Convince Yourself of ANYTHING!

I love talk radio…happy talk radio. I walk my talk about being happy and monitor what I allow into my brain. Since I drive a lot during the day, I am a regular listener of the Rosie O’Donnell Show on Sirius/XM radio. Rosie's show is positive and funny most of the time; there are the occasional sad or emotional topics but never negative. Last week I was listening to Rosie and the gang talk about food, weight management and general health. (Wish I could tell you what show this was…but, hey I was driving and it was a rerun.) The conversation went back and forth at one point about eating in moderation without restriction and avoiding certain unhealthy foods. If you have read my book, taken my training or heard me speak…you know I do not believe in deprivation.

As the conversation continued about eating desserts or not eating desserts, Janette Barber offered profound wisdom by saying, ‘is it really deprivation if you are avoiding food that is poison?’ Sugar and bad fats being the poison. This is the essence of the Life is Mental training wisdom.

Yes, you can convince yourself of ANYTHING! If you choose to believe that desserts are your birthright, then you will most likely eat desserts forever. You deserve them right? However, if you choose to believe that desserts are bad for your body and health, then you will have an easier time passing on the extra dress size coupled with diabetes dressed up like a piece of chocolate cake. No back talk…it is what it is!

So my friends, what are you convincing yourself about sugary sweets?

Convince yourself of healthy beliefs,

Kelly Stallings, MS, LPC

www.LifeIsMental.com
www.Facebook.com/kelly.stallings
www.twitter.com/lifeismental

GUEST BLOG from Kevin Graham of Empower Me Photo

The Power of Visualization

The power of visualization is well known yet many people do not associate it with weight loss. The reality though is that the power of visualization is an amazing tool to help improve one’s look, weight loss and overall confidence. If you want to get to a healthier weight, you should be visualizing your future self on a daily basis.

I am not talking about endless yoga sessions or a full day of chanting. Is all that it takes is a few moments a day, preferably as you are just waking up or just about to fall asleep as those are the times when our mind is most relaxed and our subconscious is open to suggestion.

Can you really visualize your future? Yes, you can. OK, I’ll admit that it is virtually impossible to be able to control your future – there are simply way too many dynamics and variables in the world right? Wrong. OK, I’ll admit that you cannot control every aspect of your future; nor can you decide as to which aspects you specifically want to control.

What I am saying is that you hold the power to dramatically impact your future and how the world opens up to.

Remember when you first got a certain type of car and you started to see those same models at every corner. Remember when you learned something new and all of a sudden you saw the same concept applying to various areas of your life – even though it was really only relative to one aspect at the time you learned it.

Those are examples of situations where you placed focus on something – allowing its possibilities into your world. And then the world opened up to you consistent with your focus.

If you think about the power that goes untapped in most of our minds – the challenge is there. Try something for me (for your benefit as well). Think about an old classmate or work colleague. Think about them several times over the next 3-4 days. Write their name on your calendar a few days from now. Continue to think about them. I bet you that something about them shows up in your life. It could be seeing them on the street or online. It could be that someone else connects with you where you have a mutual connection with your former friend. There are endless possibilities but you controlled the events because you put focus on something.

Imagine if weight loss were that easy. You know what? It is. Grab a compelling vision of your future self – and Let The Vision Empower You!


Kevin Graham
http://www.EmpowerMePhoto.com

Commit your goals to paper and make them happen!

January is the perfect time to make resolutions and set personal goals for the year. While this is a common practice, apparently less than 2% of us will stick with these newly established resolutions and goals past January. Why is it challenging for folks to keep focused on goals? One reason may be that goals are not revisited after they are created…or worse, maybe these goals were not written down to be revisited.Writing your goals on paper is the important first step to accomplish a desired change. Without identified written goals, there is no easy way to track achievement. Write out your goals in a journal that will be easy to keep track of throughout the year. Include easy to reach short term goals as well as the larger long term goals. Both are important. Be sure to create many short term goals that support the achievement of each long term goal.

Long term goals represent a final destination. An example of this could be achieving your optimal weight. Long term goals may require a commitment for months or years to accomplish. Commitment and patience is required for reaching long term goals.

Short term goals are crucial to the successful achievement of long term goals. These small goals support the big goals. Short term goals give you a sense of accomplishment and motivation as you work toward your long term goals. Short term goals may be items like reducing a size in your clothing or walking for thirty minutes four days a week.

Think of short term goals as the individual steps in a staircase. As you achieve each short term goal, you step up one step at a time toward your long term goal of reaching the top of the staircase. You can get excited and celebrate your progress as you achieve each short term goal that propels you further up the staircase to your long term goal. Looking back at how many steps you have climbed will give you the motivation to keep going when you feel tired of climbing.

Your goals journal is a tool. Use a highlighter to highlight each goal as you achieve it. Since you will make a lot of small easy to accomplish goals, you will be highlighting a lot in your journal. Make a habit of highlighting achieved goals weekly. This keeps you rereading and mindful of your goals. As you update your goals journal, you will feel continually motivated by the growing number of highlights. Thinking of the highlighted goals in your journal and staying mindful of the upcoming goals that you will be highlighting soon could very well help you decide the chocolate cake offered at lunch is not as good as it first looked and easily avoid eating it.

Many people are accustomed to thinking that weight loss is hard, so they proceed in fulfilling that prophecy through negative thinking, self criticism and bad choices. This year, decide that weight loss is easy. Keep it simple and use this technique for organizing your goals this year and accomplish amazing weight loss results!

To your thin body,
Kelly

Kelly Stallings, MS, LPC
www.LifeIsMental.com
www.facebook.com/kelly.stallings
www.twitter.com/lifeismental

Release Limiting Beliefs for Weight Loss

Many of us live with self imposed limiting beliefs. These limiting beliefs hold us back. They keep us from reaching our full potential and our optimal healthy body.

Up to this point, you most likely have not given your weight loss goals all you’ve got. It is easy to make attempts, get sidetracked by your limiting beliefs and then make excuses. These limits are self imposed negative thoughts and beliefs. You might believe that people in your family are heavy or it is difficult for you to lose weight. Whether these limiting thoughts are your voice or someone else’s, it is time they stop and you are freed!

In the movie, Facing the Giants, there is a scene where a high school football coach is attempting to show his players that they are not playing to their full ability and believing in themselves. The team has had a poor football record for several years. The coach asks one of the defensive players to stand up and death crawl (crawling on his hands and feet) down the field from one end zone while carrying another player on his back. The coach asks the player how far he can make it. This defense guy says that he can only make it to the 35 yard line while carrying another player and maybe to the 50 with no one his back. The coach says that he believes the player can make it to the 50 yard line with a player on his back and proceeds to blindfold this defense player for the exercise. The player stammers and denies his ability but ultimately positions himself to take the challenge. As the player moves down the field the camera focuses tightly on the coach encouraging him to keep going as the player says he is tired. Soon the camera pans the players on the sidelines standing up and becoming attentive to watch the progress on the field. The coach tells the player to keep going and use up every ounce of will power he has and just keep going. Finally the player falls to his stomach red faced and out of breath apologizing for stopping. The coach takes off his blind fold to reveal the he went the entire length of the field.

This is a great example of the limitations that we set on ourselves and the limitations that others set on us that we accept as true. The blindfold kept the defense player going beyond his own expectations and judgments of his ability. He amazed himself and his team mates.

Please think about how you have judged yourself. Think about how you may have accepted other people’s judgments of you concerning your weight and your ability to lose weight. Picture yourself five years from now. What do you look like in five years? Are you at your perfect weight or are you overweight? This is a significant question for you to really think about. If you picture yourself overweight in your future, do you really believe that you can lose weight?

This belief is directly tied to your thinking. Picturing yourself overweight in the future is not thin thinking. You may not have many thin thoughts. You may have a long history of holding limiting beliefs. These limiting beliefs are a choice, not the truth about you. You can choose to change your beliefs and your thinking which will change your life. You have a choice to improve yourself no matter how small the improvements are when you get started.

Release your limiting beliefs and become your best self!

You can do it!



Kelly Stallings
www.LifeIsMental.com
www.twitter.com/lifeismental
http://profile.to/kellystallings/

Detox Your Brain for Weight Loss & Success

Do you want to increase your success with weight loss and other goals? Detox your brain. In a world where wellness is a billion dollar industry, it should be safe to say the importance of detoxing your body is common knowledge. There are so many options for detoxifying your body; special diets, fasting, and supplement use to name a few. Detoxing your mind is just as important and as easy as cleansing your body.

Toxins in our foods can collect in our bodies like negative toxic thoughts can collect in our brains. It is crucial to cleanse your mind of self criticism and negative thinking. Our thoughts and personal beliefs represent the core foundation of our health and general life experience. Flushing a poor self image and negative thoughts cleanses our mind for optimal health. Self critical thoughts diminish our motivation toward success. Repetitive thoughts like, ‘I am always going to be fat,’ or ‘I am never going to be thin,’ help to create a self fulfilling prophecy that affects our daily decisions and motivation to make healthy choices. Negative self beliefs result in poor food choices resulting in a thicker waist fulfilling the critical self belief. Does this sound like a familiar personal experience?

Eliminating negative thoughts is easy to accomplish. The key to success is giving yourself enough time to achieve the goal. It took time to develop negativity; it will take time to create positivity. Be patient and stay the course. I have yet to meet a person who suddenly woke up one day with negative and self critical thinking. In fact, we are all born with a blank slate. The negativity is conditioned for us as we grow and develop. Do not blame your family; negativity bombards us from many environmental sources. Think about the last time you saw an upbeat breaking news feature. I am betting that you cannot think of even one example. Recondition your thinking and detox your brain with three easy techniques.

Repetitively use these easy techniques to change your thinking, change your life!

Detox your mind of negative self talk. Eliminate negative and self critical thinking by converting negative thoughts into positive thoughts. This might feel weird as you get started, especially if you have been self critical for years. Continue the practice regardless of how you feel. Repetition creates comfort with the process and comfort accepting that you are successful, healthy, smart, thin, etc.

Continue the mental cleanse by protecting your brain. Avoid negative environmental influences that create toxic thoughts and roadblocks toward success. Television, radio, print media and social settings can represent a negative influence on your thinking. Removing negative information allows your positivity to take root. Minimize time with negative people. Be rigid with this technique during the vulnerable first days and weeks of this new process of protecting your positivity. Daily use of this technique can quickly create a new successful and happy habit if simply stick with the plan.

Grow your positivity and success with positive influence. Adopt a new mantra of ‘good things in, good things out.’ Put good things in your mind daily that will keep you on track and motivated toward your goals. Read positive and success oriented books or stories, watch positive videos, and most important spend time with positive people. Seek out positive people to influence and grow your positive mindset. A positive minded person will talk you out of eating that afternoon sugary snack and influence you with other tasty options that support your physical fitness goals. Positive relationships act as a support system to help keep you on track during stressful times.

Make these changes and stick to them even if they feel foreign or silly. You will see a significant boost to your mood, self esteem, and successful goal achievement with repetitive long term use. Thoughts affect action. Actions create reality. Utilize these skills and think thin to live thin.


Kelly Stallings
www.LifeIsMental.com
http://twitter.com/lifeismental

Self-esteem, Body Image & Weight Issues

In honor of Women’s History Month, let’s change our personal histories by releasing all issues of body image and poor self-esteem. The awesome side effect of this change is weight loss and thin thinking.

Most women are self critical of their bodies and unfortunately critical of other women’s bodies as well. Studies and surveys are not necessary to prove this to be true. Just think about what you said to yourself as you looked in the mirror this morning. Did you say, ‘you beautiful thing,’ or ‘my face looks fat’? Self criticism leads to poor self-esteem and negative body image that creates weight issues like eating disorders or perpetual yo-yo dieting. If you are unhappy with your body, you may decide to take a drastic dieting measure to lose weight as fast as you can to feel better quickly. The drastic measure is typically not a good plan and you will probably self criticize more harshly when it fails. You may respond to this by eating everything thing in site since you ‘blew the diet’ and the yo-yo cycle starts over.

The ramifications of this negative behavior reach far beyond our bathroom mirrors. It is affecting future women. Studies have shown that young girls start dieting as early as the fourth grade. These girls are listening to the statements women of influence make about their bodies. Does your daughter hear your self criticisms? Does your niece hear you tell yourself that you are going to diet because you look fat? As women, we are helping to perpetuate this issue. This self critical behavior is a choice that we can control. We can make a different choice and change the future for our selves, our daughters, granddaughters and nieces.

Media also plays a part in our self assessment as well as our daughters’ and nieces’ self assessments. We can control the effects of media by not purchasing the magazines or watching the television shows that negatively affect our body image and self esteem. Media needs our support to thrive. If fast food restaurants are now offering sliced apples as an alternative to fries in response to America’s weight issues, I believe that we can affect positive changes in the media for the same reason.

Here are three simple ways to effect change and release weight issues.

1. Love your body as-is. Love your best qualities as well as your perceived flaws. Verbalize this love for your body in place of verbalizing the self criticisms. Feel the love for yourself as you look in the mirror. Practice this exercise daily until it feels normal. It will begin to feel comfortable with practice. Positive feelings create positive choices to support your best body.

2. Compliment daily. Eliminate all self critical thoughts and statements as you recognize them in daily life. Do this for yourself and other women. Compliment yourself multiple times daily on your look and positive actions. Boost other women by complimenting them also. Give compliments to your female friends as well as women you do not know. This creates a new habit of women supporting women feeling good about themselves.

3. Avoid media that portrays women as unrealistically thin. Change the television station. Do not buy the magazines or the movie tickets. Support media and programming that portrays realistic looking women as smart and competent. Media will adjust their focus to capture our dollars.

Improving your self-esteem and body image perception will naturally lead to weight loss. When we feel good, we make better choices about food and exercise. When we feel bad, good choices are replaced with comfort foods, inactivity and more self criticisms. Teach other women to implement these simple strategies into their life. Women are hardwired to help and support others. Use this information to help and support your sisters, mothers, grandmothers, and girlfriends.

Boost your self-esteem and reduce your waistline!

Happy Women’s History Month,

Kelly

http://www.lifeismental.com/
Receive a Think Thin tip each day to keep you motivated via Life is Mental Twitter!
www.Twitter.com/LifeisMental

Love Yourself First!

If you think loving yourself is a silly concept to relate to weight loss, you have been living under a rock with no connection to the real world. This concept of loving yourself has been reinforced by even the conservative medical community at this point. Loving the totality of yourself eases the emotional issues of weight management. I am referring here to an unconditional love for yourself which includes loving all the imperfections and quirky traits that make you unique. If you are self critical or mean to yourself, this should be a red flag indicating difficulty with the unconditional self love concept.

Unconditional love is easy. Accept you for who you are...the good and the bad. Live with a positive intent to do and think good about yourself. Love and accept your amazing body just as it is today. Focus an intense self love on any body part that you have historically criticized. As you practice this, you will notice an increase in self esteem and overall mood that affects your eating habits. I am not suggesting that learning to love yourself will help you drop a few pant sizes in a week or so; however, it will make a positive impact on your waistline over a healthy period of time if you truly love your body curves and all!

Don't take my word for it...test the theory!

To your thin self,
Kelly


http://www.lifeismental.com/
http://twitter.com/lifeismental