Amend Your Mind, Not Your Body! NEW Challenge!

Lately, I have been confessing a lot of my short-falls and I am very sorry to be focusing on what may seem like negativity. But there is a purpose to taking a route through the dark woods – the purpose becomes clear when you take a moment to look up and see the light between the trees.

Basically, I had a bit of a realisation about my September Pledge that I think I need to share.

The last thing I want to do is waffle on about this, the video below says it all!

Here is the wonderful post by Kellie Davis over on Bret’s blog.

Final thoughts:

• Without thinking about anything in the past or future, try honestly to think of something right NOW that is wrong with your life?
• Back in Feb/March time, I remember writing about how I was living like I was 58kg (or something) and not feeling like it was a future goal – within 2 weeks I was 58kg!! I felt no stress about it, and lived each day as if I had everything I could ever want.  You really do attract what you think about most.  For example, If I had been feeling like 58kg was a future goal everyday, then it would remain a future goal.
• I also felt pretty damn good about how I looked and SO grateful about many things each day. I remember keeping a journal to write these things down.  Guess what? I didn’t find as many things to complain about or be dissatisfied with – and how I looked wasn’t even a concern.
• There may be things that I would like to happen in my life; future stuff like get married, have babies, build my business more etc, but I shouldn’t let not having these things affect my feelings now.  Because “now” is all it will ever be and unless I am present and accept that, I will constantly live in the past or the future, and I will never be happy – because happiness exists nowhere else, but in the PRESENT. Oh boy, this stuff is hard to explain!

So, what about fitness goals, are these not based on the future or the past? Yes, they are based on it, but how you live out the process is what defines success or failure.  For one thing, if you never learn how to be happy NOW, then how will you ever appreciate that moment that you reach the end goal? That moment is easy to imagine way off in the future (that’s not real), but if you can’t deal with NOW, NOW, then when that time comes you won’t have learned that important skill!  Confusing? YES!

Ok, but I have to make a plan to attain that goal – is that not avoiding “now” too? Nope! Again, you need to learn how to fully live in the moment – like you can only make good choices to follow your daily plan moment to moment.  The biggest mistake you can make is feeling dissatisfied after 2 weeks of following your plan because you don’t notice any changes. This means you have attached your happiness to the future, which doesn’t exist! You may indeed achieve your goal one day, but at that point it is no longer the future. If you always live in the future (imaginary world), your moment of success will fade into failure because you simply aren’t happy now. Make sense?  You need to appreciate each step along the way.

My “motivational” photo was only helping me to not be happy now. Instead of making me feel I was on a journey, I was feeling stuck, feeling a failure and feeling a massive sense of pressure to get back on track.  But what track? I can only be on the track I choose to be on right now. You can only see one step at a time; you can’t see the road ahead – it doesn’t exist yet.

This stuff is enough to explode my brain at times, but I am sure on some level it makes sense – or I wouldn’t have realised that my September Pledge was flawed.  I made a mistake and now I am making it right.

As I type this, I can accept my body is amazing! Whether it looks the same as 8 months ago or not, it squatted 60kg x 2 reps yesterday and that was a moment to celebrate!

What about the September Challenge?

• I still want to try and do 2 strength sessions and 3 conditioning sessions, along with my daily walks each week.
• I will still be fasting and trying to make the best choices each day.
• I will still try and get good sleep.
• I will still drink more water and less coffee.
• I will not expect to look any different to how I am right now. Because how I look right now, is all that is ever real. This is where it gets confusing. Even if I change over time, the point is that I learn to accept that in any given moment I am powerless to change anything.
• I live in a state of gratitude – tough one, but essential!

Although I initially felt really stupid for letting myself fall into this trap again, I am glad it happened, because I have now reset my mind 🙂 Whatever the mind is set on, the body follows!

Have a great Day everyone! Hopefully this makes some sense.