I Want to Receive Some Cool Stuff Now!
The first huge step in having a mental dialogue that gets you fit and keeps you fit forever is realizing, that beautiful mind of yours is where all fitness begins and ends!
Your mental fitness is 99% of your physical fitness – if you have your mental conditioning aligned with where you want your physical conditioning to be you’ll hit your target almost every time.
After 20 years of watching, coaching, hand holding, and advising 1000’s of people from all fitness levels to achieve their various fitness target I’ve come up with an analogy that runs deep. That analogy is “Becoming or staying fit is like bowling” (bowling of all things lol).
You are the ball and the level of fitness you want is how many pins you’re going to knock down. To hit strikes (knock down all pins) or to maintain the most peak fitness is much harder than to just hit a few pins and be healthy.
To continually bowl over 200 (300 possible points in bowling) you’ve got to develop a lot of knowledge, skills, and practice relentlessly.
But the great part is to go out and bowl a good game that’s likely to put you in first or second for most Friday night friend circles only takes a little insider knowledge and a small amount of practice. The same is true for you becoming and staying fit.
The leading health and fitness researchers all agree that to go from a low score in your health and fitness to a high score takes little more than your favorite daily physical activity, eating fruits and vegetables, lean proteins, and staying well hydrated.
The World Health Organization shows that in the U.S. 70% of people are either overweight or obese and 86% of people don’t get enough minimal physical activity to improve health.
The reason for that is when trying to knock a few health benefit pins down or even if you’re going for an elite fitness strike, there is that thing on each side of the lane which can keep you from hitting any pins at all - the gutter.
That gutter is the mental dialogue that keeps you from following through on any plan at all to hit pins.
You could have the best nutrition and fitness plan in the world. You could go out and hire the most expensive trainer paying someone like me in the range of $300 per session.
You’d have a perfectly crafted exercise and nutrition plan for your unique body to get the fitness results of bowling a near 300 game.
Although, unfortunately you could get very little to no results at all if you don’t have the right mental dialogue to stay on your plan and not end up as a gutter ball.
How you attach to these thoughts with emotions determines how you feel which is like the energy force field around your thoughts and that energy force field determines your alignment for knocking down your intended pins such as exercising or eating healthy.
Your external life is a reflection of your internal life. Said differently, your outside reality is a reflection of your mental dialogue.
Although, with an inventory of over 2,500 thoughts per hour how could you possibly keep track of your mental dialogue let alone change it to align with your greatest intentions such as exercising and eating healthier?
You can do this by taking a “mental dialogue inventory” of any life improving intention you want your actions to align with.
For example let’s dive into your mental dialogue around physical exercise and see what we come up with. You’ve heard it said that pain will “move you away from” something and pleasure will “move you towards”.
Your mental dialogue inventory for “moving towards” an action has both pain or negative emotion that you feel can be avoided by following through with the action and pleasurable positive emotion gain by taking the action.
In “moving away from” an action you have pain or negative emotion of taking the action and pleasurable or positive emotion gain by not taking the action.
Instead of just having pain we move away from and pleasure we move toward there is actually the pain and pleasure force fields on both sides of the “do I take an action” decision making tree.
The tangled web of emotions is why it’s so easy to end up in the gutter when aiming for improved fitness.
To make this somewhat complicated tangled web of emotions much easier to understand and greatly beneficial to your own fitness journey I’ve included a Mental Dialogue Inventory sheet for you below (or you can recreate your own by copying the format onto any full size sheet of paper).
Remember these are your emotions, your feeling for each item below. Don’t overthink and do let yourself explore your creative mind on all aspects of how you feel about exercise.
What comes up does not need to make sense as often emotions are irrational but still this is the energy force field in action.
Pay special attention to thoughts or feelings that come up which have often come up in the past – these are likely to carry greater energy and more impact to your alignment.
Don’t jump ahead. Go through each item 1 - 5 focusing on one item at a time.
Don’t jump ahead. Go through each item 1 - 5 focusing on one item at a time.
Under “Pain of Not Exercising”: Think about exercising and how you feel about NOT following through with this action. Are there any negative feelings you have when thinking about not following through on or skipping exercise? Write all of these thoughts under “Pain of Not Exercising”.
Under “Pleasure of Exercising”: Think about exercising and how you feel about the action of exercise. Are there any positive feelings that come to your mind when thinking about exercising? Write all of these thoughts under “Pleasure of Exercising”.
Under “Pain of Exercising”: Think about exercising and how you feel about the action of exercise. Are there any negative feelings that come to your mind when thinking about exercising? Write all of these thoughts under “Pain of Exercising”.
Under “Pleasure of Not Exercising”: Think about exercising and how you feel about NOT following through on or skipping exercise.
Are there any positive feelings that come to your mind when thinking about not following through on exercise? Write all of these thoughts under “Pleasure of Not Exercising”.
Once you are fully completed with creating your mental dialogue inventory: Under the green bar write “Moving Towards” and under the red bar write “Moving Away From”.
Congratulations, you’ve just completed a first HUGE step of the 99% of becoming and staying fit!
In Part 2 you will learn How strong are your emotions and what is the length of your list on the “Moving Towards” side versus the “Moving Away From” side.
If you could just flip a switch and have the best physique would you choose to have it? If all you had to do is flip a switch and you could have the best physique, why not, Right?
Although, with your mental fitness as is also true with your physical fitness - you’re never really done!
The first huge step in having a mental dialogue that gets you fit and keeps you fit forever is realizing, that beautiful mind of yours is where all fitness begins and ends!
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