my LiveBIG experience on Day 2

Day 2 of the LiveBIG Conference had a lot of stuff to think about.  I didn't get much sleep that night.  Woke up at 3am, my mind churning.  I did some blogging.  I prayed.  I did some more praying.  I did some reflecting.  I went through some memories.  I cried.

I finally got up and wrote out a prayer, texted it to my buddy and Gerald, and posted it on Facebook.  I had 3 of my close friends text me prayers back.


Father,  Thank You so much for Misty and for the friend she is to me and so many others.  Give her the strength and wisdom to endure this getaway and to find peace, confidence, and most of all to see more of You and Your Love.  Convict Misty's heart, give her direction daily of where You would have her go, not go, do and not do.  Remove any negative spirits of inadequacy, unworthiness, condemnation that others have placed on her, I am confident Lord, that most of us try too hard and you're asking us to rest in you...show us...lead us to that rest.  In light of the fact that Misty will not have the support of her adrenal meds please allow her health to hold up during this time so that she may glean in for and insight from this conference from you as she moves forward in her life drawing near to you and living in complete freedom.  Thank You again for such an amazing friend, please take care of her as I KNOW you will. Amen.



Papa, You're holding Misty today as you were yesterday, you know exactly what she's feeling and thinking.  I pray that you'll give her Your strength as she takes on the day, and I thank you for loving her enough to let hard things happen, to push and grow her.  I pray she'll feel Your arms around her this day as you stretch her heart and soul.  Always in Your Name.



Lord I lift Misty Gilbert and lay her at the foot of the cross. That fully surrendered to You, she can live the life you designed Her! Remind her Lord, about your kingdom that is love, Joy, peace, and well-being. In your sons name Amen!


Friends that will take the time to encourage you and pray for you are amazing!!!  They truly make me feel close to them quickly.

When I got to the conference I checked in on my buddy and learned she was in pain.  I spent some time trying to encourage her and listen.  Was the pain stemmed from the emotional work we did yesterday?  Maybe.  Was the pain from sleeping in a bed that wasn't her regular bed?  Maybe.  Was the pain due to a condition she had that had just flared up?  Maybe.  It didn't matter, she needed my love and support.

When the doors opened for the Day 2 Session, the team gave each of us a hug.  I told Anthony, so good to see you...and he whispered in my ear, you too lovely. I am better now that you are here!

Wow!!!  Anthony knew how to communicate a message straight to your soul.  He knew how to be loving.  Talk about melting your heart.  What a sweetie!!!  You couldn't help but connect with Anthony.  He reminded me of my Granpa Whiskers, my Dads Dad, who passed away in 1991.  Wish I had gotten my picture with him!

I took my seat, sitting on the same row as yesterday, 2nd row, right hand side.

Yesterday, if we spoke up, we said "My name is..." and where we were from (city & state).  Today, if we spoke up we said "My name is...", and the LiveBIG Tribe asked "Who Are You?"  And we repeated our affirmation of who we were that we created last night.  So I would have said, "My Name is Misty, I am a Courageous, Generous, Loving Woman."  They then said, "Yes You Are."  We were to reply, "Yes, Thank You, I know."

The first few times of doing this, it was truly uncomfortable.  I felt like I was bragging.  The more you did it, the more it felt like it was apart of you.  The more you did it, the more you believed it.  All these exercises truly were ways for them to teach us in a hands on skillful way to create and rewrite our own story.

Amazing!

Not too long into the morning session, we did the same exercise we did the day before with someone saying "The Greatness I see in You is...".  

I did this with Kristine, Tanner and Jeremy.

You would have thought I was more prepared for it this time after having done this yesterday, but I flat out wasn't.  This time I was even more hung up then the day before on trying to let what they said sink in.  This time I was more conscious of trying to fight my internal belief system about myself, trying to figure out what was truth vs lies, trying to understand how the words they were telling me could represent me.  

Since we believe 80% of what we tell ourselves and only 20% of what someone else tells us, this lesson was hard, very hard for me.  I found myself trying to discredit the things people were saying about me. I found myself not believing what they said was true and they were only saying and doing it because they had to participate in this exercise.  

But I also found myself creating a connection, a bond, and planting new seeds to create a new belief system.  I found myself being open to listening to what someone else saw in me.  I found myself realizing that they had the truth, I am the one that had lies.

I found that when I got lost at looking into their eyes and seeing them it gave me a feeling of love for them.  It brought me closer to wanting to know more about their life and to speak life into them.

The lesson from all this is that you will forget who you are.  Repeating it over and over, never with the same person, you are finding a way to remind yourself and emphasize the truth.  The thing to remember is that we should not get frustrated with ourselves when we forget.  The goal is to create ways to reprogram yourself so that you remember.  

Wow.  An impressive way to rewrite your story!  Truly meaningful.

Marci then took us to the next part which was where we all were sitting in our thinking at this point:  How do I move through this junk?  

She made it clear that none of us can be forced to move through our junk.  We have to choose to.  She stressed that everything exists out of fear or love...and shared examples of what she meant by that.

She asked an incredible question.  

"What if you learn to love everything you were taught to fear?"  

This is very powerful if you think about it.  Whatever you think or focus on you will experience.  The gift of feedback helps you figure out what is working or not working to create improvement.  You will either stop yourself or give into the emotion.  The goal is to catch yourself and move through it once you analyze what and why.  These are the tools you need to rewrite your story.

She spent a lot of time talking about how everything shows up in your inner self worth.  This was an amazing nugget to me.  We spend a lifetime trying to create a book cover but don't deal with addressing the internal material in the book.  We think its closed and won't be discovered or uncovered.  We think that the outer picture is more important than the inner picture.

We are wrong.

You can't hide when you look in the mirror and look yourself in the eyes.  And believe me, you can't hide when you look these other people in the eyes.  They see you, your heart and soul our conveyed, a message is being delivered to the outside world about the true you.  Others can see you more clearly than you see yourself.  Others can pinpoint your character because it shows, it can't be hid.

"You will never lose love if you love yourself!"

• I love Misty!
• I love and approve of myself just as I am now!
• I am perfect, whole, and complete just as I am now!

Tony then spent time talking about why we sabotage ourselves.  I never would have dreamed that this was something I did until he walked through some examples.  He had loads of examples.  He discussed the 4 patterns we use in this process and how if these patterns remain unexamined, they will run us, and how we need to examine without shame.

This thought struck me.  How can you do this?  I mean, when someone is trying everything in their power to put shame and guilt on you, how do you do this?

So when he asked if there were questions, I asked mine.  "You told us to examine without shame.  How do you examine without shame?"

They brought me the mic, just like yesterday and he asked me to stand.  

I knew what was coming now.   Yet, I also knew I was committed to living a level 10 and engaging in this process.  Awwwhhhhhhh, here it goes...

Tony stated, "By your question, it is obvious that you feel shame."  I nodded.  He said, "Is it true?"  I said, "That I feel this way?  Yes."  He said "No, that you should feel that way?"  I said, "No."  I know this theoretically in my brain, but in my heart, I question.  He dug deeper.  He asked more questions to find out why I felt this way.  I answered some of his questions providing more details of the childhood experiences I had, the things that hold me back, the things that have created my negative internal belief system; stating that even if I made straight A's, I never made my parents happy, it was never enough; even if I give all to my clients, above and beyond what is in my contract, they want more, it is never enough and I consequently feel like I am not good enough; even if I do everything is expected of me, it is never enough; even if I take care of myself and make enough money to support me, my Mom feels I am to independent and that I make too much money and I am not living as God wants me to live because I am not married; I feel if I take care of me I am being selfish; etc...one of the questions when he pressed further to get me to open up more and I passed it off with, "it relates to what I told you last night when we were talking."  He didn't probe more.  He left it.

I was grateful.  I couldn't go into that in front of all these people.

He then asked me to close my eyes.  He asked me to move forward and imagine myself without a feeling of shame.  He asked me to feel the opposite of what those feelings were creating in me.  He asked me what that looked like.  He asked me how it made me feel.  He saw my demeanor change and said, whatever you thought brought a smile to your face, that is what I am referring to.  He said, "You thought about sex didn't you?"  I believe Tony said it, not just because that is one of his favorite things and that he believes it is a great tool to be used in our lives that we don't give it enough credit (and yes, without you being there and hearing the reason this was part of the topic at the conference and to just hear me recount this through this context you probably aren't going to understand, and it is going to seem truly inappropriate) but I believe he also did it to lighten the moment.  However, this question sent my wall back up, immediately like a red alert.  Because the topic related to the very thing I didn't want to talk about...an incident that happened when I was 17.  If Tony knew what it made me do and feel, I don't believe he would have.  I felt myself stiffen.  I felt myself build a barrier and revert back to a belief and a feeling of more shame.  I caught myself and told myself to listen to Tony and try to glean what I could from what he was saying.  This is another one of those things that is the junk in my life that has created me to have my own internal belief system.  A belief system full of lies.

"Shame is I Am Bad.  I Am Not Worthy.  Change your story.  Write new stuff.  Change the focus.  Look at the truth.  Rewrite your story.  Create statements that change your automatic thoughts.  Put them on your mirror.  Put them on your review mirror.  Put them on your dashboard.  Rewrite them in your mind.  Refocus."

He asked me what those would be.  I listed:

• I am Courageous!
• I am Good Enough!
• I am Loved!
• I Matter!
• I am Worthy!
• I am Successful!

He said, did you say, "I am Beautiful?"  I said, "No, I didn't."  He went on talking and said again, "I am beautiful was one of your statements, right?"  I said "No, but if you want to use it for your example, that's fine."  He talked more and then said, "You are Beautiful."  Say it.  I struggled to say it.  It was at that moment I realized just how keen he was into the soul and belief system I had.  He then said, "If I am Beautiful wasn't one of your statements, it should be.  You are."

I am not stupid and you don't have to force a thought on me for me to get it. I heard Tony and the message he was getting to me.  At this point, I was crying.  

Again.

While I was standing up doing this exercise, Deonne, an attendee sitting two seat over, had grabbed my notebook/journal and wrote me a note sharing a resource for dealing with shame.  I did not see her do this, I only saw a note written to me when I sat back down.  {This will mean more later when I share stuff on Day 3.}

Gerald took over now and told us that your mind is fighting to make your story true.

Wow.  Didn't I just do this in the example with Tony?

The next several exercises were effective in me getting to see things about myself.  We were told to write until we were told to stop, though we were told that this might not be an exhaustive list, it would get us started and to continue the exercise later.  And to repeat it as often as necessary to figure this junk out.


Exercise:  What top 2 or 3 things you want?

1. I want to achieve work life balance while I still have a passion to do what I love in the midst of my love to work.
2. I want to believe I am Good Enough, Beautiful, Loved, Cherrished, Create a New Story, etc.
3. I want to be an encourager, generous, and loving to a greater degree and deeper level.

Exercise:  What are the reasons I can't have this?

• I don't believe I deserve work life balance.
• I don't believe I can be successful because of being told I would never be.
• I always received abuse and feel I must abuse myself because I am not worthy.
• I don't believe I am worthy of love.
• I don't want to be my Mom.
• I have fear that I can't ever be good enough.
• I don't believe a man will love me.
• I don't believe my story matters.
• I don't believe anyone will believe my story because my parents didn't.
• I don't believe I am understood.
• I don't want to give up.
• I don't know how to achieve work life balance.
• I believe being a workaholic is self sacrifice.

Exercise:  What is the truth?

• I am successful.
• I am loved.
• I am good enough.
• I am courageous.  Beautiful.  Amazing.
• I am not like my Mom.
• I am able to create work life balance.
• I am determined to be different.
• I know My Story matters.
• I will resolve my childhood abuse issues.
• I will live big.  Live my dreams.
• I will be more of a dreamer.
• I will create time for me.
• I will love myself.
• I will believe the truth.
• I will rewrite My Story.

"Challenge every thought and ask, is that true?  Really true?"

Somewhere in the midst of all this, it was a lunch break.  I went to lunch with a lady named Tonya (she was on crutches due to an injury) and her daughter Brittney, who wanted to talk to me more.  They had brought their lunch to the conference and I suggested I go get food and I come back and meet them in the lobby.  They didn't want to do this, they wanted to go with me.  So the rode with me and we went to Sweet Tomatoes.  The situation with Tonya reminded me of something my Mom would do, and it was plain awkward because we (or I) carried in their rolling ice chest tote of food.  Brittney didn't want to eat what her Mom had brought and complained about having to do so.  I told her I was treating her to lunch and to not worry about it.  Tonya wanted to hear more of my story and this is why we had made plans to meet up for lunch.  We had a good time sharing and relating thoughts with each other.  We headed back to the conference before we would be late.  

Tony spent time talking about self acceptance.

Marci had us do some upper body exercises with bands.  She kicked our butt.

In anything in life, if you want to be good at it, you have to study the skills.  In our society we spend time studying a skill for our career, but we don't take the time to do this in other things, especially the things relating to our hearts and minds.  Why do we not truly study the skills of relationships and communication?  We need to.

Throughout the day, I had various people make comments to me about how courageous they felt I was to share.  They asked to know more about My Story.  They shared thoughts.  They encouraged me.  They were loving.  They were kind.  They were friendly.  It was amazing!!!  

These are the people who I became close friends with.  These are the people who impacted my world.  These are the people who taught me lessons.  These are the people who are helping me to change my belief system.  These are the people who are helping me to rewrite my story.

At our 90 minute dinner break, I went with my buddy and 3 other lady friends (Melanie, Michelle and Bethany) and Misty & Jay to a Sushi & Hibachi place.  It was a great time of being able to share in each others lives and learn more from each other.  We had to rush to eat as the restaurant took their time at getting our food prepared.  The sushi was absolutely delicious!!!  

In a conversation with Kent, one of the attendees that evening before I left, he told me:  

I want to share something with you.  You are chosen!  You are beautiful.  Believe it.

I listened.  I heard him.  Do I feel chosen?  Beautiful?  Do I believe it?  No.  But I am a courageous, generous, loving woman who is learning to rewrite her story!

Day 2 of LiveBIG was an incredible experience!!!  I encourage you to #LiveBIG...