OK, after the last few days I do feel a little drained. So today is just a short message.

I may have left some people believing that it is hard or difficult to make all of these changes.  But here is the important thing to remember.

However it may appear to you now, the bad news is just the other face of the good news.

One thing that I constantly find is how little people realize the long term implications of their actions.

A good example of this is our fairly standard practise of overeating.

We often stop and think that this is a poor choice in the short term and that we will need to lose weight but fail to come to terms with the long term effects, or even realize them. In nature when there is a glut of resources animals and plants both go crazy reproducing using those resources.

So nature has some built in tools to deal with that rocketing population. It decreases virility and reproductive rates. It starts to kick in genes that act to shorten our life span. There are many and varied versions of that, heart disease, arthritis, cancers and circulatory disease. These are all tools used to shorten the individual and generational life-spans to decrease ecological pressures that would overburden the environment.

Unfortunately our medical system fails to see this and intervenes in the symptoms instead of teaching the foundations of those symptoms and supporting individual choice in this matter.

When we start to understand disease as symptom we can then take control of the causes of our disease and illness rather then being a victim of them. In this way the bad news becomes the good news.

We are in charge of our health and have always been in charge. We are not victims, just sometimes ignorant.

My aim is too have all people understand enough about health and it’s maintenance to decrease markedly our need for a medical system.

• Heart disease,
• Stroke,
• Osteoporosis,
• Most Cancers,
• Arthritis,
• Many autoimmune disorders
• and possibly even diseases such as Alzheimers and Multiple sclerosis may come under the heading lifestyle diseases.

As such they may be managed or avoided entirely by simply managing our lifestyles.
Feel free to contact me for further information.

Manage your actions.

When I say manage your actions I mean the little things that give you access to your own power. Constantly look at you actions through the eyes of the person that you want to be. Which means do not try and fix yourself, there is nothing wrong with you, remember.

If you want to be 67KG, think of how 67KG man would act.

• Do you dance down the stairs and run up them. 
• Do you walk easily from place to place? 
• Are you active and energetic? 
• Do you have the pastimes of a 67KG man? 
• Do you rock climb, play touch, run, and dance?

Or are you still acting as if you are overweight and wrong.   Do you arrive home after work, tired and strung out after a hard days work and plop yourself in front of the telly. Sit there with a beer until it is time for dinner and then sit there after dinner until you fall asleep in the chair. 

• Are those the action of a fit and active man? 
• Are those your actions? 
• Do you sit around at lunch time and eat prepared food from the cafeteria? 
• Do you skip breakfast and swallow cups of strong coffee to get you going? 
• Do you have a sugar hit at morning tea? 
• Are these the actions of a fit and healthy person? 
• Are you just like me and 10 Million other people trying to survive the day?

Because this is how I was. This was me and because it was me, I also understand that it is you.

• Do you feel bad because of it? 
• Do all the “Diet” and “exercise” ads on tellie make you feel guilty?

Well guess what? All of this depresses your immune system and your metabolism. Feeling guilty especially, works directly against everything that you want.

So the most important place to start is to stop feeling guilty!!  

It achieves nothing in the long or short term, and only acts to suppress you ability to make any lasting and worthwhile changes to where you are now.   

Again, and listen to me “This is the secret of why diets do not work!”

Your mind and your immune system, your mind and your endocrine system, your mind and your metabolism are all intricately and intimately connected. You can not judge yourself, you cannot be guilty, you cannot be wrong, you cannot be bad, you cannot be any of these things and be healthy. All of these things work to suppress and depress you.
But there is another way. It is as simple as it is positive. Simply stop making yourself wrong. Reinvent your lifestyle the way you would have it be and then act as if that is the truth.

If you want to be that person, change your mind and act as the person you want to be would act. Find something about which you feel passionate and go do it. If you love dancing, go and do that. If you want to play football, go and do that. If you want to volunteer at a local homeless shelter, go and do that. Go and identify the things about which you feel passion and go and do them.

Your actions will not only affect how you think about yourself but the actions themselves will bring about a rush of chemicals that make you feel better about yourself. You will feel more alive and you will feel as if you are doing something, which will make it easy to be more, do more and have more.
 

One of the strange things about our society has been the development of an idea that our state of mind depends on what we do and have, where the reality that scientists and spiritual people know is that it is our being that has us do and have things.  

So your first step to being the person that you want to be, is to change your mind and be that person. To create, in your mind, a vision of that person and then think and act as that person would act.

In everyday life, this is often called an act of faith. All religions and mystics teach this, as a matter of course. Scientists are now finding that this is true too. As a matter of cause, we now know that, it is our mind, our thoughts, that create the reality in which we live.

If you believe that there is something wrong, you will act as if there is something wrong, and there will be something wrong.

To have a different life you will need to change your mind and then find the actions that are in alignment with that new thought.

Continuing on from yesterday.

When you change the way that you see yourself, you then have access to a new way of life. This is how an Olympic gold medallist see themselves, or a world champion, or a Donald trump. This is where all success stems from.

Christopher Howard is a great trainer and very well known. He runs an extraordinary training program and a successful group of companies that teach success. But he was once a self confessed failure. He was going nowhere and achieving nothing. One day, he decided that he was sick of being a failure. He wanted something else.

He reinventedhimself.

How many times have we heard that and never realized the implications of it. There was no great parade or fireworks display. Chris just stopped thinking of himself as a failure and started thinking of himself as an extraordinary person doing what he loved. This same story is true of almost every great or significant person on earth. Gandhi, Mandela or Mother Theresa all saw something that made them change their mind.

It does not matter what you want to reinvent yourself as. Just change your mind. If you want to be a great animal activist, like Steve Irwin, change your mind. If you want to be a successful business woman, change your mind. If you want to be a good parent, change your mind. If you want to be.... fit, healthy, skinny, active, rich, successful, wealthy, well...........Change your mind. Change your mind. Change your mind and watch something extraordinary grow.

Watch the person that you behave as fall away, and the new person grow and blossom.

However be aware that while this is an extraordinarily simple step it can be very challenging. But there are some simple rules to increase your ability to follow through with this.

Rule number 1
        Manage your environment. 

There are things that you do and have that support what is happening now in your life. It may be the chocolate bar in the fridge; it may be having no walking shoes. It may be that you turn on the television when you wake up. Whatever it is, be aware that it is a part of the environment that you created to support who you were. 
And that you need to take charge of your environment.

Now it is still very simple to do. Once you have created in your mind the new you, go to each separate cupboard and room in your house and look at it and in it. 

Ask yourself this; would this new person have this stuff in the house? This includes your clothes cupboard, the refrigerator, your bedroom, your shoes, bathroom cabinet, ETC. If the answer is no, then you have some trips to the dump or the local OXFAM/ENDO’S or ST VINNIES. Just take it down and donate it. Have it out of your space because it belonged to someone else and does not have a place in your life.

This will have 2 outcomes. One is that it will no longer be in the space supporting the old you. 2, it will create space for the new you to grow into.

And you need to get that this is important. Every gardener knows how important it is to put a plant in a pot or bed that will encourage its best growth. If you keep yourself in a place that stunts your growth you will not be able to continue growing.

So be aware that this may mean major change. For some people it may even mean moving house or town or even in some cases moving to a new country. But whatever it is you need to do that which is aligned with who that new person that you create is.

OK now here comes the hard one.
     Manage your friends

Yes, it could be as challenging as it sounds. You and I all have friends who are happy to be small and unhappy, desperate, overweight, underpaid, ETC. Whatever it is, these people are ‘happy’ where they are and have no intention of changing. Sometimes it is fear, sometimes laziness. But whatever the reason they will not, cannot, support the new you. They will tell you that you are crazy and that you will fail. If you continue to mix with them they will pull you down. They are the chocolate bar in the fridge that you keep just in case. This does not mean that you do not like or respect them. It does not mean that you do not love them. 

In fact it has nothing to do with meaning at all. You are creating an environment that will support you. You need to find friends who will encourage and support you.

A plant needs nutrients to grow. A car needs fuel to run. An oven needs power. We know all of these things are true. We need to accept that this also is true. You must have friends who support you for who you are, not for who they want you to be.

This one is often the big challenge where people fail. However you also need to be aware of something during this process. Your friends will self sort. Tell them about your change of mind. Tell them about your new self. Tell them what you invented and what you want to achieve. And look into their eyes as you do this. You will see some of them shut down, these are the ones who cannot or will not believe in you or with you.

You must have this conversation with everyone though. You will be surprised at who will come through for you. You may also be surprised that you new self gives some of them permission to change their minds.

What? What whole new world?

Well; this whole new world! What if, you are perfect now, would be a new you. What if you chose a new way of treating yourself? (By the way, this is the secret of why a diet only works in special circumstances. And that is when something occurs to change the way you think about yourself.) If you want to be a 96 KG Rugby league player, what if you started being a 96 KG Rugby league player. What if you imagined yourself exactly as you wish to be and then treated yourself the way that person would want to be treated. If you want to be a 67KG long distance runner, how would that person treat themselves? If you want to be a slender and good looking mum, how would that person treat themselves.

The reality of health and wellbeing is that your major, and most difficult change, is your mind. If you are fat and lazy, change your mind. If you can’t run, change your mind! If you are a little inactive, change your mind!

Change your mind and stop behaving as if there is something wrong. This is the secret of weight loss. If you change your mind, your body and environment, will inevitably follow. If you right now, treat yourself as the person you wish to be then your actions will fall in to line behind that decision. You will drink more water, you will walk to work, and you will not pick up that cake/biscuit/cigarette. Whatever it is that has you fail now while you are thinking of yourself as wrong and a failure will disappear. Because you are not anymore, to yourself, an overweight and inactive person.

And you know what I am talking about. Don’t pretend that you do not. We all know people whose actions and speech are different to the skin we see. Sometimes that is a boy whose actions are effeminate, sometimes a giant who is very gentle, sometimes a fat person who acts skinny, sometimes a clumsy person who acts like a ballet dancer. We all know someone like this. In our ignorance we say “fake it till you make it.” But it is not faking it! It is changing our mind and looking at ourselves in a new way.

It is going to a mirror and looking at ourselves and seeing who we really are. Under the gut and the large hips, under the unhappy face and desperation, who are we. Who do we choose to see? 

Do you see a failure, or do you choose in that moment to see a happy and vibrant person who is fit and happy and active. Who weighs 67KG and is attractive and active? In that moment, everything changes. We choose who we are!

Now I do not mean that we deny the reality of who we are now. I personally weigh 82KG and want to weigh 76KG. Now I can be unhappy and depressed about that. (This thought changes my metabolism, by the way.) Or I can see the person I was for 25 years. I can choose to see myself as that 76KG active and happy person, which I am.

And behind this thought there is a whole field of medicine. That field is called Psycho-endocrinology. This is the study of the interaction between hormones, behaviour, and mental experience. And it is a huge field so I will just paraphrase it here as it relates to us. 

“If you do not think you are healthy, then you can not be healthy.”

And my original thought was, “Omigod, I’m gonna die.” And I had this thought because I had no experience in changing my mind and did not know how to do it.

But it can be done and you can start at the physical end like they do on “The biggest Loser” or you can start at the mental end.

Have you ever noticed that on the biggest loser, the contestants start as depressed and desperate? And as they lose weight something inside them changes. You can see it. They start to believe that it is possible for them, and then it becomes their reality. They start to believe in themselves as a 76KG happy and active person. That is the moment when weight starts to fall away. They change their mind and get a new possibility for themselves. And somewhere during the show you see it. You see the change in the people who are going to be in the top 3-4 contestants. You know that they have changed the way that they see themselves and that they will be there at the end. That they have changed how they see themselves.

This is where I invite you to stand. You do not need to go on TV. You do not need a personal fitness fanatic in your face and yelling at you. You do not need special diet meals or shakes.

You only need to change your mind and see the person that you believe yourself to be. To stop making yourself wrong and to create a new thought. That you are perfect, right here, right now. And to treat yourself as the person you want to be.

Oh Boy, did I get asked a tough question last night. I usually find it easy to explain things to people but this one stopped me in my tracks. I was explaining to a lady that I do not support dieting. 

And she said, “So, explain to me why don’t diets work?”

So today and probably over the next few days I will explain why a diet does not work.

We often hear people talking statistics about dieting. For me the most relevant is that ‘within 90 Days of beginning diets, 98 % of people weigh more than they did at the beginning of their diet. And this is a pretty ugly statistic right. But I have come across it in a number of health research journals and have found out where it comes from. So I believe that if not exactly right it is pretty close to factual. So here is the big ugly awful hairy question “why don’t diets work??”

Strangely enough the answer is fairly easy and obvious. And it refers back to high school physics. Who remembers their Newton and his laws of physics? Just vaguely, yes. OK. The third law of physics is the law of motion and it states, “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” When you push against something there is resistance. If the forces are in balance there is equilibrium. If the forces are not in balance there is movement. This is fairly simple to understand. In fact it is so simple that it was years before it ever occurred to me that this works for humans too. When you push someone they respond.

So how does that work with diets?

When someone tells you that you are wrong/bad/fat/lazy/etc, you naturally and quite rightly resist. Even if the person doing the telling is yourself. Even if you are trying to do the right thing there will be resistance. There will always be resistance to someone telling you that there is something wrong with you. This is why we have developed manners and politics and courtesy. Saying exactly what you think is often considered offensive and aggressive. In fact, most of us consider it to be violent. Telling myself that I am fat and lazy and unfit, is an act of aggression based on social values, not on what we believe to be true about ourselves.

For myself, I constantly deal with my weight. As a wellness coach many people consider me to be overweight and sedentary, and I only weigh 82KG. Is this true? Not for me! Nor for many other people out there. 

The important thing to understand here is that when there is a conflict between our inner and outer selves we will usually see feedback as negative and judgemental. We will, quite rightly, resist that perception. It will be unconscious, it will be strong and it will be your resistance to being judged. You can no more stop it from happening than you can repeal the law of gravity or stop the world from turning.

Feel free to email me if you want me to write more about this.

On the other hand, what is the answer? How do I lose weight or get fit? Well the simple answer is that you do not lose weight or get fit. As long as you are trying to fix yourself you will fail. You will fail because of a simple error in thinking. As long as you think that there is something wrong with you that needs fixing you will fail. So here is the thing, you need to change the way you think about yourself. If instead of being wrong, what if you were that you are perfect, right now, right here, there is nothing wrong with you, and there never has been. 

If you got, being perfect, how would you feel? 

Would there be a sense of relief? 

Are you willing to feel to feel that way?

Because on the other side of that decision is a whole new world.