1.1.11 - 5 Reasons Why New Years Resolutions Never Work

1.1.11! - Disregard the dates within this blog, as the message itself is timeless. Here you will read about the pitfalls of weak resolutions that we so often make and how to put them right!

The first of January 2011. For many this day will signify the end of a very short lived new resolution(s). The excitement for reaching new heights will quickly fade away, whether it is for a new health regime, a change in career, a new relationship, etc. Their momentum for fulfilling their resolution(s) will end due to the 'silent killers'. Why? Why is it that some new resolutions never work and who or what is the silent killer?

This blog is about the internal barriers that we give ourselves that prevent us from sticking to resolutions, regardless of whether we make them at the beginning of the year or mid July, for instance. The principles behind why we may not get the results we wish for remain the same. Below are 5 reasons (silent killers) why some new years resolutions never work and simple solutions to ensure your future success.

1. Social Acceptance
Firstly, why do people have new years resolutions? In a nutshell, because it's expected! It's why people will ask you 'What's your resolution?' and often you may feel that you must oblige by having one. So, not to be a bore and different, you may end up creating a resolution. And hey, let's be fair, when you think about the resolution, it actually makes you feel good, right? And you start to think about how good it would be to reach that goal.

Just because it feels good however, doesn't mean that it will continue to feel good. Be sure that your resolution is made not due to social pressure.

2. Intention
You probably haven't set a proper goal! This ties in with the above. It may make you feel good stating such an intention and that's great. However, that may be short-lived and you may find that by the 1st of January, you've lost interest and/ or momentum.

It would be more effective to run your intention/ goal through the neurological levels of alignment. That's a bit of a mouthful, so let me explain. The neurological levels of alignment ensure that you have the best foundation before you even begin to strive after your goal. It is a system used by many successful people and is easy to implement. I shan't go into detail today about each level of the alignment but below is a list of them. I will write another blog or report explaining how to progress through each of the levels, so look out for that.

• Environment
• Behaviour
• Capabilities
• Beliefs & Values (very important!)
• Identity
• Purpose

Running your intentions through these levels greatly increases your rate of success.

2. Negative Emotional Experience
That you may make the resolution in a light-hearted manner, will have a direct impact on your emotional experience. You will not have laid down any regulatory decisions 'red flags' to help you through the difficult times ahead, e.g. the early morning running schedule, fighting the urge to smoke or getting over your poor eating habits on a daily basis.

Without future pacing your goal(s) and actions, i.e. what I will say to myself when I just don't feel like doing it any more, you may run out of commitment and not be able to regulate your emotional experience quite early on (even as early as January 1st!). Just by giving yourself 'red flags' that  pop up in your mind at the appropriate times, will ease the pressure.

4. Don't Pay Now...Don't Even Pay Later Syndrome
Procrastination is a killer of time and emotions! Because you've not laid down any certain plans, like how you are going to reach your goal(s), the various steps, etc, you will not feel a great need to work for your goal. You'll have the "I'll start tomorrow" type thought, which will not get you to where you want and need to be.

5. Poor Scheduling
We all have busy lives. It would be incredible naive to think that you can just slot another item into your busy diary, without proper forethought. Take time out, sit down and work out just how and where you will schedule-in your new resolution.

I truly hope that you regardless of where you are in the year, you will reach all your goals/ resolutions. Avoid the above pitfalls and I'm confident that you'll be well on your way to success, time and again.

I help many individuals with their goal-setting and it gives me great pleasure to see them achieve their desires. If you have a goal that you feel you need help in reaching please feel free to contact me today.

"What Do You Mean, I Am Relaxed!!" - 24 Hour Free MP3 Offer

"What do you mean, I am relaxed!!" That's how one client replied during her sports massage session with me. She was very adamant that she was very relaxed. However, she didn't realise that her muscles were telling a different story. It wasn't until I got her to perform a rapid relaxation technique, that she realised she indeed wasn't relaxed at all. The interesting question is, even when someone is looking at themselves, how is it possible that they can think they are relaxed when they're not?

If you were to conduct a survey, asking people if they felt that they were physically relaxed, I'd imagine that a very high percentage would argue that they were and that would be quite a normal response. Unfortunately however, the truth of it, is that the muscles in our bodies are often tight and inflexible. Why?

When you were a child, say around the age of 5 or 6, did you ever wake up in the morning in pain, complaining of a bad back? Whens the last time you heard a child say "oh, my back ain't what it used to be?". Highly unlikely! Kids do get tight muscles, but that's normally from playing games, etc, for a long period of time. Yes parents, even their muscles get fatigued sometimes, although you wouldn't think it, by the way they can't keep still at times!!

As we get older we learn stress and how to feel stress! It's sad but true. You weren't born stressed. Of course, there are occasions when a baby is born distressed, due to a complicated birth, etc, but ultimately, we learn stress as we grow. Sadly, our bodies suffer, as we hold on to much of our stress throughout our muscles. That's when we get the bad backs, the stiff necks, the tight chest.

Then we have our dysfunctional world of ergonomics. If you work in an office, what's your workstation like? Is the chair at the right height, in correspondence to your screen and desk? Do you spend a lot of time on the laptop? How long a period do you spend in front of your computer? If you are female, which shoulder do you hold your handbag on? How heavy is it? But why am I talking about tight muscles and ergonomics?

Well, the body and mind are so intertwined that what affects the body, affects the mind! So if you're feeling stressed and your muscles are reflecting that, what affect do you think that is having on your mind?...not a great one! I want you to test something. Hunch your shoulders, knit your eyebrows together, breathe shallow from the chest and clench your teeth. How do you feel? Awful I bet. Now loosen your jawline, open and lower your shoulders, breathe from the stomach area, clench your fists and look up. Now how do you feel? Much better, right?

Your mind reflects what your body feels and vice versa. For me, it's important during a coaching session, to have the client relaxed, otherwise the work that they perform might not have the right impact.

If you are a sportsperson, it's vital to be able to relax at the right moments. Granted, some sports require you to have a certain amount tension in your muscles, I mean you wouldn't want to be half asleep running a 100m race, would you? And what about those of you who run hectic lives, juggling family and work responsibilities, you need to be able to relax at any given time too, isn't it?

What would it be like for you to relax in difficult situations? What would it feel like? What would you be saying to yourself? What picture comes to your mind right now?

Well, you'll be glad to know that I have put together a 'Relaxation' mp3 for you ((Apologies, Not available at present)), which will provide you with a technique that will put you in a relaxed state immediately! The mp3 is full of dialogue that will get you feeling relaxed in no time. I use a whole body relaxation technique, so that you can literally  feel the your muscles loosen as you listen. You will then experience something that may be quite new for you...what it means to be truly relaxed. 

The mp3 takes you through progressive steps to ensure that you have the skill to evoke your relaxed state, just by thought alone. You can use it for immediate relaxation whilst at home or appropriately at your place of work.

Here's the best part.At present the price for the mp3 is £7.97 (click here to see our articles page and listen to the excerpts), which is due to expire at 17:29pm on 7 January 2011. (Apologies, Not available at present)

However, For the next 24 hours I'm offering the mp3 to you FREE! Yes, that's right FREE. For one day only. My offer has to end at 15:45pm 2nd December 2010, guaranteed. 

I do have a favour to ask of you before you download the mp3. In exchange I was wondering if you could spare me a minute of your time. That's all I'm asking.

You see, I want to make sure my blogs, email newsletters, my FREE reports and advice, be the best they can be. I want to give you exactly what you want. I want to only give you the information you really want on your sport, health, fitness and personal effectiveness mission. So if you could just visit the link below and give me your moot; one or two sentences on what you want to read, I'll then give you access to the downloadable mp3 immediately afterwards. (Apologies, Not available at present)

Thanks in advance, I really appreciate your assistance.

So get relaxing today...truly relaxed! And if someone should ever say to you " hey, relax!", think twice before you respond...

Revealed: The Sporting 'Zone' and 'Flow State' Doesn't Exist!!

The Zone or Flow State Just Doesn't Exist! 

You may have heard someone say that before and much has been written as to whether being in the zone or flow state really exists. So, does it really exist? If it does, just what is it? How do you enter it? and how would you know whether you were in it or not? The answers are contained within today's article.

I've spoken to many people who claim to have been in the zone and I myself have experienced it, which you can read about below. Let's first answer: Does it really exist? The answer is yes but maybe not as you think.

Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi  (pronounced as ‘Cheeks-Sent-Me-High’), renowned psychologist, described 'flow' or 'being in the zone' when he said "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost."

Now, I ask you, how many times have you been in such a state? Probably more than you think, regardless of whether it was in sport or not. It's the state that you find yourself in, when you are completely absorbed in an activity and completely focussed.

For a sportsperson, it is a place that you often want to be, isn't it? So how do you get there? Once experienced, many try to replicate the circumstances to get back into their zone.

This is not always possible however, so I'm providing the list of the main factors that you may need to get into 'flow'.

• Clear and attainable goals are being pursued.
• Intense concentration and narrow focus of attention.
• Distorted sense of time in that you become less aware of the passage of time.
• The activity provides immediate feedback in terms of success. This enables immediate adjustments and changes to be made.
• The activity is sufficiently challenging – neither too easy nor too difficult.
• You have a sense of personal control over the activity.
• The process of being involved in the activity is intrinsically rewarding so it will feel effortless.
• You will become unaware of other needs e.g. feelings of tiredness, thirst or hunger will go unnoticed.

Be aware though, when you are in flow, you will not be consciously aware of it. It's not until you 'come out of it', that you will realise that you were in it! That's not fair, I hear you cry out. True. But what an experience to have!

I vividly recall a particular time when I was in the zone whilst playing football. I remember having the feeling that time almost was standing still, to the point that I could read perfectly the movements of all the other players around me, no matter where on the field. I seemed to have so much time on the ball, even when under pressure from an opponent. What really stands out are the sounds; everything seemed almost muffled but still audible, like I was encapsulated within a free-flowing bubble. I felt like their was nothing I couldn't do. It was great!

As mentioned above, if the correct 'ingredients' are present, flow can be experienced by anyone. If you were to think, right now, and imagine, in what situations would you like to get into your 'zone', what would they be? What would it feel like? What would you see and hear?

So, flow state/ the zone does indeed exist and it is an amazing place to be!

Think It, Say It, Act It

A recent study conducted by Mayer, Tormala 2010 explored think (“I think . . . ”) versus feel (“I feel . . . ”) message framing effects on persuasion. The authors suggest that think framing will be more persuasive when the target attitude or message recipient is cognitively oriented, whereas feel framing will be more persuasive when the target attitude or message recipient is affectively oriented.

Now, as you can imagine, I'm not here to talk about advertisements and the effects they have on us, interesting though that is. However, the above study does give us some insight into how the mind processes information around us and how your own thoughts can have a massive impact on your sports, health and fitness performance and results.

If you want to improve your level of fitness, sport, health, and even business, it's imperative that you understand what's going on inside your head, so that you can create the optimal circumstances for your success.

Unlike Mary in The Sound of Music, I'm not going to start at the very beginning, however the end and the beginning of this process are intrinsically linked.

Let me ask you, how many times did you look in the mirror before you left home today, think about it? Now, how many times do you think you peered into your other mirror?

The Emotional Mirror
You fair badly at a task, sporting or otherwise. You begin to feel really bad about what happened and feel that you're a "loser" and that "things never go right for me!". Before you know it, you have a picture in your mind of your failure and this in turn makes you feel even worse; you can't get it out of your mind no matter what you do.

You speak to your coach, family or a friend and not even they can change how you feel. If you're anything like others, you would have experienced something similar in your lifetime. Horrible, isn't it?

But that's ok. You've done what many of us do, you looked in your emotional mirror and didn't like what you saw staring back at you! What is this emotional mirror?

Our emotions are just a reflection of our thoughts. For you to 'feel bad' about yourself, the thought must of first been presented in your mind, therefore you would probably be thinking 'I'm bad'. You may not be consciously aware that you had that particular unhelpful thought because it would have occurred all too quickly for your consciousness. In fact, the concept of being bad is an incorrect one, as you cannot become or be the word bad itself. And that's a whole other topic, which I will save for another time.

The thought resulted in your own self-talk, your internal dialogue, which if left unchecked can be disastrous, as you see from the example above.
 
The Little Known Secret!
The emotional mirror is a good part of our human behaviour and we should never try to ignore it. Instead, you may have gathered by now that to change the reflection, you need to alter the the thought. I appreciate that being able to constantly control the unhelpful inner thoughts can be challenging, especially as we may have so many of them throughout the day AND of which we're not consciously aware of.

So just like an athlete, when he/ she trains their bodies to respond in a specific action, we must train our conscious mind to 'red flag' the unhelpful thoughts as they arise. I wouldn't want you to think that this is easy and that with time you'll be able to see yourself doing this easily and with time you will. As you practice this skill you'll find that it will become an automatic response, i.e. a subconscious process.

Why not keep a note of the automatic unhelpful thoughts you have and combat them with more resourceful ones instead, write them down in a notebook or sticky-note. So, if you find yourself thinking "Well that was rubbish, I always get that wrong. I'm a loser", combat it with "What? I'm not a loser! I just missed the mark. I've done this great before and I can do it again. At least now I know what I need to work on to improve." You can use whatever feels and sounds good to you.


To help you appreciate more about how we process information, feel free to view the video below. The video contains information that many people are unaware of. It explains how we communicate information and how this affects our thoughts and behaviours.

The Mayer, Tormala 2010 study is great proof of how we communicate and process information, internally and externally. By becoming more aware of your thought process, you can combat negative emotions in your sport, health, fitness and even business.

Remember, if you think it, you say it, you without fail ACT IT!

Please feel free to comment on any of our blogs, we welcome them

Join Our FREE Mailing List Today