Health and Fitness Success 7 Easy Tips
Damian Miles asked:
Two weeks ago today I dramatically pushed back the limits of my running. In one morning I went from a best distance of 12km in an hour and fifteen minutes (done on a treadmill in my gym), to running 12 miles round a Welsh lake, at a better pace than I have done in the gym, and without stopping.
To achieve this is used several personal development techniques, that are often used by Powerfully Positive People to achieve difficult goals. How did I do this, and what are these techniques? And how can you use these same techniques to achieve your exercise goal?
Inspiring Health and Fitness
Keeping me going was my overall inspiring health and fitness goal. This goal is to run the London Marathon 2010. I realized if I could not run the 12 miles, how could I run 26? I also realized that if I could achieve this leap in distance then the marathon should be mine. It was my desire to cross the line in April 2010 that kept me going every step of the way. Besides, twice round the lake would be a marathon! If I could do one lap, surely I could do two laps?
To Do: You need to have a health and fitness goal that you believe is achievable, but sufficiently high to excite and stretch you.
Mentoring and Encouragement
One of the biggest things that helped me to achieve this breakthrough was the encouragement and advice of an experienced marathon runner (my mentor for the run). But above all my mentor ran every step of the way with me. Having someone tell you that you can do something that you previously thought impossible, and the person telling you this being qualified to do so is very powerful. You have no excuse for not pushing your boundaries. When this person then goes every step of the way with you, advising and encouraging you it is even more powerful. Having a mentor can be one of the most powerful tools for personal development you can use.
To Do: Find someone who is qualified to take you one step further towards you health and fitness goal, and ask them to take that step with you.
Score Keeping
I kept score at regular intervals along the run by checking my heart rate on my heart rate monitor. One of my aims was to run the distance within a set heart rate range. I congratulated myself every time my watch showed I was within that range. In this way I was scoring myself to achieve a regular pace. I am glad to say I got a perfect score by the finish line.
To Do: Decide on a way to score yourself, and stick to it. Celebrate every time you win!.
Goal Setting and Rewards
Throughout the run I kept setting goals such as “get to the castle” or “make it to the dam” or near the end I was saying “just to the next lamppost.” In this way I broke the 12 miles down into manageable chunks, and would celebrate each time I achieved my goal. I also had the overriding goals of running all the way round (no walking or stopping) and setting a good pace, all of which I achieved.
To Do: Break you next exercise session into tiny goals, and reward yourself every time you achieve these mini goals.
Distraction
Running for 2 hours and 10 minutes was just as much a mental challenge as physical. My mind was full of doubts and my body full of aches, and part of it was just plain boring. So how did I cope? One way was by distracting myself. I remembered wonderful holidays, focused on a particular lamb or tree that I was running towards, or visualized the Power of Intention falling from the sky and filling me with great energy and endurance. Anything to take my mind off how I felt and how much more there was to go.
To Do: Plan in advance to remember something exciting, and remember it in vivid detail.
Power of Intention
I have been listening to at CD set in my car called The Power of Intention by Wayne W Dyer. The CDs talk of us being made out of and part of a universal energy. That universal energy is always available for us to use. I am still not quite sure what to make of this yet, but while running I called upon this energy to fill me. I finished, so it worked didn’t it? Perhaps, but at the very least it worked as a mental distraction.
To Do: Find a cassette or CD to listen to that will give you a more positive outlook for your activity.
Peer Pressure
From deciding to do the run on the Friday, to actually doing it on the Sunday, I made sure I told every one of the 55 people I was camping with that weekend, that I would “run the lake.” This set up a huge amount of peer pressure for me. If I failed the run I would painfully and publicly fail BIG. This created a powerful incentive for me to succeed in the run. Also as a result of succeeding the run after telling everyone, a lot of respect was generated which translated into a large number of sponsorships for the charity I am running for at a race later this year.
To Do: Increase peer pressure on yourself by telling everyone what you plan to do, and ask them to check up on you later to make sure you have done it.
As you can see I was able to use many personal development techniques, that Powerfully Positive People use, in order to take me from the initial challenge to run the lake, to actually running it and running it well. Without the use of the above techniques I would have been less likely to finish. The techniques dramatically increased my chance of success, and I’ll continue to use them until I cross that London Marathon finish line (and beyond). Make sure you use these techniques too.
Create a video blog
Two weeks ago today I dramatically pushed back the limits of my running. In one morning I went from a best distance of 12km in an hour and fifteen minutes (done on a treadmill in my gym), to running 12 miles round a Welsh lake, at a better pace than I have done in the gym, and without stopping.
To achieve this is used several personal development techniques, that are often used by Powerfully Positive People to achieve difficult goals. How did I do this, and what are these techniques? And how can you use these same techniques to achieve your exercise goal?
Inspiring Health and Fitness
Keeping me going was my overall inspiring health and fitness goal. This goal is to run the London Marathon 2010. I realized if I could not run the 12 miles, how could I run 26? I also realized that if I could achieve this leap in distance then the marathon should be mine. It was my desire to cross the line in April 2010 that kept me going every step of the way. Besides, twice round the lake would be a marathon! If I could do one lap, surely I could do two laps?
To Do: You need to have a health and fitness goal that you believe is achievable, but sufficiently high to excite and stretch you.
Mentoring and Encouragement
One of the biggest things that helped me to achieve this breakthrough was the encouragement and advice of an experienced marathon runner (my mentor for the run). But above all my mentor ran every step of the way with me. Having someone tell you that you can do something that you previously thought impossible, and the person telling you this being qualified to do so is very powerful. You have no excuse for not pushing your boundaries. When this person then goes every step of the way with you, advising and encouraging you it is even more powerful. Having a mentor can be one of the most powerful tools for personal development you can use.
To Do: Find someone who is qualified to take you one step further towards you health and fitness goal, and ask them to take that step with you.
Score Keeping
I kept score at regular intervals along the run by checking my heart rate on my heart rate monitor. One of my aims was to run the distance within a set heart rate range. I congratulated myself every time my watch showed I was within that range. In this way I was scoring myself to achieve a regular pace. I am glad to say I got a perfect score by the finish line.
To Do: Decide on a way to score yourself, and stick to it. Celebrate every time you win!.
Goal Setting and Rewards
Throughout the run I kept setting goals such as “get to the castle” or “make it to the dam” or near the end I was saying “just to the next lamppost.” In this way I broke the 12 miles down into manageable chunks, and would celebrate each time I achieved my goal. I also had the overriding goals of running all the way round (no walking or stopping) and setting a good pace, all of which I achieved.
To Do: Break you next exercise session into tiny goals, and reward yourself every time you achieve these mini goals.
Distraction
Running for 2 hours and 10 minutes was just as much a mental challenge as physical. My mind was full of doubts and my body full of aches, and part of it was just plain boring. So how did I cope? One way was by distracting myself. I remembered wonderful holidays, focused on a particular lamb or tree that I was running towards, or visualized the Power of Intention falling from the sky and filling me with great energy and endurance. Anything to take my mind off how I felt and how much more there was to go.
To Do: Plan in advance to remember something exciting, and remember it in vivid detail.
Power of Intention
I have been listening to at CD set in my car called The Power of Intention by Wayne W Dyer. The CDs talk of us being made out of and part of a universal energy. That universal energy is always available for us to use. I am still not quite sure what to make of this yet, but while running I called upon this energy to fill me. I finished, so it worked didn’t it? Perhaps, but at the very least it worked as a mental distraction.
To Do: Find a cassette or CD to listen to that will give you a more positive outlook for your activity.
Peer Pressure
From deciding to do the run on the Friday, to actually doing it on the Sunday, I made sure I told every one of the 55 people I was camping with that weekend, that I would “run the lake.” This set up a huge amount of peer pressure for me. If I failed the run I would painfully and publicly fail BIG. This created a powerful incentive for me to succeed in the run. Also as a result of succeeding the run after telling everyone, a lot of respect was generated which translated into a large number of sponsorships for the charity I am running for at a race later this year.
To Do: Increase peer pressure on yourself by telling everyone what you plan to do, and ask them to check up on you later to make sure you have done it.
As you can see I was able to use many personal development techniques, that Powerfully Positive People use, in order to take me from the initial challenge to run the lake, to actually running it and running it well. Without the use of the above techniques I would have been less likely to finish. The techniques dramatically increased my chance of success, and I’ll continue to use them until I cross that London Marathon finish line (and beyond). Make sure you use these techniques too.
Create a video blog
Health Fitness Guide – Thoughts, The Foundation For All Health And Fitness Achievement
Jeff Baker asked:
“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve” – W. Clement Stone
Like any learned skill, there are certain basics that must be mastered first. The very bedrock upon which all health and fitness achievement rests are thoughts. Everything man-made in the world or any action you’ve taken in the past all started with a thought. There is not one man-made object or goal that didn’t start as a thought in someone’s head that was then made into reality. Your toaster, your TV, your automobile, your desire for better health.
A single thought ultimately transformed into physical reality.
In order to achieve any health or fitness goal you must start with this basic concept; thoughts are things. Thoughts are the foundation upon which you build the framework for attainment of your goal. Every thought has a physical manifestation in our bodies; every thought produces physical substances called neuro-transmitting enzymes that have instant effects on how we feel and who we are at the cellular level.
Don’t believe me? Think of biting into a big, juicy lemon or think about fingernails slowly running down a chalk board and tell me you didn’t have an immediate, physical response.
Or how about a thought that changed the world?
Every day, thousands of times a day, all over the world people fly from destination to destination. It’s amazing that a person can step into a device that lifts them off the ground and flies through the air at great speed sometimes over great distances safely carrying them to their destination in a matter of minutes or hours! Only a bit over a hundred years ago that would have been considered impossible or a miracle. Yet it happens every day today and it started with a thought in someone’s head that man could fly. On December 17th, 1903 the thought that man had had for generations to fly, became reality.
That is the power of thoughts!
If you can have that kind of immediate response from such a simple thought, just imagine what you can accomplish with a focused, burning desire backed by faith and persistence!
Life isn’t fair or normal, there’s just life. But that should be a comforting thought. If life were fair all things would be equal and all people would be equal. The logical conclusion is that there could be no social movement up or down, no bettering of yourself nor worsening, no getting healthier, just stagnation. Because life isn’t fair it means you have the ability to control whether you improve your life or make it worse but at least you have the ability to make change.
What about external influences which you have no control over? Say your significant other is killed in a car accident or you become paraplegic in a skiing accident. The list could go on and on. But there is one thing you have total control over.
Viktor E. Frankl, a concentration camp survivor, put it best in his book “Man’s Search for Meaning,”
“The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose ones attitudes in any given circumstance.”
The only absolute freedom you have is choosing how you react to life. And how you choose starts with a thought.
Who you are right now is the sum total of what you’ve thought about up to this moment. If you’re not satisfied with who you are right now, the good news is who you will be from now on is entirely up to you. Change your thoughts and you can start changing yourself. If you want to lose weight or be more fit, it all starts with a thought.
Create a video blog
“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve” – W. Clement Stone
Like any learned skill, there are certain basics that must be mastered first. The very bedrock upon which all health and fitness achievement rests are thoughts. Everything man-made in the world or any action you’ve taken in the past all started with a thought. There is not one man-made object or goal that didn’t start as a thought in someone’s head that was then made into reality. Your toaster, your TV, your automobile, your desire for better health.
A single thought ultimately transformed into physical reality.
In order to achieve any health or fitness goal you must start with this basic concept; thoughts are things. Thoughts are the foundation upon which you build the framework for attainment of your goal. Every thought has a physical manifestation in our bodies; every thought produces physical substances called neuro-transmitting enzymes that have instant effects on how we feel and who we are at the cellular level.
Don’t believe me? Think of biting into a big, juicy lemon or think about fingernails slowly running down a chalk board and tell me you didn’t have an immediate, physical response.
Or how about a thought that changed the world?
Every day, thousands of times a day, all over the world people fly from destination to destination. It’s amazing that a person can step into a device that lifts them off the ground and flies through the air at great speed sometimes over great distances safely carrying them to their destination in a matter of minutes or hours! Only a bit over a hundred years ago that would have been considered impossible or a miracle. Yet it happens every day today and it started with a thought in someone’s head that man could fly. On December 17th, 1903 the thought that man had had for generations to fly, became reality.
That is the power of thoughts!
If you can have that kind of immediate response from such a simple thought, just imagine what you can accomplish with a focused, burning desire backed by faith and persistence!
Life isn’t fair or normal, there’s just life. But that should be a comforting thought. If life were fair all things would be equal and all people would be equal. The logical conclusion is that there could be no social movement up or down, no bettering of yourself nor worsening, no getting healthier, just stagnation. Because life isn’t fair it means you have the ability to control whether you improve your life or make it worse but at least you have the ability to make change.
What about external influences which you have no control over? Say your significant other is killed in a car accident or you become paraplegic in a skiing accident. The list could go on and on. But there is one thing you have total control over.
Viktor E. Frankl, a concentration camp survivor, put it best in his book “Man’s Search for Meaning,”
“The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose ones attitudes in any given circumstance.”
The only absolute freedom you have is choosing how you react to life. And how you choose starts with a thought.
Who you are right now is the sum total of what you’ve thought about up to this moment. If you’re not satisfied with who you are right now, the good news is who you will be from now on is entirely up to you. Change your thoughts and you can start changing yourself. If you want to lose weight or be more fit, it all starts with a thought.
Create a video blog