So we’re coming up to the end of the year, with a brand new year just around the corner. January 1st is the most popular time to set new goals, make resolutions and start afresh.
Did you set yourself some health & fitness goals last year?
Or did you commit to new years resolutions at the start of 2012?
Most importantly, did you achieve those goals and stick with your resolutions?
Many people don’t, and you might be one of them, and that’s ok there’s no reason why you can’t make changes this time around. But unless you change your approach or address whatever it was that let you down last time you’ll probably get the exact same outcome right?
We all know that this is the definition of crazy – doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
One of the most important aspects in achieving any weight loss, health or fitness goal or even just maintaining your fit and healthy lifestyle is the mental game.
At the end of the day if you can dial in the right mindset, overcome limiting beliefs about yourself, and you want something BAD enough, or you want to avoid something bad enough (like being unhealthy or overweight) you WILL find a way to achieve any goal you set for yourself.
Have you ever stopped to think about your self image?
Your self image is how you think about yourself. WHO you think you are…
So many people believe certain things about themselves, deeply engrained self limiting beliefs which end up subconsciously sabotaging any efforts they make to change themselves.
“I’ve always been the fat girl / guy”
“I’ve always been overweight since I can remember”
“I’ve always struggled with my weight”
“I can never lose weight no matter what I do”
“I have always hated exercise”
“I always start off really well then I lose my motivation and go off track”
“I love food too much to stick to an eating plan”
“I’ve always had no upper body strength”
“I am addicted to sugar’
“I NEVER have any time”
These might seem like pretty standard, innocent comments, do you ever find yourself saying things like this? You ‘always’ do this or that, or you’ve ‘always’ been this type of person?
People really latch on to beliefs like this and it ends up forming part of their identity, you might have already made up your mind that you’re a certain type of person, with special limits that seem to have been inherently imposed upon you. If that’s who you think you are, it’s a part of your self image.
It’s impossible to act in a way that is incongruent with your self image for a lengthy amount of time.
It’s like you’ll talk yourself out of it.
For example, you might train hard and eat well for 8 weeks, you’ve lost weight, feeling great and are doing well but in your head you’ve ALWAYS been the overweight girl/guy. For some reason you mentally drop the ball and find a way to sabotage yourself, you get off track and gain the weight back because you’re not acting in line with your self image, you’re not being ‘yourself’.
If this sounds like you, I highly recommend reading a really good book called ‘The New Pycho-Cybernetics’. It will help you to overcome self limiting beliefs and change your self image, which will help you realize what you can accomplish.
In fact I think you can buy the audio book now from iTunes, listen to it in the car or on the train, on the way to and from work over the next week.
Now here’s a quick little exercise I recently came across and thought it would be good to share with you, this is something you can do RIGHT NOW.
Ask yourself this question…
“Where you would like to be, and have known you
would like to be for some time, but aren’t.”?
Write it down.
The more specific the better. (This is great to do for health & fitness goals, but also great for any other area in your life too for that matter)
Now you need to get a pen and paper and make a list of all the reasons you are NOT there.
– What are you doing that sabotages your efforts?
– What daily habits are hindering you?
– Are you hanging around the wrong people?
– Are you talking a big game but refusing to take action?
– Do you have big goals but small priorities?
– Are you keeping all of your goals and dreams to yourself, so that no one else knows what they could be helping you with?
– Why am I acting incongruent with my goals, instead of in congruence with my dreams?
– Do I read things like this, but don’t actually do the exercise suggested and explore myself to find what might be holding me back?
So make a list, it might be quite an uncomfortable exercise. Be brutally honest with yourself, put aside your ego and just do it.
This exercise has been labelled as like “peeling an onion”. For each layer of excuses we give ourselves, we must ask why and peel back the real reason. Each time we go a little deeper to get to the raw truth of what is holding us back from success.
And just like in the peeling of a real onion, there may be tears, and certainly discomfort. But in doing so, you’ll have big breakthroughs.
The biggest obstacle in you achieving what you want is YOU, not any other external circumstance.
Somewhere in the world there is a person in the exact same situation as you with the exact same circumstances as you, achieving YOUR goals and dreams.
They just have different beliefs, a different mindset and a different self image…
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