'Tis the season to travel, eat, pray, love

It’s that time of year again when we cap another year of daily non-events punctuated by milestones. How we value that one year and how we look forward to another one depend a lot on our attitude and disposition in life. 

Two women have in the last few years, aside from Ellen Degeneres and Oprah Winfrey, steered millions of women (and even men) worldwide to improve and change their disposition. Both were trapped in bad situations, and the journey of how they transformed their thinking and emotions, and improved their lives are subjects of their best-selling books. I am, of course, talking about Rhonda Bryne of The Secret fame and Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love. 

By the spring of 2007, the book of Australian TV producer Rhonda Bryne had sold almost four million copies and the DVD more than two million. Affirming her impact, Time magazine included Bryne in its list of 100 people who shaped the world in 2007. Recently, she released a sequel to The Secret , both a hardcover edition and audio CD.

Elizabeth Gilbert is an award-winning writer of both fiction and non-fiction. Since its initial publication in January 2006, the book Eat, Pray, Love spent 57 weeks in the #1 spot on the New York Times paperback bestseller list. It has shipped over six million copies in the US and has been published in over 30 languages. Columbia Pictures even made a film adaptation starring no less than Julia Roberts as Gilbert. It was reported that the film drew 70 percent of the US female moviegoers on its opening week.

As we end the year, and as we focus on faith and family, let me share some popular quotes from these two female authors. These authors convince us that the divine is in us and if we look inwards, we will find happiness. So, as you travel to reunite with friends and family to celebrate faith, love, and hope, and as you eat and partake of the holiday feast, always pray that you will have the capacity to love more.

Rhonda’s Secret

• The Great Secret of Life is the law of attraction that says like attracts like, so when you think a thought, you are also attracting like thoughts to you. You are a human transmission tower, transmitting a frequency with your thoughts. If you want to change anything in your life, change the frequency by changing your thoughts. Your current thoughts are creating your future life. What you think about the most or focus the most will appear as your life.

• The law of attraction is a law of nature. It is as impartial as the law of gravity. Nothing can come into your experience unless you summon it through persistent thoughts.

• To lose weight, don’t focus on “losing weight.” Instead, focus on your perfect weight. Feel the feelings of your perfect weight, and you will summon it to you.

• Visualization is the process of creating pictures in your mind of yourself enjoying what you want. When you visualize, you generate powerful thoughts and feelings of having it now. The law of attraction then returns that reality to you, just as you saw it in your mind.

• Treat yourself with love and respect, and you will attract people who show you love and respect. To make a relationship work, focus on what you appreciate about the other person, and not your complaints. When you focus on the strengths, you will get more of them.

• Laughter attracts joy, releases negativity, and leads to miraculous cures. Do not listen to society’s messages about diseases and aging. Negative messages do not serve you.

• You cannot help the world by focusing on negative things. As you focus on the world’s negative events, you not only add to them, you also bring more negative things into your own life. Instead of focusing on the world’s problems, give your attraction and energy to trust, love, abundance, education, and peace.

Quoting Elizabeth

•. People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.

• A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.

• A soul mate’s purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master...

• I have a history of making decisions very quickly about men. I have always fallen in love fast and without measuring risks. I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential. I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times in romance, I have been a victim of my own optimism.

• Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.

• ’Tis better to live your own life imperfectly than to imitate someone else’s perfectly.

• To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced life.

• There’s a crack (or cracks) in everyone…that’s how the light of God gets in.

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Post me a note at mylene@goldsgym.com.ph or mylenedayrit@gmail.com.