Lisa Nichols once found myself in complete breakdown. In 2006, her professional life was soaring: As a CEO and motivational speaker, she was inspiring people all over the country, writing books, and having great success. Yet she was nearly 100 pounds overweight and living in personal shame. She was silently depressed. She was teaching people how to live their dreams – but she was living in her nightmare.

Her wake-up call came at a health retreat. She was sharing her weight struggle with a woman there, and this is how she responded: “You already know how to lose weight,” she said. “This is not a physical thing; it’s an emotional one.”

Lisa knew she was right: she’d been living with the excuse of “I don’t know how to get this weight off” because that allowed her to sidestep her responsibility to address the issue. It was her crutch – a reason she was using to keep from having to act. “If you know how to eat less and exercise more,” the woman told her, “then there’s an emotional reason why you won’t release the weight. You’re choosing this.”

That sobering lesson has remained with Lisa: We can actually choose to stay in breakdown. In fact, many of us will choose a familiar discomfort before we will courageously leap into an unfamiliar possibility. Now here’s some good news –

1. Recognise where you are, 2. Rate yourself, 3. Get clear about what’s driving you, 4. Unpack your fear, 5. Make a “to-done” list, 6. Begin with the end in mind, 7. Shift your mindset, 8. Get moving.

Once Lisa had my Aha moment at that retreat, she thought about what was really behind my weight gain. She realised that in her former athletic body – a 5’2” version of Serena Williams – she hadn’t ever developed sexual self-esteem. Lisa didn’t understand that the room called love didn’t have to be entered through the door called sex. Her fear was that without physical intimacy, real love wasn’t possible for me. So Lisa unconsciously put on this jacket called weight to protect her from men’s advances until she could develop self-esteem. Lisa was holding onto the weight for emotional reasons – not because she didn’t know how to eat healthy or go to the gym.

Lisa recognises that breakthroughs are not something you can Google download. A-ha’s come in an instant, but life change comes through daily action. Repetition is how you build your muscle and move yourself forward a step a time. Here’s what she knows: That kind of momentum is possible in every single part of your life. Don’t settle for good enough when you deserve extraordinary. Look at a breakdown as the doorway to your next life breakthrough.

Pendulum Summit, the world’s leading business and self-empowerment summit returns to the Convention Centre Dublin on January 10th – 11th 2018.

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