Monday, February 20, 2012

Can't have one without the other

Do you kick yourself in the butt, every time you make a decision to change something in your life because you always resort back to an old habit?

This is very common we decide to do something we want only to always fall back into old habits causing us frustration in believing we can never accomplish anything.  There is great news you do not have to get angry anymore because I want to explain what you must do to help you accomplish your dreams.

Many years ago when I was training to be a bodybuilder I would always start off new routines strong, training 4-5 days per weeks and eating a clean healthy diet, yet it seemed that a few weeks in I always fell off my diet routine.  Healthy almonds were now replaced with chips, and tuna sandwiches were replaced with burgers.  This happened all the time, I even had a journal, I wrote in blue for healthy foods I ate and had a red pen for when I ate unhealthy.  If you go through my old journals you always find lots of red the further you turn the pages.
Then I figured out what my trigger was, it's my weakness- CHIPS!  I love them.  If I ate chips I fell back into a comfort zone and forgot my eating habits I needed to follow. 
I made a decision, and it worked.  Instead of deciding to eating healthy 7 days a weeks and avoiding junk food I made a decision and that was to stop eating chips.  This worked very well for me, as long as I stayed away from those tasty chips I was fine but I had to decide to stay away from them.

We all have things we want to do and we make decisions to do them yet we don't make the decision to stop doing other things.  For every healthy habit you want to begin you must stop doing an old habit.  Replace a bad thing with a good thing.

If you want to quit smoking, you must begin by finding an activity to replace smoking with.  Let's say reading for example, in the evening when you are bored instead of smoking you choose to read, this will shift your focus on something entirely different.

Eliminating triggers
Triggers are things in your life that remind you to do actions.  So let's say for example you want to quit smoking and you find out your trigger is drinking.  Every time you drink you smoke, so decide for a little while to cut out the drinks.  Now even deeper, if the reason you drink is because your buddy Paul makes you want to have a drink, I think you know who you should spend less time with :-)

Replace bad habits with good habits, this shifts your focus to something else.  The sure way to win in life is by making positive strides to become greater.  Decide what can you start doing to enrich your life and what must you eliminate for your daily routine that stands in the way of you reaching your goal?

Stay motivated
Shane C

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