Get the Garbage out of your head

It’s been a while since I’ve written one these types of blog posts.  It’s about the garbage in our head when it comes to succeeding in weight loss, lowering body fat percentage or anything for that matter.

Have you ever had someone compliment you and it made you feel good all day? It’s really nice to get a compliment every now and again but some of us have more junk than we’d like.

how about this..

Has anyone ever complimented you and you thought something like this to yourself:
“He/she is just being nice”

“I’m still hella fat.”

“I’m really not doing that well.”

“I wish.”

Basically anything that goes alongs the line of “I don’t believe you.”

In the book Feeling Good by David D. Burns, he calls this discounting the positive.

On the flip side of things.  If we are doing something positive in our business, health or life, why does one negative remark or comment will mess with our motivations to move forward?

To varying degrees, some of us amplify the negative crap in our life unnecessarily. Sometimes it takes a friend or family member to get you out of your one person pity party. Or you could be one of those people who sort things out yourself.

If you don’t have this problem, you should stop reading right now and know that I’m jealous of you.

For many years I’ve suffered with depression and because I tend to be introverted I don’t reach out much.  Luckily I’ve chosen to work in a field where I have to be less introverted. Being inherently introverted, I have a job designed for a naturally extroverted individual is ironic.Through maybe fate, circumstance, chance or just plain dumb luck – it’s saved my life.  It’s saved my health and it’s kept me sane.

Everyone suffers with self doubt. Much of this self doubt comes from our inner dialogue. It’s what we say to ourselves that has a great impact on how we feel.  It affects how we things, it affects what we do which ultimately determines our outcome.

Now you might be thinking, “I don’t talk to myself.” Trust me when i say you do. It’s called thinking. Part of my way of communicating sarcastically has to do with getting people to like me.  If you can stand my a**hole like remarks and still manage to hang around me it means you like me enough.

Okay enough of self analyzing.

I’m sort of running out of time so I’ll try to make this quick.

The reason why most of us fail in following a diet or an exercise regiment has to do with what we think.  It’s about all the positive and negative things we say to ourselves that leads us to our decision making.

I can’t do that because…

I don’t have time because..

I can’t follow a diet because…

If you want to conquer this, keep a journal of what you say to yourself.  Write down your own internal dialogue when you find yourself flinching.

I want you to stop and imagine jumping into a pool of water.  As you jump into the pool of water you find out that it’s 0 degrees Celsius. or the coldest water you’ve ever jumped into.

I’m not sure if that was a good example, but you might have felt a slight chill reading the above line.  Mind you that you haven’t actually touched any water while reading this blog post.

Or when you smell something unexpectedly bad. You make that face and you react.  You flinch.

This is an automatic response.  And as simple as it might seem this is we all do when we think of something that is less physical like the thought of doing a hard exercise program.

Like the thought of not eating carbs.

Like the though of lifting heavy weights and being sore all weak.

Like the thought of running and breathing heavy because you’re out of shape.

Like the thought of taking the time log your food in a journal

Like the thought of doing leg day

Like the thought of doing 100 burpees for time

These things typically cause a response that similar to a flinch.  Why do you flinch? Why do you respond in that way.  Understand your thoughts and you’ll understand you’re feelings.  Understand your feelings and you’ll understand your actions.  Understand your actions (or lack of action) and you’ll understand your results.

Change how you think and you will change everything.