Stop getting in your own way. All of you, including myself will have got in your own way at some point in the journey to achieving your goals, any goals in your life, you will have gotten in your own way. Very often it is ourselves that are preventing ourselves from achieving our goals. It’s a hard pill to swallow because often the excuses are I haven’t got time, I am working too many hours, the kids need running around, I can’t afford that as I have to pay for this. It is always classic rebuke; we are putting the excuses on someone else so that we feel better about it. We never say I just didn’t bother, or I just didn’t want to get out of bed this morning, you are never that honest with yourself, that is what you need to do to be able to change those habits, you need to say yes actually, it wasn’t because I didn’t have time, it wasn’t that I had to run the kids round, I just didn’t bother. As soon as you realise that truth you can start to change it.
Mixed message also, that is what we are sometimes giving out. If you haven’t achieved your goals and you have been trying for a long time to achieve your goals the chances are you have been sending out mixed messages to the universe as I like to say about actually wanting to achieve your goals. So you might have been saying things like I want to lose weight but actually I deserve this cake because I have worked hard for that. I deserve that. I want to get fit but I don’t have time to exercise. It’s like saying yes gimme, gimme I want to get fit or I want to achieve this goal but no, no, no I don’t want it, I haven’t got time today sorry. I want to lose weight, I want to lose weight, but no, no, no – I love cake. You are just sending out mixed messages all the time and it is not going to help in any way. It is confusing more than anything and can get quite overwhelming at times. So to stop yourself getting in your own way we need our thoughts, which is basically our goals, what we want to achieve and what we are thinking on a daily basis about achieving those goals, our new beliefs need to be aligned with our thoughts and then we want our actions and what we do on a daily basis to be aligned as well. When all three of those are aligned at the same time and they are all headed and pointing in the right direction we will achieve our health, fitness and weight loss goals because our actions are what are going to help you achieve them but we need our thoughts and our beliefs to be aligned with them first as well. They all need to be together.
We have another activity now. So to stop you getting in your own way I am going to read out 13 questions and it’s not just me being nosey when I read these questions, there is a genuine reason why I am asking them. In the table you have at the bottom, there are only 10 rows and there are 13 questions so use the bit at the bottom. Just answer the questions as best you can, they are all questions you should know the answer to as they are about you. I am not going to expect you to feedback the answers, they are just for you to write down.
- What time did you go to bed last night?
- What time did you get up this morning?
- What did you eat for dinner last night?
- What did you eat for breakfast this morning?
- How much exercise did you do last week roughly?
- Have you exercised today (yes or no)? Also put if you are going to exercise tonight.
- When was the last time you went for a walk (a purposeful walk, so you went out for a walk as long as you chose to watch rather than shopping or you had to walk somewhere where you would have walked anyway)?
- When did you last treat yourself with food or drink (meaning when did you last reward yourself because you worked hard/deserved a treat)?
- When did you last cancel an exercise session?
- When was the last time you complimented yourself (either internally in your head or verbalised it)?
- When was the last time you put yourself first (a conscious decision to do this, so you chose to do the thing for yourself even if someone else wanted you to do something)? For example in my sessions when someone wants a piece of equipment but they let someone else have it saying, oh no you go for it and I think ‘just do it’ it’s your session and if you got there first you get it. I play by those rules. I want it I get it. Exactly as you should do it. If that means there is a riot in here I will buy more equipment. We can swap it around later. None of this I will just sit it out when you go first. Put yourself first. It doesn’t mean being selfish, it just means prioritising you.
- When was the last time before today that you thought about your goals?
- When was the last time you invested in achieving your goals (this can be time or money but when did you make a significant investment to achieving your goals)? Committing to signing up here for membership, cancelling a dinner as you were going to do a fitness session. It could even be if you got up early this morning at the expense of a little bit of sleep you invested that time in achieving your goals, and I am not saying sleep won’t help you achieve your goals because it will, if you are not getting enough that is detrimental. But if you are having 6-8 hours already and then you have 30 mins less sleep to achieve your goals then that will help you.
Ok so we have those 13 answers down hopefully. We are just going to do one final part. On that grid that you have in front of you on the right hand column it says helpful or unhelpful. I think you will know from the tone of when I ask the questions what the better answers will be, not right or wrong but better. Have a look and put a tick or a cross in the column on the right as to whether you think it is tick meaning helpful, or cross meaning unhelpful, have a look at whether you think they would help you in achieving your goals. If you have more ticks than crosses you are doing alright, you just need to work on the crosses. If you have more crosses than ticks then we work on those and pretty soon as that why you wont’ be achieving your goals. You are doing more things that are not helpful then you won’t be achieving your goals any time soon.
So taking the first step, you don’t need to know the how, how you are going to achieve your goals before you start to achieve them. Some people get worried that before you even start you are thinking about what if I don’t have time, or what if I can’t afford it in a months time, or what about if I lose weight and then I put it back on again, what if things get busy at work and I won’t have time or Christmas is coming and I always go away at Christmas and what if I do that. I won’t even start, I will do it in January as I know I can do it then. Anyone done that before? Those reasons are not even in the foreseeable future, they are later down the line and before you know it you could have achieved your goals before they started to impact on it but you haven’t even given it a chance. You have self-sabotaged; you have stopped yourself before you have even started. It is about not even knowing the how as well, even the how like what about if I come to sessions and I can’t do lunges or squats or things and what if she gets me doing those ab crunches and I hate doing them so I am not going, there is no point in me going as I don’t want to do that. It’s over thinking too much. You just have to think about the first step which is what I want you to commit to today.
On the bottom of that activity sheet there is one more thing for you to do. Everyone in this room I want you to commit to taking one step in the right direction to achieving your goals in the next 24 hours, so between now and tomorrow lunchtime something you are going to do between now and then that is going to help you achieve your goals. Try and think outside the box, if you are already doing fitness sessions that is a given and you are already coming in between now and tomorrow that is already done, think about something else that you are going to do to push yourself. It could be from the list of things you have above there. E.g. if you went to bed at 1am this morning and you know you are not getting enough sleep and you are only getting 5 hours sleep that is not very helpful for you, so your commitment would be that you are going to go to bed before midnight tonight. I am not asking you to go at 9pm or anything that extreme but you are going to make a commitment to improving to that. So something you are going to do within the next 24 hours to help you achieve your goals.
We talked about step 1, setting clear goals. Step 2 was to believe and expect that you will achieve those goals, step 3 was to stop getting in your own way and step 4 was to take the first step and then keep taking the next step so one step at a time all the time. As a result you will be a happier, healthier and more confident version of you. So thank you very much for coming along today, I hope that has helped. If anyone would like to ask me any questions about any of the things we have talked about today I am more than happy to help. So keep hold of those sheets and finish them off at home if you need to. Thank you very much.