PJ’s Fitness Blog
A blog about a fitter you. Come find out what is on the cutting edge of fitness science and be a part of the ongoing conversation.
Did you know that your body has a ‘burn fat’ button, and with one simple command, your can direct you body to dump pounds of fat? Well it true – but most people push the ‘pack on the fat’ button instead.
We were meant to eat protein, and that is how it still should be. Our genetics haven’t changed in the last 10,000 years, but our diet sure has, and now we have the biggest obesity epidemic the planet has ever seen.
When we increase protein intake, our bodies shed fat. When we increase fast carbs, our bodies hold on to fat.
When protein intake goes down, your body anticipates starvation and to help you survive, it stores fat and doesn’t let go. It’s just a simple survival mechanism.
So how can our bodies still react as if we’re starving, with all this food around? We are eating more calories than we need, but as I have said many times, TOTAL CALORIES DON’T MATTER! Like I point out in my book, Cracking Your Calorie Code, it’s the type of calorie and the timing of that calorie that makes all the difference.
All those low-protein junk food and breads that we eat give our bodies the ‘fear of starvation’ reaction and puts us into the ’store fat’ mode.
Simple: Eat more protein. But is that really easy? After all, we aren’t hunting game anymore like we were 10,000 years ago.
Yes, if you know how to do it, it’s pretty easy to turn your diet into a high-protein fat dumping routine. Here are a few of my favorite tips and food swaps:
P.S. I know, I may have offended some vegans here with my picture at the top, but hey it’s pretty funny, and laughter also burns fat.
Do these jeans make my butt look big or is it my genes?
I’m usually not one to re-post other people’s stuff, but an email I got today from Dr. Sears, explained an important subject so clearly, I just had to copy and paste it. I like most of what Dr. Sears has to say, although I don’t buy the supplements he sells, because I eat so clean. Below is his latest topic, and one that I agree with completely, and have also counseled my own X Gym clients on for the last couple years.
Have you resigned yourself to gaining weight because it “runs in the family”?
Bad genetics doesn’t have to catch up with you. You can change your genes simply by making a few adjustments to your diet.1
When you eat certain foods, nutrients release hormones that switch your genes on and off. And the nutrients in low-glycemic foods turn off genes that lead to weight gain and diseases that may follow.
We found this out when we studied the response to the glycemic index (GI) in people who have metabolic syndrome.
The glycemic index measures how fast your food breaks down to sugar in your bloodstream. Metabolic syndrome is a medical term for overweight people whose cholesterol, triglycerides, and blood sugar levels are high. It puts them at risk for diabetes, heart attack, and stroke.
In the study, one group ate foods with a low GI rating of 40-60. The other group ate foods with a high GI rating of about 80-100.
In just 12 weeks, the high GI diet increased the activity of 62 genes that lead to disease. These genes activate your stress response. It puts your body in a constant “fight or flight” mode. This lowers your immunity and causes damage to your cells.
But the low GI diet decreased the activity of 71 disease-causing genes, including hormone-sensitive lipase (HSL).2
High HSL is what causes fat to settle around your middle.3 But when scientists studied animals bred to have little HSL, they found the animals became resistant to obesity, whether it was hereditary or from diet.4
I suggest you eat a wide variety of low GI foods. Follow the example handed down by our primal ancestors. Choose foods you could have gotten either by hunting or gathering:
Eat fresh, low-glycemic foods. Look for grass-fed beef. Fish. Beans. Plenty of above-ground and green, leafy vegetables. Onions and garlic. Berries, nuts, and seeds. Fresh fruits.
Avoid high-glycemic foods. These include white potatoes, most grains such as rice, corn, and wheat, cereals, cereal bars, and low-fiber or sweetened foods.
Shun pre-packaged items and fast food. These products contain high-glycemic ingredients and artificial chemicals. Avoid sweetened foods. Diet foods. Foods like these turn on the genes responsible for weight gain and disease.5
For more information on the glycemic index, click here.
Finally, if you have a family history of disease, you may want to supplement with additional nutrients:
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD
I had to tell you about this new site, MyUrbanWellness.com - is just too cool to NOT talk about. MyUrbanWellness offers wellness products and services to people in the greater Seattle area at discounts of 50% or more.
If you are a reader of this blog, you are probably already spending lots of money on wellness, but you are not even sure you are getting the best service because it’s too expensive and time-consuming to shop around!
Well, MyUrbanWellness.com does all that for you. They screen each product or service carefully to make sure it is top quality. Then they make sure the merchant is “green”, by verifying they are making conscious efforts toward sustainability and are ecologically conscious. And best of all, by going through MyUrbanWellness, you get big discounts on the wellness products and services you need.
Sounds too good to be true? It’s not. It’s just a really great deal. It’s free to sign up. Then you automatically get reminders each time a new deal comes out – about 3 times per week.
Check it out and sign up for MyUrbanWellness.com today.
Great question, huh? I bet you know my answer already. Of course it’s better! Science has proven it over and over. Science has also shown that Prozac is about as good as a placebo, so it’s not hard to beat that over-used drug for elevating your mood. Even so, exercise is definitely the king for getting you happy, and curing depression.
The reason exercise works so well is because it is better at changing your brain chemicals than anything else you can do. Ever wondered why? God created us to move and to keep moving all day. Our modern society however, requires most of us to sit down all day instead. This unnatural lifestyle screws up the chemical balance in our brains and causes a downward spiral of depression, junk food cravings, more sedentary choices, obesity, etc., etc., until we are dead (10-20 years earlier than we have been).
A recent article in Time points out that exercise is indeed the best drug out there. High intensity exercise like the X Gym workout or the X Gym DVD is of course best; and activities like stair climbing offer the most intense “high” with the least time required, but for those who are obese or just want to get moving again, a simple walk can be the first step in a process that will change your mood and entire life.
Many regular X Gym members have eventually fired their “shrinks” because they just don’t need them anymore. When they are exercising regularly, they find it easier to eat better too. The X Gym member who suggested I write this post said, “I knew there was a reason I was feeling great lately…despite the nasty June weather!” I have even had a client tell me that the X Gym saved her marriage because it broke her mood patterns and helped her see her husband in a different, better light!
The reason your mood is so important, is because your moods are tied directly into your decision-making. To prove how important mood is to good choices, answer these questions:
Exercise causes an immediate response that helps you make healthier choices, but it also changes your general mood over time, helping turn this healthy choice pattern into a lifestyle.
The key is to get started NOW and commit to consistency. No time? Try walking 5 minutes a day to start. If you don’t have that kind of time, you shouldn’t even be reading this post (you should be looking into time management skills first!) Once you do start, you will find that 5 minutes increases your productivity by at least 10 minutes from the brain benefits you experience, so it really saved you 5 minutes. Then the time factor doesn’t seem like an issue anymore. In fact, you soon learn that NOT exercising COSTS you so much time, you can’t afford your sedentary and depressed lifestyle anymore! Then the upward spiral begins.
It’s your choice. Spiral up or spiral down. There is no hovering.
My job changes every day. That’s one of the reasons I love it so much. New research comes out all the time, and each week I get to learn new tips, tricks, and techniques that help people reach their health and fitness goals. This week I learned that affirmations may be even more powerful when they are phrased in the form of a question, rather than a statement.
I have instructed many people on the power of affirmations and how they are a powerful tool for helping us reach our fitness, health and wellness goals. I use them myself, and I have seen them produce miracles in many lives. Affirmations are a proven, effective way to reprogram your subconscious brain. This is so important is because your subconscious brain is the “boss” of you. It will make happen whatever it believes, through controlling your conscious and unconscious actions every day.
You can use your conscious brain to reprogram your subconscious brain using certain techniques, and affirmations are one of these very powerful techniques. Many people have trouble with affirmations however, because since they are traditionally phrased as a statement, they can cause a conflict if you don’t believe the affirmative statement you are making. Pounding away at it will effectively reprogram your brain over time due to the sheer volume of messages (it’s actually just a brainwashing technique), but it requires significant willpower to implement, because we are forcing ourselves to say something we don’t believe (yet).
Since most people feel this as an internal conflict, they stop doing their affirmations. Their mind fights against it and makes them forget, or they just don’t want to do it because the mental exercise is emotionally uncomfortable. Some even find that affirmation statements like “I am thin and fit” when they are far from it, even feels like a lie, which cause negative affirmations to follow, canceling out the positive ones.
I am always on the hunt to reduce the need for willpower, because I firmly believe that achieving true fitness doesn’t have to be a battle. This is why I was so excited to read the research study by Dolores Albarracin, published in Psychological Science, April 2010, Volume 21, Number 4. She discovered that phrasing affirmations as a question instead of a statement drastically increased success! When people asked - “Am I going to exercise today?” instead of saying “I will exercise today.” – they were much more likely to follow through.
She found that framing the desired outcome as a question presented a challenge to the person instead of a requirement that they might rebel against. By asking themselves a question, people were more likely to build their own motivation. The results of this experiment showed that participants not only did better as a result of the question, but that asking themselves a question did indeed increase their intrinsic motivation.
All it takes is switching two little words in your daily affirmations. Instead of “I will,” use “will I?” Try it and see. It makes a lot of sense to me, and it sure is easier in a lot of ways for many reasons, to perform daily affirmations without the tedious feeling of forcing a new belief. Will I be doing affirmations this way from now on? I think so. Will you?
Here is a hilarious video of the traditional way of performing affirmations. Watch it (it’s less than a minute) and get some laughter chemicals pumping and raise your metabolism a bit. Keep in mind, this technique still works, and is still the most effective in many cases, but I think professor Albarracin has done us all a huge favor with her breakthrough study.
At a certain point in life, many people (even people who may have been fit all their lives) find a few extra pounds creeping on, or find it harder and harder to lose weight, seemingly no matter what they try to keep it off or take it off. Popular wisdom says “Well, that’s just how it is when you begin to get older.” “Things change, your body changes, better just deal with it.” But is that really the whole truth? Are we doomed to decline as we age? Or, is there a better alternative?
If you want to stay or get fit, yes, there is hope for women after menopause and for men who have gone through ‘manopause,’ - a relatively new term used to describe the hormonal changes men experience during middle age.
Normal hormonal shifts with age don’t have to mean weight problems unless you convince yourself that’s true. This age-related shift does indeed mean that your body will change - and new lifestyle habits will have to be adopted to counter that - but it doesn’t mean that you are doomed to be out of shape no matter what you do, or that you will no longer have any control at all.
Many middle aged people surrender to the idea that it’s hopeless, and just give up. Some even try to fight it for a while, but then succumb to the myths and tell themselves they did their best, but “you just can’t fight mother nature.” Well, these people just fulfilled their own prophecy, that’s all. They believed, at least on some level (conscious or not), that they would fail, and with that belief, they made it happen.
I am in the best shape of my life, and each year I get fitter, faster, leaner and stronger. I even look better! I can do things now at 44 years of age that I wouldn’t have even dreamed of at 22, and I was in great shape then (or so I thought)! In fact, I would love the opportunity to go back in time and take on that whipper-snapper and show him what real conditioning looks like. I also feel better, have more energy, and an improved mood and outlook on life, and the list goes on. The main reason for this is two-fold: (1) I never slowed down, and (2) I learned how to program my subconscious brain. If you want to make something big happen, it always important to ask…
It’s actually your subconscious mind that is the boss of your body, and your subconscious will always make sure it is right. If your subconscious believes that you will be out of shape when you are middle aged, it will, behind the scenes, do everything possible to make that happen. If you’ve ever had that frustrating experience of thinking “Why did I do X (eat the chocolate cake), when I wanted to do Y (eat nutritious, healthy food today), you’ve experienced your subconscious mind at work.
Your conscious mind is of course powerful as well, but the subconscious always outranks it. Think of it this way: Instead of being the boss of your body, your conscious mind is the tool that “programs” your subconscious mind. It’s kind of like the executive assistant to the real boss. The right suggestions, phrased in the right way, with enough consistency, will get through to the boss and change opinions. Then the boss can make the executive decisions that change the course of the company.
Your subconscious brain is way more powerful than we realize. In addition to controlling all your conscious and unconscious actions throughout the day, it also controls your metabolism to a very large extent. I have worked with people who are eating right, exercising properly, drinking their water, and doing all the correct things “by the book,” but because they see themselves as out of shape, or expect a certain outcome, their subconscious fetches that for them and makes it happen.
How does your subconscious brain do that? Besides changing your actions, it can also change the very nature of the atoms that make up your tissues. Your belief system and faith in who you are and who you will become can either slow down your molecular vibrations or speed them up. I know it sounds pretty kooky, and I thought so myself when I first started learning this stuff years ago, but there is science to back it up, and I am now convinced this really is the case.
You can actually make things happen just by believing they will happen. It’s about faith, and it’s not all metaphysical either. Jesus, my Savior and hero, taught the importance of faith many times. In Mark 11:24 for instance, He says, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” This is where I got the idea for visualizing your “after picture” to get results faster and train your brain for permanent fitness. I don’t believe He gives us things that aren’t right for us, but if it is good for us and we are within His will, He will give it freely to us, just like you would for your own child.
Have you ever talked to the skinny person that says without doubt, “I can eat anything I want and never gain weight?” I think we all have, and most of us feel jealous. Well, the fact is, those people don’t really eat that bad, but when they do, they don’t gain weight – just like they said. This is partly because when they eat a whole bunch of garbage, their particular body type and metabolism compensates for it later by causing them to eat less, or better food for a while, but the other part is that their FAITH in their statement keeps their metabolism elevated so they burn the junk food off. Their subconscious brain believes it and it makes sure it happens by talking to the parts of the body responsible for metabolism adjustment, resulting in secretion of the right chemicals and hormones, along with the atomic vibrations necessary to stay thin.
Now for the physiology side of things. As far as the research shows, your muscle mass should decline no more than 2% per decade after the age of 40. Some studies show even less of a decline! This means that when you are 80 years old, you should still have at least 92% of the muscle you had at age 40. If your strength and muscle declines more than that, it’s because you are slowing down and you have chosen to get old, not because of anything “mother nature” decided for you. Since muscle and metabolism are closely linked, keeping muscle is the best way to maintain your metabolism. The best way to keep it of course is to keep moving.
Below, I have listed only a few of studies that confirm the science behind preventing metabolism declines with lifestyle choices, but there are many more. I would encourage you to do your own research on PubMed or through Google. Educating yourself is the best way to drive this fact home in your own brain and to convince your subconscious that you can actually take control by programming it in the right way.
The bottom line is that whatever you believe will happen, will happen. Your brain is more powerful than exercise, proper nutrition, supplements, or anything else. All that stuff is important – don’t get me wrong. I’m just saying that while it does serve it’s purpose physically, it also helps the program the brain mentally, because while you are following through with the right habits, you are also changing your beliefs and programming your subconscious in a very effective way.
Proper brain training is the most important component to aging well and staying fit. There are sadly too few people (and almost no trainers) besides me talking about this, but I encourage you to check out a couple of my favorite authors on the subject, Dr Amen and John Medina. If you want training that incorporates these ideas, the X Gym is your place. For more info on this subject and specific brain training techniques, check out my book at www.crackingyourcode.com.
Resources:
American Journal of Physiology, E281, 633-639
Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 82, 3208-3212
Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab, 264: E450-E455
J Nutr Health Aging. 9(6):408-19.
I really enjoyed the lecture with Tim Van Orden a week ago. Thank you to all who attended. I hope you agree it was a fun, informative, and valuable event. (For those of you who couldn’t attend, you can purchase a DVD of the presentation shortly – watch your Facebook, Twitter and the newsletter for the announcement it’s available.) I especially enjoyed watching those of you who attended squirm with the dilemma Tim presented to you regarding protein and fruit (among other things). I let you stew about it for a week so you would fill your heads with questions and doubts. Everyone should always question what they hear and strive to seek out both sides of every story.
Well, now you’ve certainly heard both sides! Tim’s message and website (www.runningraw.com) is certainly different from my message and the X Gym’s philosophy on nutrition isn’t it? Did he rock your world and shake your state just a smidge? I certainly hope so. Many of you wondered why I agreed to do a joint lecture with him at all, since he flies in the face of so much of what I preach.
The reason is, I don’t want you to blindly believe anyone. Not me, not Tim, not your mom, or even your doctor. What I want is for you to know that there is an amazing amount of information out there, and if you research it yourself to form your own opinions, you will be able to adapt quickly as new information comes out. You will be trying your own experiments and finding what is right for you because you know how, not just because someone told you what to do.
It has been established that within 5 years, you can become a national expert in any field by studying that field for just 30 minutes a day. Most people don’t have this kind of commitment however, so that explains why there aren’t that many national experts for each particular field. In the area of health and fitness, I have averaged over an hour a day of study since 1987, so my brain is a pretty good resource for you to use.
Many of you depend on me to get you the best information on exercise and nutrition, and that’s fine to get you started. I have the time to do the research and you probably don’t. My job is to be your resource and I take that very seriously, so keep depending on me. However, I encourage you to take a little time to do some of your own research as well, so that you aren’t dependent on me forever, and you can challenge me when you think I’m wrong.
Almost half of the new things I investigate come from X Gym members and friends. People know I am into researching health and fitness, and that I am always experimenting with new ideas and methods. Because of this, I get a steady stream of links to studies, articles, news feeds, etc. Some of these I have already seen and can respond to right away, and some are new to me and require more research. Your questions and challenges are a great source of inspiration and learning for me, so keep ‘em coming.
Tim’s message contains a lot of great information and useful tools. He is a close friend of mine and an amazingly intelligent man. Tim has researched his concepts more than anyone I know. He is in phenomenal shape and through his applied concepts, is one of the healthiest people I know as well. He is also far an away the healthiest vegan I have come across. For those who want to commit to a raw vegan lifestyle, Tim has the best way to do it and his concepts should be followed to the “T!”
I am an omnivore however, and I love my meat. I have switched 95% of my other food to raw recently, and am loving that too! Is this the best way for you? Maybe, maybe not. Is it easy to implement? Yes. My time in the kitchen has sure dropped! Is it easy to sustain? For some. Any lifestyle change is tough at first, but with the right brain training, it can be very easy.
The point I wanted to make is that you shouldn’t believe everything you hear, no matter who it comes from. Remember your kid asking you “why” over and over until you hit a dead end? They are just trying to figure things out to the deepest level they can comprehend. You should do that too as an adult. Don’t be satisfied with the first answer, no matter how reputable you think the person is. Dig deeper and see if they really know what they are talking about. See how far you can push them and get all the information you can. This is how you learn and form your own opinions as to what works best for you.
Here is my favorite comment: “I have X Gym members asking me about the major contradiction that was presented the other night! and I don’t know what to tell them until I talk to you… Unless you are changing your nutrition recommendations, I hope you NEVER do something like that again!”
More comments and Q&A soon, so send me yours too!
Continuing on my quest to rewire the brains of the world for permanent fitness without the need for willpower, I submit to you the final part (be sure to read the previous parts below before this part).
5.) Complete an experience that exceeds your limits. What is something that you think you would never do? Bungee jump? Speak in public? Pick up a spider with your hand? You know you could do it if you had to, but your subconscious brain doesn’t think you can. If you temporarily overpower it with your conscious brain and keep doing the things that your mind’s eye doesn’t think you can do, it will get confused and will rewire itself to match the new references that you are presenting.
6.) Master a new skill. Most people’s identity is deeply linked to their job, their family/spouse, of both. If you pick a new skill to master that is outside these parameters, you will open up your mind’s eye to accept new possibilities. My new skill was to learn how to fly airplanes and get my pilot’s license. This was totally outside of the fitness world (my job), and had nothing to do with my kid’s interests (my family). Because of that experience, I can tell that my subconscious brain is much less resistant to new ideas and is also easier to reprogram.
7.) Rewrite your most common questions. When you ask yourself questions like, “What’s wrong with me?” or “How did I become so fortunate to have this life?” you are programming your identity for better or for worse. It’s the job of your conscious brain to come up with the questions. Your subconscious brain is the one that answers them.
If you say, “Why do I always have such bad luck?” Your subconscious brain will assume you know what you are talking about and answer the question for you with something like, “Because you’re just one of those unlucky people.” Now that answer is part of your programming, and the next time “luck” is a factor, you will make conscious and unconscious decisions to bring bad “luck” your way. Remember that your subconscious brain always has to be right, so it will make you miss opportunities and help you sabotage yourself so good “luck” never happens and when it does, you won’t notice it.
The same principle applies to fitness. If you catch your negative questions, you can stop the answers from programming your subconscious brain. You can also use this principle to your advantage by forming positive questions that you constantly ask yourself. One example would be, “Why did God bless me with such a great ______.” Just fill in the blank with what you like about yourself. Your subconscious will have to answer the question with something like, “Because God likes you and wants to show you in ways like that.” This opens up the window for future blessings, not just to receive them, but to notice them and create a life where more flow in!
To be continued in the lecture DVD…
Changing your mind’s eye and personal identity might seem like a daunting task at first, and this blog has limitations due to the fact that it is only one form of communication, but if you would like to learn easy and specific strategies on how to apply these principles, then stay tuned for release of the DVD on the seminar I gave on 3/18/10, because this is the subject matter I spoke about in much more detail (including some new and better twists).
Special note to lecture attendees: I know Tim’s message was drastically different from mine in many ways and I knew that you would all have tons of questions. I wanted to lecture with Tim because our viewpoints are so different. He has some great points, and so do I. We both have opinions based on scores of research studies, so how you you know what’s right for you?
Well, I will be blogging about it more in my next post. Keep your questions coming so I can answer them all in the blog which will benefit many others too! Just email me at pj@xgym.com. In the mean time, keep eating your protein, drinking your water, chomping lots of dark greens (raw is best) and limit your fruit intake if you are trying to burn fat fast.
More soon…
Continuing on my quest to rewire the brains of the world for permanent fitness without the need for willpower, I submit to you part 3 (be sure to read parts 1 and 2 below before this part).
3.) Exercise. Start small and move ahead when you are ready. Most people think exercise is a big huge commitment, but it doesn’t have to be. I average less than 10 minutes a day and I am in the best shape of my life! Exercise is vital to your success because it changes the way you move, your posture, how you feel, what you think you will and will not do, and many other things that effectively reform your mind’s eye.
Small steps is the best way to start out, because that makes it easier to establish consistency. When you establish consistency, you create a habit, which can then become a part of your lifestyle. Once you are at that point, exercise is just as much a part of your life as brushing your teeth. Since we now live in a modern transportation society, it is more important than ever to keep moving. God did not designed us to sit down all day!
Exercise can be condensed (like we do at the X Gym and on the X Gym DVD) so time isn’t a factor any more. If you don’t have 40 minutes per week to exercise, you’ve got bigger problems to deal with, so get those straight first! If you do have 40 minutes per week, but you still won’t exercise, then it’s just a priority issue, then read on and practice the other techniques in this series of posts, because they will help you with this one!
4.) Check your peer group. This can be co-workers, your social network, your family at home, or any other group you associate with. Your mind’s eye will listen to the messages from these people too – especially those messages that are linked with emotion. This is how others can brainwash us. Be careful what you hear, and catch others feeding you these negative messages.
You may even find that you need to make some courageous decisions in your life and break off some friendships or hang out with certain people less. Your peer group will either drag you down or pull you up. You have to choose wisely!
If it is your family that is pulling you down, then you need to be a leader and pull them up. Tell them this is your new lifestyle and you really need their support. Be sure they understand that you won’t force this all on them, but that this is your new resolve, and that you need their help, support and love to make it work for you.
You may also find that you need to hang out with certain people more. Find friends that support the lifestyle and goals that you want to achieve. Surround yourself with people who are already living that dream so you can find it easier to share those habits.
Sharing your proclamation with someone in your peer group can also be very helpful. For instance, if your proclamation is “Today I commit to getting healthier and fitter,” say it to that person. Have them respond with, “I believe you and support you in that.” If you don’t see them on a given day or you forget (remember that your old neural networks will sabotage you and try to make you forget or just take away your motivation to do it), then call them, text them or email them as soon as you remember. Just do it every day. It will help you in two ways: first, to remind your brain that this is a new lifestyle and second, to remind them that they are supporting you in it.
To be continued in part four…
Changing your mind’s eye and personal identity might seem like a daunting task at first, and this blog has limitations due to the fact that it is only one form of communication, but if you would like to learn easy and specific strategies on how to apply these principles and work with me live, then come to my next seminar, because this is the subject matter I will be speaking about with much more detail than can be delivered through this medium. Click here for more details…
If someone could safely brainwash your subconscious brain and reset your mind’s eye so you thought like a thin person and therefore became one for the rest of your life, would you do it? Most would jump at the chance. Some wouldn’t though, unless they trusted that person unconditionally, so how about if that someone was you?
Forming a new mind’s eye will help you break the old patterns and once that happens, willpower isn’t even needed anymore. You will think like that new person and will act differently as your old patterns are a thing of the past and new patterns control you. Sounds great, huh? So how do you brainwash your mind’s eye and form a new identity in your subconscious? All you need is commitment and consistency to follow the next 7 steps.
1.) Link pleasure to your goal. You have probably already found enough discomfort with your present state to make you want to change, but people can learn to live with discomfort, so while it might be a good catalyst to get you started, it’s never an effective long-term strategy for success. If you imagine enough pleasure to link to your “after” picture however, you will be motivated towards long term results.
Since pleasure is the only long term motivator, you will need to focus on this aspect. Do this by writing down a list of good feelings you will have when you achieve your “after” picture. Look at this list daily and feel the pleasure in the present tense, as if your after after picture has already happened. This only takes a minute or two to be effective!
2.) Compose a proclamation and say it at least 3 times a day. Become obsessed with it. Post it in places you will notice it. Write it on your window or mirror with dry erase markers, place post it notes in strategic places, etc. Get weird about it, and when you recite your proclamation, say it with emotion for full effectiveness.
Your subconscious brain will hear messages most clearly when emotion is applied. If you find it hard to muster up emotion with your proclamation, or even if you don’t believe what you are saying, you can fake it and it will still work. Just be an actor. Your subconscious brain is easily fooled and doesn’t know that you are acting, so it will hear it just as well.
Your subconscious brain will always go with the majority of the messages it hears, especially the messages that are linked to emotions, so make your proclamation the majority message and your subconscious brain will buy into them even if your conscious brain isn’t convinced!
My proclamation is, “Every day and in every way I’m getting stronger and wiser.” I say this at least 11 times, emphasizing a different word each time. Sometimes I restate it a few times emphasizing the word “stronger,” because that has many different meanings to me (i.e. physical, endurance, power, will, spiritual, etc.).
You can create emotion to some extent by simply involving your physiology, so even if you don’t feel your proclamation is “just right” yet, you can still make it work over time by saying it emphatically with a focused posture, while looking in the mirror at yourself with utter intensity. You may feel silly at first, but do it anyway. Even if you do feel silly, wouldn’t you rather feel silly and be successful, than feel comfortable and fail again? I sure would!
It is important to know however, that this and other exercises might be difficult to perform. Your brain might tell you things like, “This one just doesn’t sound right” or you might put it off until you have formed “just the right proclamation.” That is your established neural networks trying to sabotage you. They know how effective this technique is, because you have been using it all your life already, but just in a negative way. These networks don’t want to die off, so they will resist your efforts. Expect this resistance and when it happens, recognize it as a sign that you are winning the battle and push on to win. These old networks are dying off and are simply fighting for their survival. Just press forward and finish them off! Once you do, you will look back on those times and wonder how you ever even thought that way!
I’m living proof of this principle. So is Taz and many others. I was a Doritos freak in high school. I could eat a family size bag in one sitting! When I got to college, my main addiction was those soft candy orange slices, made from high fructose corn syrup and coated with granulated sugar. I would buy the Costco size bucket and pound through one of those in just a couple days! Now my cravings for things like spinach and bell peppers are even stronger than my past cravings were for Doritos and sugar. I couldn’t imagine eating a single Dorito or candy orange slice today. It still blows me away how much my brain has changed! This can be you too, with just a little consistency of these 7 easy steps.
To be continued in part three…
Changing your mind’s eye and personal identity might seem like a daunting task at first, and this blog has limitations due to the fact that it is only one form of communication, but if you would like to learn easy and specific strategies on how to apply these principles and work with me live, then come to my next seminar, because this is the subject matter I will be speaking about with much more detail than can be delivered through this medium. Click here for more details…
