Book Review: Becoming Princess Charming

A few weeks ago I was contacted about potentially reviewing a book that seemed to about empowering women to achieve their goals through self-reflection.  Of course I said yes because I love reading and any book that actually helps one reach their goals is a win.  Not to mention I've been struggling with being stuck in a few areas of my own life and this book's description was all about getting unstuck in a few major areas.  Just to make sure I don't misquote it here's the synopsis that was provided in the initial email:

Do you ever feel “stuck” or like you’re going through life as some kind of pseudo version of yourself? Are you ready to realize your greater potential - and live like a princess in your very own fairy tale? 

In this engaging, easy-to-read book, intuitive healer and spiritual mentor, Morgan McKean, takes you through a journey of self-discovery, so that you can create your life the way you want it to be. Each chapter represents a personal strategy session that can be used alone, or in conjunction with the other chapters, as a way to expand your mind, while setting the mental and emotional foundation for creating your happily ever after. 

Covering topics like Fun, Food, Fitness, Men, Money, and Meaning, Morgan shares her spiritual insights and real world techniques for making you the princess of your very own fairytale, called LIFE.

Because there's a little part in each of us that wants to Become Princess Charming, Morgan is offering you this unique opportunity to create your very own fairytale. 

The book was written by Morgan McKean (click here for more details) and even though it's around 300 pages it's a relatively quick read, I covered it during an insomnia fit one night, that provides you with a variety of things in each chapter.  It focuses on women she's already worked with by giving you examples of how some of us arrive in our stuck state with each of the categories, explores how to make our view of the world more productive for us as well as encourages exploration of what it would take to get there for you.  A lot of the book's focus is really about changing how we see the world and our potential in it.  Yes the good old power of positive thinking.  That's easier to achieve when we are feeling great about the world but this gets into trying to do it when things aren't working as well as we would like and how to move beyond that.

Some sections worked better for me than others, namely food, fun and money.  I have an awkward relationship with food sometimes.  I rarely eat to excess but when I do it's normally because I'm stressed or disappointed and that just starts a nasty cycle until I break through it.  And I have known for quite sometime that I have blocked my own avenues to have fun because of fear about the expense of the things that I really like to do.  Even though a flight to Vegas to catch a Prince show wouldn't have broken the bank.  The timing of it, near Christmas, in my brain meant I would be short changing relatives for gifts and the timing of our checks being off said no nice lady you have responsibilities.  And I do but all that's meant is me being frustrated because the people I'm responsible for don't seem to cut back on what they see as fun to help me out if that makes sense.  Which leads to me being resentful and continuing the stuckness.  My money and fun are linked together too but the other aspect of that is investing in myself to potentially make more income so the fun things aren't distant ideas and can come to fruition easier.

All of that is not to say the fitness, men and meaning sections are not relevant they just weren't as applicable to where I am stuck at the moment.  I enjoyed the exercises at the end of each chapter but my therapist brain, since that's what I do for a living till I start my new job ha, wanted a bit more of them--possibly a section to revisit after you made the changes to compare how you thought it would look and what it actually manifested itself as in your life.  I like exercises as they get your mind in the thought process it needs to approach in order to see if something can actually be different.

Many of you know I'm in the process of house hunting long distance and have been frustrated repeatedly by people not getting back to me and getting moved before the job officially starts so I can at least be unpacked.  It was driving me nuts and ratcheting up my contacts wasn't doing much to make a dent in getting help.  Well this will seem unrelated but as part of the moving I've been storing the DVDs in a large storage case so we weren't packing all of these cases that at this stage no one really needs and take up a ton more room than a case that can hold 320 dvds.  After hunting online I found out that Best Buy had one on sale and appeared to still have some in stock at a local store.  I ran out to get it among other things for the nice lady that lives with me and drives me slightly crazy, known as mom, and was quite frustrated when no one in the store could find it and figured it would just add to the craptastic luck I've had with realtors as I had called one that morning and hadn't heard a thing at by noon when I left for the store.  I was almost out of the store when I said let's just try to make this trip not wasted if possible.  The Geek Squad guy was able to order it for me and get it shipped to my house for free.  He rang it up and to my amazement the total price was less than what I had seen online when I left home.  Well that's because the store had marked it down 5 bucks less than the online price and that's what I paid.  I figured if nothing else that was a win for the day and I was going to believe that my luck would change with the housing front soon.  When I got back home after errands, a house I saw last week was marked down 15K so I said screw it and put in a contact request with the realtor.  I hadn't heard from her by the close of business but they were an hour ahead of me so a morning call would be fine.  Nope she called mid pizza preparation and asked me what I was looking for, what I would be willing to pay, deadlines and preferences and unlike her counterparts didn't seem freaked out by me being out of state and trying to relocate.  She told me she'd be in touch soon and I hung up feeling fantastic.  I ate my pizza, got cranky with the Voice results and went to bed on time for the first time in a long time because I wasn't as stressed about this house hunting thing and started to put more positive energy out there that all would come to fruition.  Turns out after I went to bed she sent me like 20 houses that mostly hit on all of our discussion that I showed to mom the next day and we agreed on about 5 to look further into.

I'm not saying that the results would have been different if my brain hadn't switched over to this can and will happen because I want and need it do.  The fact that they were different and that I quit thinking this person isn't going to call me back could totally be a coincidence but as a lifelong pessimist to my exes, realist to me lol, it felt better to not be in a negative head space about my goals.  That's a really dumbed down synopsis of what I felt the book was about but really the book makes an overall good point.  How can you be your own princess if you don't believe in your fairy tale?  If you discount, dissuade, dismiss all of the things you want in your life best believe they probably won't happen for no other reason than your energy won't allow them to do so.  

If you are intrigued go ahead and head over to Morgan's SITE and you can purchase the book, sign up for other services and learn how to host a Princess Party for us big girls if you are so inclined.  For you new era princess in training you'll be thrilled to see the book in kindle format.  For an older era princess to be like myself I did miss flipping through physical pages but I totally recognize I'm a bit of throwback in that regard.  I do still love a good bookstore and library--ahh book smell lol.  Final thoughts, if you are stuck in area and don't know why or how to get unstuck I think this can be a great tool to help you along provided you are willing to learn how to refocus your thinking to make the changes you want in your life.  I think it would be great in a therapy setting if I just remembered to print off the pages in time which yeah can be a problem sometimes ha.  Okay enough of my babbling, I'll be back later with another post.

Selected questions from the Q&A with Morgan:

Question :: What inspired you to write Becoming Princess Charming?

McKean :: Well, after a couple of false starts in my twenties, and a lot of resistance to writing anything longer than a blog post or magazine article in my early thirties, last Summer, as I was contemplating how I could best share my spiritual ideas for fabulous living, as I believe that when we understand how magnificent we really are, we can create our life the way we want it to be, I received over eight requests, and two demands, from clients and friends, in less than a two week period, to write a book.

Then, as I finally sat down to write, and the book was essentially pouring out of me, I began to see that I was finally at a place in my own life, where I could allow myself to be the catalyst or messenger to deliver these ideas.  And, when the book was completed in less than fourteen weeks, having very little to do with me personally, I really got the message, it was time.

Question :: What can people expect from this six-session guidebook?

McKean :: I believe that living the life of “Princess Charming,” is first about learning to love and accept yourself, and then, being able to create your fairy tale, or life, the way you want it to be.  Accordingly, I’ve broken this guidebook down into six sessions, including; fun, food, and fitness, and men, money, and meaning, so that you can see who you are being in each of these areas of your life.

In each “session” with me, you’ll go on a trip of self-discovery as you learn more about your fear-based ideas and thinking, and develop the ability to identify old programing and limited beliefs that are currently holding you back from living your life the way you want to be.  Additionally, through out each chapter, and at the end of the session, you will have access to real-world exercises and new ideas that will help you shift your perspective, or expand your awareness so that you can create your happily ever after.

My dedication to embarking on this journey of self-discovery and spirituality, as well as doing the work daily, has transformed every area of my life for the better.  I’ve learned to have more compassion, love, understanding, and appreciation for who I am, what I’m capable of, and how what I really believe about myself and the world around me influences how I experience our physical reality.

Life's a Blur and then you collapse

I have been all kind of sluggish and busy the last few weeks so I should update you on what has been going on.  Short of washing my hair I had nothing major on my proverbial agenda.  Just watching the money to make sure the old lady and I don't get kicked out prematurely.  Don't worry we won't but I'm the one that worries about these things because my mother does not.  After a talk with my brother yesterday I realized that we both do and again I think it's because my mother didn't.  Neither one of us shop for sport.  We try to save where we can, we rarely indulge and we're pretty practical. Not bad things to get from a parent I get but we got them because of her not from her which seems different.  And another common refrain from our childhood resurfaced in that while my mother provided the financial support the person who raised my brother was me.  He's right unfortunately.  I helped with the homework, got him to school, signed off on assignments because mom wouldn't or didn't, and when I was leaving for college understanding he was a bit of a dumbass with dumbass friends made sure he went to live with my father who was thrilled to have him and there was much less opportunity for dumbassery.  It all worked out for the best for everyone but mom who 20 years post is still a bit bitter about that whole thing.  As they say though your reality is largely based on your memory and hers is sketchy about these things.

Okay that went totally off tangent, I didn't have much to do.  I'm still hunting for a house for the move but I did secure movers at a decent rate and we're moving full steam ahead towards a garage sale/purging of old baggage.  It's odd tossing things away, what to keep, what isn't important, what did you bother to get that for in the first place.  I have clothes to donate, books and cookbooks to sale and magazines to recycle or toss.  I'm not done with one closet so more will be leaving my sphere but it feels good to unburden some of these things from my life.  In that vein I was reading a book one of my sorority sisters recommended called 7 an experimental mutiny against excess by Jen Hatmaker.  Especially at this moment it seem apropos to read but turns out I don't really do excess as it is.  I keep clothes until they kinda come unraveled, I have maybe 15 pairs of shoes but I routinely only wear a few pair, and books are my real only major indulgence.  Nonetheless I'm still clearing out even if the book didn't inspire me to do so.  Mom can take a few pieces, the rest will go to shelters or donation centers.  Heck I'm even getting rid of old movies I know we don't watch or need.  It feels good to really downsize for some reason.  In the next two months I'll work on shedding as much as I can.  Maybe I can move into new digs even more in a sense of who I am and what I want.

Working Out is Hard to Do....... & So Are Two Strand Twists

You should definitely sing the title of this post to the tune of Breaking Up Is Hard to Do.  And after you're done you can keep reading.  I get to officially update the workout count today and I need to get back to the daily workout.  I always feel better afterwards as I mentioned and this other thing happens lately that I completely forgot about in the stress and hubbub of deciding on which job to take and what to do if a shinier opportunity presented itself.  Even though every fiber in my being kept me lazy and my sleep cycle is still out of whack (clearly which is why this post is going up at 5:30 in the morning) I ran a few errands and got my official offer letter from my new job today.  I ran to the library and got a few books as well as returning the final two books of the Hunger Games series.  The books were great even though the third was uneven and felt slow to me in comparison to the first two but I'll save that for another post.  Part of my library run was to grab a book of stories that I was hoping were like the ones my father told my younger brother and I when we were little.  They fascinated us and we could only remember snippets of them when we tried to compare notes.  After asking one more time if anyone knew anything about the bits and pieces I could recall I got lucky.  Turns out they really were African folk tales and there are a LOT of them.  The main character is Anansi the Spider who is periodically an insect, man, or anything else as the story dictates and depending on which author's interpretation you end up with.  There are also stories with Ananse which seems like it would be a subtle difference but that's the volume I got from the library and how Anansi got stories to the world is totally different so I went with the version closest to the one I remembered and sent some to my nieces and got a few for me too.  They are kind of like Aesop's fables but with more settings in Africa and told from a slightly different tack.  LOVED them and I hope my nieces will too.  Anansi and the Box of Stories is the one I heard all the time in case you're interested.  You can find a few of the stories online too if you have small people you want to impress as you commit the somewhat short moral tales to memory and whip them out like you are the best thing ever.

I also ran to the grocery store and got some lemons for a recipe I saw on facebook that looks super simple and should go well with some pasta or something maybe a nice salad.  Not sure on that but as my two weeks of lazy only netted one pound weight gain I'm going to try to keep it light up and up the working out again to see if I can turn my mostly better eating habits and combination of working out to weight loss.   I have to say though I need some different work out socks or supportive thin shoes.  I got blisters on the balls of both of my feet from the working out.  They just starting peeling and right now they feel like they are kind of on fire which isn't particularly helpful.  Beyond that I feel great.  I figured out that I can do more of my own random stepping around the board and it still count.  Actually when I did the side to side steps and front to back instead of just up and down I moved faster.  It ended up meaning a little more than 100 steps greater than my normal twenty minute frame and was 2152 today.  A little more than 100 steps a minute so I'm happy with that too.  And the rhythm boxing which somewhat frustrates me also starts and immediate burn and toning around my waist.  Even if I don't do the step everyday I may need to figure out a way to keep that up.

I did twist my hair yesterday after I washed it.  I think my hair wants more twists than the four I tried to do and doesn't really like the flexi rod for the ends.  I may pin curl them next time because I keep ending up with semi wavy hair with really flipped ends.  The twists that were so well defined before were with assistance.  I need to work on nailing that on my own for when I have spur of the moment wash sessions.  My hair feels good and there wasn't much in the way of hair loss in the shower or during the detangle.  Just need to make sure I moisturize and seal it later on and then pin up my ends.

Have a good one everyone!

Forgive my tardiness...

This week has been a total and complete whirlwind.  I just got my first workout in tonight as a result and yes I realize I didn't do my weigh in on Saturday but I promise it was just because I was totally preoccupied with getting ready for my trip.  I will do it on Saturday just to keep the day consistent but I'm not sure if there will be any weight loss netted despite having upped my workout count significantly this month.  I'm going to rework how those stats look too because I want to see as much encouragement in that section as possible.  Okay so let's get on with the updates.

• Trip was a MESS.  Travel time wasn't massively an issue.  Lots of layover time and then rushed to get us out of Atlanta otherwise we wouldn't be able to land in my final destination.  You know that great snowstorm that battered half the country?  Yeah flew straight into that.  And my drive to the hotel that should have at most taken an hour took a bit over two.  I got to my hotel at midnight, took forever to fall asleep, and then got up three hours later to get ready for my interview.  Yeah no interview because of the bad weather.  My original day of departure turned into interview day and then back to the airport to get home again after midnight because of computer glitches.  That killed the Sunday through Tuesday workout days and yesterday I had class so no workout then either.  Not good excuses just reality.  But the hotel did have the ID channel so it was a tiny win.
• Because of all the travel delays I actually read an entire book.  I completely scoured The Hunger Games and was a little sad at the last lines.  I wasn't clamoring to read the next one but it left me sated and didn't piss me off the way I was with the first Twilight book that I STILL have not finished. It had good pacing and enough character development that I cared about the main characters even when they weren't in the pages that much.  And oh poor Rue, just not fair and especially not what ends up happening to all the fallen tributes.  Regardless it was a good book and I'll eventually get around to the others.
• As best I can tell and this is being as honest as I can be, I totally checked out during that interview.  I answered everything they asked, had fun during my presentation and shot the breeze with the non staff folks BUT I wasn't there.  I was desperately hoping nothing got delayed so I could get home and get some sleep.  Everyone was nice and the area is nice as best I could tell but really I wasn't fully invested like I have been which is why one of the next updates will shock you cause it sure as heck shocked me.
• Class went well again and only one more week till it's all over.
• During class my phone rang which is atypical because I'm just not that popular.  If it's not family then I usually ignore it and since I wasn't going to be free until 10 I ignored it.  Turns out it was my last interview calling to make an offer.  Yeah the one I was checked out on.  No real details now and I really need to pray on if I want it or if I want to keep waiting for something that is my ideal position even though those may not come through.  And let me be clear there's nothing wrong with this position short of it's the opposite direction from my family.  Still haven't heard from the previous interview even though my mentor seems convinced I should be hearing from then soon.  That position would be closer to family sort of but after seeing a picture of my nieces today I really want to be somewhere I can hug them all the time.  Neither site allows for that right now.  Decisions decisions.
• I finally counted up my workouts since I knew I had been doing better this month.  Of the ten workouts I've done since January 1, 6 have been this month.  I want to try to get in at least 10 for next month and if possible 15--every other day or so since there are 30 days next month.  More than that would be ideal but gotta work with what I can.
• My hair is on some BS right now.  The prepoo with heat was great.  The combined deep conditioned with heat not so much.  My Hydration Elation did not love the Mixed Chicks being added to things.  Granted I went in and out of snow and chilly weather so that could have impacted things a bit but it will be nice to wash it and see how things go.
• Mom's birthday is tomorrow so after she finishes squealing I'm sure it will be off to Red Lobster or something else.
• Oh and the Miami Heat lost so the streak is over and that is the best news ever, after the job offer of course.

How's things with you all my fair blog readers?