Believing Comes Before Achieving

Self imposed limitations are established by our beliefs. These limiting beliefs hold us back. They keep us from reaching our full potential and experiencing true joy.

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 respected 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 player 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 that 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 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. Identify these limitations and release yourself from them today. Start expecting to succeed and feel happy. Just like the anticipation of your limitations held you back, your expectancy of a positive future will propel you forward.

Your 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. Just get started.

You can do it!

Release your limiting beliefs and become your best self!

Romans 12:2


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

Tips for the Busy Professional to Stay Fit

Working 60+ hours a week does not leave much time for fitness. You might feel tired, moody, and sluggish from long hours or sedentary work. If you cannot reduce your workload, try these easy techniques to boost your energy, lose weight and increase your fitness level.

Add Spontaneous Exercise into your day. Spontaneous exercise is the physical activity you experience daily like walking from your car to the office. Walk as much as you can everyday to stay fit. A mile is roughly 2000 steps. Track your steps with a pedometer and be creative to squeeze a few extra steps into each day. Park farther away from the door, take the stairs, and use your breaks as an opportunity to walk around your office. You will be walking more than a few miles each day in no time.

Cut calories without noticing by eating slowly. Eating slowly gives your brain time to realize you are full. Put your utensils down while chewing to slow your pace. Eating fast allows an average of 200+ extra calories at a meal. Slow down, cut calories, and feel full. It is that easy!

Focus on what you want to eat, not what you don’t want to eat. You will naturally eliminate or greatly reduce the junk food from your diet by focusing on what foods you want to be sure to include daily. Your attention to healthy food options will distract your attention from bad foods. When you feel full on your healthy food options, you won’t have room for the bad food.

Keep a healthy work space. Eliminate candy, snack foods and sodas from your work area. We typically eat what is easily accessible. Keep only a very small selection of healthy snack options like fresh fruit, nuts and water easily accessible from your office. If you really want a soda, make yourself work to get it. This gives you time to rethink how badly you want it and possibly make a different decision after boosting your energy with a few steps from your desk down to the soda machine.

Keep a healthy snack in your car. Busy people are typical work long hours. Keep a healthy snack in your car for those times when you are running late for lunch or dinner. The healthy snack will give you a small amount of calories and energy so that you do not overeat when you are able to enjoy your real meal.

Add these practices into your daily routine immediately to enjoy the benefits of weight loss, increased energy and improved fitness!

To your health,

Kelly

Kelly Stallings, MS, LPC

www.LifeisMental.com

www.facebook.com/kelly.stallings

www.twitter.com/lifeismental

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

Managing Stress and Your Weight

As women, most of us are really good about taking care of our outside appearance. We are good about doing things to enhance our outer health. It is important that we realize the need to spend just as much time and effort on the inside for a healthy mind and mood both of which relate to a healthy body. Unnecessary eating and emotional eating can develop from stressful situations. Managing your stress can significantly assist weight goals. In a world where most women work outside of the home as hard as they work inside the home, mental stress is at an all time high. Do you recognize the stress in your life?

Stress comes in four forms: environmental, social, physiological, and personal thoughts. While you can control some of these sources to minimize stress, everyone has to learn to live with some level of stress as a part of being human. Some physical signs of stress include: weight gain or loss, muscle tension, negative mood, hair loss, sleep disturbance, high blood pressure, shallow breathing leading to anxiety, and digestive problems.

Regardless of where your stress is coming from, work, family, self induced perfectionism…here are three easy cogntive techniques to manage stress effectively and maintain a healthy body.

1. Laughter and positivity. These are the most important stress releases you can use. Both are easy to use and offer immediate relief. Laughter has been found to release natural ‘feel good’ endorphins in our brains. When stress levels are high, think of a really funny memory or movie that will make you giggle. Let yourself laugh out loud. This breaks the tension of the moment and creates cognitive dissidence (a psychological term meaning that you cannot experience two opposing feelings at one time). Maintain positive thinking at all times and surround yourself with positive minded people. When you notice negative or critical thinking creeping into your mind…turn it around to improve your mood and coping skills. The majority of our experiences are manifestation of our thoughts and expectations. Keep positive expectations to improve your reactions to life events. If you doubt this idea…you are probably in a negative rut…test the theory for yourself.

2. Deep Breathing. This is the easiest and most overlooked stress management technique. Do not let the simplicity of this technique fool you…deep breathing powerful and very effective. Again this skill is portable and can go unnoticed when used in public. Practice in private to get proficient with the skill. Breathe deeply so that your stomach moves instead of your upper chest. If only your upper chest moves, you are breathing shallowly which increases anxiety. Practice breathing deeply and take 3-4 slow deep breathes before, during or after a stressful situation to keep yourself calm and in control. Keep control and avoid mindless eating.

3. Drink and Eat. Stress directly relates to physical health and weight. A major symptom of stress is over or under eating. If your weight or body image cause you stress, you might be tempted to reduce your calories to an unrealistic level. Hunger and dehydration are unnecessary physical stressors that affect our behavior and reactions to life situations. Maintain a healthy balanced diet drinking plenty of water daily. Staying hydrated and satiated keep your thinking and behavior leveled in stressful situations.

Manage your stress and maintain your healthy body!

To your thin thoughts,
Kelly

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