learning Archives

Guard Your Mind from Shit (I am Not Kidding!)

Don’t let shit get into your mind! We don’t realize how much hype, violence and drama we let into our minds when we watch world news and TV/Movies. We may not believe that it affects us, but the truth is that it does! Our brain is interesting in the way it reacts to all of that and subconsciously affects our thoughts and behaviours.

Past memories that create negative feelings in our mind also clog up our thoughts and beliefs, affect our ability to be happy today and actually affect our feeling about ourself! This is a good reason to work hard at resolving those memories and finding ways to appreciate how they have made you who you are today. I am a prime example of this. I had a rough childhood and was in past abusive relationships. I used to feel anger and self-pity and feel totally crappy about myself but with help I learned how to reframe those experiences and use what I learned to my positive advantage. Those old habitual feelings tend to creep in once in a while, but once you have recognized them, you can quickly turn those thoughts in a positive way (practise!). No matter how bad the past was or how messed up you feel because of it, there is always a way to work at feeling better about it.

What helps me to keep my mind positive and moving forward is to AVOID letting crap into my mind, regularly feed it personal development. I learn new things and apply them to my life and have learned to feel excited and passionate every day about what I do. Seriously, nothing beats feeling excited and passionate every day! When you feel like that, where is the time to even feel bad or negative about anything!?

One of my mentors (Tony Robbins) said….”If you are not growing, you are dying”. I will never forget this and it is so true…learning and personal development is so important! The same can be said for many things such as our relationships, our businesses and more…if they are not growing, then they are dying! Scary thought!..

Ultimately, the most important thing to protect our mind and mental health and sense of well-being, is to stand guard at the door of our mind. Don’t let the crap in, and work every day at getting the crap out from the past and reframing your thinking. This process is important to maintain positivity, motivation, interest in and a zest for life like no other. If you are having a hard time doing this yourself, it is understandable. I recruited help from a coach to help me to reframe myself and my thinking, and I recommend this for you if you are having difficulty as well.

My other mentor (the late Jim Rohn) suggested that our mind is like a garden full of weeds. Work at getting the weeds out (may take a lot of work at first), but then (after all that work) maintain it well by plucking the weeds out as soon as they come up.

Have a great day! Fill your mind with personal growth, development and learn new things. Get the shit out of there, keep it out and enjoy life NOW!

TO learn 7 tips to improve your self-discipline, get your free download HERE.

Working Out for Beginners (and Grandmas), and the surprising way it will change your life.

...to be healthy and fit feels fabulous! — …to be healthy and fit feels great and is worth the work!

Thinking of working out, but you’re a little afraid?

Or maybe you’re afraid of getting bulging muscles. (Don’t worry ladies, that’s highly unlikely.)

Think you’re too weak or too old or too lazy, but you want to at least give it a try?

Good.

Then I want to quickly tell you how it’s going to change your life. I mean even in your everyday stuff. I’d also like to give you a bit of direction about how to start.

How Working Out Will Change Your Life

The first thing many want when they start on their fitness journey is to look different. Thinner, smaller, tougher, lean. And that may happen, but you need to know right at the start, you’ll get much more out of it than just looks.

Your energy will increase. Assuming you’re eating clean and getting enough calories, the adrenaline and other hormones released into your body by exercise will affect your energy.

Your body will work better. Exercise affects you even at a cellular level. When you’re active, the body will use food more efficiently, and many parts – like the thyroid, endocrine system, pancreas, digestive system – will all signal and function better as a result. It’s pretty amazing how movement (or non-movement) affects the body.

You’ll feel better. Client after client has reported feeling more positive, less depressed or lethargic, more motivated and a feeling of being more capable. Exercise improves mental and emotional health, not just physical.

You can do more normal stuff. I’ve noticed this in my own body. Since I began working out, I can do a lot more on my own. I can bring in all the bags of groceries by myself without huffing and puffing afterward. I can shovel snow without pulling a muscle. My joints are stronger. And, if I need to move the couch or fridge, I can do it easily on my own – all important things for a single grandma!

Working Out – Where to Start

It’s a bit tough to say where to start, because it really depends on where your body is at.

A person recovering from back surgery or a teenager will need a whole different routine than an overweight mid-forties woman who’s otherwise healthy.

It’s always best to get the personalized advice from a coach who can advise you based on your specific needs and fitness level. (I can help with that) So please take the following not as specific personal advice for you to follow, but more as a general guideline.

That said, it’s often best to start slow. For a few reasons. If you’ve been especially sedentary or have health issues, this is especially true. A good beginning for you might be to stretch daily or every other day, and go for a walk or bike ride. Keep it light to start – pushing too hard right off will only destroy your motivation and invite injuries.

The next stage would be to increase intensity by either lengthening the time of your walk or bike ride, or increasing the difficulty, perhaps by traveling uphill or going faster for portions of the workout. A person could also add a cardio workout routine or consider joining an accountability group! Click HERE to ask how!

The (Most Important) Thing Beginners Forget About

Most people stop there, forgetting to add the vital element of weight lifting (resistance training).

Wait ladies – before you envision giant barbells and bulging muscles – that’s not what I mean. Not at all.

Here’s the truth about muscles. If you don’t make them work, they weaken. They weaken a lot and actually shrink (atrophy), becoming nearly useless. A lack of exercise leads to atrophy of skeletal muscle, which essentially leads to a smaller number and size of the muscle cells!

Lifting is Easier Than You Think

Just so you know, lifting doesn’t have to be this big, demanding ordeal. I’ve been working out for years, and only lift 2-3 times a week. The rest is cardio. It doesn’t take huge amounts of time to get results.

It may suit you best to start out with smaller weights (3-5 lbs) even once a week, and work up to 10 or 15 as you gain strength.

The bottom line: if you don’t use your muscles, they’re going to leave you.
You need them. Work them. Even just a little at first. Starting small is okay.
The important thing is that you start.

To get tips about getting started on clean eating, click HERE.

To join the athletic grandma community, enter your email address HERE and get a free download about how to improve your self-discipline!

Sleep? Who Needs Sleep?

Sleep is essential for so many things! — Sleep is essential for so many things

After 3 nights in a row without proper sleep, I am beginning to wonder how I am going to function if this continues.

Not sure why my brain doesn’t seem to want to go to sleep, perhaps it is part of my abuse recovery… I am on what I am calling my “emotional fitness journey” especially intensive over the last month. It has been a challenging path to take and honestly, some days, I feel like quitting the journey and just going back to my “tough” self that never had any problems.

Sleep is one of those things that is important for brain function and we don’t realize just how much. Yesterday, at clinic, by half way through the shift, my thinking felt slowed, cloudy, eyes were burning, ears were ringing and felt some serious fatigue. Ate a few mint chocolate squares to liven me up, which seemed to work for a few minutes, then subsequently I felt worse instead of better. Challenging to get through the last part of the shift this way!

I did some research on sleep recently and founds some interesting facts about what the brain does while we are sleeping! There were 5 that I found most interesting!

Firstly, while we are sleeping, our brain helps to process complex data, to aid with decision making when we are awake! Its amazing how much our brain processes while unconscious!

Secondly, While we are sleeping, the brain creates and consolidates memories. For this reason, sleep is VERY important for learning and retaining information. Also, having good sleep PRIOR to learning, prepares the brain better for initial formation of memory. Hmm, maybe pulling those all-nighters to study for exams and write papers were not such a good idea!

Thirdly, sleep helps to boost our ability to have creative connections. In an unconcious state, the mind can make surprising creative connections that it won’t make while awake! Have you ever waken up in the morning after a good sleep with new “aha” moments?

Fourthly, a very important function of sleep is for the brain to do a little housekeeping. This process allows the brain to flush out toxic materials that build up while we are awake! Apparently, without enough sleep, these toxins can build up and lead to cognitive diseases.

Fifth, while sleeping, our brain learns and remembers the process of how to perform physical tasks. These things could include dance moves, new golf swing techniques, running form, etc. During REM sleep, our body transfers these to a longer term memory area, so that they become more permanent in our minds.

Given the significant processes that occur during sleep, its no wonder my brain didn’t want to work properly after no sleep. I have learned that no amount of caffeine, chocolate or sugar in the day will fix that! In fact, having these substances, can affect the quality of your sleep the upcoming night again!

With all of the research, and looking at just how important sleep is, I have come up with 5 ways to improve my sleep:

Minimize caffeine intake (chocolate, coffee, iced tea, other drinks and more). Caffeine can take up to 18 hours to completely clear from the body, so even the morning coffee can interfere with sleep quality! (this issue can get worse at we get older too!)
Avoid bright screens/computer for at least an hour prior to sleep. Bright light can interfere with our natural melatonin and sleep cycles! Also, what we are reading on those screens may be too stimulating instead of relaxing!
Meditate or think deeply about things that are stressing me or bothering me prior to going to bed and write them down on a piece of paper beside the bed and give myself permission “not to worry about them until tomorrow”.
Exercise and eat healthy (at least 85% clean) every day.
Have no screens or TV in bedroom. Bedroom to be used ONLY for sleep.

What other suggestions do you have for me about how to improve sleep? Have you had issues sleeping and found a solution that works for you? Please share your suggestions in the comment box below!

CLICK HERE to receive a FREE PDF re: getting started NOW with Clean Eating!

My Patient’s Emotional Pain Nudged Me to Heal From My Own

Emotional eating can feel like the answer

I caught myself doing it again.

There I was in front of the opened fridge, searching for peace.

It had been the kind of long, frustrating day no commute could erase. Maybe it was the two patients I’d seen whose troubling stories broke my heart. Maybe their struggles with depression and emotional trauma had hit a little too close to home. Now, an unstoppable string of painful memories threaded its way through my mind.

“I thought I dealt with this already. Why am I rehashing this again?” I sighed and closed the fridge.

Nothing in there would fix this ache in my heart. And it certainly wouldn’t stop the rerun of disturbing images through my mind. I’d have to deal another way. Without snapping at people. Without rolling my eyes and sighing at them. Without withdrawing or stuffing my face.

It’s crazy, isn’t it, how things that happened decades ago can trigger negative behavior in the present. Even stuff we’ve dealt with. Forgiven. Accepted and learned from. Or thought we had.

Many coaches say that forgiveness (and, I’d add, dealing with trauma) is like peeling an onion: it has a lot of layers, and each one makes you cry. I’ve certainly found this to be true as I worked through each painful layer of my past.

The weird thing was that I couldn’t force it. I couldn’t hurry up and heal, or race to the next level. Each layer of healing seemed to come when I was ready, and it would always surprise me when it came.

Like this week. I never saw it coming. But suddenly something like a patient’s suffering can stir up a mess of memories I didn’t realize I still needed healing from.

When that happens, my behavior can get weird. I can suddenly find myself in the fridge, or any other number of bad habits I once had, to help me deal with the pain. Overeating (some kind of carb with peanut butter and jam), staring at TV, grumping at my family, and ignoring my friends.

Has that ever happened to you? Has something triggered old painful memories and sent you headlong back into rotten old habits you thought you’d kicked?

It’s not a bad thing.

I mean, we definitely need to find a way to avoid those negative behaviours. But here’s the thing. Once we become aware of what is triggering our behaviour – once we realize the connection between our past experiences and our current behaviour – we can short-circuit the effects of those old wounds.

We don’t have to continue to be hurt by our past.
We don’t have to let past pain hurt our present.

Practically, what this looks like for me (once I recognize what’s triggering my behaviour) is to close that fridge door and walk in the opposite direction of that loaf of bread. I’ll try to find a quiet place to sit down and let the memories come. I will, once again, (again!!) decide to forgive and let it go, just as I had before. Then I’ll fix my mind back on the present – on my current goals – and choose a behaviour that fits with that.

Instead of going to the fridge to feed my feelings, I resolutely choose to engage with my daughter and grandson. We’ll play a game, talk, go outside for a walk, read a book or sit and play with toys – whatever it takes to engage in healthy activities.

We can break free from our past, from hurt.  But it takes some self-awareness and the willingness to choose a new path, one scary, difficult layer at a time.

How to you shake free from past hurts when they come knocking?

Please comment on this post. I would love to hear your ideas!
Click Here to download FREE 6 tips to help Emotional Eating issues