I have been teaching Sparky and Shady for around 8 years now and if you asked me which part of program is the most important, I would answer that the top four are:

  1. Love Shady (our fear)

If we can love the most fearful part of us, we can love our whole self. When we personify our fear and accept it as the part of us that is trying to protect us and keep us alive and safe, it becomes much easier to love and manage our fear. As a result, it then becomes easier to love and manage our whole selves.

  1. Trust Sparky (our loving inner wisdom)

When we can see, hear, feel, know (or interact) with the most loving, wise and courageous part of us in our imagination we become more open to its loving force and more likely to accept the hope, direction and answers to our problems that it gives us. I call this being ‘plugged in’! When we are plugged in – we live more loving, connected and meaningful lives.

  1. Let go of baggage

This is done in a Pit Stop. It basically includes listening to Shady, expressing our feelings, listening to Shady some more, expressing our feelings some more and then when we run out of fearful thoughts and feelings on a particular topic, we listen to our loving inner wisdom for an alternate viewpoint that will help us and empower us!

  1. Fill up with Sparky beliefs

This is as simple as listening to Sparky every day in a daily meditation to get a hit of the loving side of life and doing daily affirmations to put helpful beliefs about ourselves, other people and life into our subconscious. When we are open to the positive, loving, confident, courageous, problem solving part of us we are able to see life from this perspective more of the time. (Much more uplifting and fun than believing our fear!)

Okay, so which of these four is the MOST effective in bringing positive change into our lives?

Hands down – Letting go of baggage!

The reality is that our subconscious drives us on autopilot 95% of the time or more, so whatever we believe about ourselves, other people and life in our subconscious comes true for us – that’s how humans work! If I have baggage (unhelpful Shady beliefs) inside me that says: ‘I have to stay in this job or in this relationship’; ‘I am too old or not smart enough to study’; ‘I can’t lose weight no matter what I eat or how much I exercise’; etc. Then I’m not going to do what I need to do to change because I believe ‘I can’t’.

Whenever I notice I’m thinking, ‘I can’t’, I know I have baggage keeping me stuck!

To get me unstuck and to stop feeling bad, I take a Pit Stop. I do this once every 9 days on average according to my diary dates, which is apparently about the same number of times American women have a good cry according to a study by a leading researcher into crying, Ad Vingerhoets.

There is a difference between having a good cry and taking a Pit Stop. Having a good cry is one of the essential elements of a Pit Stop, but there are two other really important parts of the Pit Stop which make it more effective than crying alone, these include…

  1. Listening to Shady and getting our fearful thoughts out of our subconscious and out of us. This usually accompanies crying. Once we’ve said our fearful thoughts out loud, written them down, or said them to someone else, we need to let them go. This is actually quite a normal and natural process, we are all familiar with whinging, bitching and debriefing to verbalise our fear, anger, guilt, sadness etc. But the difference with this in the Pit Stop process, is that we are not trying to enlist people to be ‘on our side’. We are not building a case against someone who has wronged us, or trying to get other people to agree that we can’t do whatever it is we know we need or want to do. Instead, it is all about getting those fearful human, natural and normal thoughts and feelings out of us so we can feel them, share them, express them and let them go. If we have no intention of letting our fear go, then we can stuck in this stage.
  2. Following the release of fear, we go on to ask Sparky for advice as to what we could think, say and do now. Then the most courageous part of the process is to actually do what Sparky suggests so we can move forward in our life without the baggage and overwhelming fear! (Leave the job we don’t like, end the relationship that isn’t ever going to work, enrol in the course we really want to do or change our eating and exercising habits.)

I’ve been taking Pit Stops for a long time now and they have definitely worked miracles in my life. I look back on how I used to react to things, the situations I would get myself into and the problems I had in my life and see that I no longer have the reactions, habits and patterns that I used to. I also have a completely different life doing what I really want to do, following my dreams and learning a heap of cool stuff along the way. My life truly is an adventure that I love!

Pit Stops in my opinion are the secret to change and the secret to following our dreams. We are here to follow our dreams! I’m not naïve enough to think this means all our dreams will come true – because they won’t. But the dreams that are really important to us, that we don’t change, that we are passionate about and we keep going with – most definitely will and do!

If you are interested in what a Pit Stop looks like so you can think about whether you want to try one yourself to either let go of baggage or just let go of overwhelming feelings (the process works for both), I’ve just uploaded an edited version of real-life Pit Stop here. It’s one of me letting go of baggage that ‘I can’t be myself’. I’ve cut and edited the video from the ‘How to cope with problems’ lesson in the Sparky and Shady MA program (the original video is 22 minutes). It is just snippets of the steps involved to give you a quick overview. Just a heads up that you might find this video confronting and it does contain swearing.

If you want to watch the full video (and other videos that are actually uplifting), it will cost you $25 to have a sticky beak at the program for one month. If you love it, you can keep paying for them more months and then you own the entire program forever. If not, just cancel your order and email me for a refund. Seriously! Check it out here.

If you are looking from a parent point of view, you may be interested in the Pit Stop for kids to help them overcome Shady beliefs that are not helping them. The online video program for families is now available for $33 for one month instead of $330 up front. (Same deal as the MA, if you love it you can keep paying for ten more months and own it forever, if not, you can email me for a refund). Details here.

Here’s to you, me and everyone on the planet getting rid of our baggage and fear so we can do what we are here to do to make our lives even more amazing!

Love Kathy