Tell me what you want, what you really, really want...

30^th August 2011

Car boot sales are Gods way of telling us, seriously - we've got too much stuff. Chris Evans

I had a super early night last night, 8.15 and we were snuggled up, I obviously needed it and so did Alfie because when I woke up at 5 this morning he was snuggled in my arms bless him, that doesn’t happen very often, he usually sleeps on the window sill or at the bottom of my bed.  Yes I’m now fully refreshed and ready for my short working week. 

I did manage to do my ironing and cook a dinner yesterday so I hit my two small goals I’d set myself and rewarded myself with an afternoon in front of the tv with red wine and an early night.  Today’s mini goal is to track and stay within my 29 daily ProPoints allowance, I shall officially weigh this morning as I wasn’t able to yesterday and I’m feeling good about it.  Also if I have time today I’d like to cook a recipe from the new one pot, it’s a spinach something, looks delicious.

What’s kept me going with my weight loss efforts over the last few years is realising it’s not a race, there isn’t one goal to reach, there’s lot’s of them because the journey is continual, I know as long as I breathe, I’ll watch what I eat because if I don’t I lose focus which usually results in weight gain.

It’s possible for us all to reach our weight loss target, and it helps by using goal setting along the way.  And goal setting can be used for any aspect of your life, not just your weight.  It's often easy to focus on one aspect of life and then suddenly feel that other areas have been 'neglected'.

When having a goal in mind, you’ve got to ask yourself how much you want to achieve that goal, for example how much do you really want to be able to run 5k on a scale of 1-10, for some of you it may be a 2, for me right now it’s a 9, I really want to do it, that’s what motivates me to get my trainers on, on a Sunday morning after I’ve already walked the dog for 90 minutes.  You’ve got to desire the goal to be able to motivate yourself.

Do you believe you can achieve?  It’s important to check whether you believe you can do it.  Some of us want things but don’t believe we can have them – are you secretly sabotaging yourself through negative thinking?

Expecting it to happen - begin to speak as if you are going to be doing/achieving it – talk to people, saying that your goal is really going to happen. You might then get support from unexpected opportunities.

Action - do something about it today –taking action will move you out of thinking into doing.

So whether the goal you have in mind is weight orientated or something else, once you’re focused on it, you then “cut the flab out of your life by tracking where you're spending all your time, money and energy. Ditch the things that drain you and concentrate on the gainers.” This can be activities such as watching mindless TV, or gossiping negatively, to not sleeping well. Removing energy wasters from your schedule will allow you to focus more on what you want.

Why not spend some time visualising your success, apparently if someone visualises in their mind’s eye what they would look like, feel like and what their inner dialogue would be when they’ve achieved their goal, this sows the seed of thought in your mind and motivates the person to move towards their goal.  Maybe by doing a ‘walk through’ or dummy run of the future in your mind, it might help to motivate you.

You could pay a life coach a fortune to help you realise what you want from your life, or you could just sit down and be honest with yourself, I think we all know what we want, sometimes we’re just scared to admit it.