When most people are trying to lose weight or get more healthy, the top two things they focus on is their workouts and their nutrition.
After all, it makes sense since those are two things that heavily influence our bodyweight and health. But your exercise and nutrition plan will only get you so far if there’s mental blocks.
Have you ever thought….
- I don’t think this is going to work
- This will probably end up failing like the last 10 things I tried
- I’m destined to be overweight forever
- I come from a big family so I will be big
- My metabolism is broken and can’t be fixed
- I’m x years old, it’s too late for me
Every single one of those thoughts are lies. But a lie believed as truth will affect your life as it were true.
Your body AND MIND can be trained through repetition. If you say something over and over to yourself or your parents repeated something 1,000x during your childhood, it’s easy to accept it as truth…..even if it’s completely false.
For example…what if your mom said “our family is big boned.” How easy is it to accept that truth? After all, she’s someone you trust. But to my knowledge, we haven’t discovered a dinosaur size human skeleton with big bones.
I’m being ridiculous but seriously….big bones tend to appear in very tall people to support their larger frame but that’s about it. So, that phrase is a complete lie unless you come from a line of NBA basketball players.
A lie believed as truth will affect your life as it were true.
One more example but NOT related to fitness. Legendary magician Harry Houdini was touring around America and often would stop at the local jail, gather a crowd and ask the jailer to lock him in a cell. Time after time, Houdini escaped the cell within minutes.
But one clever jailer heard Houdini was coming to town and planned to trick him. When Houdini came to town, he offered his cell for the famous trick. When the jailer went to lock the door, he secretly turned the key the wrong way. He removed the key and the audience watched Houdini struggle to escape.
He unknowingly would lock himself in the cell repeatedly. Finally in frustration, Houdini admitted he could not escape. The jailer revealed his deception which gave Houdini a sigh of relief that he hadn’t lost his touch.
Houdini believed a lie and the lie held him captive. Living your life by a lie is a lot like believing the door is locked when it isn’t. On the other side of the door is freedom but you have to commit to some personal lie detection.
You have to do the toughest work there is….the self-work on your thoughts, beliefs and habits. They are your jailer. They have you locked up. And you can’t truly experience freedom until you turn the key the right way.
I know I’m not leaving you with a clear step from this post. But that’s because it looks different for everybody. Some can read a book that will help them to better understand themselves. Some people need to work with a therapist.
Others need support from a community and join a gym like Lead The Way Fitness. That’s up to you to decide but my main goal is to have you move forward thinking about the work that needs to be done in the gym for your body and the mind gym as well.
It’s your strongest muscle…give it repetitions of good thoughts, not the ones that makes you weaker.
One more time for repetition sake – a lie believed as truth will affect your life as it were true.