This blog is a little longer than I normally write, but I just needed to get this off my chest and out there to the Universe. I believe important messages come through you at the right times, so here it is – uncut because it’s better all out than clogging up my brain any longer!
I was going back through some of the questions and comments from past friends and clients and was shocked and saddened from what I was reading. So many of you struggle to attain your health and fitness goals and remain in this constant battle of limited success when you do, only to fail again as it’s unsustainable. I hadn’t seen it before now, perhaps I wasn’t looking for it, but all the inconsistency screams clearly a very affected mental state. If you hear enough of the following words from your social circle, chances are you have begun to believe it:
“You just need to work harder”
“Why can’t you just get off your butt and do it?”
“You need to do more cardio”
“You just need to stop eating so much”
“You should cut your carbs back”
While their intentions are great (albeit not new advice), planting seeds of thoughts like these can be completely detrimental to your cause. I’ve seen first hand many people suffer repeatedly by adopting extreme strategies ranging from very low calorie diets, weight loss shakes, diet pills and overtraining that usually results to going backwards because:
- Your relationship with food is damage
- You can’t bare the thought of doing hours and hours in the gym again
- Your mindset hasn’t shifted to the next level
- You’ve put your body under such stress that it simply doesn’t work efficiently for you anymore
- Your goals are to big and you’ve forgotten to celebrate the small wins
What’s going on? This is not what I thought the health and fitness industry would evolve to when I first became became a trainer. As each year ticks over, I feel like we should be moving forward with new research, easier ways to access this and applying this knowledge but it seems as though irrespective of available education people consistently hold their values skin-deep and trust anyone that has ever lifted heavy or lost weight as an expert!
It’s devastating to see so many people struggling, playing the guessing game, putting their bodies under torture and being led blindly by unqualified ‘experts’ to attain a desired look. Worse yet, they choose to ignore the signs of their body shutting down from being mistreated. You can be good and stick to it 5 days of the week but because the underlying issues aren’t resolved and the program is unsustainable, the weekends become blowouts and the guilt sets in again only to ‘re-start’ on Monday. This is simply no way to live life. When you’re 60 would it really matter that you once had abs or even a flat stomach? Does it really matter that you lifted that PB 15 or 20 years ago?
If you can relate to this situation, if you are struggling to make a change in your life even if you’ve tried hard in the past, this never-ending cycle has to stop and CAN if you choose to. It’s time for you to make a change. It’s time to have a conversation with your internal thoughts – the ones that actually make things you truly want happen. It’s time to find out your WHY and what is really important to you. Before going any further, you need to watch this video to help you understand why you do what you do.
Some important things you need to understand first;
- Mindset is just as important as the method
- Your mindset controls your habits and
- Your habits control your result
There’s so much more that needs to be instilled for you to make a permanent change. If this is something you’d like help with here are some tips that could be the catalyst you need;
- Stop beating yourself up! Your mind has the power to dictate how your body reacts. Negative thoughts will hold you back from your desires, every time. Dr Masuro Emoto demonstrated this vividly in his experiment using positive and negative words and its affect in water [read more here]. Every negative thought you need to see as simply floating by – don’t focus on them, let them flow out of your thoughts as easily as they came in. If you struggle to do this, then start replacing those thoughts with a chosen health affirmation for instance you constantly hear your head tell you “I’m so stressed and tired from work I have no energy to exercise”, counteract it by telling yourself “Exercise helps me de-stress and feel energized”. You can say this out loud or just to yourself if you don’t think randomly talking in public spaces is appropriate! Think of affirmations for all the crap things you currently say to yourself – if you can’t think of them in the moment then go back to a default affirmation “I love and approve of myself”, this works wonders and can never be said enough times in the day.
- Stop Comparing. I was about 7 when I remember children of my class playing effortlessly on the monkey bars. For something I had not tried before, swinging looked like fun and I wanted in. As I let one hand go and took my first swing, to my unexpected disappointment I missed the bar and fell flat on my ass. Out of sheer embarrassment that was the end of my monkey bar experience. I gave up because I thought I could never be as good as the other kids. Some time later it only occurred to me after seeing these kids out there on the monkey bars day in day out, that they had been doing the exact same thing for countless hours before my first trial. They had clocked up far more experience than me even before I’d got there. Looking back now, I realized I made a choice to not explore something that I could have been good at or enjoyed because I wasn’t as good as the others and unfortunately that experience affected my willingness to try a lot more things later in life for fear of not being perfect at it immediately. My point is you have no idea who you’re comparing yourself to and never let that strip your opportunity to give things a crack when it comes to investing in self-improvement.
- Years after Disneyland was complete, someone said to Mike Vance, the Creative Director of Walt Disney Studios, “Isn’t it a shame that Walt Disney didn’t live long enough to see this?” with which Mike Vance replied, “But he did see it. He saw it before all of us”. Walt Disney may well have been one of the greatest creative visualizers of his time. Start visualizing what you want in the world and you’ll be amazed at the outcome. Its starts with intent irrespective of how it will come to fruition just trust that it will play out. It’s something you must experience to believe, so if you find yourself sceptical then begin with small or somewhat insignificant visuals such as pulling into a car park in a busy shopping centre straight away on your drive there. It doesn’t matter how it happens, once it starts working for you, acknowledge it and move onto larger more fulfilling goals.
- Find ways to move your body that you enjoy. Notice I didn’t use the term exercise as this has been formalized when for some people it doesn’t need to. Simply being more active than you currently are is enough even if that means you dance furiously with your kids for 1hr a day (PS it’s an awesome workout trust me, and it’s thoroughly enjoyable to hear the laughter and energy I get from my kids doing it!). If you are after a specific goal then your training will need to support your direction but it also needs to be something you thoroughly enjoy doing. The best fitness regimen is the one you can see yourself doing for the rest of your life. Find what you enjoy and fully understand WHY you are doing it and what’s the purpose of it in your life.
- Become accountable to someone you can trust. I know just as much as you how difficult it is to make something a habit when you’ve done something different your entire life. This is where accountability has its place. You need to be held accountable to your own actions until it becomes part of your everyday living (as routine as brushing your teeth). Your accountable someone can be a friend, trainer, coach, family, housemate or partner but it needs to be a person that you respect and takes his or her responsibility as your support team seriously.
Action these tips and I guarantee you will begin to see clarity about your WHY and positive changes in your mindset spill over towards ultimately creating your best health and fitness state. It’s time to stop the negative emotions – blame, guilt, disappointment, failure etc.
Anything is possible; you just have to want to believe you deserve it.
If you would like to know more about how we operate and methodology behind our vision please don’t hesitate to reach out at admin@perform-360.com.au
To your success,
Jason Clark