Why: When it comes to fitness, the most important "muscle" is our brain. Our brain controls how we think and feel about ourselves, our life, and others around us. This directly impacts how fit you are and how fit you can become.
Exercise your brain power by keeping and maintaining a positive perspective. Here's 5 "brain exercises" to get you started:
1. Give yourself over to "YES!"
Our "no's" are the negative, the can't, and the anything else that keeps us from creating our best self. Give yourself over to "I'm too fat," "I'm too ugly," or "I'm too stupid," and you give yourself over to an entire world of "no."
In every good and positive opportunity, ask yourself, what's really the worst that could happen. Meet a new friend, try a new hobby, or pursue your dream job and you unleash endless possibilities in a whole new world of "yes."
2. Focus on the forest.
Frequently an overworked, out of shape, overtired female will ask me for advice on how to get in shape. I begin to explain the integral components of a fit lifestyle, and am stopped mid sentence with a myriad of excuses.
"Oh, I don't have time for that" or "My kids won't eat that" or "I don't like vegetables." If that's your gut reaction to a lifestyle overhaul, then all you see is a tree for the forest. Adjust your focus so that you're not staring at an obstacle, but instead have your eye on the prize. No goal is reached without strife, contention, or full on mind-to-body combat. Perseverance makes the prize great and the forest that much easier to see.
3. Stop with the comparisons.
Ah, Facebook. It's analagous to a personal greatest hits album; you see you're girlfriends in only the most flattering photos and read only about the positive in their lives. Engagements, promotions, flowers sent for no reason. . . all right there, bullet pointed onto one greatest hits album.
Of course, we're destined to log on, compare, then lament not having a day filled with kittens and rainbows. I'm certainly not suggesting we all resign from Facebook, but I am suggesting you resign from whatever it is that makes you measure your life against another. Focus on YOUR efforts to live a fitter life, YOUR progress, and what you can learn from YOUR mistakes.
4. Get in the picture.
I was so swollen and heavy after I gave birth to my son, I refused to capture the first months of my life as a mother. How sad that I let the scale dictate my involvement in my own life. This happens too often, ladies. Insecurities about our waistline, wrinkles, or bad hair have us running to be on the other side of the shutter and missing out on a memory.
Be present, and I don't just mean in pictures. Don't let anything hold you back from participating in a moment.
5. Learn when to let go.
I was in the gym recently and noticed a former colleague of mine whispering in my direction. I immediately started boiling. I boiled the rest of the workout, the rest of the day, and am boiling now as I write. The funny thing is, I have absolutely no proof that this person was even talking about me.
I think it's easier for us to park in "boiling" than to just let go. It's comfortable, it's drama, and gives us a really nice excuse to throw a good old fashioned pity party. Why do we do this to ourselves? Let go. Whatever it is. Big. . .small. . . it's all insignifcant and is holding you back from something better.
