive rewards in some circumstances. But they are sneaky. It is more likely resistance to the actual goal showing its ugly head in the shape of a reward. If you are giving yourself that treat in full awareness then that is one thing, but typically we are not aware when we do this, and it is our subconscious pulling us back in line by subtle sabotage. It shows that the old programming is still in effect. And that provides a wonderful learning opportunity and a reminder to keep releasing those old instructions.

Merry Christmas! What a wonderful day! Today is the day that many of us openly and vocally give thanks for the greatest gift we have been given. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, Jesus. With that Love made manifest, our whole world changed. I pray we all walk in a greater understanding, acceptance and receipt of that Love. Drink it in. Bask in it. Swim in it and then pass it along, pour it out and keep it moving, giving thanks all the while. That is what the whole lovingME lifestyle is about.

We teach others how to treat us. When we do not treat ourselves with love and respect it broadcasts to the world that we do not expect them to do so either. On the flip side, when we hold ourselves in utmost respect, loving ourselves despite and including our imperfections, we show the world that this is how we are to be treated by all. It is a work in progress no matter how far we have come or how far we need to go. It isn’t arrogance. It is acceptance and gratitude.

“I am exhausted and I just need some down time. It isn’t going to happen today because everything on my calendar is must do.” People I work with sometimes tell me that. Have you ever said that or felt it? Have you ever been in that situation when you really just had to press on and you didn’t want to?

Of course you have. You are successful. You have responsibilities and you are the go-to. I can totally relate. My life was a series of days like this. And then weeks. And months. And years.

Then I realized something very important. It is MY schedule. It is MY life. No one else has control over my life or even my schedule without me handing it over. I had been giving from my life support and not from my overflow. Read that again. We are to give from our overflow. God provides more than enough but we first have to receive that. Then, from the overflow we can bless others.

You are a must do. Please treat yourself as such. Or your body, mind, spirit, will make it happen eventually.

Well, it is here! Today, the sun sets one minute later than it did yesterday. We have turned the corner. The days are getting longer again and things are ramping up for a fantastic 2015!

I am very excited about 2015 because I have never had the tools I have now going into a new year. I have never had the faith, experience, wisdom, discernment and maybe most of all the awareness that I now have. And the thrilling thing is that I know that a year from now, I will have exponentially more than I do now in each of those categories and more. One day at a time, however, and that I am learning more and more.

The choices I make today count. The choices I made yesterday really don’t, except for the way they impact today. I choose to look at all of that as experience and expertise whether I would have chosen that particular outcome or not.

Living the lovingME lifestyle, I live better than ever. I can see the big picture and make choices that support that big picture. Sometimes that requires a sacrifice today. However, I choose it with open eyes and with absolute joy for I know WHY. It is the most loving and best thing I can do for myself in the moment. To know what I am doing and why I am doing it can be so much more powerful and empowering than any momentary gratification I may have gotten. The payoff down the road is exponential as well but I am continually learning to focus in the moment. It is the simple and profound pleasure in moving in my own journey in my own destiny, and helping others to do the same in theirs.

Honoring yourself can take many forms. One of the biggest and, I think for many of us, the hardest to realize and do is to be true to what we are feeling, what we want and what we dream or once dreamt. Expressing feelings, ideas, needs, and wants is not usually encouraged. Most of us have learned to stuff all of that down over the years.

When we were kids we learned to behave. Behaving meant not crying, singing loudly, dancing, yelling, running around or asking for things or asking questions. Behaving meant being quiet, being seen not heard and being continually pleasant and satisfied with what we are given including perfunctory explanations. It meant sitting in our chairs, staying in the straight line, minding the teacher. All without questioning any of it.

So we have spent literally years, the most formative years the thinking goes, learning how to blend in and live by others’ expectations and rules at all times. College gives you a little more freedom then back into the job where it all begins again.

One of the best ways to begin this lovingME lifestyle is to simply reconnect with the “me” in that equation. How much do you even know yourself? If you have spent a lifetime being a good son or daughter, a great student, a team player and a model employee, do you even know what the real you looks like? Do you know what the real you wants? Do you know what the real you is feeling? Do you know what the real you is here to do?

I submit that the world needs that real you. Not just the conformant, do what is necessary version that you play in your various roles, but the real you that is the spirit living in the physical body. The one that was put here to do what only you can do. You suffer for not knowing him, your family suffers and ultimately, the world suffers.

Get acquainted with and begin honoring your spirit – the real you.