photo credit: h.koppdelaney
For all of us who made New Year’s resolutions, now is when, sometimes, our initiative and gung ho attitude start to wane just a little bit. Life starts to return to normal after the rush and bustle of the holidays and we begin to feel the stresses of everyday life–all of which leads us to weaken our resolve. So how do we keep our motivation going strong? It’s not easy but it can be done. Here are a few tips on how to keep ourselves on the right path:
It’s all about the mental shift: Whether the goal you want to reach is losing weight, eating a healthier diet, becoming more successful professionally, or taking more time for the people you love– it involves a shift in thinking patterns first and foremost before the physical actions toward change can occur. We humans have a hard time changing and so it is important to create practices that help us be aware of the goals we want to reach and how to achieve them:
Meditation is a great way to create space in the mind so that we are more aware in each moment. You’ll find that the more time you give to doing ‘nothing’ the easier it will be to remember why you have chosen the goals you have and to spend each day choosing to pursue them. Time gets away from us, business overwhelms us and most often, before we know it, we forget to do what we know we need to. Meditation helps us to be here now. It is also a great tool to help take control of the ego and allow the mind to be an ally instead of an enemy. How many times have we talked ourselves out of exercising? How many times have we let fear keep us from realizing our dreams? When we start to become aware of the emotions barring us from getting what want it is easier to overcome those emotions and push forward. We can learn to use the mind to motivate ourselves instead of fighting against negative thoughts and feelings.
Visualization: Most of us are aware that we have both a conscious and unconscious mind. Sometimes, even when our conscious minds are fully engaged on reaching our goals, our unconscious minds are still stuck in the past or holding on to fear. A great example of this is the person who wants to eat healthier but whose unconscious mind is still battling negative self-images and therefore doesn’t believe that the person deserves to be healthy. So the person self-sabotages by gorging on junk foods without quite knowing why. Visualization is a great way to gain access to the unconscious and enlist its powerful help in achieving goals. Athletes have used visualization for years to increase performance. In a well known study, Russian scientists studied four groups of Olympic athletes to assess the efficacy of creative visualization in their training schedules:
- Group 1 = 100% physical training;
- Group 2 – 75% physical training with 25% mental training;
- Group 3 – 50% physical training with 50% mental training;
- Group 4 – 25% physical training with 75% mental training.
Group 4, with 75% of their time devoted to mental training, performed the best.
photo credit: la_cola_de_mi_perro
Creative visualization is a fundamentally successful tool in staying motivated in achieving both physical and mental goals but how to do it?
- Set your goal
- Create a clear idea or picture
- Focus on it often
- Give it positive energy
Continue to work with this process until you achieve your goal, or no longer have the desire to do so. Remember that goals often change before they are realized. If you lose interest it may mean that it’s time for a new look at what you want.
Affirmations
Affirmations are one of the most important elements of creative visualization. An affirmation is a strong, positive statement that something is already so. It is a way of “making firm” that which you are imaging.
The practice of doing affirmations allows us to begin replacing some of our stale, worn out, or negative mind chatter with more positive ideas and concepts. It is a powerful technique, one that can in a short time completely transform our attitudes and expectations about life, and thereby totally change what we create for ourselves.
An affirmation can be any positive statement:
Everything I need is already within me.
The universe is unfolding perfectly.
All things are now working together for good in my life.
I love and appreciate myself.
Here are some important things to remember:
- Always phrase affirmations in the present tense.
- Always phrase affirmations in the most positive way you can.
- In general, the shorter and simpler the better.
- Always use affirmations that feel totally right for you.
- Always remember that you are creating something new, not trying to redo or change what already exists, which would create conflict.
- Affirmations are not meant to contradict or try to change your feelings or emotions, even the so-called “negative” ones.
- Temporarily suspend your doubts and hesitations, and put your full mental and emotional energy into your affirmations.
Other great visualization tools are journaling and dream boards. Writing down exactly what we want to visualize, in the first person present, is a powerful way of helping to make it real and gives us the opportunity to read the visualization over and over again. Dream boards, simply a large posterboard with images of what we want pasted on to it is another powerful tool. Images speak directly to our unconscious in a way words seldom can and to gaze often on the images of our goals is a great way to begin stirring the unconscious mind into helping us achieve them.
photo credit: James Jordan
Break it Up: Many of us suffer from panoramic vision when looking at our goals. We see the end result and not the steps in between. We say we want to lose twenty pounds or run three miles every day. These giant goals often end up overwhelming us when, a month into it, we haven’t seen significant changes. By breaking those goals down into smaller goals, we are able to live more in the moment and keep motivation by having many small successes. A great friend of mine once said that life is alot like driving at night. We can only see the small patch of road right in front of us that is illuminated by the headlights of the car. Everthing past that is dark but we have faith that it is there and that the road will keep appearing, one lit up patch at a time. If we were to want to see the whole road at once we wouldn’t be able to go anywhere. So break up the goals–whether into time segments or minigoals–for example, if eating healthier is the ultimate goal, try starting out with the goal of incorporating a serving of vegetables into each meal. Once this goal has been reached then another goal, such as eliminating high fructose corn syrup can be added. In this way, we tackle things day by day and keep ourselves from being so overwhelmed that we fail before we hardly begin.
