Yesterday I had a long discussion with a colleague of mine regarding what allows individuals to achieve what they want in life e.g. happiness, health, wealth, being successful in x, y, z.
One point we agreed upon was that we have to be very clear about what we want e.g. in our world as fitness instructors and personal trainers – most clients want to be fit, healthy, some want to increase strength, others want to lose weight etc..
I often ask personal training clients during the initial consultation “What does it mean for you to be fit, healthy etc. ?” …. they have to think for a moment, some say I want to be able to run 10k without stopping, I want to be able to play football with my kids in the garden without getting out of breath, I want to get ripped (mainly the younger generation), the more mature individuals in their golden years are happy if they are able to go after their daily jobs without any major aches and pains and to keep mobile and active, other individuals still want to runs marathons in their 70s, 80s or beyond.
What I want to say is – that being “fit and healthy” means very different things for different people. It is very important to be clear about what it means for you – a simple way to clarify it for would be to take a few minutes and write down what your definition of “being health, fit and …..” or “being happy” is, keep in a diary and review it every so often and if you definition changes of the years and decades.
It is often the case that people who think they are healthy, happy, fit etc. are more likely to be healthy, happy, fit etc. and those who consider themselves as unfit are just not bothered doing something about it. It comes often down to a mental attitude e.g. in a book about creativity the author wrote that researchers wanted to find out what creative people have in common. They looked at the environment, cultures, eating, drinking habits, activity levels, education, family circumstances etc. etc., what they concluded was that those who considered themselves to be creative geniuses where more likely to be creative and those who thought of themselves as not creative were less like to be creative. It seems to be a notion in our head – a self full filling prophecy.
Therefore watch out what you think and what you think about, as
"It's not what you are that holds you back,
it's what you think you are not."
Denis Waitley.
Martin
