How do you create explosive energy everyday?

While listening to The Power of Intention I heard something that made sense on a level I had never thought of before. I’ve taken liberties with the story here so pick up the audio if you want to hear it from the horses mouth.

A stressed man in a small farming village went to a local teacher who was a very wise man. He told the teacher of his problems.

“My home is so crowded with all my in-laws! What should I do? There is not room to move around the house.”

After a few moments of reflection the teacher said, “Do you have any sheep?”. To that the stressed man said, “yes”.

The teacher then instructed the man to bring all the sheep in the house.

After a few days the man came back to the teacher… “You’ve made my life worse! I came to you for answers!” In reply the teacher said, “Do you have any chickens?”. The man said, “Yes”. Then the teacher instructed him to do the same thing he did with the sheep.

Of course the man came back even more angry than ever… and again the teacher repeated this pattern. This time he had him bring all his dogs.

The next time his lamas.

And finally his horses.

In one last attempt to save his home from complete and total chaos, the man returned to the teacher, finally in tears he broke down once more and said it is too much his home is far too crowded for anything useful to happen there.

And with this the teacher said, “great!” Now go remove the sheep, the chickens, the lamas, and the horses.

With that the man left and did exactly what the teacher said.

The next the teacher saw the man and asked is your home still too crowded? In reply the man said, “No it is not, and thank you! You have fixed my problems!”

So what is the moral of the story?

You must increase your threshold of tolerance for anything you want more of. Just like the man who wanted more room had to get comfortable in a truly crowded home. You will need to increase your tolerance too.

If you want energy that’s explosive and positive every day you have to elevate yourself higher than that level. Work out intensely, breath powerfully, take your supplements, and commit to eating right!

Each one of these activities  increases your threshold for these things and these are the things that will make you feel awesome everyday.

Getting up to get out to the gym is pretty tough for me… or at least it used to be. I use this little trick to help me get myself going in the morning…

I used to feel a lot like this lovely little lady looks… hehe

So what is the little trick? Well prior to using the trick you have to be sure to get the proper rest the night before… that is pretty smart but that isn’t the way I fool myself into being awake.

Someone told me once to splash water on my face in the morning and honestly, it works but isn’t really pleasant. So I skip the “shock therapy” of cold water in the morning.

I do use the method of setting up my alarm really far out of reach, but that isn’t the technique I’m going to show you here… Setting your alarm out of reach so  you have to get up and move helps to get some momentum going. (I put mine near the bath room, so I can keep the momentum by moving from the alarm to the rest room.)

And of course I get my stuff ready the night before so I have my gym clothing handy and I have my shoes and iPhone (I listen to motivational music and/or speakers at the gym with my phone) ready to go.

So with all this that I do to wake up what the heck do I do to fight the morning sleepies and get going?

In order to get up in the morning *and stay up* (IE: not slip back into my nice warm bed with my beautiful wife, snoozing ever so temptingly).

I use that moment during my morning stretch. Usually I have walked to the alarm in my usually morning slumber, then I shut the alarm off, and…

I stretch and while I’m feeling the delightfulness of my morning stretch I quietly tell myself. “You have to do this… You have to get up because You have no choice”. Then I tell myself, “You can do this, you’re strong…”

This kind of positive self talk, combined with making this a “Have To” vs. a “Want To” really puts my mind in the right spot quickly. I challenge you to try it tomorrow morning to get in the right frame of mind… then do it everyday to help get up and motivated!

Get into the habit of doing this and you will see massive changes in your ability to wake up on command! This kind of self mastery is a critical key to losing weight because you can do the same anytime you are doing something that is contrary to your weight loss goals.

Start making the things  you want into the things you MUST Do and you’ll reach your energy and weight loss goals!

Have a great day!

What can you do to fit your workouts into your day?

Getting your workout in will keep you energized and alive all day long. So how do you get it into your schedule?

As a busy business owner, husband, father, enterprise engineer for a large corporation, team leader, online business educator, and fitness enthusiast I find it difficult to make time for my workouts! Do you have the same problem?

Do you catch yourself on a very inconsistent schedule for eating healthy and exercising regularly? If so then re-adjusting your thought process before you make a schedule is likely the cure for you.

If you really want to feel energized… really alive you need to put being energized and full of life into the forefront of you mind.

Find things that modivate you. Here is one thing I did to get my energy going… While this is a bit embarrassing to admit one of the things I did was join an aerobic step class. Was the class hard? You bet! But what kept me going to it… well…  um…

I’ll just have to say it, for better or worse it got me on a regular schedule. I went because it was a great chance to spend time in a room filled with lots of beautiful (sweaty) women. For me that was a motivator… I’m not single and am not looking to date or anything like that. I simply enjoyed the idea of spending an hour in a room full of beautiful women.

You of course should find your own motivation, perhaps it is people… do you like to socialize? Then find a partner who counts on you an do your best to support them… this will help you to keep your own goals while helping someone else.

Find the fire inside you and then make your workout and healthy eating schedule around that.

You can do this.

What are the main keys to keeping consistently motivated with your weight loss program?

So how are turtles related to your weight loss motivation? They are about as low energy as you get right? So what can we learn from them to get some great weight loss motivation ideas?

Getting motivated to hit the gym, eat food that make you burn fat, and doing all the things required to detox your body in order to lose weight as fast as possible requires that you create excitement and consistency. Yes, you have to create it and thankfully it is pretty easy, once you get used to doing it.

One strategy you can use to keep excited about your workout routine is to listen to things during your workout that inspire you. This way your workout becomes mentally stimulating. Listening to motivational speakers, comedians, or just music you love goes a long way toward keeping you excited about losing weight.

So what does the tortoise have to do with this? Do you remember the story of the falbe called “the tortoise and the hare”? Do you remember how the tortoise one the day? From moment to moment keeping a slow steady progression toward your goal.

Keep moving toward it and you will have success with it. Keep steady on your course and you will find more motivation… motivation becomes something that feeds on itself. The more you do it the more you have of it… Just like high energy living… the more of you put out there the more you get back.

Start looking for ways to get excited and share techniques you use to get “pumped” about losing weight on this blog!

Before we dive into getting motivated we first need to think about how you get motivated to master the art of weight loss. There are basically two ways. There is an internal conversation that you have prior to getting physically active. There are also external influences that can affect you. For this blog we’ll discuss both methods for diet motivation.

Define the internal conversations you have:

The internal motivation for weight loss is very important. This conversation is about the things you say to yourself in your head to become motivated or unmotivated.

Have you ever had this conversation in your head? Some time during your day you think: I’m going to get to the gym and work out. But later when it actually comes time to workout you flounder? You begin to think of all the things you have to get done and working out just falls off the list. Perhaps something gets in the way. The reason really doesn’t matter, the end result is that you miss a workout.

This all happens internally. At some point during the day you felt good and wanted to go to the gym. For what ever reason that is, you emotionally felt like you should be there.

When you finally had time to get to the gym, other things come up and you deviated. Perhaps you weren’t as excited about it now that the time had come to go do it.

Again, this is an internal conversation that at one point had you motivated, and at another point the steam was lost.

Before we talk about a strategy for recapturing that moment of motivation and reusing it we will discuss our external conversations and motivations.

Define the external conversations you have:

Your external motivation for weight loss is also very important, but it comes in many different forms. Unlike the internal conversation that happens from solely your perspective, external conversations can happen in many ways. It can be a literal conversation with someone else. And, it can also be factors that influence you that you are consuming. A motivational speaker, this blog, or a book. These are all forms of external conversations that you have.

Listening to audio, reading books, and working with other people (like on this blog or in the gym) are all very solid ways to find external conversations to have in order to your diet motivation high. But there is a few key secrets to these items that can make all the difference.

And example of these items might be when you listen to an audio book like How to Get What You Want by Zig Ziglar. In this audio he talks about setting goals and specifically uses is personal weight loss story as the foundation for the discussion.

When you feed your mind with content like this your are having an external conversation.

So with internal and external conversations defined how do you go about using this information to keep your weight loss motivation in high gear?

Two keys to doing this are critical to staying motivated. Getting into the habit of consuming high quality motivational information and then internalizing it so it becomes a normal part of your daily internal conversations. Focus on using the things that really excite you. For many this is hard to find so you need to catch yourself when you are excited and really focus on it.

Here is a personal story that will help you to understand where this is coming from. Often times when I would complain/joke about running. I used to think: Why the heck would you want to run… you do all that work just to end up in the same place that you started!

Well little did I know but this was a paradigm that was actually stifling my weight loss and keeping me UN-motivated. I thought to myself that is stupid and I shouldn’t have to run to get into shape. And all the while I thought this I kept gaining weight. Day after day, month after month. The paradigm shift happened and my weight loss motivation shot through the roof when I started to learn about how your body works to lose weight. That is something that got me excited but for you it may be something else.

The point behind this personal experience is simple: I was unmotivated to workout until I found what motivated me and got me excited, I spent a lot of time searching for other things that would get me thinking correctly. That audio CD I mentioned by Zig Ziglar is one of those things that I happened to find.

Key number 1 find what you personally get excited about. If you aren’t sure catch yourself and think about what is exciting you the next time you’re feeling jazzed about something. Is it money that excites you? Figure out how to make that a motivator for weight loss. Is it sex that motivates you? Figure out how to create weight loss motivation using that as the catalyst.

An example of this in the case of money. Say you opened a GNC (General Nutrition Center) or sell weight loss products online. Use your story to sell these products. Because you are telling your story it is motivating to lose weight to prove to others the products you sell work. (I’m not telling you to open a store or sell vitamins… this is just an example of diet motivation planning.)

An example of this in the case of sex. If you want more sex, it makes perfectly good sense that other people seek healthy lean strong people to be sexual partners. Losing weight translates into better more attractive sexual partners. (I’m not telling you to have multiple sexual partners… this is just an example to find ways to get your weight loss motivation mind set going.)

Key number 2 is to believe that you can actually lose weight. I personally have lost 30 pounds and now I’m packing on lean strong muscle. You are not different than me and I’m 100% confident you can do the same. But you have to believe you can.

Be sure to focus on your beliefs. And, here is basically how they are formed.

If you say I’m going to the gym. And don’t make it… you reduce your own faith in your ability to deliver on your promises to your self. (Please read that again to be sure you understand it.)

Every time you say internally, “I’m going to the gym” and you don’t actually do it… You are breaking down your personal confidence and creating diet UN-Motivation.

Every time you say internally, “I’m going to the gym” and you DO actually make it… You are improving your personal confidence and creating Weight Loss Motivation.

So how do your recapture that moment of motivation?

You must focus on your feelings at that moment. Stir up your emotions by doing the same thing or thinking the same thoughts.

And example of this. I was confronted by a huge number of stairs, and thought about racing up them as fast as I could. Then I lept into action. There was not perticular reason… it just seemed like a fun thing to do in that moment (and it was). So I replay that moment in my mind when I’m thinking about skipping my workout. I think to myself. If I had not been working out… leaping up the stairs 4 to 6 steps at a time would not have been possible. Perhaps if I workout I’ll be able to reach 8 steps…

You see focusing on the possibilities… is what weight loss motivation is all about. Is it possible for you to be lean strong and healthy? Absolutely! Is it possible to be motivated and excited about losing weight? Absolutely!