05 Jan Keeping Things Alive

Do you ever have a slump in your energy or motivation?

When it comes to exercise and nutrition most people have experienced the lack in motivation at some point during their journey.

This is a sign of being human. Everything can’t be cheerful and perfect all of the time. There will be a challenge in your journey somewhere down the line for sure. This will be your mood changing moment.

Some of theses challenges will be small, like your coffee machine breaking down (Actually lets be honest, that might be quite a BIG problem for many of us). Lets make a small challenge something like when you push snooze on your wake-up alarm. You find you just can’t ever wake up and get out of bed on that first alarm and instinctively push snooze. Or you find you are always having a sneaky chocolate at a certain time of everyday.

A big challenge might be a huge tragedy where a family member passes away unexpectedly or you have a severe car accident. Everybody’s big challenge will be at different levels. Maybe it’s having that hard conversation with somebody or changing jobs, you will know what your big challenge is.

Regardless of what your challenge will be, you inevitably will have to deal with one sooner or later.

So how do you keep things alive when you hit these challenges?

When your energy is low , when you aren’t feeling happy or nothing seems to work and it’s all going wrong, you have two options to choose from. To deal with it in a negative way where your choice will make you feel worse off or you can choose to deal with your challenge in a positive way which will either make you feel better or contribute to you moving to a more alive and positive state.

Personally as a coach I find that looking at my big goal I want to achieve keeps my decision making in check. Here is what works for me and I hope this method might work for you. After practising these steps I soon realized that when a heart wrenching life challenge comes up in life, I learnt to deal with it in a way that will benefit me in some way and not all be bad. Choosing not to be a victim and taking control of what needs to be done to sort it out and make that steps forward were so beneficial. Feeling upset or taking time to grieve is a totally important part of any process and is a necessity, but choosing to be a victim or choosing to take small wins from the situation is a totally different kettle of fish.

Here is how I choose to do it:

Step Number One:

What is my end goal?

(I know I am nowhere near achieving it now and all of these challenges keep slowing life down and get me unhappy but I do know what my end goal is.)

Step Number Two:

What very tiny steps can I take to get me a little closer to this far off goal or back to my happy feeling?

(Even if it’s pushing the snooze button one less time than I usually do, I know I am taking some steps towards my end goal)

Step Number Three:

Ask myself what is my goal and repeat number two until I start feeling some good momentum and then find other small steps I can work on.

(Maybe adding an extra glass of water per day to my eating plan is the one or maybe you are at a stage where I can have that hard conversation or tackle big challenges straight away.)

This is the method I use every day with my nutrition, exercise, work and big life challenges. From cutting down on sugar in your diet or dealing with massive pain always choose to take small wins no matter how small.

Mentally you are constantly training yourself to be a winner in all situations no matter how hard or painful they might be. How you choose to react to your challenges everyday will determine your ability to keep things alive.

Get out there and try it out 🙂