Making It Happen

Written by Andrew Wilkin Tuesday, 31 May 2011 18:19

I have a mentor and a friend called Jamie Smart, he's an expert in NLP and other things relating to the mind. Recently we had a chat about making it happen, and barriers to success. This short article may prove to help you as much as it did me, though a word of caution, you may find yourself doing more than you had thought was previously possible and feeling better about it!

So what was it that was so powerful in our brief ten minute conversation? Well at the time I was feeling the weight of loads of things on my plate, I'm sure there are those out there that feel the same way. I was overwhelmed by my to do list and everything that just had to get done because of the consequences. I also fely guilt for time spent on indulging myself not knocking things off my to do list.

The funny thing is you can never have too much on your plate now, too much on the plate is a future construct with which we beat ourselves up, build barriers and work ourselves into a tail spin. Righ now you only have enough time for one thing, and right now you choose that to be reading this article, for which I thank you. The second thing he said to me was that it's not your circumstances but your thinking about those circumstances that traps you, in other words its our attitudes and responses to the things that happen to us that limit more often than the circumstances (though Jamie would take that even further).

Right now you may be beating yourslef up that you did not make it to the gym this morning or even for the last few days. Jamie's point would simply be this, the more you feel uneasy and not quite right about it, the more it's your body saying your thinking is not quite right. All you have is now, not the past nor the future, and if you want to go to the gym then thats fine, or if you want to go out with your friends that is also fine - just don't heap so much pressure on yourself.

One interesting side note on this, if life is a game that we can choose to play, when we feel compeeled to do something and feel there is no choice we naturally want to resist that and do the opposite and drag our feet. So too with training and indeed proper nutrition. You'll find it a lot easier if you choose to go to the gym, or choose to have that low fat protein shake, instead of feeling that this is something you have no option to do. This summer I will be writing about my proposed transformation from beer swilling, wine loving, kebab eating bloke to fitter more diet concious fella. This will be starting in July and be a three month program as designed by my friend and coach Joe from SNES.

The thing is that this will be my choice, I'm doing it because I want to. What things are you doing because you feel compelled to that dropping will make you feel happier and more content, what is preventing you from going to the gym when you say you're going to, or passing up that pizza slice - make it happen :)