Yes!
Like most of us, I enjoy seeing before and after pictures of people who have lost phenomenal amounts of weight. I belong to a population described medically as morbidly obese, so photographs of those who've lost 100-200 pounds impact me most. Those people are my super heroes and super heroines! They give me hope! They make, what often feels impossible to accomplish, look doable. But as dramatic as those pictures are, reading or hearing what kept those successful people moving forward between “before” and “after,” is the biggest help to me. I need to know what happened in the during of their struggles –what sustained them. I'm 50 pounds down from 340 pounds last June, but these last two months, my body is stubbornly lingering in the 280s. I am still solidly in the “during” of my quest.
One thing that helps sustain me in my “during” are the out-of-the-blue internal moments. These are moments of clarity that happen when a thought transforms from a cloudy notion to a crystal clear idea. It happens in the blink of an eye or a beat of my heart and I feel my spirit exclaim, “Yes!” My most recent Yes! was realization the word “hole” is totally changed with the simple addition of one letter. A hole is an opening, an emptiness, a space lacking substance, but it can be transformed with addition of a single letter—a “w.” Led by “w,” “hole” becomes “whole” which means entire, a space filled to its capacity, complete.
In this quest to F.I.T., Finding Inner Truth, I relish the idea of completion. A well-known line from a Tom Cruise movie is “You complete me.” That line worked wonderfully for a romantic comedy, but not in real life. In real life, the healthier realization is we complete ourselves, i.e., “I complete me.”
So, the vital question becomes, what completes us during our journeys? What letter do we need to add full meaning to our lives—to make the “hole,” in our journeys, “whole?” What is your letter? What letter leads the word you need to add? Look inward. Is your letter an “r” for “I need rest?”Is it “n” for “No, it wouldn’t be in my best interest to do that?” Is it “a” for I am going to get more activity? Is it “l” for “I am going to choose to eat less of that for my health.” Or is it “h” for “I want to be healthier, but I need help?” When you find it, be prepared for your own undeniable “Yes!”