We all understand the concept of conditioning our bodies regardless of whether we choose to do it or not. It essentially comes down to diet and exercise. If we do not exercise and have no regard for our diet, it can ultimately lead to poor physical health.
What about conditioning the mind? Might I suggest that if we don’t condition our mind it can lead to poor mental health? I’m not proposing that you will have psychosis or mental illness, just the inability to take control of your thoughts.
We all have inner dialogue. Most of us tend to play stories in our mind over and over again.…
We have now gone through the steps to help you to direct your life. In order to be successful in this endeavor, it is critical for you to take control of your life. This means you must take responsibility for everything that happens to you. Blaming others is simply giving away your control. If someone else dictates where your life is going, you become a victim with no power. We will take a deep dive on this concept in a future blog.
I have broken down our “Direct your life” series of blogs to 8 critical steps:
Accept full responsibility for everything that happens in your life.
Now that you have started taking the necessary action to bring you toward your goals, it becomes helpful to maintain the motivation to keep moving forward. Why not create personal rewards for reaching your goals? It is a powerful way to keep you on the path. Assume you have a goal of making $100,000 a year. You’ve always had a dream of going to Italy. Make the Italian trip your reward for reaching the goal. If you want to increase your drive, get pictures of all the places you want to see when you are in Italy and look at them every day.…
We’ve discussed the importance of ritualizing the activities or creating habits associated with moving you toward your goals. Now let’s examine the process of how you could begin your routine.
Let’s assume you wake up one day and decide that you would like your weight to be 15 pounds less then it is today. Since you are not exercising currently, you decide to join a gym and work out 5 days a week in order to lose the weight. The first day your alarm goes off at 5am, you get up and go straight to the gym. The next day your alarm goes off at 5am and you hit the snooze bar, but you do manage to go over lunch.…
Now that you have taken the action required to move you toward your goals, the next step is to repeat the action with regularity (daily, weekly, monthly etc). You do this by creating habits to ritualize the activities you need to do, in order to reach your goals. As humans we are all creatures of habit. Think about those things you do every morning to get ready for your day: Brushing your teeth, taking a shower, getting dressed, etc. Most of us even have an order to which we do each activity.
If you do these things every day you have made a commitment to the goal of good hygiene.If…
Have you taken the time to identify your desires? Most people have no clarity around what we truly want in life. The key is to start from the end and work backwards. Begin the process by fantasizing about your ideal life. See it as clearly as you can. Next, examine the characteristics that make up that fantasy.
