Meditation & Affirmations

As discussed in week 7, mental health is essential to weight loss, increased energy, and high levels of performance. While the public and society at large can ignore the importance of mental health and performance…(largely because the media industry profits more by keeping us in a constant state of mental stress), you will no longer ignore it because of how much it will help you transform your thinking over time.

Now, if you have a habit of negative self talk, complaining, spending time with negative people, watching the news, aimlessly scrolling through social media or watching Netflix, or you have other addictive behaviors like binge watching Netflix shows, viewing pornography, alcohol dependency, etc, then these patterns won’t be changed overnight! Typically changing the state of your mental health in a permanent way (much like transforming your body and creating the habits for long term transformation), can take much longer than 12 weeks. Scientific research has pointed to the need for at least 18 months of habit change to make something permanent.

In the quest for mental health, there are 3 primary practices, which if done consistently will give you a greater sense of control and security in your mental and emotional health. One deals with your relationship with the past, one with the present, and one with the future.

The first exercise in helping you acknowledge and approach the past from a positive way is gratitude. Gratitude is the opposite of complaining. When you complain about something in your current experience or past, you reinforce your attention towards what you don’t like. This makes the problems or “negative” things in your life SEEM worse than they really are. When you focus on negativity, then your brain will release more of the hormone cortisol and increase your stress levels. However, when you experience or create gratitude, you are focusing your attention on what you want to experience, and therefore create an impression that your life is BETTER. You are happier, 
more positive, and have more emotional security. Even if your gratitude practice is something simple like writing down 3 things each day you are grateful for, you will feel much more powerful in the delivery of it.

The second exercise is meditation. Meditation is one of the most common practices by people who are high performers and extremely healthy. People like Oprah, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Michael Jordan have all expressed tremendous benefits from this practice. If you want to experience a greater sense of self control, personal peace, and greater productivity/focus, then simple forms of meditation can help tremendously. Meditation can be as simple as sitting down, closing your eyes, and focusing on following the inhale and exhale of your breath for 2-5 minutes at a time. When your mind wanders (which it will), the goal is to bring your attention back whenever you notice it. The goal of meditation is not to “be good” at it, but just to bring your attention back to your breath as often as you notice it getting off course.

The third exercise is affirmations/visualization. This is a practice where you state out loud, write down, or imagine the future you want to experience as if it’s already yours. You can write out the goal weight you want to have, the body you desire, or how you feel in your body as if it’s already true. An example of this is to say “I am so grateful I effortlessly maintain my goal weight of 120 pounds.”

An example of a visualization is to sit with your eyes closed and imagine a moment when you have achieved your goal weight as if it’s already done. When you look in the mirror and see your body in the shape you’ve always dreamed of, maybe with your partner or kids acknowledging you for the transformation. 

Doing these daily can be very powerful for your long term transformation, I discuss more about this and train more deeply on transforming your mindset in my 12 month program.

All in all, “training” isn’t just something you do for the muscles in your body, it’s something you do for your mind in your body as well. Both are essential to your long term happiness, health, and well being.

Mindfulness Exercise

This week, choose one of the 3 habits to practice daily. If you practice none of them right now, then start with gratitude as your first exercise. 
Spend 2-3 minutes when you wake up and before you go to bed noticing things you are grateful for, this will set your mind up to feel good throughout the day.

Once you practice gratitude for at least one full week, add in meditation.
 If you already have a gratitude practice of some kind, add in meditation. You don’t have to do this for 15-20 min to start, it can just be something you do for 2 min. Download a meditation app like Calm or Headspace if you’d like to be supported in your meditation journey. 

Finally, if you practice both gratitude and meditation, add in visualization.

The keys with these habits is not trying to do all at once. You could spend 30 days just focusing on adding one of these new mental habits. If you spent the next 90 days adding these 3 to your daily routine, it would change the course of your mental health, and therefore your life as a whole.

After doing this for the next week, share in the Facebook group your experience