Your attitude is something that you are in complete control of, no matter what’s going on in your life. It might not solve your problems but it will affect the quality of your life and make a positive change in the lives of your loved ones. With a focus on positive attitude – our emotional fitness helps us to take our physical fitness to the next level!
Depending on your thinking, you can create opportunities that have the power to negatively or positively affect your life.For example, if all you do is come up with excuses for your struggle to stay fit or lose weight, then you’ll only be setting yourself up for failure. You’ll be blind to the ways you can succeed, and are only focusing on what you perceive to be as ‘obstacles’.
- Pretend method. Find a quiet place where you can sit down, relax, and close your eyes. Now imagine yourself as someone who loves working out and eating healthy. How does this person think? How does she feel? What does she do every day? At first you’re going to be like an actress playing a role, but if you do this exercise often you will be able to take what you imagine and implement it into your own life.
- Come up with at least 10 creative ways to enjoy exercising and eating healthy. How about signing up for interesting sports, a new class, a new hobby or get in a new zone on my website? Examples: I recently tried bouldering and indoor rock climbing, it was great fun and really challenging. Also a great one for if you have kids, they will love it too. Think out of the box. If working out is boring right now, maybe you need to engage in something more stimulating. Trust me, once you pick up a sport, you’ll end up working out eventually, because you’ll do anything to excel in your chosen activity. As for eating healthy, maybe you can sign up for cooking classes so that you can create delicious healthy meals or book into a seminar locally abut nutrtion. Imagine inviting your friends and family for fancy healthy dinners you prepared yourself. This exercise is very powerful and I recommend doing it every day and changing your ideas. (You can apply it to other areas of your life as well. For instance, try to come up with 10 ideas on how to free up your time so you can squeeze in your daily workout. Some of the ideas may not be good, some of them might be downright useless but the point of this exercise is to train your mind to be more inventive and capable to create solutions instead of coming up with excuses.) Practice, and don’t let your brain become lazy; it will only continue to produce excuses.
- Find a deeper meaning for creating change. This requires you to sit down and completely immerse yourself in your thoughts. Ask yourself these questions: What will I gain if I start exercising and eating healthy on a daily basis? What are the small rewards and what are the ultimate rewards of this lifestyle? Allow yourself to become emotional. You need to feel; not just think about all the benefits. The second half of this exercise is to ask yourself quite the opposite: What will I lose or what negative impacts am I going to experience if I don’t change? Really think about all the suffering you have to endure due to your lack of motivation and your current lifestyle. How is it going to get worse over time? Let it affect you. Let it make you cry. Human beings have evolved to avoid pain and seek pleasure. If you’re in a place where you feel more numb than anything else, then evoking emotions about your current situation-good and bad-is what’s needed for you to finally take action.
So with anything in life, always consider giving your attitude a check up. Is it serving you in this moment, or leading you down a road of sabotage?