American Fitness Professionals & Associates

Teri R Gentes – Wellness Educator and Practitioner

“Life is as beautiful as your thoughts let it be.”

It’s everywhere- beauty and grace and goodness and love.  Your attitude totally affects your experience of life; it is all about how you take it.  When we look for the good in any given situation we will find it and it is in every situation no matter what.  I know from my own personal experiences, trials and tribulations.

By all means, we do need to accept reality whatever it may be; yet more important is for each of us to realize how our attitude totally affects that reality (our experience of it) in profound ways.  We learn our responses to given situations and circumstances and they vary from one culture to another. 
What is acceptable in one culture may be unconceivable in another. What brings delight to one soul may wreak havoc for another.

With a humorous look at a perception of my own as an example (for we are all ever evolving students as well as teachers) let me share with you my dramatic take, my reaction on winter.

For so long I repeatedly made claim of just how much I disliked winter, I hated it in fact.  The cold, and the needed extra clothing, the biting frost, the frigid winds, the dampness… whatever additional metaphoric dramas you can imagine.  I constantly vowed I would get away from it as soon as possible.

No matter how much I whined and complained it did little, nothing actually, to change my present every day experience of the season for the better.  Like a recovering addict’s need to continually exercise effort and restraint and discipline, in my own personal quest for consciousness I took a good long look at my attitude and self talk of what is an absolute given for me – winter will come and go no matter what opinion I have about it. 

Fully aware that my attitude was not improving a negative experience, nor aiding and abetting my desire to be peaceful, I realized it was in my own personal power to change my experience by changing this attitude.  My current reality is, I presently live in Quebec and winter usually arrives for four or five months and my denial or disgust with it does not prevent it from arriving and settling in for whatever duration Mother Nature determines.  So, what could I do? What did I do?

Well I decided to accept this reality and better prepare myself for it.  I went out and purchased warmer clothes (and those that do not have me feeling the size of the Michelin Tire man), a reliable little Suzuki 4 x 4, with a block heater, great winter tires, booster cables, a shovel, a blanket, candles and food, CAA and fabulous flannel jammies.

I began to take good long looks around me and focused my attention on the pristine beauty of the winter season. 
The fluffy blankets of snow dressing the evergreens in glorious coats of virgin white, the sparkling icicles dangling on the branches of the tree, the glistening and brilliant sparkle of the river bed shimmering in the sunshine with a surreal mist as I cross the Quebec, Ontario bridges. The perfect cozy turtlenecks and cuddling with loved ones in front of a blazing fire sipping my favorite steaming hot beverage with the occasional indulgence of added brandy and being wrapped up in a big duvet with flannel sheets around me.

 I look for and find the many positive aspects of this given reality. It has changed my experience of winter entirely.  Sure the cold on those frigid days still gets to me and indoors is preferred to outdoors (so I plan to be in more).  I know the winter days do pass and the changing of seasons is so perfectly beautiful, both in the arrivals and departures.  It is renewal; it is our life and death reality, another of Mother Nature’s perfect metaphors to teach us to go with the flow.  An opportunity to trust that there is a time for all things and people and energy and full circle is the way it is.

Denial or depression of our reality is self-defeating and once we learn to practice letting go and to surrender to what is, we quickly learn that our path to peace and contentment and joy and love is with acceptance.  That acceptance begins within. 

Accept yourself, exactly as you are right now, know that you are okay and likely are doing the best you can do right now. 
Know that what you have thought and said and did to this point in time is enough. Now you know more and are ready and able to do more for yourself by simply deciding to see your life circumstances with greater perspective.

Decide to be more conscious and present and accepting and heart-full.  Decide to take great care of yourself, with much attention given to your health and your happiness.   

It will mean letting go of old patterns and habits and beliefs that are not fully supporting peacefulness in your everyday.
You will need to deprogram your current remote control routine and consciously choose that which will bring you peace. Doing this will change your experience of life.  When you choose to come from love, pure, unconditional, practiced and purposeful love, it will become your experience. Simply by changing your attitude about life and focusing on peacefulness and acceptance, you will change your life experience in the grandest and most gracious manner.  Embrace your ability to manifest miracles with the seemingly intangible yet omnipotent power of your thoughts, your attitude, and gratitude. 

The results are heavenly – heaven sent – and divine.

Teri is a wellness practitioner dedicated and grateful for her commitment to practice and assist others in living life joyfully. 
Like most her life has its own trials and tribulations, triumphs and tragedies.  She has found it enables her in being a considerate, compassionate and loving being grateful for the ongoing gifts that abound.

She shares this passion as an educator in Gourmet Nutrition and Wholistic Whole Self Wellness.

You can contact Teri at teri@terigentes.com or visit www.terigentes.com

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, and confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.   Melody Beattie