I will share with you that one of my dominant, illogi- cal, and negative belief systems is that if I get too successful or “big” in my life I will end up with no friends. I am not sure where this belief comes from, although I do have some ideas. The point is, it doesn’t matter where the belief comes from, it only matters where it is taking me. What this belief was manifesting in my life was a desire to not do things that would cause me too much success. I would play down my success and my goals and my dreams to my friends because on some level, I believed that they wouldn’t want to hang around. In working with my coach/trainer, Martha Beck, I learned to turn this belief around to, “I must become big and be who I really am in order to see who my true friends are.” My mantra is “Go big” in everything I try to do. This book was going to be a small e-book just for my clients, but now I am publishing it. To me, that feels very big and, yes, on some level I feel as if I might lose some friends. I just have to go after it to prove it wrong. Because the truth is, if someone is not happy for me because I’m following my dreams, that is not someone I want in my life. What I have learned is that when we start truly loving and believing in ourselves, we don’t hunt down these 177 • If IAm So Smart, Why Can’t I Lose Weight?