Of the two primary driving emotions of pain and pleasure, pain will always be the stronger short term motivator and the one that easily derails us from reaching our goals because our brains are naturally wired to move away from pain.
It’s an unfortunate truth that most people who begin a program to shift to their current lifestyles to a healthier lifestyle will eventually fail because their mind associates this process (get healthier) with pain (real or perceived) rather than pleasure.
This causes an internal battle between opposing thoughts to either carry out one action (leading to success) or the other (that does not lead to success.)
For example: shifting to a healthier lifestyle might trigger a negative response in someone’s mind that equates to settling for less satisfying foods like carrot sticks, having to eat bland foods or salads every night or having to exercise everyday. So immediately the “pain” response takes over and causes them to want to flee.
These negative, damaging perceptions need to shift before you any actions will shift.
Your actions will always follow your feelings…your feelings are a result of your perceptions. Shift your perceptions from “pain” to “pleasure” and then watch your actions and your life shift.
If you are not currently taking action steps that you know would benefit you – such as steps that lead to healthier weight, or an improvement in your health in general it’s time take stock and examine your pain and pleasure signals. Obviously a negative perception of some sort is driving your decision not to take positive action and resisting your good.
What you should be feeling good about, getting healthier – makes you experience a bad feeling and this needs to be reversed.
You must make your emotional force drivers of “pain and pleasure” work for you not against you as they presently are. You must change the subconscious negative thoughts/programming controlling your brain.
You must begin associating pain with “failing to exercise regularly and failing to eat nutritious foods” and pleasure with exercise because it boosts your immune system and keeps disease away and healthy foods because they give you energy, vitality, and long life.
Use this powerful but simple technique as a tool to help reverse and adjust your distorted pain and pleasure associations to healthier ones.
Ask yourself two simple questions: (they help you to associate pleasure with taking action right away to improve your well-being)
- What will it cost me in regards to my health if I do not take the required actions to get healthier now?
- What immediate pleasure will I benefit from by taking actions that help me get healthier right now?
As you ask these questions, ponder the following if you don’t take action:
- The cost to your health now and long term?
- What it costs in relationships and lost opportunities.
- The cost to your damaged self-esteem and self-confidence/how you feel about yourself when you can no longer perform everyday tasks.
If you do take action:
- How does it benefit your health and energy levels?
- How it improves your self-esteem and self-confidence?
- How improved self-esteem builds stronger relationships with family, friends and loved ones.
- How it will make you feel now and long term?
Take time to visualize your answers to the two initial questions and think of things that create strong emotions of pain and pleasure for you. The stronger you get yourself to feel these emotions the stronger your motivations will be to take the proper actions towards them.
Then take immediate action that moves you closer to your health enhancement goal (go to the gym, create a healthy meal). It is the action steps that complete the process and fuel and reinforce your motivation.
By reversing the old self-sabotaging pain and pleasure associations that used to work against you (both consciously and subconsciously) your new associations will begin to work for you slowly escalating your motivation and helping to keep you focused on healthy actions that move you towards eventual health and stellar fitness.
This process gets easier as your mind gains evidence of the increased benefits that result from your new course of action and automatically lessens any resistance it has to your new lifestyle and healthy way of thinking.
Soon you’ll be doing it effortlessly and getting healthier by the day.
If you are serious about achieving a truly healthy lifestyle that will take care of you long into your senior years visit “Reclaim Your Longevity” .
Everything you need to live a long healthy life…dancing well into your senior years is included in this program that is geared towards helping you to find the “fountain of youth.”
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