Red's Health Tips

Blog 7JAN12 – Results Matter – Day 4

Great day today!  I just spent the last four hours attending a Think and Grow Rich seminar hosted by Jan Poskovsky.  It was a wonderful event and got the creative juices flowing again.  She covered the first two of 17 principles identified by Napolean Hill in his book Think and Grow Rich.  Those 17 principles were derived from 20 years of interviewing the richest people in America (early 1900’s).  The first principle is having a definiteness of purpose and the second principle is forming a Mastermind Alliance.

I had a couple of chicken strips for breakfast on the way to the seminar and had a dry salad (lettuce and tomatoes only) at the seminar.  Tonight I plan to have baked chicken as the main course.  No hunger pangs or urges to have any type of food that I typically indulged in before starting this lifestyle change.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend at this event.  She did her first marathon years ago to lose weight.  That was her motivator.  She completed 37 of them.  She firmly believes that eating small balanced meals several times a day and exercising will result in losing weight.  It worked for her.  We were going through some magazines identifying pictures to make a ‘dream’ board as an exercise in the seminar.  She came across an article that stated something to the effect that running marathons doesn’t guarantee you to lose weight.

I read the article a short while later and it confirmed exactly what I have written in my book, RESULTS MATTER When You Want To Lose Weight and Keep It Off.  Exercise increases your appetite.  Many people who exercise eat more than the calories that they expended during the exercise.  And, they eat the wrong kinds of food – primarily carbohydrates.  Eating a balanced meal with exercise will work for some people, but not the vast majority of people.

During the first week of the 28-day program you should set plans that are consistent with your goal to lose weight.  Look at what has worked for you in the past – that is why you need to reflect on the successes and failures in your past.  Make sure you goal is realistic.  If you have never lost 50 pounds in your life, why are you making that goal now?  Five ten-pound goals would be better than one 50 pound goal.  Set achievable and realistic goals.  If you want to lose ten pounds in one month, have you ever achieved that goal in the past?  What worked when you did lose ten pounds in one month?  More importantly, what didn’t work?  You are making a lifestyle change to what you did in the past.  Don’t do the same things over and over again and expect different results!

Make a promise with yourself and share it with a confidant.  This confidant might be your spouse, you significant other, your best friend, etc.  You want to go on record to someone outside your brain and commit – to promise – to do something.  Your subconscious mind protects you from embarrassment.  If you just tell yourself you will achieve you goal, your subconscious mind will compare every event in your past life and decide whether you can make it or not.  If you haven’t made that goal in the past, your subconscious mind does not want you to fail and be embarrassed.  Your subconscious mind will do everything it can to help you not achieve your goal.  That is one reason why your goals have to be realistic and achievable.

A promise is interpreted differently by your subconscious mind.  You will become embarrassed if you don’t keep your promise.  It’s one of those things that has been taught to us over the years that ‘a promise is a promise’ and you don’t break promises.  A promise adds emphasis and emotion to your subconscious processing.  You subconscious mind will work with you to achieve your goals when it knows it can and must.  Believe it or not, but you need your subconscious mind on your side to make a lifestyle change.  If you don’t have the mental discipline (your subconscious mind on your side supporting you) you won’t achieve any goals.

Visualizing the end result helps your subconscious mind to accept your goal.  Your subconscious mind works only in the present.  If relies on your history to make decisions.  It has no concept of the future.  Therefore, you must give visual stimuli to your subconscious mind that you have already achieved your goal today.  Your subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between real and imagined and will accept any thought you give to it.  If you add emotion to that thought, it is accepted.  Visualize yourself at your goal, or interim goal.  Believe with your whole heart that you have achieved that goal.

Visualize those things you would do when you have achieved your goal.  Visualize how people react to the new you – all the nice words they will say when they see you.  Visualize about doing those thing that you currently can’t do – wearing new clothes, doing activities beyond your capability today.  Visualize them as having been accomplished and how you feel about it.  The ‘how you feel about it’ adds the emotion necessary for your subconscious mind to accept and act.

If you start out cutting back on food and exercising more expecting that it will get you started, you are fooling yourself.  Your actions are powered by your subconscious mind.  Your subconscious mind sustains your impetus to do the things you want to do every day.  You are making a lifestyle change.  You have to do something differently each day that you haven’t done before in order to establish a new habit and make a permanent change to your overall weight.

Red O’Laughlin

Your Prosperity Professor

281-437-8114 H/W  281-687-1188 C