Help Yourself Meet a Challenge

Ever had a challenge and needed a little sumthin' extra to help you meet it?

For about a year and a half, each month I've hosted a 10-Day Health & Wellness Challenge that begins on the 10th day of each month.  I ask my friends on Facebook if anyone wants to join me, and there's been a group every month who accepts the challenge.

For 10 days we commit to do the following: 1) Exercise every day, 2) Eat a green vegetable every day, 3) Eliminate sugar, and 4) Keep a journal of everything that we eat and drink each day.

As part of the 10-Day Challenge, I’ve email everyone each day with health and wellness tips, along with affirmations. I’m not a nutritionist or a personal trainer any more… but I am a coach, fitness buff for 20+ years, and a life-long learner. I’m sharing practical tips that I use to keep exercise and healthy eating a part of my busy schedule, as well as information I’ve garnered over the years from some of the best in the business.

Knowledge alone won’t do it, though. In addition to practical knowledge about what to do, when to do it and how to do it, we have to have the right mindset to achieve any goal.

 

Heard of the knowing-doing gap? It’s a term used in education and in business… it means sometimes we know things, but we don’t always do them. Having a positive mindset and belief system will help us to DO them and narrow or eliminate that gap.

Affirmations are positive sentences that you repeat to yourself each day. Over time, you can change your mindset.

Steven Covey, in The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, says that a good affirmation has five basic ingredients: it’s personal, it’s positive, it’s present tense, it’s visual, and it’s emotional.

Covey uses this example: “It is deeply satisfying (emotional) that I (personal) respond (present tense) with wisdom, love, firmness, and self-control (positive) when my children misbehave.”

Dr. Charles Garfield is a renowned researcher in the area of high achieving individuals. One of the main ideas his research showed was that almost all peak performers are visualizers. They see it; they feel it; they experience it before they actually do it.

To make the affirmations even more powerful, visualize your affirmation in your mind’s eye or create a visual display.  Brain research tells us just how powerful visualization is. If you visualize a red apple sitting in front of you, your brain doesn’t know if you literally saw a red apple or not. Your brain can’t distinguish between real and imagined experiences.

(Sidebar — I tried to use this with my husband. He doesn’t really need to go PLAY golf… he can just visualize, and his brain will think he really did!)  :)

The group of us doing the challenge are using affirmations daily to help us achieve our goal.

What other suggestions would you give to someone who is trying to reach a goal?

 XO,