I used to be a connoisseur of fine exercise equipment, and like fine wine, I kept it all stored in a cool, dark basement out of sight. Just like wine, none of it was completely out of mind. Yea, I knew it was there. I knew it would be good, maybe even enjoyable if I used it, but I didn’t imbibe except on rare occasions. Eventually, I sold it all off like the rare collection it was. I always felt guilty, as if I sold something of great sentimental value.

True to my collector’s nature, I acquired one more piece after years of subduing the urge. It was a subtle piece. A treadmill without bells and whistles, powered only by my moving feet. It would fold-away, sort of, but it still had a rather large footprint. As out-of-place as it was in the living room, I refused to store it away in the dark coldness of the basement. I chose, instead, to keep it in full view… shaming me into making it and my body move. At this point, I was about 60lbs overweight. That fact alone had not supplied sufficient shame, ironically.

I, like most women, had secretly waited for years for “skinny in a bottle” to finally be birthed. It never happened. The only other piece of heath equipment I bought afterwards was a small bracelet to further my shame. It vibrated in protest when I set sedentary for far too long. I sporadically listened to both the treadmill and the bracelet. More often, I showed them who was truly boss in our relationship.

The treadmill was the producer of much pain in my life. The pain didn’t come in the form of sweat or exhaustion. It came in the form of stubbed toes and actual blood-letting crashes. The thing literally jumped out in front of me every time I came within two feet of it. It was calling to me, and I’m sure it wasn’t asking me to reply with the flurry of profanity that often accompanies an unexpected boo-boo. I’ve personally never been much of a potty mouth. Profane words never fit my mouth quite right, so I didn’t use them. I did think them loudly on occasion, which is all the same as saying them when you get right down to it.

I knew that something had to be done about the menacing treadmill. I had choices. I could sell it to spite it. I could burn it in effigy on a funeral pier. I could relegate it to detention in the basement. I could listen to the messages it and my jewelry were sending me. I could use all that I’ve learned in the last 40 years to rise above it. Something to do with two birds won out in the end.

I began a practice of walking meditation with my treadmill. I learned some profound things along the journey to nowhere or “now here” in my meditative state. First (and perhaps, most profoundly), Fitbits don’t record movement if you hold on. You have to move with abandon, without training wheels, without safely gripping the bars. Secondly, you have to walk blindly if you are to hear the messages within your core. Thirdly, you have to make friends with anything that has caused you pain if you have any aspirations of rising above it. To me, that meant no hands, no eyes and no judgement. Focus, Forgiveness and Faith could be my only companions along the journey. I couldn’t have asked for better ones. It’s a path I keep to daily, one step at a time.

I began to realize that life gives us a little jolt (a vibrational wake-up call) when there’s something we should be noticing. Just like a Fitbit, it’s meant to wake us from our sedentary coma. There’s something we’ve been missing. We’re called to notice the profound beauty that surrounds us. And, just like a stubbed toe inflicted by a treadmill, sometimes the message comes wrapped in pain. If we ignore it, rest assured that more pain lies in our future. If we focus only on the pain and not the message, profanity is likely to be the only by-product. If we let go of the anger, the profane, the sadness, the guilt, the judgement…only the beauty of the message remains. That beauty is wrapped in pure potential, infinite possibilities for where we go from here. How utterly amazing is that!

Nothing in our alleged past grants us the possibilities that exist in the here-and-now. If anything, the past has been inflated into something that never really existed, except in the crevices (dark, cold basements) of our minds. Scripts that others have written get jumbled up and hard-wired in our neurons. Sometimes, we are the authors of our fantastic fiction. No matter the collaborators, it is usually a tragedy of Shakespearian proportion. We are not meant to re-live Groundhog Day. Much like our tragic stories, it was only a movie. We can flip (or retune) the channel to a different wavelength.

The F-ing System™ I created helped me break free from my personal constant, tragic loop. You can find a full discussion of the system in my new book “I’m Invincible, Moving from Victim to Victor by Invoking Your Super Powers.” It’s also available on the website, www.thef-ingsystem.com. You can find both of these and many more tools on my main web www.myartLogic.com. I’ll go over it here, as well, but be sure to follow up our discussion with these tools I’ve made available to you for your personal, ongoing use.

The F-ing System™ is really simple to understand, but don’t let that fool you. Occam’s razor, or the Law of Parsimony provides a perfect backdrop for this discussion. It is a problem solving tool that simply states “among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.” That perfectly describes the F-ing System™. And, with a name like the F-ing System™, it is not easily forgotten!

Here are the rules for this brilliant system:

There are 4-F situations in life that require a 2-F response. Every other situation requires a 3-F response.

Thus concludes the rules!

Now, let’s discuss the F’s:

The 4-F situations are straight-forward. They are Fire, Flood, Famine and Ferocious Beast. When you are confronted with any one of these, then a primitive 2-F response (the Flight or Fight response) is appropriate. This, sadly, is the response that our subconscious mind tries to serve up constantly, even when a 3-F response is far more appropriate. The 3-F responses are Focus, Forgiveness and Faith. I’ve found it’s best to keep them in that exact order.

Now, to walk you through the system, let’s look back at my treadmill experience. My treadmill, although sometimes menacing, did not present me with a 4-F situation. While it inflicted stubbed toes and sometimes gashed feet, no Fire, Flood, Famine or even Ferocious Beast lived within. Therefore, my appropriate response should have been (from the beginning) to Focus on the message, to Forgive anything myself or others have done that seemed to inflict painful past memories (buried within the message) and to have Faith that brighter days lie beyond the boo-boos (once I set free the debilitating past). Instead, I chose the inappropriate Fight and Flight responses. Because I did, boo-boos continued until I chose the simplified 3-F responses.

For those of you who are saying (or thinking…same thing…) that it’s only a treadmill and not like problems in your life, I humbly suggest you think again. This system works on every problem, big or small, and the treadmill was a metaphor for some really big demons residing in my psyche. Among them were procrastination, lack of commitment, fear of change, failure to take responsibility for my life. Problems (big or small) grow when we bury them in the basement. They become the stuff of our nightmares at first, then occupy far too much of our waking thoughts, whether we admit it or not. When they do, they grow to epic proportions. Here are some examples:

Your Dad told you that he loved your crooked little nose. You became self-conscious of what you thought was a physically grotesque bump of a breathing apparatus on your face. You hid your face from the world.

Your Mom fed you junk food because she lacked time enough to prepare healthy meals. You grew up blaming her for your out-of-control weight issues (as if she didn’t carry enough guilt already), even though you’ve been able to make your own choices about the food you eat for decades. You hid yourself from the world in mounds of fat and flesh. You now feed your children the same kind of “comfort foods”.

You were too self-conscious to go for that big promotion at work. Although your work is better, the promotion was given to a less-than-stellar co-worker. You silently stewed for years, blaming everyone but yourself for your misery.

All of these are examples of stubbed toes that have festered, steps on treadmills untaken.

Give yourself a gift this holiday season, clean out your basement. Buy my book, I’m Invincible, for yourself and others on your gift list. It is a gift that truly will keep on giving through the years. Change your life. Change your mind. Change your focus. Change your fortune! Become Invincible!