Shhh… don’t tell myself I said this, but:

I am having SO, LIKE SO, SOOOOoooooo much trouble just getting through a single day of juice feasting. It’s a bit ridiculous. Anyway, maybe I don’t NEED to, but I want to. I want to do the Intestinal Soap recipe, just like Nicole is. Just like Michael Perrine talked about. I already bought all the ingredients. I started making juice, but my darn juicer gets clogged before I can make a few liters of it. Anyway, on our cozy coaching call, Nicole said she wants to do a juice feast this week. That little love nugget inspired me. She just said it and she’s doing it! I keep watching myself putting all this attention on “how hard” it is for me to do a juice feast and I keep hearing myself talk about how “I can’t do it” so I decided to klup myself up the side of the head and change my attitude. Okay, so here goes… 😉

Gooooood morning, Pumperfly. I don’t know why I called you Pumperfly. I guess it’s because Jimbolina calls me “Miss Daisy Pumperfly”. Anyway, it’s Monday. It’s the start of a new week and on the phone at last night’s cozy coaching call, I couldn’t decide what I was going to commit to. I still haven’t decided.

We’re rapidly approaching the midway mark of our 90-day detox and it’s actually hard to believe just how much things have changed in my life since starting this thing. Wow. Let’s take inventory on our achievements, shall we?

Let’s take a moment or two to identify where change has happened in a positive way. I actually am stunned to think of how much my relationships and personal values have changed. Nutritionally speaking, I’ve made some adjustments. I sure do a lot more green juice. For fitness and exercise, I do yoga, oooooh sweet glorious yoga of looooove! So fitness, food and lifestyle have all improved A LOT. I ditched some projects and liberated myself from (I know this sounds harsh, but it was necessary) people that just weren’t contributing in a positive way to my life.

So, that’s a lot of improvement. Maybe that’s enough. 🙂

I think I’ll pack it in there. Thanks for the ride, folks.

I’m done.

I’m outta here.

That’s enough for meeeee…

*aaaahhhh….*

HA! HA! HA!

Wouldn’t that be funny? Wouldn’t it be funny if women like us could just say, “That’s enough. I’ve done my best. I’d like to stop now.” 🙂 Nice idea, but we live to grow and expand and improve. We live to experience the height of what experience has to offer. As long as we take moments to validate the progression, then I have no problem with raising the bar on what we can expect of ourselves–on what we can achieve and allow for ourselves.

Like  the Dutchman, for example…

I’ve read about fairy tales with a prince who is gallant and charming and attentive. I’ve read about those things. But until last night I’d never actually BEEN WITH a real, live Prince of a prince. I mean, he showed up with flowers for a tea date!

And it’s not that I need gushing displays of chivalry, and I’m quite modest when it comes to materialistic indulgences, but I just sat there thinking, “Huh? Flowers? For me?”

And then the next thought I had was, “Uh-oh. I’m wearing jeans!”

You would have thought this guy was preparing for a very special occasion. I mean he was decked out, looking gorgeous and carrying flowers. *gulp* Maybe it’s just because I’ve never had someone consider tea with me such a treat before that I wasn’t expecting to be so graciously received. The entire night I sat listening to this person thinking, “Is this for real?” “Are YOU for real?”

Now, I’m not trying to imply anything about where this adventure will lead. I’m just saying that the whole experience got me thinking quite a lot about things…

There are ways we live and put barriers in place for ourselves. Limitations about what we think we deserve and what we’re “worthy” of. Whether it’s with respect to the relationships we are willing to create for ourselves, the money we make, the pleasure we allow ourselves to experience, the time we give to ourselves to do the things we love or the foods we say we can and cannot control eating. There are ways we put limits on pleasure and possibility. I don’t have all the answers about WHY we do it, but many of us impose limitations on ourselves.

I’ve decided it’s time to stop it with that nonsense.

It’s time to raise the bar on the amount of pleasure, passion and purpose we allow ourselves to experience.

What if I really COULD get swept away to Paris for the weekend with a man I love? What if I really could have a relationship that was easy, empowering, loving and fulfilling? (I’m not saying there couldn’t be bumps in the road, but my goodness gracious, you’d think i’d been riding on a construction site with no highway in site for the last 10 years.)

What if no matter how tough things have been until now, no matter how many stupid mistakes I’ve made, no matter how much I think I do or do not “deserve” certain things in my life… What if I just decided to knock away barriers, obstacles, limitations and self-sabotaging thoughts and stand on the mountain top of my life and shout out to the Powers of Pleasure that be to say:

“BRING IT ON!! BRING IT ALL ON!!”

Bring on as much good, as much pleasure, as much passion and abundance as you REALLY want. Let go of limitation and put possibility on your horizon like you ain’t never done before. You can. I can. We can. We will.

I told you about my apartment the other day, and how that worked out so serendipitously. Well, here’s another fun thing about this Dutchman story…

Last week after I got through the spiritual upheaval and life-change I told you about, then I just felt like “I want to get out and meet someone.” I didn’t have expectations that this be an intense relationship, or anything serious or intimate. I wasn’t looking for love, I was looking for an exhilarating conversation or a walk up the mountain with someone I found interesting.  So, I popped onto one of those online dating sites. (I did it once before last year and after about 4 hours on that site I had dates lined up for weeks and more emails than I could handle. When you’re feeling like you need to extrovert a bit, well, that’s not such a bad thing.)

So the other day, just for the fun of it, I logged on to a site. (I went to this one, because it’s FREE, but I’m warning you, it’s VERY distracting!;-)) I set up a profile for myself. I put the picture of Mika and I to ward off immediately anyone cruising for something other than a respectable relationship. I just wanted to put it right out there that I am a mom of small children.

Anyway, I sat at my computer and just said outloud, “Find me a Dutchman!” My mom is Dutch and I looooove all things Dutch and I’m always google-eyed over my friend’s Dutch boyfriend. Not because he’s anything spectacular, it’s mostly just because he’s Dutch. 🙂

Anyway, it could not have been more than a few hours that passed when I received an email from a gentleman kindly asking me to remove the picture of my daughter from the site.

*gasp!*

WHAT?!!

It wasn’t a, “Hey, Baby. Nice smile!” or  a “how r u tonite? i’m lonely. lol… wanna chat… lol…”

It wasn’t “I’m an honest man with a good sense of humor, would you like to go for coffee?”

It was, “I think you should take that picture of your daughter off this site, because it’s not totally appropriate and for safety reasons alone,  I think it would be best if you remove it.” (Trust a Dutchman to say it like it is. I should have spotted it immediately!)

At that point, I was already inundated with more messages than I actually could manage and needed to close down my profile again because it was just too distracting and there were far too many bare-chested Brunos looking for a beer-slurpin’ patio babe. (Let’s face it. I should not be looking for dates online. I should be hanging around the compost bins at health conventions winking at the tall, skinny boys that come by.)

I wrote back to the gentleman telling him that I didn’t necessarily share his concerns,  but thanked him for the suggestion and changed the picture (I mean, I don’t want to attract some weirdo!). I had noticed in his profile he would respond in English, French, German and Dutch, so I had to ask, “Are you Dutch?”

Sure shootin’, he was a Dutchman! A real, live, DUTCHMAN! Poof! Just like that! Only a matter of hours from the time I made my official request.

Looking back I can remember very clearly sitting at the computer saying outloud, “Find me a Dutchman!” and how very different from the 436 times I said, “I’m going to juice feast today”. I see a difference in the degree of intention I put into saying those two things.

If you say you’re going to do something, or you want  something, but it’s laced with self-doubt of some possibility that this might not happen, it doesn’t happen. It’s not going to happen. I just wanted a Dutchman. I didn’t have a whole bunch of other qualifications about what kind of Dutchman, or how nice, or how tall or what kind of relationship it would be. I simply wanted a Dutchman. And holy smokin’ baloney did I ever get one FAST!

So, given this little observation, I’ve determined that when you just place your order for whatever the heck you want at the checkout counter of life, then  do so with with a little kick of your heels and a sparkle in your eye and do it like you mean it. Then be ready to get what you ordered.

So here’s the deal, Chica:

I AM GOING TO JUICE FEAST TODAY!

And here’s WHY:

• Because I can.
• Because I want to.
• Because I think intestinal soap sounds delightful.
• Because I want to feel the intense satisfaction of doing what I say I’m going to do.
• Because I know I can, I know I can, I KNOW I CAN!
• Because fiber is overrated.
• Because I have a small cyst on the back of my leg and yesterday I noticed it through my clothes in my yoga class and it made my heart sink in my stomach. David and Katrina generously signed me up for a test drive of their  juice fasting program. I admit, I was impressed with everything they offer and one thing in particular caught my attention. It was a testimonial on the side of the page from Bridgette Mars who had a cyst/lump that totally disappeared while juice feasting.

So I’m gonna do it.

And I’m officially removing a few more limitations off what I thought was possible for myself. I can’t tell you exactly what that looks like, Sunshine, but I can say that I’m not putting on any filters to keep out joy, pleasure, passion and abundance of all kinds this week. Crazy thing, this detox. Every time I think it can’t get better than this, the top pops off all over again.

I love you. I reeeeeeeally, really do and I can’t wait to hear how you’re doing and what you’re going to commit to this week.

My commitment: To accept the possibility that life could get EVEN BETTER than this, that I DO deserve all the magic I can possibly create for myself and more. Then I’m going to do whatever it takes to allow  that  to happen.

*taking a deeeeep breath and diving even deeper*

Tera

P.S.

I’m off to finish up a detox announcement. 😉 So close, so close I can taste it!