Read an Excerpt
How to be H.O.T.
Your Guide to Becoming Happy, Open and Trusting In Your Relationships
By Christal Fuentes, Melinda Jae Johnson Page Street Publishing Co.
Copyright © 2016 Christal Fuentes
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62414-277-2
CHAPTER 1
Let's Get Real! What's Your Story?
Story time! This exploration shouldn't be hard because we've got a lot of them, don't we? You know, the stories that keep us creating disempowering beliefs about the world. What are disempowering beliefs? They are beliefs that keep us feeling shitty and stuck. Here's some to get your creative juices flowing:
"There are just no good guys (girls) out there."
"I'm not educated enough for the position I want."
"I'm too young."
"I'm too old."
"My partner will never change his (her) ways."
"This is as good as it gets."
"I'm not pretty enough, smart enough, rich enough."
"There's just not enough time."
"This is the life I was given."
"No man (woman) can keep up with me."
"I'm just too smart for people."
"I'm gonna be single the rest of my life."
"Passion is for the movies."
Take some time to think about what your disempowering beliefs are. I encourage you to think really hard, because the truth is, we all have them. We might not even know the stories we are telling ourselves until we dissect what's keeping us feeling stuck and it requires us to get real!
All of our negative beliefs, large or small, are attached to a story we've made up in our head and confused with fact. Let me give you an example of a small disempowering belief that I had to get over just recently. It had to do with writing this book, as a matter of fact. I'm probably throwing myself under the bus a bit, but that's okay.
If you didn't know, this is my first book. (Celebrate good times!) A big hooray, right?! Well, with that blessing came a lot of procrastination. There were days I planned just for writing but quickly found everything else more important. It got so bad that my man, Andrew, would often (okay, all day, every day) ask me when I was going to write. I would usually pick out one of the following three excuses. Want to hear them? I thought they were pretty good.
"After I work out, so I can get that out of the way and focus." (Five hours later.)
"There are too many people at the house causing too much distraction, so when they leave."
"I'm too tired. I had a really busy day, so I will focus on it tomorrow."
Again, these were only some of the excuses I gave on the daily. However, the real reason I was procrastinating was because I was deathly afraid. After the excitement wore off, I realized that writing a book comes with completely putting myself and my work out there, and that's scary as hell! Why was it scary? Because there was a small voice inside that said, "You're not good enough, Christal. You don't really know enough, Christal. You're not a writer, Christal. Who's going to read your book, Christal?"
I didn't really want to acknowledge these voices were what was stopping me until I sat down and got real about why I was procrastinating, and let me tell you, becoming aware was even scarier! I mean, these voices (beliefs) each had their own megaphone in my head. It was cringing, hurtful, suffocating and frightening. My spirit suffered. My message suffered. My passion suffered. And although these voices (beliefs) were primarily about writing my first book, they were backed by tons of experiences from my past. Not to mention, these voices came with energy. Energy that completely sucked the inspiration right out of me. Energy that filtered every aspect of my life, causing me to feel uncertain of who I was in general.
Remember how I said this was just a small belief I had recently? It doesn't sound that small now, given the huge impact it had on my spirit. But the truth is, so many of us are walking around with not one, not two, but hundreds of disempowering beliefs that are leaving our spirits feeling unworthy of the things we want most.
How in the hell are we supposed to feel happy when we are walking around with beliefs and stories that restrict who we are? Oh yes, let's talk about our stories! Now that I told you about my beliefs that came in the form of a troll's voice, and I'm not talking about the cute trolls with gem belly buttons that we used to play with when we were younger — I'm talking about gremlin trolls! These trolls also happen to create untrue, or fabricated, stories and disguise them as fact. You know how they do this? They will take a story from your past, twist the feelings that arise from it into a disempowering belief and then hope the resulting "belief" sticks until you actually think the voices are true!
Trolls love to manipulate stories to make what they have to say true. If I didn't go back and acknowledge these voices by getting real with what was going on, I wouldn't have been able to understand what was causing me to cave into fear. Are you starting to see how this works?
Now, I don't want you to feel overwhelmed, but I do encourage you to think of your most recent disempowering belief and acknowledge how it has made you feel. Then ask yourself, Is this really true? Or is it coming from a troll?
In order for us to become HOT in our relationships we have to stop the bullshit beliefs we have regarding them. Getting real requires you to take a step or two (or for some of us, a few more) inward to see what standards we've allowed in our life versus what we ultimately want. What we will find is there might be a contradiction between our "wants" and our "truths."
Let me repeat that again. There's usually a contradiction between our "wants" and our "truths."
The problem is less about knowing what we actually want. We usually know what we want and if we say we don't it's because we often feel embarrassed actually saying what we want. The problem is that how we are currently living is not congruent with what we ultimately want.
Raise your hand if you know someone (maybe you) who finds herself in and out of a toxic relationship and very often says, "I just want a man who treats me [this] way ... Does [this] for me ... Makes me feel like [this]" (insert your preferences as needed). We usually don't have a problem expressing what we want, but why is it so hard to get what we want?
It's because our wants don't align with our truths. Our truth is how we exist now. And how we exist now is an accumulation of the beliefs and stories we have about ourselves, our lives and our relationships. These can cause us to believe our "wants" are a part of an impossible fairy-tale dream that doesn't really happen to people "like us."
The relationships we have around us are a reflection of the love, or lack of love, that is flowing within. That is the truth. Getting real about what's happening means we tap into our core and get to the truth of the reasons why there's a contradiction between what we want and what's actually happening. This will help us realize why we aren't getting what we want and instead have created a belief or story (true or false) about the reason for it.
It's definitely easier to tell a story instead of taking responsibility, right? I mean, I definitely thought so. I know personally it would have been easier for me to blame what I went through in my life for the reasons I wasn't achieving the things I wanted most.
What did I want?
Well ... everything, duh! I wanted to be happy, successful and in love. You know, the norm, but in some way shape or form, we all want to achieve the same feelings. Yes, happiness is a feeling. A feeling we can achieve every day. Success is a feeling, a feeling we can achieve every day. And love? Well, love is the ultimate goddess of feelings but another feeling we can feel every day. For one, love is who we are and why we are here. That I know for sure.
The difference between us is in how we achieve these feelings. How you feel happiness is completely different from how I feel happiness, and how success feels to you is different from how I feel success. How you feel love is different from how I feel love. Regardless of the differences in how we experience our emotions, why should we go a single day without feeling them? We shouldn't, but here's why getting real matters.
Although we might ultimately want to feel love, our meaning of love might be tainted by what we have experienced in our past, and that's incredibly important to understand. Why? Because if you are coming out of a toxic relationship hoping to focus on "loving yourself" (as beautiful as that sounds), then you will have a really hard time for one of two reasons:
1. You have a tainted perception of what love really is.
2. You believe love is outside of yourself and that in order to "focus" on it you have to "fix" yourself.
If we continue to believe that we have to fix ourselves, like we are a bird with a broken wing, then we will never really understand the power we have inside that is fueled by love. That love is already in us and all around us.
Now let's talk about why all this matters in our relationships.
Remember I said, "The relationship we have with ourselves sets the foundation for the relationships we will have with others"?
That means we are the powerhouse of everything that surrounds us. Once we begin to take responsibility for that, we are able to start allowing room for happiness to fill our lives.
Getting real puts us in our truth. It turns us into the scientist of our life, allowing us to see what's working and what's not working based on what is true right now.
Why is becoming a scientist important? Because scientists are constantly testing. They don't get attached to one specific way of achieving a theory. When one hypothesis doesn't work, they test a new one. When that fails, they test a new one, and a new one and so on and so forth. They don't create a permanent belief (theory/law in the science world) because something failed. On the contrary: failure is part of their job, and it certainly doesn't stop them from trying again.
So how does all this relate? For the sake of this science talk, I want you to imagine our beliefs about our life as laws. How many times have we formed a law in our life without testing a different hypothesis?
Let's take some examples and maybe you can find yourself in one of them. (By the way, these are made-up names and not actual stories.)
Suzie has been in and out of countless bad relationships that has led her to believe all guys are the same. (Law created.)
Nicole was told by her mother that she was a nuisance and a disappointment, which keeps Nicole walking on eggshells with people and believing she is not worthy of love. (Law created.)
Sarah was physically abused by her father growing up and although she doesn't necessarily think abuse is right, she still believes love comes with great pain, which keeps her in a verbally and emotionally abusive relationship. (Law created.)
Heather was told at a very young age to never depend on a man for happiness, and now she believes that having a relationship will only slow her down. (Law created.)
Deborah has been overweight her whole life and now believes she will never be able to lose the weight she desires. (Law created.)
Ashley grew up without money or material goods and realized how unhappy and stressed her parents were. Since then, Ashley has created a belief that money and material goods make people happier, which has led to her working so hard for all that she has but is still leaving her unhappy. So now she works even harder for more money and more things. (Law created.)
Not one of these beliefs these women created stemmed from an untrue story. The story of how these beliefs got created was very true for each of them. But the conclusions, beliefs and laws the women created from these stories are not true and are what could be causing them to feel stuck in certain (important) areas of life.
We have to get to the bottom of what our beliefs are because they can do a lot of damage without our even knowing they are there. This can cause us to be rigid, inflexible and unable to adapt, and in order for true happiness to fill our lives, we have to detach ourselves from anything that is keeping us restricted or is incongruent to our being.
How do we do that? You gotta get real, girl!
As self-help guru Tony Robbins says, "Divorce the story and marry the truth." That's where we need to start first. Ask yourself:
1. What is your story?
2. What law or belief came with that story?
3. What has this law or belief cost you?
Next, become a scientist. Ask yourself:
1. How could you test the story that has caused you to create the theory or law about how life works?
2. What are you willing to try differently?
3. How do you want to feel every day?
4. Are you willing to detach yourself from the stories that aren't serving you so you can live a life that is congruent with your truth?
5. What new story do you need to tell yourself so that you can feel HOT in every aspect of your life?
Once you have answered these questions honestly, you have taken the first step to becoming happy, open and trusting.
CHAPTER 2
Learning to Value Your Values
An appalling truth I've realized is that we often devalue ourselves into the arms of the wrong relationship. The wrong job. The wrong friends. The wrong beliefs. The wrong situations. Catch my drift? And more often than not, we don't even know why. But let me share something I was told by a wise and very dear friend years ago. He said, "You are the bus driver of your life: Who gets on the bus, what gets on the bus and why they get on the bus are completely under your control."
I remember taking that message to heart because it meant I had to take responsibility for all the pain I was feeling. That everything — good and bad (mostly bad at that time) — was all caused by me. I don't know about you, but that was a painful realization for me. I mean, who wants to take that kind of responsibility?
So that means the bad relationships, the people I thought were using me, not being able to save my money, working overtime because I couldn't say "no," the not-so-good friends, the unfortunate situations I got myself into that (I thought) were outside of my control were all me?
I really tried to dodge that truth, but it hit me square in the nose, and hard! So hard, in fact, that I also cried hard. It wasn't the cute cry, either. I'm talking the snot out my nose, mascara running down my cheeks, hyperventilating type of cry. You would have thought my friend actually hit me with a ton of bricks because that's how it felt.
I have always said that words have power, and in this case, I was very thankful, because his words really struck a chord in me. Why? Because it left me confused.
Did you know that confusion really is the best place to be? It allows our mind to be open. There is no "absolute" in confusion. There's actually a beautiful sense of authenticity that lives in confusion because it opens up the possibilities of what could come. "Confusion" allowed me to stop and question. Question the people I allowed in my life. Question the behaviors I allowed of myself. Question the things I often complained about but did nothing to improve. Question my comfort with comfort. And questioned my inability to see what was actually going well for me.
The truth was, I was so consumed in what wasn't working in my life that it was hard for me to see what the reality was. The reality that said, "I am the cause of everything good and everything bad in my life," and the bad was caused by not "valuing" my values. More on that in a minute.
I remember I would take what sounded good over what actually felt good because I was just so scared that what felt good to me wouldn't be approved by others. I greatly feared rejection. Rejection meant that I wasn't good enough, and if I wasn't good enough, then I pretty much failed life. I would rather be seen for what others wanted to see than be seen for who I really was. I would think, "What if they don't like what they see? What if they don't see my worth? What if they don't value who I am? What if I'm just not enough?"
I was a professional people pleaser, and pleasing others made it easier for me not to focus on what was really important, like my own needs and what I valued most. It also kept me as far away from rejection as possible because as long as I wasn't being me, then how rejected could I actually feel?
As much as I felt like I was protecting myself, I also felt completely exhausted because I wasn't valuing who I was at all, and in the end, I was attracting people who didn't value me either. The standards we uphold in our life are a reflection of how much we value our values. If we aren't valuing the things most important to us, then our standards for how others show up in our lives aren't going to be very high. When you don't value yourself, the wrong people will come along and believe they don't have to value you either.
I was attracting things that didn't feel good because I wasn't being congruent with my truth. (That's a fancy way of saying that I wasn't being real.) When we aren't "real," how can we possibly be happy? We can't! Being real means we uphold what we value most in life, but that can be hard if we don't know what we value.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from How to be H.O.T. by Christal Fuentes, Melinda Jae Johnson. Copyright © 2016 Christal Fuentes. Excerpted by permission of Page Street Publishing Co..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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