2019 #39 What's the real challenge?

What are your challenges for living a healthy life? How do you go about solving them? Here's a framework I use...

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Transcript
Obstacles are put in our way to see if what we want is worth fighting for.

Last week, in our previous video, I talked about what are the skills for healthy life skills for healthy living, for weight loss, fitness. And I talked about four ideas: this idea of designing a life you can live,  purposeful 

thinking, emotional management, and self care, (So) as being the four key skills.

What I really love about the idea of actually then going and putting them into practice is that we'll face challenges, we'll face obstacles, we'll face opportunities to either fall back into unhealthy, unhelpful habits that we have been living, or to choose new, purposeful decisions. To create new helpful habits that are going to serve us on the spot, or to experiment to be finding out what's working and what doesn't. So in this video, I want you to think about how you currently handle the challenges that you have, any obstacles that get in your way. As I've spoken to people over the, you know, 10 years, 12 years that I've been doing this....and all this week, I've been teaching my webinar about the three mental breakthroughs that you need to succeed. And so many of the obstacles that come up, and the same for everyone, right, it's like "there's a certain food, I don't feel I can stop, I don't feel like I can do it, I'm not good enough, I don't have time". All these kind of excuses, all these reasons that we have, you know, "there's temptation foods, there's social events, there's fussy eaters in the household, there might be medical conditions, injuries", things like that.

Life will give you challenges. And what most of us do, as soon as we're presented with him challenge, is just to go "nope, it's too hard, I can't do it, I'm out". Or, our brain tries to short circuit, it tries to solve it just by going back to what it already knows. Right? It goes that easy route, our brain is motivated to conserve energy, to stick with the mental pathways it already knows, you know, our primitive part of our brain really likes to be lazy, let's just do what it's always done. Which is how we end up repeating habits, and creating habits in the first place, over and over and over again.

So, once we know that, though, we can recognize it, in practice, and we can think about "well, how can I do things differently?". And that's what I want to talk about you today.

Pema Chodron says, "What we call obstacles, are really the way the world and our entire experience teaches us where we're stuck". I love this train of thought...that everything is here, for us. Every obstacle that comes our way, every moment where we're tempted to procrastinate or to giving in or to let ourselves down, to go back to old habits. Every time, it's an opportunity to create new strength, train in a new habit, to change, to transform. And that's so powerful.

Let me give you a series of questions that I use to help overcome challenges help narrow down what is going on, and then to move past it.  So a challenge is really just an opportunity to succeed. It's an opportunity to learn, to grow, to become the person we want to become, and to live the life we want to live. Just think about that. Think about everything challenge in your life being an invitation to live the life you want to be living.

So here are my questions. First of all, we'll start with the basic, the easy one. What are the challenges for your weight loss, fitness, your healthy living? What is the challenge that is stopping you from living the healthy life you want to be living? Now you might think big picture here, where you might think a really specific example it again, try and think about the really specific examples, the more specific and get the better. So what is the challenge for you with living your healthy life?

Once you answer that question, think about refining a little. What's the real challenge here for you. Now those extra words make a difference. What is the real challenge here for you? So for instance, let's take an example of it for the first question. You said, What are the challenges for healthy living? And I said, you said that there's lots of social events in my life. Okay, what's the real challenge in that for you? Now, for many of you, you might have different responses to that. It might be there'll be social pressure or customs that we have to follow. There might be the food or the drink. It might be social anxiety.

So think about what it really is. And then once you've got that one, you try my toddler technique. This is the toddler technique I like to use. Imagine there's a toddler standing by you getting inquisitive, trying to learn about the world. And every time you come up with an answer, for instance, social events, then you want to ask "but why?" But why? But why? 

So why is social events a challenge for you? Okay, let's say it's a birthday party. What is the specific social event? Okay, what's a birthday party? But why is that a challenge? Well, because it is going to be cake. Now cakes, not your thing. It might be alcohol or might be nibblies, it might be chips and dip. It might be whatever it is that you feel, is your thing. Just substitute it in here, right? But get specific. Why is going to a birthday party a challenge? Well, there's going to be cake. Okay, well, why is that a challenge for you?

Maybe there's the fact that there's a social expectation that you'll have a piece of cake. Maybe you really like cake and you really want some? Maybe you wonder what that cake is going to taste like, it looks so delicious, to be tempted just by the view of it. Maybe you're telling yourself that once you start, you can't stop. Notice that these are all kind of different. So but why, but why, but why? Why is each one of those? You know, maybe you don't know how to have the piece of cake in a healthy balance with the rest of your day with the rest of your choices across the week, for instance. Maybe it was unplanned. Maybe you didn't have it planned into your days, you haven't already thought about how else you're going to have it in a healthy balance. You want to keep asking. If you feel like "Well, I'm a person who once I start on the piece of cake I can't stop. I'm going to eat that piece of cake. I want to go back for a second peice of cake. Maybe I'll take the rest of the cake home and eat that too.

Okay, why is that a challenge for you? You're doing it? What is the actual challenge? Is it the having the cake around? Is it seeing it? Is it getting that first taste of it? Is it like the "thats's so pleasurable that I have to keep eating?" Really get narrowing it. What is the real challenge here for you?

Once you have that, what the real challenges, then we have a decision point. And so it's helpful to think about here is, if I'm saying yes to this choice, eating the cake, having a second piece taking it home, or if I'm saying yes to this, what am I saying no to? Because when you are saying yes to something you are saying no to something else. When you're saying no to something you are saying yes to something else. So if I'm saying 'yes', what am I saying 'no' to? What I'm saying no to, you know, perhaps losing weight this week? I am perhaps. So if I'm going to eat two, three piece of cake the rest of the cake. If I didn't have it in healthy balance, well I'm saying yes to it overeating, I'm saying no to living healthfully. I'm saying no to the the confidence and the strength to be able to stop whenever I want. There's an opportunity to build that there.

What if you're a person...like you could think about it differently, so what would I say? What would you want to do differently? Right. So that's the next question. So so far, we've done What are the (chat..), the challenges, what's the real challenge here for you? But why? But why? But why? As many times as you can. And then once you feel like you've uncovered the real challenge. If you say yes to going with what you already do, what are you saying no to for your future? And then you want to ask, Well, what do you really want?

Do you really want to be a person who overeats cake at a party? Once again, just remember, this is just an example I'm using, fill in your thing here. Maybe it was alcohol at the party, maybe it was the social pressure, maybe it was social anxiety? How do you want to be? What do you really want? I want to be able to person who enjoys a piece of cake at a birthday party. Got it into a healthy balance. I can stop at one. No big deal. (By the way, that's how I am now).

This is a learned skill, right? You'ev just got to train in all the various steps. So what do you really want? Do you want to be able to say 'No'? Do you want to politely decline? Do you want to be able to have half a sclice? Do you want to go to stop at one bite? Do you want to be able to go..."All right, well, I'm gonna have cake. I will make some adjustments in my eating the rest of the week so that that's balanced out nice and healthfully". Right? I got all my nutrition. I'm feeling full and I'm feeling satisfied not going without. But I'm also not overdoing it. Right. I'm just taking it from my discretionary choices.

Think about what you're saying yes to if you make the alternate choice, if you make a different choice, the new choice, if you like, Are you saying yes to your goals? To your dreams, your hopes, your desired future? Are you saying yes to becoming the person you want to be?

So you want to make a decision? There's no right or wrong answer you get to decide. What am I saying? No to? What am I saying Yes to - get really clear on that. Then once you have that, once you've decided what you want, what is what you're really deciding between and what you really want, then the question will ask is... What change here can you commit to? Right now, in this decision point? We don't have to solve everything at once. We can do continuous quality improvement, we can do one little change at a time until we accrue the skills.

What can you commit to? That's real in your life? That's totally completely doable. And notice the word commit in there, right? What can you really commit to doing? Are you committing to your past, or committing to your future?

And finally, the last question I like is, how can I use this opportunity, this obstacle, this challenge for me, as a chance to grow, to develop, to improve? I like to think that our healthy life is always a work in progress. And we're always working on becoming the next, best version, of ourselves. So much fun to think about that right. 

And what happens is, over time, if we do it in just those one little tiny commitments at a time, we start to train in new habits. We start to build new beliefs. You start to realize that we actually can live a healthy life, because we are living it - one little choice at a time.

Every obstacle, every challenge is that invitation to step into that new life, to make a change for the future you want. So I really invite you to take that today.

We learn from failure, not from success. You know, when we get it wrong, we try something and we get it wrong, we find out what doesn't work. We find out that we had unrealistic expectations or we're trying too much at once, we went too far, or that technique didn't work. We need to find a different one, that works for us in our life that feels good. That gets us the results we want. When we succeed, we often just go Oh, that's it. I'll just keep doing that. We stop growing.

So, how can you change your perspective, of challenges,  of obstacles this week? Can you make them opportunities to grow, to develop to improve? What questions can you ask yourself to help you overcome any challenge that gets in your way? 

Now, if you are a person who struggles with emotional eating or not being able to stop or giving into temptations and urges and cravings, then know that I can help. All of that comes down to learning about purposeful thinking emotional management and self care. And it's what I offer in my Stop Sabotaging Your Weight Loss course it's a five week course to overcome emotional eating just 35 days. Where we learn how to discover the thoughts that are driving our unhealthy actions. How those habits formed in the first place. I teach you a tool in week one about how to turn those around, how to be intentional, how to think things on purpose and make clear decisions. And then in week two, we think about feeling your feelings on purpose, and learning how to manage them. Allow them instead of fighting or resisting them. We learn an easy way to manage urges and cravings. And then in week three, we talk about training the new habits, I give you three different frameworks for building up healthy skills, one at a time...actually solving the real issue. Because in the end, we all got to overeating and unhealthy eating because of a situation that we're trying to solve with food. We're trying to solve in a way that doesn't work. 

So what if we really just solve the issue took the reason for the overeating and unhealthy eating out of the equation? So exciting to do that! And then within week four we talk about relationships with ourself and with others. We talk about reinventing ourselves, and help you do that. So you can become person, who no longer sabotages. In week five we make peace with your past and help you create a new future from the possibilities. If you're interested at all, please get in touch enrollments are closing this week for the current intake of stop sabotaging your weight loss. So get in now and let's get this sorted next five weeks. 

If you're watching this on replay after the after the first of October 2019 make sure you go to www.LiveMoreLife.com.au go to Stop Sabotaging Your Weight Loss and get on the waitlist, so you can be notified when the next enrollment opens up. 

For now, how will you challenge your obstacles? or How will you think about your challenges? obstacles? How would you think about your challenges and obstacles differently this week? What do you want? And what can you commit to, to create the future healthy life that you want to be living? It's totally available to you.

Challenges are what makes life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful. (Joshua J. Marine) Invite challenges, think about them differently and get in touch. Let me know what works for you. And particularly reach out if you need some help. I'd love you to share your ideas in the comments down below. And if you're watching live or you're watching on replay on Facebook, type replay in there, give me a like give me a reaction. And if you're watching on YouTube, make sure you hit the subscribe button to get notified about all new videos when they get released. And if you're watching on my website, make sure you sign up for the newsletter so that get notification but you also get my extra hints and tips.

You can solve the challenges of living a healthy life.

Transcribed by https://otter.acoming soon