5 Things Keeping You from Exercising, Eating Healthy, and Losing Weight!

Hey All!

I am psyched that it is the weekend, and I wanted to post a quick blog about 5 reasons you are not exercising, eating healthy, or losing weight. Please be prepared because each of these reasons is very much different from the other. Correct these five things in your life, and your exercise “goal” will shortly become a reality!

Barrier #1: Your Mind!

Yes, you guessed it my friends: The mind is the number one reason that you do not exercise. Psychology tells us that 96-98% of all of our human behavior stems from the sub-conscious mind. Therefore, if your mind is not rooted in a state that will help you, it will almost always sabotage your efforts!

The good news is that the mind can be changed. Never fall for the line of bull-crap, “I am who I am and I cannot change.” Rest assured that if you are not mentally prepared to change your lifestyle, it WILL NOT happen no matter how hard you try because “trying” and “will-power” are “conscious functions” rather than sub-conscious functions, giving you a whopping 2-4% chance of succeeding--not the odds you are looking for!

Your best bet is to find a good way to change the way that you think through changing your sub-conscious mind FIRST! This is an integral part of the course in the seminars that I teach.

Barrier #2: Your Mind!

Nope, you are not reading a typo! I get BS excuses from clients all the time such as, “I do not have time to exercise,” or “I am too stressed to exercise.” The list could go on and on, but I do not want to bore you, and I do not want to raise my own blood pressure beyond livable levels.

The dirty little secret is that excuses are nothing more than “an option out of the life that we desire to live.” Excuse-making is nothing more than a false reality that we create to make ourselves feel better and to gain the sympathy of others, all the while we are really screwing ourselves over with BS that is damaging to our character.

The solution? Without going into much detail, start with recognizing excuses for what they are: Bull Crap! Nothing more and nothing less! Once you are aware of the nature of excuses, you can take the proper mental action to rectify these faulty and damning thinking patterns.

Barrier #3: Your Mind!

Griff you are off your rocker. You wrote the same reason you did for the first 3 very different reasons! YEP! I hope you are getting the point by now!  BTW, I hope it does not sound like I am talking down to you…quite the opposite. I get very passionate about this topic because I have struggled with it in my own life. I have experienced both the bitter consequences of negative thinking as well as the triumphant victories of mental mastery.

You see, we create little things called, “memes,” as Dr. Wayne W. Dyer in his book, Excuses Begone so elegantly states. A meme is a thought, belief, or attitude that subtly or aggressively influences our behavior on a day-to-day basis.

Here are some examples that might resonate with you: “I cannot exercise because I have arthritis and my joints hurt,” or “I cannot workout because I am too busy at this stage of my life,” or “I am just so far gone that I cannot even begin to better my life . . . I am screwed,” or, “I am limited very badly by my genetics . . . I have too many strikes against me to reach my fitness goals.”

These are just a few examples, but they illustrate what a “meme” is. I guarantee that most of you are saying to yourselves, “yeah, I get it Griff, but these are very real obstacles in my life.” You may be right that they are obstacles, but they are not unbreakable.

Most of these “mental habits” and mental “beliefs” are just that: beliefs, NOT reality. Again this is where awareness comes in. The moment you become aware of your false belief systems is the moment that you can start to replace and discard them with new memes that are productive instead.

Barrier #4: Your Mind!

“Alright already Griff . . . I freaking get the point.” Awesome . . . That’s why I love ya! The masterpiece Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz teaches us the following truth about self-esteem and its consequence to our actions: “The most important psychological discovery of the century is the discovery of the “self-image.”* Whether we realize it or not, each of us carries about with us a mental blueprint or picture of ourselves. Once an idea or a belief about ourselves goes into this picture, it becomes “true” as far as we personally are concerned. We do not question its validity, but proceed to act upon it just as if it were true. This self image becomes a golden key to living a better life because of two important discoveries:

1- ) All your actions, feelings, behavior--even our abilities--are always consistent with this self-image.

2- ) Our self image can be changed.

*pg 2-3

The beauty of this statement is that we CAN CHANGE our self esteem. So if you think you are “fat and ugly,” the good news is that proper mental conditioning can change your self-esteem, and consequently, your actions will change to correspond to your newfound self-esteem.

Barrier #5: Your Mind!

Think of all the times that you have failed to reach a health or fitness goal, and I personally guarantee you that they started with NEGATIVE SELF-TALK! I defy anybody to challenge me on this! Bring it! If you are honest with yourself, you will find that all of your failures of the past started and ended with negative thinking and in particular negative self-talk: “I can’t do this. I have tried a thousand times and failed so why should I expect to win the battle now. I suck.” This and a thousand other similar self-talk statements are the genesis and end-point of mental downward spirals.

The solution? Be aware of your internal dialogue from day to day. What are you saying to yourself and about yourself? Is it positive? Is it negative? Be honest with yourself when answering this question.

Well there you have it my friends. I wanted to offer this post to you so that you can start today to change your mental habits. In reality, the only reason you are fat, out of shape, or are not exercising is because you are mentally weak, not physically weak. Please take this in context. I am not trying to slam you or demean you, but rather I am trying to show you the true reason for your lack of success. Success is good my friends, so start today to change your MIND!

Life is good,

Griff