A mental game

You guessed it, it’s mostly psychological, however, it’s the way you set your mind up that we are going to challenge here. I am not going to tell you the foods to cut down on, as you will know which ones your body should cut down on.

Listening to your body

My body has told me that I should cut down on biscuits, especially cookies, as I feel bloated and tired after eating them. My body has also told me to stop eating as much pasta as I feel really tired and heavy after eating it. Pasta is my staple diet so it was a tough one to think about cutting right down on pasta. Chips (French fries) are also another favourite food of mine. My body feels okay after eating chips but I know eating too much will cause weight gain.

Learning to listen to your body when you are eating is essential to setting your mind up for cutting down on the foods you love.

Will power vs habit forming

This guide is not a diet plan and it is not about cutting out foods you like. Although the title suggests hating the foods you love, it’s about hating eating too much of the foods you love.

You might have tried cutting down in the past and lost some weight only to put it back on again a few months later and going back to eating too much. You might have thought you don’t have the will power to stop eating as much of the foods you love. Let me tell you just now, it’s nothing to do with will power; it’s about forming a new habit and reprogramming your mind to listen to your body.

Your mind

Let me ask you this question:

When you look at your body in the mirror what do you think?

Do you say to yourself you’d like to lose more weight? You’d like to get rid of your beer belly? You’d like to get rid of that big bum of yours?

Guess what! You’re focusing on the very thing you want to get rid of. Yep, the good old law of attraction is at work here. You get what you focus on. If you focus on your big bum, your beer belly, your 3 chins your unconscious mind sets you up to keep them; you always get you focus most upon. Now, if you focus on your slim, fit and trim body you mind will work toward ways of getting you there.

You might think this is absolute poppycock (I never thought I would use that word in my writing!), believe me it’s true. I know from personal experience.

The 4 easy steps to losing weight

This is the easy part of it and one you will enjoy.

Step 1 – Write down your goal

Write down what you want from your body.

Be as specific as possible and write it in the present tense. Some examples:

I am now 9 stone (126 pounds)
I now fit into all my size 34 trousers

Step 2 – Visualisation

Every day, imagine yourself as your target size. Imagine yourself in different situations wearing the clothes you want, imagine everyone commenting on how slim you look, imagine yourself weighing yourself and seeing your target weight, imagine your friends asking how you did it. I always use visualisation techniques when I am doing something that does not require me to think for example standing in a shop queue, waiting for traffic lights to change, waiting in a traffic jam, waiting at the doctors or a hospital. Anything that requires you to wait on somebody else or something else use visualisation to imagine yourself at your target size. It has been scientifically shown that visualisation can greatly enhance your efforts when trying to lose weight.

Step 3 – Listen to your body

The problem with diets is that they advise you to stop eating the foods you love. Don’t stop eating the foods you love just eat less. If you follow the first two steps above every single day, your mind will automatically tell you not reach for the cookies, in fact after a few months you will not even feel like reaching for the cookies.

If you start listening to your body, by this I mean recognise which foods make you feel tired, recognise when you are full, recognise which foods make you feel more energetic. Recognise the after effects of food as some foods are sneaky for example, a McDonalds makes me say ‘ah! That was great’ and I feel I have filled up and have some energy but about 15 minutes later I get sluggish. I have recognised this and now have a McDonalds once every few months instead of once per week. I still like the taste but my body doesn’t crave it as much as it used to.

Step 4 – No need for the gym

You don’t need to go to the gym to help you lose weight you just need to do more exercise.

Exercise increases your metabolism, which in turn increases the speed at which you burn the calories to keep your body going. If you don’t do any form of exercise, your metabolic rate will decrease and it will be much harder to get yourself slim. You might have been told that diet alone can help, this is not true, as dieting without exercise will make you fatter, yes you read that correctly. When you diet without exercising your metabolic rate slows down as your body is trying to preserve what it has. To do this it has to work on the fat on your body but it will burn it at a much slower rate than normal which will make you feel tired and will not help you lose weight. The key to being slimmer is to increase your metabolic rate.

Here are five ways to increase your metabolic rate without going to the gym:

Walk for 15 minutes every morning
Skip for 5 minutes
Jump up and down for 5 minutes
Walk up and down your stairs for 10 minutes
Jog for 15 minutes every morning

This is not about burning more calories than you eat. This is about speeding up your metabolic rate, which in turn will help burn the fat.

Conclusion

It’s easy to lose weight; it’s just that you’ve been told in the past that it wasn’t easy. Half an hour per day to use visualisation techniques, listening to your body, and doing more non-gym exercise is all it takes to lose weight.

Going to the gym is great and is a great habit to form but you don’t have to go to the gym to exercise and if you do go it’s not about pain it’s about doing something physical to increase your metabolic rate.

Walking into the wind

In everybody’s lives, we all build up strength by resisting something. Think about it for a moment. If you want to build up your body strength, you fight against weights to make your muscles bigger and stronger. If you want to be aerobically fit, you fight against machines to make your lungs stronger. If you want to become smarter you fight yourself to study and study some more.

Anything we want more of we have to build up resistance to it.

It’s just like out body fighting a cold it has to build up its immune system response to fight the cold.

Making use of this

When I suggested to my colleague that she should involve herself more in confrontational situations, I meant just that. If she did not walk away from these situations she would pretty soon become comfortable in them and then learn to stand up for herself more. You can also do this with various aspects of your life.

To be more courageous put yourself in more courageous situations.

To be able to stand up for yourself more put yourself in situations where you will have to stand up for yourself more. This way you build up a resistance to the stress you may feel in these situations.

To be a better speaker, put yourself in situations where you will have to speak more.

Your life

This is your life, if you don’t like something about it change it, don’t talk about it, don’t bitch about it, don’t think about it just change it.

Nurturing bad relationships

Occasionally we come across people we just do not like. This is mostly down to personality clashes, we dislike something about the person or the person dislikes something about us. Other reasons include jealousy, intimidation, and intelligence.

When it comes down to it most people wish they had something that other people have. Let that sink in for a bit: Most people wish they had something that other people have. This could be money, intelligence, confidence, looks, power, charisma, physique; a whole plethora of ideals.

I know my biggest wish is for more intelligence and wit. I envy people who are very intelligent and quick-witted. I am by no means think and dull witted but people like Stephen Fry, Robin Williams, Billy Connolly, Sandi Toksvig, Judi Dench, Victoria wood and Sharon Aitchison (my Wife) all have my admiration and respect for their intelligence and quick wittedness. I would like to be more like them, and I recognise the fact that I envy them.

However, many relationships fall down when people don’t recognise what they want from the other person. Like the person who bitches about someone all the time is usually jealous in some way and wish they had something the other person has.

The workplace

We are going to meet many people in our lives who we think are ‘dicks’, for want of a better word. How often have you spoken to someone or someone has spoken to you and you have thought ‘he’s a dick’ simple as that, your perception of him or her is that they are a dick. You don’t have to speak with them again, hopefully, so you avoid them. It works both ways, there will be people thinking you are a ‘dick’ and will be steering clear of you in the future, that’s life you can’t have everybody liking you and similarly you can’t like everybody no matter how nice you are.

We meet many people through our place of work, there are many people we just do not have time for, and they do not have time for us, fair enough. What about when we know, we have to work with someone on a project and we know we don’t like him or her? This can be tricky and can jeopardise the project if we are not mature enough to handle our feelings toward the other person. Alternatively, what about if we have to sit next to them everyday in the office, now everyday is a long time so wouldn’t it be better if we found something to like about the person?

The trick to liking someone is to like them!

If you do find yourself working alongside or having to spend time with someone you don’t like here are a few things you can do to change your relationship with them.

• What do you like about them?

Mentally note 5 things you like about the person. There is always, always, always something you like about someone else (we are talking about everyday people here not criminals, murderers and the like). Even if you like their dress sense, it is a start. So mentally note five things you like.

You are already on your way to a better relationship.

• Speak to them

Just make a point of saying good morning and good night, even if they don’t reciprocate. You can also comment on something you like about them. You are not sucking up here, you may be spending more time with this person that you do with your partner so try to make it pleasant.

• Recognise what their strength is

Most people have a strength and it is quite apparent from the word go. Try to find out what strength the person you dislike has. Look deeper and ask yourself if you dislike them because of this strength. Look at them a little deeper and try to find out more strengths and vulnerabilities.

• Have a mental conversation with them

This is one of the most powerful ways to getting along with other people you can use.

Before you go to sleep at night picture yourself and the other person having a conversation. Picture yourself speaking to them in a pleasant manner and them reciprocating. Picture yourself laughing with them and apologising for the way you treated them and them apologising to you for the way they treated you.

This exercise will take all of 5 minutes and if done 2 -3 times a week it can greatly enhance any relationship.

Conclusion

We all have to put up with people we don’t like but if we have to see them everyday and work with them make the effort to nurture your relationship. This will greatly enhance your work life and free your mind from unnecessary internal arguments.

Making the gym more interesting

weight are excellent motivators for going to the gym
but sometimes it can be very boring. My workout in the mornings are;
treadmill for 12 minutes, abs 3 reps, biceps 3 reps, bench presses 3 reps,
legs 3 reps, bike 10 minutes and rowing machine 1000 meters. I started
looking at my workout when it became a little stale and frankly boring, so
this is what I have come up with to make the gym a little more interesting:

These are only a few suggestions for making the gym
more interesting. Why
not share your gym tips and we can all be gym freaks in no time.

Rewrite your past to create your future

Ever thought your past dictates the state of your life just now? Why not rewrite
your past to create your future. There are theories galore stating that
what has happened in your past can have a huge impact on the way you are living
your life just now. This has become part of the human psyche and it is
an embedded belief in a lot of people. Well why not relax this belief
and while we’re at it let’s change the past.

When you really break it down your past is a collection of memories you hold
in your head.

Read that statement again ‘your
past is a collection of memories you hold in your head’. That might sound ridiculous
but it’s true. What might sound even more ridiculous is that
some theories state that you cannot prove your past existed, but we won’t
go there just now that’s for another post.

Last week someone asked me what I had for dinner the previous night (who knows
why he asked me, I didn’t even question that at the time), anyway I thought
back to the previous night. In my mind I pictured myself and my family
sitting down and eating together at the table, I pictured us talking about
school, work and the usual chit chat. I then remembered tucking into
pasta bolognaise. So I replied to the person asking that I’d had pasta
bolognaise. I went about my business as usual and then remembered I had
been working late the previous night, and I hadn’t sat down with my whole
family it was just my wife I had sat down to dinner with, the kids had already
had their dinner. And I didn’t have pasta bolognaise, I’d
had rice and chicken. So what! You might say, but I’d effectively
re-written a part of my past, albeit momentarily, and we do this everyday without
realising it.

Our memories are not always accurate; in fact I’d say they are inaccurate
most of the time. We are changing everyday, our mood changes, our perception
of life changes from day to day, our interactions with people change from day
to day, our belief system changes all the time, our knowledge and expectations
change.

The psychologist Frederick Bartlett called this ‘Schemata’. ‘According
to Bartlett, memories are organized within the historical and cultural frameworks
of the individual, and the process of remembering involves the retrieval of
information which has been unknowingly altered in order that it is compatible
with pre-existing knowledge.’ Neurophilosophy.wordpress.com

I remember in my early twenties life was totally down and miserable, I felt
sorry for myself, I thought people didn’t like me, I thought the world
was against me. Now, when I was feeling like that I was still collecting
memories along the way, bleak memories, depressive memories when in actual
fact it was my perception of the world at the time but it wasn’t necessarily
a true representation of life. However, I have collected the memories
from that part of my life and carried it on into the future. I have since
gone back and revisited those days and managed to change the overall feeling
of the time. When I have gone back it is not specific memories, rather
it is a cloud of feeling that I am changing. However it works with specific
memories as well.

Don’t deny your past

What I am advocating is changing the feeling of your past, not deny the events
that happened. By changing the feelings of the past you will be altering
your current and future life. Use this as another tool to get yourself
to feel positive about your world. If you don’t feel positive about
your world just now and haven’t done for a long time it might take a
long time to change that view. Why not make the changes now instead of
waiting on the changes to come.

Quick exercise

This is a simplified way of changing a memory, but it can
be that easy sometimes. Over
time if you do this long enough and practice it you will start to feel a shift,
mentally and possibly physically, depending on how much you have been working
on your memories.

Another tool for life changes?

I believe this method could be extremely useful in other areas of our lives
such as during ill health. I believe that our memories and thoughts affect
the cells in the body. If we are ill at any stage in our lives would
it be possible to change the illness by remembering a time when we were well
and projecting it into the future?

Your roles in life

How many roles do you have in life? I have at least 8 roles which I have to
juggle and separate, when I say separate I mean mentally separate each role. At
the moment I am a Father, a husband, a support worker, a coach, a counsellor,
a website creator, a blogger, and consultant.

I didn’t really take notice of the different roles until a few weeks
ago.

I usually get up at around 5.30ish and work on the blog or a website. I
usually wake my kids up at around 7am. So, 7am comes, I walk upstairs
wake them and come back downstairs to cram a few minutes more work. I
then shout at the kids for not being ready, or not brushing their teeth after
me telling them for the 5th time. I then cram another few minutes in. At
around 7.30am I wake my wife up for work or university and then cram another
few minutes into work. Then when I know the kids are ready and had breakfast
and their lunches have been made I then have a cold shower and get ready for
work. I have a cup of tea with my wife and then get the boys ready for
going out to school and off we trot at about 8.15am.

So, from 7am until about 8am I have slipped between roles of blogger, website
creator, father, husband, and getting ready for support worker; 5 roles in
all. What happens is that I get grumpy as hell as sometimes, mentally,
I am not finished one role before I slip into another. So I take it out
on my family, not realising why I am being a bit grumpy.

What is happening is that I am not mentally finishing one job before trying
to go into another job and then not finishing that one before going into another. It’s
like reading 8 pages of a book, you start one page, don’t finish it,
go on to the next page, don’t finish that one and so on and so forth. Nothing
really gets finished. This is mentally frustrating and can cause stress
and anger. I hate starting something and not finishing it, even if I
don’t like the task. I don’t like things being left undone.

Due to the blog and a few website commissions coming in I am much busier than
normal the past few weeks. It was my wife who pointed out I was being
a bit grumpy, which wasn’t like me. We spoke about it and nailed
it down to the mornings and nailed it down to not being able to concentrate
on one role at a time.

A tip for switching between roles

This may seem extremely simple but the trick to switching
between roles successfully is two fold:

• Recognise what roles you play in life and note down when you play them
• Set times for changing between the various roles. This has to be
  a conscious thing. For example if you work in the morning set a time
  for finishing that work and don’t go back to it. I now finish
  my blogging and website stuff at 7am and am a father and husband until
  8.30am; then I am a support worker until 4.45pm then I am a father and
  husband until about 7pm and then I am a blogger and website creator until
  about 10pm. Obviously this changes at the weekend and on holidays, as my
  father and husband roles greatly increase in time.

This has helped me tremendously over the last few weeks, I am a lot calmer,
less stressed, and I am getting more things done in life and am procrastinating
less.

What I also found useful was to create a pie chart of what roles I play and
the percentage I play them. The pie chart shows a typical 120 hour waking
week for me. It was interesting to see how much time I spend in different
roles. Doing the pie chart a few weeks ago made me realise I needed to
spend more time with my family so I rearranged a few hours to make more time
for my family. I would like to get rid of the 25% I spend working as
a support worker for the homeless, but money dictates. However I like
my job but spreading the 25% around some of the other roles would be great.

What roles do you have in life?

Why not create a pie chart like the one above or simply note down the percentages
of each different role. I think you will be surprised at the number
of hours spent in each role; it may let you look at life in a new way. If
you do work out the percentages why not post them and I will create an overall
pie chart for everyone.

Being a mind-droid.

Every now and again I have to pull my ego back in line; in fact it happens
quite a lot. It’s difficult trying to get the balance between trying
to make money for the future and trying to be spiritual. Making money
often involves the ego looking for attention. At every corner the ego stands
and tries to attract attention to itself. Recently I have been doing
this trying to attract visitors to this blog. It might take some time
to realise the ego is on another power trip, but if you realise it you’re
doing well, if you don’t realise it you will be like all the others in
life living life as a mind-droid. My life as a blogger often sees me
becoming a mind-droid until I notice it. I stop searching for the links,
I stop looking at my Google Adsense earnings, I stop writing articles to attract
links and write from the heart. When we are in jobs where we need to
attract attention it is easy to fall into the ego trap.

The most spiritual person could be the road sweeper who is happily minding
their business sweeping the street. Whistling a little tune to themselves
and happy at work. I used to think road sweeping would be a degrading
job. Now that my job involves a lot of decision making and a little pressure,
road sweeping looks like a good choice. Imagine the thinking time that
can be done when you’re sweeping the roads, what other job can offer
you that with a relatively good pay.

It’s a good idea to remind yourself of your spirituality every day. Nothing
fancy needs to be done. A simple visualising of you transcending your
body and reaching out to the collective force would be enough. Being
thankful is also a good spiritual exercise. Giving my wife or kids an
extra hug can lift my spirits enormously.

Mind-droiding is an easy trap to fall into, but it is also easy to remedy
when you catch it. Do something that will lift your spirit and you will
temporarily be a free mind-droid, do it often and you will be walking in a
different direction to your mind-droid friends.

Finding happiness by making yourself unhappy

Many of us, or most of us, are trying to find happiness outside of ourselves. Happiness
is an inner game and should be pursued on the inside. If we continue
to look on the outside we are going to be disappointed as we always look for
more and ultimately happiness becomes the end of the rainbow, something we
can never reach.

How we define happiness is the key to our success of finding it inside of
ourselves. For example the first few months of blogging I wanted to make
a million pounds and follow people like Steve
Pavlina, Darren Rowse, Debbie
Weil, Robert Scoble and Seth
Godin but I quickly learned I was not going to
make that. I did lose heart but I kept on writing and I wondered why
I did keep writing. The answer was of course because I loved the writing
and the possibility that some people might find my articles useful. From
then on I wrote because I loved writing, I wrote because it might help other
people, not because it was all about the money. What happened then was
that the money started coming in and more ideas came my way and now that I
concentrate on the writing the money side takes care of itself and I intend
it to keep on taking care of itself until I can finally do what I love doing
full time; either writing for the blog or giving seminars.

We have to take time to stop and think about our lives every now and again
and re-evaluate what we are doing and whether or not we are happy inside or
chasing the rainbow.

Test your happiness

One of the ways you can test your happiness is by testing your unhappiness,
sound strange.

Okay, here’s how it works. (Warning! this is a very powerful
exercise so be prepared)

Think of something that would make you unhappy; for example losing your house,
or losing your family. Reflect on that for a moment, what would your
feelings be: sad, miserable, lonely, suicidal, and really go for it and try
to imagine the thing that would make you unhappy. When I do this exercise
I imagine losing my family and I really do get to the point of being tearful
(okay I admit it, I do get tearful). Now, come out of the scene you were
in and look at what you have. For example if you pictured losing your
family, look at your family now. How does it make you feel? I always
feel extremely grateful and look at them in a different way as if I have been
given a second chance with them. This feeling lasts a long time before
I slip back into my normal loving self. However, what it does is let
me be thankful and never take them for granted.

So it is with life. We are so busy chasing the rainbow of happiness
we forget what makes us happy now. We have to get that feeling back. So
many of us are working hard to make money, working long hours, nearly killing
ourselves all in the pursuit of happiness for us and our families when in fact
if we loved our families first and loved the job we were doing we would find
that happiness here and now and not in the future.

Be thankful

How many of us have seem something on TV and said ‘It really makes you
appreciate what you’ve got’? I bet most of us have said this however
how long has it taken us to forget this and get on with our lives and forget

what we really have!

For any of our dreams to happen in the future, and they will if we intend
them long enough and work at it, we have to be thankful for what we have in
the here and now.

I am thankful for my wife, my two boys, my dog, my house, my job, my mum,
dad, sisters nieces and nephews and my health and I am thankful too you for
reading this.

What are you thankful for?

I was reading an article written by Gleb Reys Creative Habit Naming and I thought it was a great idea. It got me thinking about how else we could develop habits so that they don’t become a chore for us.

If we anchor a habit to another habit this would increase out chances of developing the new habit. I never really gave it much thought but I have been doing this unconsciously for a number of months.

I have been practicing the law of attraction and part of this involves thinking about my intentions every day and I also think about what I am grateful for every day. When I get up in the morning I go downstairs and turn on the computer. Now my computer being quite old, it takes about 7 minutes to boot and load up all the software etc so I use those 7 minutes to internalise everything I am grateful for in life: My wife, my kids, our health, our love for each other, my job etc and then I go on to visualise my intentions for my life, and I have around 20 at the moment.

I turn my computer on every single morning which is the habit and I now practice my gratitude and intentions which is anchoring the habit to an existing one.

This is a great idea for doing other things we might not necessarily do. For example, I spend about 1-2 hours every day in my car driving to see clients etc. Instead of listening to the radio, I listen to podcasts I have downloaded, books on CD, self help developments books, and my intentions. I also practice speaking in my car gestures and all, it doesn’t matter that I look a bit crazy I don’t know the people who might be thinking this so what does it matter. I am practicing a seminar in my head I am giving for the ‘law of attraction’, it’s a 5 hour seminar, and because I haven’t really done it before I am quite apprehensive so I am practicing it in the car. So I am anchoring a new habit to the existing habit of driving

What is my current situation?

– You have to fully understand and be aware of your current situation A lot of clients I deal with say they don’t have a problem until they admit they have a problem, for example with alcohol – an alcoholic is not an alcoholic until they admit they’re an alcoholic. You have to be fully aware of your situation and admit that it is wrong. Obviously most people know this or they wouldn’t be asking the question ‘how can I change?’.

The next question you have to ask is:

Where do I want to be?

– For you to change anything in your life you have to know where you want to go in life. You wouldn’t jump into the back of a taxi and say to the driver:

You: ‘I want to go somewhere’

Driver: ‘Where to guv?’

You: ‘Don’t know, just take me there’

Driver (on the phone): ‘I think I’ve got a psychiatric patient who needs help here’

It’s the same with life, you have to know where you want to go before you can actually get there.

I was speaking with a client a few weeks ago who said she wanted a new job, as she was really fed up and bored with her current job. I asked her what kind of job she wanted, she looked at me and said ‘the same type of job I’ve got just now!’. Where is the logic in that? Most people are happy to trundle along doing the same boring job for the rest of their lives and maybe the adventurous ones will go to a different company but do the same job. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that as long as you are happy. If you are not happy, decide what you want to do first before making plans to change.

The last question to ask yourself is:

How am I going to get there?

– Simple question, tough to put into practice. However this can be made easier for you.

When you are planning, try not to bog yourself down with all the hows, wheres, why’s and what’s, just do it. If you know you want to change, if you know what you want to change to just start!. Do anything to start you along the path of change.

For example: You want a new career, you know the type of job you want, great. But, you don’t have any experience, what then? Go do a course at college – that’s a first step, go do some voluntary work in the line of work you want to do, send out your CV to companies you’d like to work for, do anything but make the first step.