Life is Busy Stop and take the time to think

In our daily work, consulting with many interesting individual clients over the twenty year history of our private practice, we are privileged to be able to learn from the wisdom & experience of the people we are working with.   A frequent insight that is expressed by many of our more senior age clients (55+ ) was that they regretted not having spent more time just thinking about life and where they were going.  Instead, they seemed to have been on a busy non-stop ride throughout their lives.

So often the demands and busyness of life can keep us from taking a step back to look at the bigger picture.

Why do people in their 20’s, 30’s, 40’s & 50’s often find it hard to set aside time to think?

• Life is busy – as life gets busier and more demanding we can sometimes struggle just to stay on top of matters and cope with it all.
• We are on an entertainment ride – we live in a 24/7 consumer – entertainment culture.  It is not in the best interests of the media or entertainment industry for us to switch off and just spend time thinking. Instead, we are offered a never ending, seamless feed of exciting shows, series and sporting events.
• Ants in our pants – many people just can’t keep still long enough to think.
• Quiet contemplation is not really valued or promoted in our society.  The old Greek philosophers would be turning in their graves to see how little talk of deeper issues there is in the public arena today.

When we take time to think we can:

• Look at the big questions.  What is the meaning of life? What do I believe in? What happens to us after we die?
• Create life goals. What would I like to achieve? What things are really important to me? What do I need to be focusing on in 2015 to help me reach my goals?
• Evaluate our journey. What have I been learning? Am I on track to reach my goals? How have I been distracted? What do I need to be doing differently? Whom can I be building a stronger relationship with?
• Appreciate the present. What good things are happening in my life presently and how can I appreciate them more fully?  How can I put my problems into perspective?

As always we would be delighted to make the time to talk with you professionally – please choose to contact us and book an appointment in your own good time !

Beyond Limits - The Inspiration that Sets Your Spirit Free

This is the fifth and final blog in the series about my journey to find increased health and happiness over the past 11 months.

If you’ve missed the other blogs, here are the links:

• Post 1: Sick to Death of Myself;
• Post 2: Self Sabotage: Fear of Looking Good;
• Post 3: Letting my Light Shine.
• Post 4: I am an Athlete

Creating Healthier Workplaces Program Launch

When I started my journey I thought I was going to lose some weight and get a little fitter.

However, in the process I have discovered so much more including a desire to share my insights to help others.

Merging my own corporate experience with health and wellbeing insights gained through working with a personal trainer this year, has led me to develop the Creating Healthier Workplaces program.

This is a program to assist business owners and managers to get so much more out of their own lives, as well as making their:

• work environments healthier;
• more appealing to employees;
• and more conducive to higher thinking and productivity.

So much has changed in my life - much more than I could have foreseen or dared to hope for. So, as is fitting with my new philosophies, I am just going to get straight into it…

Beyond Limits - The Inspiration that Sets Your Spirit Free

Just like me, each and every person has the ability to make better choices and take steps to realise the potential that lies within.

An inspiring sense of freedom and lightness of living becomes available at this level. The banality of social facades and the tiresome games based on other people’s narrow rules and fearful expectations, drop away.

Physically: In a physical and energetic sense I now have a continuous connection to endurance, power, flexibility and speed within my fit, healthy body.

Emotionally: At the emotional level I consistently feel more joy, gratitude, respect, appreciation, reverence and delight - whatever the ebb and flow of life’s events and circumstance.

Intellectually: At the intellectual level I have a higher level of confidence - this confidence is driven by a non wavering sense of personal power that is strong, resolute, certain, assured, breathtakingly expansive and inclusive of others.

The source of my new levels of energy is inextinguishable - the equivalent of fuelling a fireplace with the inner slow burn logs of deep energy and a sustaining flame.

This is very distinct from my past spluttering, flickering surface actions, and my previously erratic energy bursts of short, frantic activity.

Eleven Months Later ...

Now that I am eleven months into my health and wellness journey, the exercise and nutrition rituals I have learnt from my inspirational personal trainer, have become a habit. This creates the confidence for me to move beyond limits - toward expanding success and wellbeing that previously would have seemed impossible.

Indeed the only way to discover the limits of the possible is to choose to go beyond them into the allegedly impossible!

Because I am so much healthier, it is easier for me to integrate a disciplined pattern of physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual practices into my life.  I no longer struggle to remember to do them.

I actively seek out uplifting situations and environments, particularly in outdoor and wilderness environments, because moving about in natural settings is so much physically easier and rejuvenating for me now.

My renewed energy means I have the focus and clarity to more easily discern the right people and choices that resonate with my core intentions and life purpose. It is simply more and more straightforward to draw forth the best of myself.

Handling Setbacks

Like all of us, setbacks will still cross my path from time to time. I am now much more likely to smile with acceptance and grace in such times of adversity. There’s a knowing that "this too will pass" soon enough, as I continue to grow and learn that I am more physically and mentally tough, endurable, powerful and unbreakable than I had previously realised.

As I enjoy this sense of an upwards spiral through having a much healthier lifestyle, I experience increasing time of joy.

It is increasingly difficult to remember or recognise the version of myself in blog one from January this year:  misguided, stubborn and limited. Back then I did not know what I did not know. I was foolishly covering up all of this with false arrogance and bravado!

My health and wellness journey has fully evolved to become a true partnership with my extraordinary personal trainer - because as a psychologist, I recognise that it is important to admit it times we can't do it all on our own, and there are resources available if we choose to draw on them.

In addition to teaching me a healthier way of life, my personal trainer reminded me to reconnect to my true self; and to remember that the door to each person’s dreams is always open. 

I trust my reflections in this blog have been good food for thought and wherever your dreams may lie at this point in your life; may I respectfully encourage you and ask.....

What are

you

waiting for? 

Self Sabotage – Fear of Looking Good

Sometimes a psychologist needs help too!

The second in a series of posts, sharing my personal journey from a fat and grumpy sad sack during nine months of personal training sessions ...

Introduction

To stop this year ending up like the last few (or rather many) years, struggling to keep my head above water physically, financially and at times emotionally, I have embarked on a new journey.

And I’m doing something different ... at the same time I’m personally experiencing the stages of creating enduring change, breaking bad patterns, and reclaiming my life, that as a psychologist I often find myself teaching to others!

This is the second of 5 blogs recording the different stages of my own personal transformation, and how that has led me to insights that I now use to help individuals reclaim their energy and their lives. It has also given me a passion to help businesses to create healthier workplace environments to support their workforce, community, productivity and ultimately their own profitability.

The sad sack, fat and negative old bastard, I started the year as, has to some extent, moved aside.

I’ve kept up training and healthier eating for 6 weeks and there’s some real improvements being made.

Physically, especially, there’s progress … but then there’s this massive roadblock that I just didn’t expect – which is odd because I’ve seen it before!

6 Weeks And Counting…

Mid February 2013: Development and Disruptions

I have to acknowledge that six weeks into my training routine, I am starting to sleep better and feel less stressed.

Nevertheless, there is still no way I would reliably get out of bed early each week to work out hard in the local park.

For that, I still rely upon, my motivating personal trainer, who continues kindly sending me text reminders and regular snippets of information and encouragement during the week.

The Power of Modelling and Example

My trainer’s contagious positive enthusiasm, happiness and zest for life is having a vicarious effect on me. I'm seeing firsthand the power of modelling, and becoming the average of those you surround yourself with …

Her strength of belief in my progress and capacity is a much-needed substitute for my own self doubt, excuses and long entrenched habits of self-sabotage. Left unchecked, I am sure, I would already be falling back into my old unhealthy ways.

Dare I say it … I am even starting to look forward to nutritional and physiological information and advice from my trainer.

I am starting to reluctantly agree... this integrated approach slowly seems to be working!

I am also becoming more interested in the concepts of recovery and strain prevention.

I’m starting to honour and nurture the rhythms of my physical body, and am replacing my old views of seeing my physical self as an external obstacle, to forcefully discipline with brute strength and aggressive demands.

I am even starting to notice that the touch of my own body feels different in the shower, with more toned muscles and sleeker awareness of bones and torso outlines. 

Could this be the beginning emergence of my true, real and long lost healthy self???

AND THEN, suddenly into my awareness my biggest sabotage fear rears its hidden tentacles from my deeper subconscious

The Fear of Looking Good!

I had become comfortable and willing to settle for my big belly, beer drinking social self, as an easier way of living.

Believe it or not, I was now becoming scared about the loss of my old self and social identity, if I started looking like a healthier, fitter and younger man.

Around this time of emerging doubt about my desire to truly change my physique, extended family relatives started to criticise and ridicule my efforts ...

• It won’t last Peter, just have a beer or two with us at the weekend BBQ and let your hair down for a while.
• This is a special family/social occasion, surely you can eat a big meal with everyone and have a few social drinks to relax and celebrate in style?
• Don’t overdo this training Peter, maybe you are pushing yourself a bit too hard.
• These personal trainers can be an expensive luxury Peter are you sure you can afford it? Do you really think its worth the money?

I worried about the loss of my old familiar "big boy" social identity, as the host and hearty provider of plenty of good food and cold drinks for everyone - and the more the merrier at our family feasts!

The Inner Voice of Self-Sabotage

I started finding ridiculous justifications to trick myself into backing away from ongoing sessions.

• Gee as my waist size decreases I will be up for the expense of a heap of new business clothes, I cannot afford all that.
• Do I really believe I am worthy to be a superbly fit and healthy guy, or is that just the territory of youth? Am I just kidding myself by thinking I can turn back the clock?”

Through all of this, my trainer listened to my doubts, regularly smiled and gave me new health knowledge.

And most importantly of all:

• Simply held me accountable;
• Kept demonstrating and insisting that I do the exercises and physical routines; and
• Encouraged me to keep modifying the types of food I regularly ate.

Furthermore, my trainer modelled and embodied the truth of her own techniques.

In other words, there was an integrity and congruence around the health and vitality of her joyful lifestyle that deeply resonated with me. It was hard for me to ignore, minimise, justify or rationalise away this embodiment of lifestyle alignment, with my litany of weak excuses for quitting on myself.

Guess what, when you persist with the routines, and have a genuine role model, you continue to get the results.

Bit by bit I started to leave my doubts behind and notice the beginning emergence of the joy and enjoyment of fitness training, as a regular and natural part of my daily life.

Breaking through this self-sabotage syndrome and barrier of doubt means that I am truly ready for my health and well being takeoff. I’ll be sharing this phase in the next blog - "Letting My Light Shine".