How To Take Back Control Of Your Health
Tight pants, mental fog, lack of energy and libido…these are just a few consequences of lack of exercise. Exercise is known to decrease stress and increase confidence so why don’t we do more of it? When you think about making room for anything else in your schedule you may feel a tendency to freak out! Most likely, that’s because you’re over-busy and possibly haven’t taken the time to sit down and figure out how to make time for your health.
Like some, you might have an all or nothing personality. These types believe that for a workout to be worth it, it will take an hour…five days a week…doing something you don’t enjoy!! Working out needs to be enjoyable and doesn’t have to be all or nothing for you to reap the benefits.
If you value financial freedom and the lifestyle it affords you, how are you to fully enjoy what you`ve worked for unless you have your health? If you value your romantic relationship, your physical health is a priority. If you don’t make a change now, we all know what happens. The weight slowly finds good lodging on our hips, chest, butt, stomach, etc. until one day you wake up and realize what’s happened. It’s time to kiss the extra weight goodbye, develop better self control and start feeling happy again!
Common excuses used by people who don’t exercise regularly:
“I just don`t see where I would fit it in. The only time I could fit exercise in is on the weekend and that would take away from family time.”
“This is my busy time of year at work.”
“I`m not a morning person.”
“My husband really wants to see me during the evenings.”
“I`m too tired when I get home from work.”
Excuses Hold You Back From Your Dreams
You can always find time for exercise if you want it badly enough. People make time for their highest priorities. People pursue activities that result in great amounts of pleasure. Conversely, we avoid activities that we feel will make us feel pain, like having to organize a workout in between a morning drop off and the start of our work day. It takes effort. The pain you experience from not being in your optimal physical health has to start outweighing the pleasure you get from making excuses…and procrastinating!
When clients start working with me, they are typically successful in their work lives, because work is the main thing they focus on. They get pleasure from working and it’s painful to think about what they might need to sacrifice if they were to regain their health.
Stepping Out Of Your Comfort Zone Is Worth It
Maybe you need to communicate with your spouse about your health goals and you’re not that comfortable communicating. Maybe you’re a bachelor and there’s no one else to hold you accountable so you’ll need to raise your standards of what’s acceptable. Maybe you’ll need to ditch the feeling of guilt and start making decisions that make you happy instead of wasting so much of your energy worrying about what others might think about how you spend your time. This people pleasing trap can cause anxiety and even depression if you let yourself get stuck there.
My suggestion for you is to start linking massive amounts of pleasure to new exercise habits and massive amounts of pain to your old behaviour. This internal pain will motivate you to make changes.
In his book, Awaken The Giant Within, Anthony Robbins writes about how to tip the pain and pleasure scales to create lasting habits. I highly suggest you read the book!
Questions that motivate – Increase the Pain:
If I don`t start, how will I feel emotionally? What type of negative thoughts might I start thinking? How might I feel about my body? What impact does lack of physical health have on my spiritual health?
What will it cost my family and colleagues/clients pay if I don’t make a change?
Questions that motivate – Increase the Pleasure:
How will I feel about my body and myself when I exercise?
How will regular exercise benefit me as a parent, spouse and work colleague?
What else will I be able to accomplish once I start changing in this area?
How will my changing benefit my family and colleagues?
Realistic Expectations Help You Stay Focused On Your Goal
To create long term habits you need to set expectations for yourself that are realistic. If you set your personal expectations too high you’ll be setting yourself up for disappointment and frustration.
Realistic expectations make you feel good about your accomplishments and help you stay on track instead of giving up. Creating milestones to aim for on the path to your bigger goals will help you focus on your progress, not perfection. Here are some examples of milestones.
*Being flexible enough to run around with your kids without feeling like you’ve pulled a muscle the next day.
*The moment you start noticing that you’re breathing easy instead of feeling like you could die when you go for a run.
*Being able to swim x number of lengths at the pool
Get the point? Milestones help you take note of your progress. And take note, self acknowledgement (even if it makes you feel squirmy) is a crucial element in creating new habits and refueling your motiviation to stick with it. Even when your emotional side is telling you you’re no where near your goal, your job is to focus on how far you’ve come.
Celebrate Each Step You Take
It’s so important that you recognize your progress in order to keep your motivation high. Sometimes you’re not going to feel like exercising. Sometimes you’ll stay up late or have family visiting. Keep yourself on track by celebrating how far you’ve come. Also, don’t forget to create a back up plan if the unexpected throws you off track.
Your back up plan:
If ______________ happens, I will ___________.
Get crystal clear on WHY you want to get more physically fit. Reminding yourself regularly of your why will motivate you for the long haul. For many people, the good pressure of a workout partner or future race date is helpful in keeping motivation high!
Daily Action Step
Don’t try to change everything about your physical fitness at once. To avoid feeling overwhelmed and choose one area of your fitness you want to improve on. What will your goal be? Go back to Day 1 and look at how you broke down your ultimate 30 Day Goal into smaller goals. Do this today with your fitness goal.
Amy Englemark teaches strategies to Boost Health, Wealth and Free Time to Entrepreneurs, Community and Business Leaders. Get Amy’s 3 Step System to Boost your Time and Productivity at: www.amyenglemark.com . For Proven Tools to zap stress, free up your time and boost your income, Like Amy Englemark Coaching on Facebook and Follow her on LinkedIn at: Amy Englemark.