40 DAYS & 40 NIGHTS OF CPA

So I watched a documentary called Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. It’s about an Australian guy who is fat, sick and nearly dead who decides to go to America (the land of temptation) and live on juice alone. No food for 60 days only the juice of fruit and vegetables.

So I started thinking – as I do, what a fantastic way to illustrate the foundation of my belief system and my teachings. You see I have always believed that if you wish to achieve anything in your life it comes down to Consistent Positive Actions. 

Consistent obviously talks to doing it every day, never giving up, never quitting, being methodical and disciplined, never skipping a step, not missing a beat,  and don’t stop until it’s done.

Most diets do work if you do them for longer than three or four days. Relationships work if you constantly work at the important stuff, always in all ways, or at least in the ways that are important to your partner. So ladies, once a year on his birthday – not consistent! Telling and showing her how special she is once a year on Valentine’s Day will guarantee once a year on your birthday gentlemen. Small, consistent, persistent steps, that’s how you build relationships and keep them.

SO WHAT ABOUT THE POSITIVE ACTION?

Well, it’s like they advertise on the box – the actions have to be positive. Positive includes change, different, new, and moving out of your comfort zone. Positive is generally dictated by results. You really cannot fail but you can get the results that you don’t want so the idea is to shift, change and do something else until you find what works and then do it consistently. Life is all about what we do, not what we think. Someone once said to me “you become what you think about most of the time”. What nonsense! If that were true I would have been a woman 40 years ago.

Positive action is training and doing the correct stuff. Not like the amateur golfer who wants to improve his game so he goes to the driving range every day for a month and practices his hook. He literally practices his hook, and then he wonders why he hooks the ball perfectly at the company golf day! If he had just asked a coach and practiced positively! Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Perfect practice makes perfect.

IT’S THE POSITIVE THINGS THAT WE DO THAT MATTER

Consistent Positive Action OR CPA is my operating system. So when I saw juicing I realized it would be a great example, great positive actions to demonstrate the power of CPA.

I did some research via Professor Google and thought I would give it a crack and post my progress on Facebook for my thousands of followers to watch. Nothing better than walking your talk. My initial goal was to be able to last for five days. A five-day detox. Worst five days of my adult life but when I made it, I thought I’d move it to 10 days. Ten was then extended to 20, 20 to 30 and eventually we settled on 40 days.

OUR RULES FOR JUICING WERE SIMPLE

Drink the rainbow every day. Have a green drink (green vegetables and green apples), an orange drink (carrots, oranges, pineapple etc.) and red drinks (beetroot, carrots and red apples). No brown drinks – so never mix the reds and greens. I just can’t drink anything that is brown, there’s no brown on the rainbow!  Besides, brown seems to be an “out” colour. I think brown things are supposed to leave your body. To maximize our vegetable intake, after 20 days, we concocted a smooth vegetable soup every night.

So why am I writing a newsletter about juicing? A few reasons really. Firstly as I said it’s a great example of CPA. Also because so many people have asked me about juicing but most importantly, it’s about the mind blowing and liberating lessons you get from consistent positive action.

SO WHAT HAPPENED AND WHAT WERE SOME OF THE PHYSICAL BENEFITS THAT HAPPEND TO ME? 

** At this point I must state that I am not advising anyone to juice. This is not an advice column it’s merely what happened to me and what I was able to do. You should take all precautions before doing anything like this or similar endeavors.

The first day is all mental. It’s difficult and a novelty but you can push through it. On the second day you start feeling pretty lousy, your body sends starvation signals to your head and you get a massive headache. Mine lasted for four days. You get cranky, short, and you pray that the Grim Reaper will take you quickly. In fact you welcome him in, as long as he has cheesecake.

Then day five and the clouds begin to disappear (as they said they would) and you start feeling a little better and a little lighter. Each day thereafter you seem to get a little bit better and stronger and you begin to have more energy than you’ve had in years. You begin to smash your personal bests at gym and you can even run a full 10 km’s without stopping. Your mind begins to clear and ideas flood in, you seem to see the world differently. You still crave food and wonder every day why you’re doing this?

You feel lighter, you sleep better, don’t have headaches or a stuffy nose, and your skin feels alive. You start to smile more, walk lighter and your body cries out, “thank you!” Your kidney’s, liver and pancreas have their first holiday in 51 years. I think my kidneys went to Hungary, my liver to the pool and my gut garden went to the Chelsea flower show. No one could say I was full of cr4p anymore.

I lost 12 ½ kg’s in 40 days. I went from a waste of 117 cm to 108cm and clothing that didn’t fit now fitted and clothing that did fit didn’t. I grew closer to my wife and we became each other’s support system. How did I know she didn’t cheat? Well when the kids complained that the food had no salt at dinner time I knew! And the fact that we both had nightmares of us cheating on each other ….. With food!

But these were the bonus results. The actual results were so much more powerful. I discovered how food controls most if not all of our motives, actions and human interactions. I realized how much we actually spend on food in restaurants, takeaways, conference eating and snacking. I saw and felt the difference in consuming only healthy micro-nutrients as opposed to processed corporate food.

FORKING EMOTIONAL EATING
I began to understand, practically, emotional eating. When you are feeling slighted you grab a snack; feeling tired – eat something sweet; sad – reach for the comfort food; feeling unloved – cheesecake; alone – more cheesecake; unfulfilled – two pieces of cheesecake; failure, unappreciated or ignored – poor boy burger; anger – Zinger wings; bitter – chocolate cake; jealous or bored – crisps or chips; isolated – milk tart; conflicted – Surf & Turf; victimized – spaghetti on toast; rejected – food, food and more food.

But when you remove the food you have to face the emotion and the situation. You don’t have the crutch to make you feel better and stop you thinking about your challenges and emotions.

If you are bored you have to do get busy. If you are sad you have to ask why and go do something happy. You have to deal with your anger and if you are feeling lonely you have to reach out to someone. It is flippen amazing but scary. I believe that we suppress our emotions and our food autopilot takes over when we unconsciously feel uncomfortable feelings. Most people don’t stop and identify what they are feeling. Most people don’t even realize they are feeling a negative emotion, all they know is they feel like quick comfort food to lift them up again. It’s not until you swear off your unconscious drug of choice that you notice and recognize how many times a day your mood dips.

LEAD ME INTO TEMPTATION

During my juicing time I was placed into situations of temptation almost every day. I took photos and posted them on Facebook showing the amount of food I was tempted with on just one day at Champagne sports resort.

Many people believe that the best way to deal with temptation is to avoid it. To put yourself into a place where you cannot be tempted. So the student goes to the mountains. The alcoholic goes to Kansas, Mississippi or Tennessee and Charlie Sheen goes to a monastery. However, doing this doesn’t allow you to take back your power. You see, if something has power over you, a power that forces you to act uncontrollably, the only way to truly take back your power is to be surrounded by the temptation. The only true way to be empowered is to empower yourself. When you place an “em” or “en” in front of a word it actually means to create for oneself. Nobody can empower you. They are just lending you some of their power and allowing you to exercise it until they want it back or stop you. So you never really had the power – because true authentic power comes from within.

So when you say “NO” in the face of temptation you take back your power. I believe it’s easy and not very productive to take yourself out of a situation that has power over you, but to immerse yourself in it and then say no. That’s the secret.

You also get to feel proud of yourself for pushing through. You start to trust yourself again and the more you trust yourself the more you like yourself. The more and longer you like yourself, you then start to love yourself. Love yourself for long enough and you’ll learn to accept yourself and eventually you will get a certain amount of self-respect. Self-respect leads to self-worth and believe it or not you building character.

So the smaller clothes, the healthier mind and body, the compliments and the improving of your health are all small bonuses. The real benefit of continuous positive action is not the accolades or the recognition – it is the person you become.

NOW I CHALLENGE YOU TO START 40 DAYS OF SOMETHING:

• 40 days of not swearing
• 40 days of paying at least five compliments the day
• 40 days of not eating something, not smoking or not drinking
• 40 days of spending time with your kids
• 40 days of worship or meditation, if only for an hour a day
• 40 days of appreciation. Imagine 40 days of customer appreciation!
• 40 days of exercise
• 40 days of having $3x with your spouse (Hey some couples do a whole year)
• Maybe it’s 40 days of writing, or studying or visiting. – Whatever you need to do.

Just remember its 40 days, non-stop. If you miss a day you start all over again. It’s the Consistent Positive Action that will put you where you want to be.

Have a CPA month

Gavin Sharples

A few things to know before you start

• Get the best “cold press” juice machine you can afford OR ask around and borrow one until you know you’re up for the challenge.
• Juices and smoothies are completely different things.
• Always have a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables on hand.
• Try to juice mainly veg and use the fruit for the flavouring.
• Use the whole fruit / veg – seeds and skins included. Except for citrus fruit skin.
• Include a chunk of fresh ginger in everything. Start small and gradually increase as it will take a bit of getting used to the taste.
• Have a good supply of bottles and jars to save the juices in.
• Juice a few days’ supply all at once – it makes it easier for a number of reasons
• Not having to clean the machine everyday
• The juices taste better cold
• They are ready when you’re hungry