The Thought Diet

Consider that for everything that you don’t like there is a preference born out of it. For every negative there is a desire for the positive. The question is, which side of the coin are you looking at.

For every problem there is a solution. If the problem was big enough and important enough (you know this by the amount of time you think about it and how negative it feels to you when you do think about it) you might very well have a really big desire building. So, from the problem comes a desire for something new. That desire for something new could now be your new life purpose. There is nothing like having a perceived problem that helps you get present to something that is important to you. When it is viewed as a problem it is in the beginning stages of creation. You are determining what you don’t want. From there, it should move into knowing what it is you would now prefer. Life has helped you to determine something specific.

Now, this is relative to what you have lived thus far in life. If you lived in poverty your desire would be different than someone who didn’t. If you lived where there was poor water your desire would be different than someone who lived with good water. Point is, what you prefer, which came from your perceived problem, is specific to what your individualistic and specific life has helped you to determine.

Once you understand what life has helped you to determine what it is you would like–whether that is a healthy body because you were ill or a lean body because you were overweight–it doesn’t matter what it is so long as you are asking for an impovement, for evolvement and expansion of “what is.” Life is about expansion and right now any problem you think you have is nothing more than the beginning point of a new solution–the expansion from “what is.”

This new improvement, if it is important enough to you, may have given way to a new purpose in your life. There is nothing more life-giving than having a life that has purpose–regardless of what that purpose is. Purpose is purpose. And when that purpose is aligned with a positive end result, nothing becomes more enriching when you are on task to accomplish it.

Most of the time when I ask someone what it is they want to accomplish in the way of their health and body they often tell me what it is they DON’T want. Like losing twenty pounds, getting rid of love handles or belly fat, or getting out of pain are all goals that are driven by wanting to get rid of something they don’t want. You can’t focus on what you DON’T want and easily get somewhere else. Even wanting something like being “heathier” or “leaner” can be coming from a place of what they don’t want. Rarely do I find someone who is happy with how lean they are and want to be even leaner or healthy and want to be even more healthy. Wanting more of something usually comes from not wanting what you currently have. This is a good step in the right direction. And so is knowing what it is you DON’T want.

Often after having been told what it is they don’t want I will ask what they do want and sometimes people don’t know what that would be. Well, if you know what you don’t want you should now be able to understand what it is you do want simply by thinking about the opposite. What would be the opposite of being overweight or being in pain? Where would you be if you were not fat or in pain? If you don’t want to be twenty pounds overweight, for example, what would the opposite of that be? Twenty pounds leaner perhaps? Or to take that further, what would twenty pounds leaner (or lighter) feel like or look like? You know what twenty pounds heavier than you want to be feels like right now, what would the opposite of that be?

Knowing what you don’t want has helped you to determine that you would like an improvement. This is a good thing. It helps you to create something that is important to you in your life. Your body being the way it is right now has helped you to create a desire for an improvement. This new desire can breathe passion and purpose back into your life.

The biggest reason I encourage people to make peace with where they are before they exercise is so they can shift their focus from something that is not working towards something desire because their brain will resonate with whatever their dominant focus is. There is a part of our brain called the Reticular Formation, or better, the Reticular Activating System (RAS), that works as a filter to sift through all the massive amounts of information being thrown at our senses and our brain every second. There are billions of bits of information coming at you every second but your brain can only process about 2000-4000 bits every second. With that, you need to prioritize the information so only the important stuff gets through.

Your filter is comprised of what is important to you, those things you give your most dominant attention to–your thoughts, habits, your beliefs, your truths, your ideas, etc. The more you give something attention the bigger the priority it has in yoru filter. The more you give it attention the more it gets filtered into your experience. So, if you focus on what you don’t like about your body you will almost always focus on that area first when thinking about or observing your body. Your filter will be looking for the very thing you don’t like because you have deemed it important.

If you are working out because you don’t like your body then chances are every time you look in the mirror you will be looking to see if what you don’t like/want is gone. You will focus right on what you don’t want. And when you focus on what you don’t want you will create a stressed environment again and that will activate the release of cortisol and then that will mobilize blood sugar that most likely won’t get used–which means it will get stored as fat. This is how you work against yourself when working out to change something you don’t like. You negate some or all the positive work the exercise was supposed to create for you by focusing on something that creates a negative emotional response, thus creating a negative chemical response.

Even if you have success somewhere outside of what your main focus is, you probably won’t pick up on it because you have not set your filter to look for evidence of success. It was only looking for evidence to see if what was unsuccessful (e.g. your flabby stomach) is gone.

When you make peace with where you are–meaning, you no longer feel negative emotion when you think about your body–you will have a better chance of figuring out what it is you do want and giving your undivided attention to that. When you focus on and imagine what it is you do want and why you want it you start to change what is in your filter. The more you think about what you want and why you want it without countering it by focusing on the things you still don’t like you will start create a stronger filter in your RAS–not to mention those old thoughts about what you don’t want that made it into your filter will start to break down and go away. The stronger your filter is for the things you do want the quicker you will look for and see evidence of success, even if it is not in the area you like the least. Your eyes will scan and find evidence to support your vision. When you see evidence of success you reinforce the very thing you want. This stops the negative chemical responses and it helps to create a better chemical, neurological and energetic environment for your body where it can take full advantage of any action like working out and eating a balanced diet. The evidence you see of what you want you also move into higher emotional states, which also help you allow more change to happen naturally. The higher emotional state you are in the less physical work you have to do to get results. Things work a lot easier when you are in a high emotional state.

Change how you see yourself and what is possible and your body will show you what you are looking for. Your body will follow where the mind leads.

In every moment when we identify what we don’t like we generate a preference, even a desire, for something new–an improvement–something we do want. You can’t help but to do this. Life helps you determine your specific preferences, which is what makes your life individualistic and unlike anyone elses. Your exerperiences in life are unique to you and what you want is specific to you as well as your spesific life experiences has helped you to determine what you don’t want and what you do want. And every time you determine what you don’t want you have the opportunity to become present with what you do want. Unfortunately, most people continue to use the thing that caused them to want more (the thing they don’t want) as the excuse to continue feeling bad. Most people get a preference but they continue to talk and think about the thing that helped launch the preference, which tends to keep the thing they don’t want right in their experience. You can’t look at what you don’t want and get what you do want.

One thing I help individuals do is get a better understanding as to what it is they DO want. Most people start with what they don’t want, which is a good place to start. If you know where you don’t want to be you should have an understand of what the opposite would be, which is what you most likely do want. If you know you don’t want to be fat then you can probably assume you want to be lean. Once you can get an idea of what it is you DO want, expand on it and try to create what it is that the end result would look like and feel like. What has your negative experience helped you to determine is important for you to experience in a new and different way?

Once you know what it is you want as the end-result, take a moment to ask yourself WHY you want it. What would having this thing provide for you in your life that you don’t already have? Once you have that asnwer, ask the question again. What would having that last thing provide for you that you don’t have already. Continue asking this question until you are moved and inspired by your answer. Hint: you want what you want for the feeling you think it will provide for you and that feeling is usually one of love, passion, joy, knowledge, freedom, connection and appreciation.

Now that you know WHY you want what you want you should take some time to think about all the things in your body, as well as in your life (past and present), that show you evidence that this is possible. If you have already had something like this as your experience make note of that. If you already have something in (or on) your body that you currently feel the same way about (this is the WHY feeling) then make note of that. At this point, you are trying to create a list of things that you can recall and associate with your new found vision. The more you can think about and talk about what you want and use the evidence of things in your life as your model of success the more you will put yourself in the state of being where success is imminent.

Practice these thoughts as often as possible. This is like visualizing. The more you practice this feeling, the more your brain will become encoded to look for this success. Where your mind goes, your body follows.

In recent posts I’ve talked about how it is what we are thinking that causes us emotion, not the thing we are given our attention to. One way to change this is to understand WHY you feel the way you do about your subject – to understand what you are making your subject (your body) mean.

When I coach people I will ask them what how they feel about their body and they usually respond with an emotion. From there I ask them WHY they feel that way and the answer is often something to do with their action or something outside of their body. For example, someone tells me they are discouraged about their body and I ask them why they are discouraged and they often tell me something like they are discouraged because they have been working out for so long and haven’t seen any results. I can understand their being discouraged for all that time they dedicated to exercise and eating well with little or no results but I didn’t ask about how they felt about their workouts. I asked about how they felt about their body.

At this point I will rephrase the question by asking them how they feel about their body when they look at it in the mirror or how they feel about their body naked. With that I usually get something more personal like: “I am discouraged because I have been overweight for so long.” This is a great start in that they are relating how they feel to how they look at themselves. To take this one step further, to understand what their story is (the story having three components – what they are focused on, how they feel about that and why they feel the way they do), I ask them what they are making their situation mean about them. To continue with the same example, I ask them what they are making the fact that they have been overweight for so long mean? Or better, what does it mean about who they are (or say about them)?

What I usually get in return from a question like that is something like: “it means that I have failed for so long and that means that I am not worth the success.” Point is, from this understanding the client now has a better understanding as to what story they have been telling themselves. This story is potentially what is keeping them right where they are. You can’t look at your body and think thoughts like that and not expect your body to respond negatively – chemically and energetically. With that, once the client understands it is just a story they have been telling they have the freedom to change the story.

To help you change your own story, look back at recent posts written about making peace with where you are.