Forging Your Fitness Through FOCUS!
Hello, my friends! I hope you are treating life well and loving it! Today, I want to talk to you about one of the most powerful forces in the world: the power of focus. Author and life coach Anthony Robbins coined a very famous phrase: “Where focus goes, energy flows.” As you consider the significance of this phrase, I would like you to consider your own life, and ask yourself, “Where is my focus?”
To be sure, we have many forces vying for our attention. For example, I once trained a very successful businessman who had mastered many skills and talents—except in the area of nutrition and fitness. His health was always second to his business and his ongoing business ambitions. He would regularly tell me, “Griff, I know that I SHOULD be exercising more and eating more healthy, and I am going to start right now.”
I must have heard this same phrase over 30 times over the 2-year period that I had the privilege of being his personal trainer. In essence, he continued to erect barriers based on the conditioning of his mind. I wrote a blog post characterizing these barriers called “5 Things Keeping You From Exercising, Eating Healthy, And Losing Weight.” The self-imposed barriers that my client created all came down to one thing: LACK OF FOCUS!
It is my personal promise that if you examine an area of your life that needs improvement, you will find one of two things or both:
1- Your focus in not on that area!
OR
2-Your focus is on that area but it is focused on the negative!
As for my client, his did not focus on health and fitness, and, consequently, he made no progress! On the other hand, maybe in your case you have the desire to become healthy and strong, but you focus on all of the other times that you have “failed” in that area of your life, and, consequently, you make little progress. Below are three principles that will help establish a laser-like focus.
Principle #1: Have a FOCUS!
As obvious as this sounds, Napolean Hill in his masterpiece Think and Grow Rich discloses that 98 out of 100 people lack what he has coined a “definite purpose.” In other words, they have not defined what they want out of life, and they cannot define what their “calling” is.
Now, let’s apply this to the health and fitness arena. Instead of just saying, “I want to lose weight and feel better,” consider getting a little more precise. To get you started, consider including some of these key points in your own vision:
-How much do you want to weigh?
-What will be your body fat percentage?
-What will you feel like?
-What will you look like?
-What will your nutrition look like?
-How many times per week are you exercising?
These are just a few key points that you can elaborate on and put into your own vision. What you are essentially doing here is giving your brain a target. It will know what it is aiming at and you will be inspired to take action. After all, it is not practical to ask your brain to take action on “feeling better,” but it is perfectly logical that your brain will act on such instructions as “I am committed to exercising 6 days per week.” One is vague and meaningless while the other is definite and tangible.
Principle #2: Live “As If”
Between 96-98% of all of your habits come from your subconscious mind. This is huge. To change your habits means to change your subconscious. What we need to do is to convince your subconscious mind that your vision/focus on health and nutrition already exists! Although on the surface this may seem illogical or silly, science has proven that the subconscious mind does not know the difference between reality and what we hope to be our reality. In other words, when you create your health goals, write it in the present tense, using phrases such as, “I weigh 165 lbs.; I am at 12% body fat; and I have energy to burn!” instead of “I will weigh 165 lbs.; I will get to 12% body fat; and I will have energy to burn”.
Again, this may not be your reality at this moment, but when you repeatedly tell this to your subconscious mind, it will begin to believe it! If you always put it into a future tense, your subconscious mind will not register your instructions because it is always “off in the future.” Although there is much more that goes into this, suffice it to say, your subconscious mind only operates on the here and NOW!
Principle #3: Focus On What You WANT, Not What You Don’t!
Science has proven that we attract into our lives what we think about. This is not because we “pull” it into our universe as the movie The Secret and other authors have suggested, but rather we attract it because WE BELIEVE that we can achieve it, and we take action towards its achievement! This is nothing more than a common sense principle that goes back to Anthony Robbins’ quote, “Where focus goes, energy flows!”
When you are planning to change your nutrition and exercise habits, focus on how good you are going to feel, how great you are going to look, and how much better you are going to feel, rather than focusing on how hard it is going to be to get there and reminding yourself how many times you have failed in the past!
Well, there you have it, my friends! I know from personal experience and from scientific proof that these principles work. Apply them into your life and reap the rewards. Life is good!
God Bless,
Griff