What are your favourite excuses?

I had the pleasure of attending a Women’s Self Care Retreat in Costa Rica with Evolve Holistic at the beginning of February, and it far exceeded my expectations! Among the many useful things I brought home, learning how to identify and re-write my personal mantras was one of the most significant.

We started by looking at the things that we did well, then listed the things that we wanted to do but are not, and went through all the excuses for why those things aren’t happening.

Say you want to get to the gym more often so you can reach your fitness goals, but you’re busy and you don’t have a lot of time and the traffic is bad and you’re tired and you need to do this other thing that suddenly seems more important…

You likely spend a lot of time telling yourself that you’re busy or tired, which has become very convincing. Your excuses begin to work like a mantra, which is a phrase that you say over and over for an effect. “I should go but I’m busy. I should go but I’m tired. I should go but I’ve got other things to do.” becomes “I’m tired, I’m too busy.”

The next step is simple, but not as easy as it sounds: you gotta cut the bulls#!t.

You know you’ll feel better after you workout, no one ever regrets a workout! Check where you spend your time, and make fitness a priority over netflix, sleeping in, going for drinks, that event you don’t really want to go to anyway, etc. – say no to one thing so you can say yes to another.

(Here’s where feeling selfish can come up for many people, especially parents. As Jackie from Evolve Holistic said: “In order to be selfless, you must first be selfish.” Read – you can’t pour from an empty cup! Think of it as teaching those around you good self-care too, as I’m sure no parent wants their children to grow up learning that it’s normal to not take care of themselves.)

Once you’ve identified your favourite excuses and how they influence you, re-write your mantra to reflect the behaviour you want to see. “I’m too tired and too busy” becomes “I will be energized by my workout and I am worth making my fitness a priority.”

(Protip: avoid negatives like “I will not skip the gym”, as it sounds way too much like “I will skip the gym” – choose “I will make time for the gym” instead.)

Once you’ve got your new mantra, try it out and see if it feels true. Tweak it as needed, and then put it into action! Say it and write it as much as possible.

“I will be energized by my workout and I am worth making my fitness a priority.”

“I will be energized by my workout and I am worth making my fitness a priority.”

“I will be energized by my workout and I am worth making my fitness a priority.”

Repeat your mantra every day, every hour, as often as needed! When your mindset changes, you will change how you approach the challenge, and you will find success where you didn’t before. It’s not easy, but it is certainly worth it!

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I’d love to hear from you – what are your favourite BS excuses, and how can you change them? Email me at meagan.walker@goodlifefitness.com.

 

 

How I’m learning to control cravings.

Think about some of those times that you:

• stayed on the couch even when you wanted to work out
• caved in and ate something you knew wasn’t good for you
• didn’t do your physiotherapy exercises even though you wanted the injury to heal

Have you ever looked back on one of those unhelpful decisions and asked yourself: “What the hell was I thinking? I WANT this thing, why can’t I keep myself on track?!?”

Pema Chödrön to the rescue!

Pema is one of my favourite mindfulness teachers, she has this uncanny ability to be able to approach some of the most difficult topics with a blatant simplicity and humour that make classical teachings and meditations very accessible.

The following is an excerpt from her audiobook, ‘Getting Unstuck’, and I highly recommend that everyone take the time to listen to the whole thing. It’s been life-changing for me, and has enhanced the relationship that I have with fitness and life in general.

Think of one of those things that you just can’t seem to do, or stop doing, and keep it in mind as you read on:

“It’s the simplest thing and the most profound thing at the same time.

We’re all like young children who have a bad case of itchy scabies, and we are old enough to scratch but not old enough to know that when we scratch it, it spreads, and it gets worse.

And this is an analogy for what we all do. We have discomfort, an itch that goes along with the scabies, and we scratch it and scratch it. And what happens is we get very temporary symptom relief, but it spreads, and pretty soon we are scratching all over our whole body, and the whole thing is bleeding, and now we’re really suffering.

So in this analogy, the child is taken to the doctor who prescribes an ointment, and this is like going to a spiritual teacher and being given the teachings, and in particular being given a meditation.

‘Learning to stay’ is a description of the meditation.  Learning to stay is also a description of staying with the itch and not scratching. In other words scratching is a way of trying to escape the fundamental discomfort – the itch. What we could also call insecurity, or that bad feeling that comes over us.

So we itch and we itch, and then we go to the doctor and they say ‘you have scabies itch, if you keep scratching it gets worse, so what you have to do is to stop scratching and apply this ointment – the teachings and the practice, ways to sort of work with the itch, and then you can heal.’

And if the child has enough love for themselves and wants to heal, they will follow the doctors’ instructions and they’ll go through the discomfort of feeling an itch that they’re not scratching and then gradually they will have their own reward. It’s not really the doctor that gets rewarded, or anybody else, it’s the child that experiences that the rash starts to get less, and the urge to scratch gets less, and then the itch starts itching less.

And as any of us know, particularly those who have had really strong addictions this can take a very long time. Nevertheless, it’s the only way – because if you keep scratching, then the itch gets worse.”

Take a moment to perhaps read that over again.

The ‘itch’ can take many forms, but in the fitness world it can often be recognized as a craving to eat something that’s considered ‘off limits’ for a person trying to change their diet for weight loss or other health reasons. For the purpose of this post I’ll draw on my own experience – let’s call the itch a craving for sugar and ice cream is how I might scratch it.

Learning to stay with the sugar craving instead of giving in to ice cream is a huge task that can be enormously difficult for many different reasons (like fatigue, stress, gut imbalances, habits, etc.), but if you can look objectively at that uncomfortable craving and learn from it instead of indulging then step by step you will get closer to your goal.

Gradually, as you get better at staying with the craving it will lose some of it’s power over you. It may never go completely away, but you will have developed the skills to deal with it, as well as the experience to know that if you don’t scratch you will heal.

Often we aren’t even aware of the itch, or what forms our scratching may take, and this can cause a lot of unhappiness and feelings of being out of control. If you can apply this teaching to these uncomfortable situations and add a big dose of patience and compassion, you will find that it can help you gain more control over your entire life.

I would love to hear what you think of this teaching!

Wishing you success along your journey,

PS – Check out the ‘Overdrive’ app that connects with your local library and listen to audiobooks for free!

Getting past ‘tomorrow logic’, one step at a time.

Hi everyone, my name is Meagan, and I am a procrastinator.

I used to like to think that I just worked well under pressure, but I have come to face facts: I will put something off until I can no longer put it off, and then occasionally I will put it off just a bit longer. Until tomorrow, which is conveniently forever in the future.

Enter my new best friend, Gretchen Rubin – or more specifically her book Better Than Before.  I feel like I connect with Gretchen’s writing on a near-spiritual level, and since beginning to read it (and listening to her podcast Happier,) I have made some very do-able changes to my daily routine that have made a big impact, like if it only takes one minute then do it RIGHT NOW.

Out of the many useful things that I have gotten from this book, one of the most valuable for me has been the idea of ‘tomorrow logic’ – that somehow the Me of tomorrow will have the desire/skills/time/whatever to do the task that the Me of today doesn’t want to do.

It seems so silly when you see it written like that, but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who imagines that if I just wait until tomorrow to do this thing I’ll have a good night’s sleep and the alignment of all the stars and planets to help me do it far better than I could possibly do it today. By now you would think that a lifetime of procrastination should have taught me that things don’t work this way, but alas.

In assigning tasks to tomorrow, we miss out on the vital importance of acting TODAY. No one likes to look back at all the yesterdays that have piled up and realize that if we had only started this thing before, we would be much farther ahead.

The key is taking a step right now, even if it’s just tidying up the space you need to do the thing. Gretchen talks about the one-coin argument: if one coin isn’t enough to make someone wealthy, what about if you add another? Or another? At what point does adding one more coin make someone wealthy? With a habit like fitness, every step you take or rep you complete adds a coin to your pile.

So whether it’s a fitness goal, a book you want to read or write, your taxes, or a business you want to start, just take one step at a time, never mind if the stars have aligned or not! Seek out someone who can support you along the way – maybe a friend, a trainer, a teacher, or an online accountability group. Put it in your schedule, IN PEN, and start adding coins to your pile or steps to your marathon.

Just think of how grateful your future self will be that you began today!

Need a coach? Contact me at meagan.walker@goodlifefitness.com to get started. 🙂

 

‘Santosa’, self-appreciation, and how not to throw away time.

I saw this post on Pinterest about a year ago, and it struck me with such a sense of ‘oh my gosh, of course!’ that it almost knocked me over. This kind of statement is glaringly obvious in retrospect, but like many seemingly simple things it needed to be pointed out at the right time. It has subsequently been woven into my life and reinforced by other such realizations, and I hope what I write to you is helpful!

I work in the fitness industry, and like most of our culture it is hugely focused on physical appearance and abilities, whether it be lifting heavier, acrobat-like yoga poses, or attaining off your ‘perfect gym/beach body’. With the infinite diversity that exists in the world it is completely unreasonable to expect yourself to be equal to or better than anyone else you meet, but we try anyway. Why is that?

The short answer is money made from product advertising, but the long answer is much more complicated. There are many external and internal factors that influence why people feel the need to look or behave like someone else, and I am happy to set aside time to talk about those with you if you like, but since there are already many great books dedicated to the topic I’ll stick to my blog post and leave some recommendations for further reading at the bottom.

Any time you see someone you feel you want to emulate, chances are you need to purchase a product or service to make it happen. Clothes, makeup, a gym membership, a book or video. People who have something to sell know this, and they have become masters at driving business based on making you feel somehow inadequate.

Think about it – if you loved yourself just the way you are, would you spend as much money on things that change/enhance your image or performance? Probably not. Each dollar that you spend isn’t simply money out of pocket, it’s the time you spent to earn that money. If you make $20/hr, something that is $100 is equal to 5 hours of your life. Is it really worth the time you will never get back?

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” -Henry David Thoreau

Enter Santosa – a Sanskrit word that means ‘contentment’, something that is not to be confused with complacency.

Santosa means appreciating your current situation, body, abilities etc., while still dreaming and working towards goals. Santosa creates a solid foundation to leap from, and can save you a lot of grief that comes from financial stress, physical injuries from over-doing it at the gym, and general unhappiness that comes from not feeling good enough already. It will help determine what you really want to spend your money/time/effort on.

It sounds like a miracle word, but the miracle only occurs when you commit to being patient with the process. There will be plenty of times you feel Santosa’s influence improve your decisions and attitude, and there will be times that you completely forget about it and your old habits hijack your thoughts and actions. The trick is to not get upset with your lapses in judgement, don’t beat yourself up over all the things you should have done differently in the past and give up, because time keeps moving and your future self will thank you for working so hard now. Trust me, you WILL look back with gratitude if you stick with the tough part now.

To bring it back to my inspiration, “appreciate others’ beauty without questioning your own”, means that you don’t have to be like that person over there to be happy. I spent many years and many tears feeling inadequate in the face of comparison. I just couldn’t be like all the people I saw around me.

“Comparison is the thief of joy.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Looking back, my failure to be ‘like them’ IS COMPLETELY REASONABLE. I am not those people, I can never be those people, because they are not me. They do not have my genetics, or life experiences, or imagination. They are their own people, and the only person I can be is me because everyone else is already taken.

I have begun the difficult process of freeing myself from advertising influences that tell me I need to be different or better or similar to whatever image they are selling. I am working hard to let go of the jealously and unhappiness that comes from trying to compare myself to someone who will never be like me, because that is not useful to me. I am instead practicing the art of Santosa, contentment, so that I may be able to appreciate and learn from other people without questioning my own worth.

It’s often difficult, tedious work. But it’s also a process that has revealed riches within myself that I never ever dreamed I could possess, and it’s taken time for me to claim them. I hope that this can help you can discover your own unique value, and I would love to hear your thoughts. ❤

Extra Reading:

Taking The Leap by Pema Chodron (You can also get the same content in audiobook format with Getting Unstuck, and Pema’s sense of humour really shines.)

Lean In by Cheryl Sandberg

Blink: The Power Of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcom Gladwell

The Beauty Myth by Naiomi Wolf (this one is INTENSE and will probably make you angry, but it’s worth a skim at the very least. 😉

Owning Your Identity

“I was once afraid of people saying ‘who does she think she is?’ But now I have the courage to stand and say, ‘this is who I am.'” – Oprah Winfrey

It’s been a long time coming, and certainly I have a long way to go yet, but after seeing this quotation from Oprah it struck me that I have been spending far too much of my time worrying that people will hear what I say or see what I do and think that I’m not ‘qualified’ in some way. It’s a mindset that lurks behind the innocent disguise of wanting to ‘be prepared’ or ‘well informed’ before you make any statements or movements towards big goals. It’s a sneaky undermining of your acceptance and use of your experiences and knowledge that keeps you from feeling ‘ready’ to make the leap into greatness. Well as Amy Poehler said, “Great people do things before they’re ready. They do things before they know they can do it.”

My new mantra is ‘this is who I am’. Each and every day, I will own my experiences, my knowledge, my personality, my feelings. Alongside my daily gratitude practice I will add this mantra, and I will embrace not only who I want to be, but who I already am.

I’ve got this, and I think you do too.