We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act,
but a habit.
―Aristotle
FORWARD
As I sit down to write this book, I am 41 years old, and I LOVE MY BODY. It took me forty years, but I love every single thing about my body and what it does for me. I feel healthier than I ever have in my entire life. Although my muscles and bones are twice as old as they were when I was just finishing high school over twenty years ago, I feel better now than I did then.
Let’s compare.
In high school I was on the synchronized swimming team, so I exercised rather vigorously for 3-4 hours a day. I drank lots of water and avoided caffeine like it was poison. I ate a healthy diet of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and protein because if I didn’t, I would get nasty charley-horses that interfered with my performance in the pool. Now, nearly 25 years later, my exercise routine is significantly less intense. I get up in the morning and do 20-30 minutes of gentle stretches, and I take a couple leisurely strolls with my dog each day. I drink coffee every morning, and yes, I even add the artificial flavored creamers everyone says are so unhealthy. I occasionally devour a burger and fries or indulge in overly decadent chocolate ganache desserts. Most people would say that my current habits are not nearly as healthy as those of my high school days, yet I look and feel healthier! In high school when my body was younger and supposedly more resilient, I went to the chiropractor every week for low back pain caused by a slight scoliosis and my awkward contortions for synchronized swimming. My belly ached if I ate anything that was on my swim team’s no-no list. And, at least once or twice a year I got the flu or some other bug. But now, over two decades later, I don’t even get the sniffles. The last time I saw a chiropractor was to get an x-ray to confirm that my scoliosis was in fact gone, and I had grown two inches after years of stretching and strengthening my spine. Because I learned how to be mindful of my body and how I use it, I now have absolutely no aches or pains beyond the occasional random bruise. In high school and for years afterwards, I worked harder to stay in shape. Now, I work smarter to use my body properly. I believe I am healthier and happier now, not because I work out and eat right, but because I am mindful about HOW I eat and exercise. It took me nearly my whole life, some forty years, to fall in love with my body. I honestly believe that I feel so good in my body now and am healthier now because I love my body. For most of my life I went through dozens of fitness and diet crazes. After my synchronized swimming days, I spent hours kicking and punching the air with Billy Blanks, feeling the burn with Denise Austin, and even laughing while sweating to the oldies with Richard Simmons. I lifted weights, ran on treadmills, and stepped in aerobics. I was vegetarian for six years, and eventually gave up dairy and went vegan. Heck, I even hired a personal raw chef for a short stint to be completely gluten-dairy-sugar-cooking free. What I discovered was that all the rules and restrictions around diet and exercise kept me looking at my body as if there were something wrong with it that needed to be fixed. I was constantly trying to burn calories, weighing the scales of what I ate with how much and how hard I exercised. In high school and for most of the twenty years after high school, I believed that WHAT I ate and HOW MUCH I exercised had a direct impact on how I felt. To a small degree, I still believe that now. But now I am not only older, but I am also wiser. After nearly thirty years of working out hard and being very strict in my diet, I discovered something about health and wellness that all the diet and exercise books don’t say. I discovered that HOW I eat has more impact on my body than WHAT I eat. In fact, being mindful while I eat helps me listen to my body tell me what it wants to nourish itself. At the same time, being mindful about how I use my body is more important to how it feels than how much I use it or how hard I work it. The MOZI Method was born from the mindfulness practices I applied to my life in eating and exercise and meditation.
The greatest thing about this methodology I discovered is that it works instantly. It doesn’t take years and years of building muscles, or hours and hours of stretching to increase flexibility. I can make myself feel not just good, but absolutely GREAT about my body RIGHT NOW. It took me most of my life, lots of pain and injuries, and just as much anatomy & physiology research to really marvel over the fabulous machine that is my human body. I have learned to appreciate it, treat it as the temple that it is, and use it like the vehicle that I depend upon to get me through these experiences of life. Now, I absolutely LOVE my body and all the miracles it does for me every single day. I created the MOZI Method not as a diet and exercise program to improve medical test results and physical performance over time, but as a feel good NOW program. The MOZI Method is a way to make you mindful and aware of your body and how you use it and how it works best. As a result, you feel good in your own skin right now. In this book I don’t claim to help you lose weight or lower your cholesterol or decrease your blood pressure or any other medical magic. You do need to be careful about what you eat and how much you exercise for those things to happen. However, maybe those things will be great side effects that come over time. I think that as you learn to be mindful about how you eat and exercise and start a simple meditation practice to listen to yourself, you will start to hear your body tell you what it wants to eat and how it wants to move. Then, just maybe, you will reach your body’s ideal weight and score better on the medical tests. What I do proclaim is that The MOZI Method will help you pay attention to yourself, look inside yourself, and remember who you are underneath the layers of skin, muscles, bones, tissues, and organs.
Through simple mindfulness exercise that only take a few moments each day, The MOZI Method will help you feel good in your body right now. Maybe, after these 30 days, you will start to fall in love with your body exactly as it is.
~Teri Leigh, Founder of the MOZI Method
INTRODUCTION The Mozi Method of Muchness
This book, 30 Days of MUCHNESS: A Mindfulness Program of Eating, Exercise, and Meditation asks you to make a commitment to yourself through simple, mindful, MOZI Method tasks in the areas of eating, exercise, and meditation every day for thirty days. When you commit to this 30 Days, you are making a commitment to yourself, your health, your wellness, and ultimately a deeper appreciation for your life. Commit yourself to change your habits, and remember how to be the healthiest, happiest, and best you can be!
MOZI The Great Dane – Your MUCHNESS Mentor
Who is Mozi?
Mozi is your Muchness Mentor. He is a Great Dane. He’s awkward and clumsy and moves as if he is too big for his already too big body. He bounces into new situations and shows people that it’s okay to be awkward and weird and out of the ordinary. He is big, and strong, and playful, and loving, and expressive, and alive. Sometimes he is loud, and floppy, and weird, and goofy. He may not be dainty, but he can still be gentle. He may not be perfect, but he can still be proud.
One day when I was desperate to come up with a name for this body-mind-spirit methodology I had developed, I went to sit with a tree in a park. I committed to sitting there under that tree until I came up with a name. Just a few minutes after I sat down, a giant Great Dane came bounding happily through the woods. He was clumsy and awkward, but also happy and playful. He sat next to me and gave me the sweetest kiss I’ve ever experienced from a dog. While I prepared myself for a face-full of sloppy dog slobber, he simply touched his oversized black nose to my cheek. “You could think of mindfulness as wise and affectionate attention.” ~Jon Kabat-Zin In that moment, I experienced what Jon Kabat-Zin defines as mindfulness, and what I now define as MUCHNESS. That awkward and clumsy Great Dane gave me a brief moment of wise and affectionate attention.
“MOZI, Come!” his owners called him back to them, and he bounded off happily around the corner and out of my sight. And I knew, MOZI was the name for my method. He embodied it perfectly.
What is Muchness?
Sitting there under the tree, basking in the afterglow of Mozi’s blessing of my life, I thought about my methodology as a way to fall in love with oneself and one’s body. Mozi seemed to love himself and his body. He certainly moved as if he felt good in his over-sized body. He used his body as a way to express his happiness in life. His happy bouncing and dancing through the woods seem to say, “This is a life of MUCHNESS!” Mozi, as a Great Dane, is a BIG dog. His big nose on my cheek and his big floppy ear in my hand made me remember a promise I had made myself once long ago, PLAY BIG. In his BIG-NESS, Mozi is playing big in MUCHNESS. He represents BIG ideas, BIG movements, BIG steps, BIG-NESS. To Mozi, BIG-NESS and MUCHNESS are the same. Mozi lives in MUCHNESS all the time, and he showed me that MUCHNESS is something I can feel and be whenever I want. In that moment, I recommitted to myself to play big in life, and Mozi gave his name to my methodology and also became my Muchness Mentor. MUCHNESS is the state of feeling and BEING GREAT and PLAYING BIG.
In adopting Mozi the Great Dane as a Muchness Mentor, I began to personify him and ask, “What would Mozi think?” Digging into my imagination, I couldn’t imagine that Mozi ever worries about what he eats, or how he moves, or what he is thinking. I figured that when he finds something to eat, he enjoys every single bite like it is the best thing he has ever tasted in his life. Instead of blaming the kinds of foods he eats, or how much of it he eats, he looks inside himself to find ways to feel good in his body the way it is. I imagined that Mozi believes that HOW he eats and HOW he treats his food is how his food will treat him. I thought that if Mozi loves his food, he is putting love into his food. Then he eats that food, and he eats the love he just put into his food. He nourishes himself with the love he puts into his food. Mozi also doesn’t believe that MUCHNESS needs to take a lot of time or effort. He finds it instantly. It doesn’t have to be hard. Muchness is easy. To live in your MUCHNESS is to really feel the epic awesomeness that lives inside you all the time.
What is The Mozi Method?
The MOZI Method is a system to help you Remember Your MUCHNESS. Through Body-Mind-Spirit Integration, The MOZI Method is Education that is based on Science.
Integration
To take care of your body, perhaps you go to a gym and work with a physical trainer. When you body hurts, perhaps you go to a hospital and work with a doctor. To take care of your mind, perhaps you go to a school and work with a teacher. When you mind hurts, perhaps you go to a clinic and work with a therapist. To take care of your spirit, perhaps you go to a church and work with a minister. When you spirit hurts, perhaps you go to a retreat or workshop and work with a life coach.
Does your personal trainer talk to your doctor or your therapist? Does your minister converse with your teacher or your life coach? Likely not.
Even though your body and your mind and your spirit are all wrapped up into the wholeness of YOU, the methods developed to take care of them and treat them are all separate. The MOZI Method is a system that integrates the care and treatment of you as a whole, getting your body and your mind and your spirit to work together. Every MOZI Method program, lesson, activity and exercise works to integrate your Body, Mind, and Spirit.
When your body, your conscious mind, and your breath (spirit) all work together, your brain recognizes it as something very important to remember. Your MUCHNESS is very important, so the MOZI Method makes sure you remember it!
Body + Mind + Spirit = MUCHNESS
BODY – Put your body into position
MIND – Think a positive thought
SPIRIT – Take a deep focused breath
Education
Education is not about filling your brain with information just so that you can spit it back out on tests and quizzes, only to be forgotten soon after the test is complete. Education is about drawing out of you what you already know, your muchness.
The word EDUCATION comes from the Latin word
e-duc-are meaning “to draw forth from within.”
The MOZI Method EDUCATES you. It pulls your muchness out from inside you through repetitive step-by-step lessons that are short, interactive, and fun, because that’s how your brain learns best. The MOZI Method lessons are simple, repetitive, and habit-forming. Simple: The human brain learns best when lessons are introduced in small, bite-sized pieces that you can chew up and swallow easily before taking the next bite. Step-by-step. Bite-by-bite. Repetitive: Each time your perform a task, your brain fires electrical impulses to make that action happen. The more often you do the task, the more electrical impulses the brain fires, and more brain power is given to making that action happen. Eventually, when you perform a task enough times, the brain remembers the triggers to make it happen and you don't even have to think about it, the action becomes habit. Mozi tasks are repetitive so that you can build positive habits that happen without you even having to think about them. Habit-Forming: Mozi exercises are attached to something you already do, an established habit. This attachment is called a trigger. When you repeat an action that is triggered by another action, you form new habits based on already established ones. Forming new habits by attaching them to already established habits is much easier for your brain to do than to unlearn old habits.
Science
The MOZI Method is based on the science of how your body’s anatomy, physiology, biology, neurology, and chemistry. Through the anatomy of how your BODY is built, the neurology of how your MIND thinks, and the chemistry of how your hormones make your SPIRIT feel, The MOZI Method leads you to instant MUCHNESS!! Anatomy - Body Posture: When you put your body into position, your muscles hold your bones in line so that your nerve pathways are open. When the nerves aren't twisted and knotted and confused, the messages between your brain and your body are clear. Neurology - Positive Thought: When you think a positive thought, your brain tells your body to let out the hormones that match that specific thought. The hormones make you feel that positive thought. For example, if you think "I am strong" while standing up tall and puffing out your chest, you brain tells your body to let out just enough adrenaline and cortisol, the power hormones, to tell your muscles to activate and BE STRONG. Chemistry - Spirit Breath: The word "spirit" comes from the Latin word for breath, so breath is spirit. When your body is in line so the messages between your brain and body have a smooth road to travel, and when your thoughts are positive so the chemical hormones put into your body match what you want to do, your breath is what pushes those hormones through your system and makes space for them to do their job.
How Does the Mozi Method Work?
The MOZI Method applies mindfulness to simple brain training to form positive habits in life that last. This program is a step-by-step process to help you become mindful, conscious, and aware of HOW you do these things, and to teach you how to do these simple daily tasks the best you can. When you do these simple things mindfully, you feed yourself with your own MUCHNESS.
Simple Brain Training
The exercises and assignments in The MOZI Method are extremely simple. While a whole slew of books out there are marketed to idiots and dummies, and they sell quite well, I refuse to call you an idiot, or a dummy. I just believe that simplicity is the key to getting your brain to develop habits. Let me offer you an example from my own experience.
One year for Christmas, when I was a little kid, my older brother received a simple instructional book, but rather than calling him an idiot or a dummy, it called him a klutz. The book was titled Juggling for the Complete Klutz, and it was a simple step-by-step process to learning how to juggle. It even came with three tennis-ball-sized beanbags. The first step was so simple it was almost insulting. My brother said that even I, the annoying little sister, could get it right. The first step was to drop the beanbags and let them fall to the floor. This step was to be repeated several times before moving onto the second step, which was the toss. The toss was slightly different, to toss the beanbag up and let it fall to the floor. Again, this step was to be repeated several times. Step three was to toss the beanbag to eye level and let it fall to the floor. The act of dropping the beanbag many times was simple brain training. Each time he dropped the beanbag, his brain was unconsciously registering the size, weight, shape, and movement of the beanbag, logging it into his unconscious memory so that when he needed to respond to catching the beanbag, his brain could send the message to his hand to adjust to precisely the time it would take for the beanbag to drop and account for the weight it put in his hand. The act of tossing it to eye level and letting it drop t and aim of the beanbag. While I laughed at my elder brother every single time he had to bend over to pick up the dropped bean bag, I watched in awe when several hours later he was juggling like a pro, never once dropping a beanbag.
The MOZI Method is based on the same principles as my brother’s juggling lessons. Your human brain learns best when tasks are simple, and step-by-step. In the beginning, the tasks each day may seem almost too simple, like dropping the beanbags on the floor. Every step of the process, no matter how simple it may seem, is meant to train your brain. For example, one of the first tasks in the meditation portion of this program is to simply “sit your tush to the cush.” In other words, several times that day, you are to sit down on your meditation cushion. You don’t need to actually take time to meditate, you just need to sit your bum down on the cushion. The act of sitting on the cushion trains your brain to register the act of sitting on the cushion as part of a process. Each day, a new step is added to the process, a step-by-step progression in training your brain to register the steps to calming down and sitting in meditation. In time, the tasks will accumulate to train your brain so that eventually, your brain recognizes the act of sitting your tush to the cush triggers a habitual response of several steps to calm your thoughts for meditation.
Positive Habits
The theory behind The MOZI Method is that the simple step-by-step process will train your brain into positive habits progressively so that over 90% who commit to this program SUCCEED. Try it for one day, just one day, do one tiny little positive thing one day and see how it makes you feel. If you like it, do it again. And if it still feels good, do it again. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll want to try adding the next step on the next day. After enough days, you will have formed new habits. By the end of 30 Days, MUCHNESS will have become habit.
Every year, millions of people make resolutions to be healthier. The top ten New Year’s Resolutions all include commitments to better diet, exercise, healthier lifestyle choices, and positive thinking. Yet only 8-10% of people actually find success with New Year’s Resolutions. You can spend a fortune on personal trainers, nutritionists, holistic health counselors, dietary supplements, gym memberships, therapists, life coaches, and more, but every one of these resources requires a long-term commitment to make lasting results, and more often than not, they fail. These programs and solutions all point you outside yourself for the solution. Take this pill. Eat this food. Don’t eat this food. Use this machine. Work out with this trainer. In addition, these solutions all include complex rules and strict guidelines. In the end, these diet and exercise and healthy living programs usually become overwhelming, just too much to do. They are not easily sustainable, and so they aren’t likely to make lasting healthy changes to your life.
While many people have had success with eating and exercise and meditation programs, still, over 90% of commitments to resolutions fail. The MOZI Method argues that these commitments fail because they do not effectively train the brain. They are too complex and too big for the brain to adequately create a sustainable habit. You can have all the willpower and determination in the world, but if you don’t train your brain to create a habit through a simple step-by-step process, if the tasks are too complex, your brain has difficulty establishing patterns into habits.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. ~Aristotle One of the great qualities of this program is that the changes you make are attached to things you already do. You don’t need to add anything new to your daily routine, you just need to become mindful about HOW you do the things you normally do. While this is a program that encourages you to apply mindfulness to eating, exercise, and meditation, you don’t have to create a whole new diet regimen or exercise routine or meditation practice to participate in this program. In fact, I encourage you to start the program with what you already do. Everyday you EAT. Everyday you MOVE. Everyday you THINK. In order to function, even the tiniest bit, you must do all of these things every single day. You’ve been doing them every single day since the day you were born. How you do them has become habit, unconscious.
Remember, these steps don’t have to make conscious sense to you. Much of the magic is happening on the neurological level inside your nervous system. However, the more you consciously think about it, the more energy your brain devotes to what you think about.
How to Use This Book
I encourage you to immerse yourself in these teachings, to incorporate the practices in your daily life. Allow the process to coax your muchness out into the open. The more mindfully you MOZI, the more muchness you will pull out of yourself. Yet, you need not dive into these teachings with intense fervor. Think of this journey as a simply moseying through the woods. I encourage you to be sweet with yourself, to nurture the muchness out of yourself like you would nurture the best flavor you can out of a tomato plant in your garden. When you plant a tomato seed to grow into a plant that produces beautiful red juicy tomatoes, you need five vital ingredients of nature: good quality soil, fresh water, sunlight, open air, and your spirit of love for it to grow into its full muchness. The four weeks and two days of this program take you through the process of nurturing your muchness just like your garden’s tomato plant.
FOUR WEEKS: EARTH, WATER, FIRE, AIR, SPIRIT
Week One: EARTH - You will till the soil by establishing a solid foundation for your habits to form. Many of the exercises this week may feel overly simplistic, but they are just as important as providing the right fertilization to the earth for your plant to grow.
Week Two: WATER - You will add water to your habits by bringing an element of movement, fun and play to them. The exercises this week will start to feel like you are learning something significant because you will start to recognize the benefits of mindfulness tasks in your life.
Week Three: FIRE - You will turn up the heat on your habits, like adding more sunlight to your tomato plant. This is where you do some of the harder work. The more you work, the more you grow, and you’ll start to see how your habits become automatic.
Week Four: AIR - You will step back a bit and allow your habits to grow into the space you have provided for them through the process. You will start to share what you have learned with others because you learn 90% of what you teach others. Just as the cycle of air is a constant giving and receiving, you will start to give your habits to others and see how giving to others makes you available to receive even more.
Last Days: SPIRIT- You will reflect on your process, honor your success, and celebrate your own Muchness has it has emerged from the center of your being. Three Steps: Eating, Exercising, Meditating The 3-steps of this 30 Days of Muchness Program asks you to apply MOZI Method tasks to three areas of your life. Each day, you will be assigned one simple MOZI Method task in each of three areas: Eating, Exercise, and Meditation. Each day, the tasks in each three areas will revolve around the same intention. While you are eating and exercising for your BODY, you are meditating for your SPIRIT, and you are applying a common intention for your MIND.
Eating - Every single day, in order to fuel your body with the energy it needs, you EAT. In the MOZI Method 30 Days to MUCHNESS, you simply need to become mindful about HOW you eat. Each day, you will follow one simple assignment, one task to apply to HOW you eat. There are plenty of diet and nutrition books out there to teach you about calorie counting, food groups, and the foods you should and should not eat. This book doesn’t cover any of those topics. Instead, this program is about how you relate to your food. It teaches you in a simple step-by-step process how to enjoy your food more, how to treat your food with respect, and how to appreciate your food for what it does for you.
Exercise - The same goes for EXERCISE. Even if you do not currently have an exercise routine where you go to the gym or a yoga class or get on a treadmill or take a walk every day, you do MOVE your body everyday. Just to get out of bed and go to the kitchen you have to MOVE your muscles. If you don’t have a routine, you can apply the tasks to movement you make with your body every day, as simply as each time you get up to go to the bathroom, or while waiting in line, or while going up the stairs. Maybe you don’t have a regular exercise routine, but you want one. Then commit, for thirty days to something simple, like parking further away from the door everyday, or taking the stairs, and apply the MOZI task of the day to your movement. Or maybe you commit this next thirty days to taking 3-5 fitness classes a week, or taking a 20-minute walk everyday. The point isn’t WHAT you do for exercise, or even how long. The point of the MOZI Method is the mindfulness you bring to the process of moving your body. If you do have an exercise routine, work out with a trainer, go to the gym or take fitness classes on a regular basis, the exercise tasks assigned each day can easily be applied to the routine you already have in place. You may find that you enjoy moving your body more, that the time you spend at the gym or on the treadmill or on your walk goes faster because you are mindful.
Meditating - Many people say that they can’t meditate because their minds are too busy and they just have too much going on to be able to clear their minds of thought. Your mind is always thinking. That’s how your brain is designed to work. But, clearing your mind isn’t about making your thoughts actually stop as much as it is about helping you to become more aware of your thinking. If you have ever sat and daydreamed, even for just a few moments, you have meditated, if even just a little. That’s right, daydreaming is a form of meditation, a highly effective one at that. Meditation is the practice of sitting quietly, of watching your thoughts. Many people report great moments of creativity and clarity while meditating. In essence, meditation is simply conscious daydreaming. Your brain is always thinking. Some of your thoughts are random and others are focused. Some of them are unconscious, and others are specifically channeled. The mindfulness tasks in this program are designed to help you develop a simple meditation practice, by building on a form of meditation you are already familiar with doing, daydreaming. Through conscious thinking and daydreaming, you will learn to watch your thoughts so that you can be more clear and focused inside your head.
DAILY THEME
Each day of this program centers around a one word theme. Think of it like a life lesson that Mozi has to show you. Your assignments in terms of eating, exercise, and meditation will focus on that theme. You will start to recognize that by integrating your mindfulness practices around a particular theme, your mindfulness will grow way beyond your eating, exercise and mindfulness and spill over into all areas of your life.
STORYTIME
Every day starts with a simple story from Mozi, the Great Dane, your Muchness Mentor. These stories are meant to inspire and motivate you, as well as to infuse a little fun and play into the process. At the same time, they are meant to make you think of your own stories about the theme of the day. Like the ever-famous Chicken Soup for the Soul series, Mozi’s stories are meant to be read and re-read as a means of encouraging you to do and re-do the exercises. I don’t blame you if you devour all of Mozi’s stories in one sitting. I actually encourage it. I wrote it to be a very easy read so that it doesn’t end up on the bottom shelf with all the other half-finished books of the world. Mozi’s stories are entertaining, short, and inspiring. The high school English teacher in me encourages you to go back and re-read, re-do, re-view, and re-evaluate the chapters of this book several times and often, because your brain is best trained by repetition.
ASSIGNMENTS
After storytime each day, Mozi will assign you three very simple tasks that all align with the theme of the day from his story. This is where the real fun begins. The exercises are meant to involve your body, your mind, and your spirit. One task is dedicated to how you eat, another is dedicated to how you exercise your body, and the third is dedicated to how you think or meditate. All of them involve doing something with your body, thinking about it, and connecting to your spirit. The more involved you get in the tasks, the better they work. So get out a pen or pencil. Don’t just do the exercises, but write about them. Use a highlighter to mark up your own writing. Make notes in the margins, of both Mozi’s stories and your own. Underline passages and highlight your own notes. The more you practice an exercise, the more likely you are to develop it into a habit. I personally still practice them every single day. I invite you to try them. I promise, remembering your own muchness is easier than you think.
REFLECTION
Each day, you will be offered many questions to contemplate about your experience throughout the day. The act of writing down your ideas and thoughts, putting words through your hands onto paper, makes a significant connection between your mind and body and makes them more real. I have purposely written the questions for reflection in a way to keep you focused on the positive things you are experiencing to make those positive connections in your brain and body. Not much space provided to write your reflections because I wanted this process as simple as possible for you. If you like to write a lot, get yourself a journal. Otherwise, just write a few notes in the small spaces provided, or take notes in the margins. My hope is that after you make your way through this book so manyseveral times, that eventually the words your write in it will far out number the words I wrote. You see, writing your own thoughts helps personalize the process and make it more real and more YOU.
PRACTICE
The key to maintaining your muchness is to practice, and practice often, because practice makes progress[OU1] . If you want to aspire to perfection as in the adage “practice makes perfect,” you are reaching to an end point. The key here is that progress is growth, and growth is a journey that can always continue. I invite you to mosey through your practice toward growth and progress. Everything about you is perfect, even the mess-ups and flub-ups, and failures you bump into along your way. There is no wrongness about this process or your experience of it. If something in this book doesn’t resonate with you, that’s perfect. If other things get you super excited, that’s perfect too. I just hope you can find a way to MOZI, and to MOZI often, because the more you MOZI, the more muchness you will live . Ooooh…..I LOVE this! There’s something I thought about a lot during my TT with you regarding perfectionism. I’m sure you come across a LOT of it when you’re leading TTs, and when I started hearing it from people, it was annoying as hell….and I used to be a total perfectionist myself! I think there’s a key element here that may or may not be worth noting for those perfectionists who could be reading: PRACTICE MAKES PROGRESS…and growth is what is KEY. If we aspire to perfection, that implies an END POINT. If there’s an end point, we quit growing. Progress is growth, and that’s a journey that can always continue.