I just finished listening to Anthony Robbins' "Awaken the Giant Within" audiobook. Basically it's a lot of information that I already knew about goal-setting, but it threw at me new ways of changing the way I make decisions. He states, "If you don't set a baseline standard for what you'll accept in life, you'll find it's easy to slip into behaviors and attitudes or a quality of life that's far below what you deserve.” Now is the perfect time in my life for this. A revamp of myself starting last summer with a plethora of changes and realizations about my beliefs and life. Well, it's time I set those standards for my life as an unchangeable decision. To set the bar for myself higher than I have before. The interesting thing about it all is that I always had high standards... for everyone else. I would hold everyone to a standard that I believed I was at and exceeding, but in reality I never was. For example, in my mind I'm slim and athletic. So, when I find I can barely bench press the bar alone or when I slide on my size 18 pants in the morning, it comes as a shock to me. Nearly every time. However, this shock has never been enough to jolt me into the reality that I need to change something. I need to see weight loss as something wonderful that I'm willing to work hard for.
You see, diet and exercise have always been negative, dirty words to me. I've tried before thinking, "Diet doesn't mean deprivation," but inside I felt differently. I believed that without consuming pizza and soda, for example, I was missing out on "real" food. I was missing out on the "comfort" of pizza and that soda brought and that I couldn't find it through any good-for-me foods. Who was I fooling?! Hell, the real reason I never believed that I could live without certain things is because I programmed my brain to think that way. I never truly believed that diet and exercise were good things, they were chores because I should do them not because I wanted to.
Back to the audiobook, AR (as I will refer to Mr. Robbins) was speaking that, on a very basic level, every decision we make is based on pain or pleasure. We try to move away from pain or toward pleasure. In my example, exercise = pain. I would try not to exercise because it was difficult and time-consuming and the immediate benefits seems minute; so I found I only exercised out of obligation not desire. AR says we need to reprogram our brains into thinking that what we want will cause us pleasure and is amazing!
This morning I woke up and dragged my butt around preparing for the gym, which I wasn't looking forward to. I realized this and stopped myself. No! I want to exercise. I enjoy exercising! Honestly, I instantly felt better! I went to the gym and ran over half a mile (where I was under half a mile previously) and, though I had to push myself, I was in good spirits. I quite shocked it worked so quickly and that I found this power that I wasn't aware of inside me. It was amazing.
“The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you're in control of your life. If you don't, life controls you.” - AR. So, I am learning and doing. I am reprogamming my brain to what I know I want to equate with pleasure. Exercise. Veganism. Roller Derby. Running. Things that I shied away from because they were too difficult or consumed too much of my time and energy... in my mind.
So, even though you speak like an infomercial host and maybe because you could crush me with one fist, thank you Anthony Robbins. You've helped set in motion what I was in search of for so long!
No comments:
Post a Comment