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While we focus on maintaining our physical health through exercise and nutrition, we sometimes forget to maintain our mental health.

According to a recent government report entitled “Australia’s health 2010“, 20% of Australians suffer from some form of mental disorder every year. More disturbing is that this statistic increases to 25% for those aged 16 to 24 years old.

Anxiety based disorders such as panic disorders, agoraphobia and social phobias account for 72% of this number, with affective disorders like depression and bi-polar accounting for 31%.

These numbers are based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics’s 2007 National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing (SMHWB). Even more alarming was the discovery that 7,286,600 Australians, or 45% of the population, will suffer from a mental disorder during their lifetime

So what can we do to improve our mental health?

1. Change your negative thoughts
We need to identify those negative notions swirling around our mind and replace them with positive thoughts.

2. Get a good nights sleep
Achieving 7 to 8 hours of quality sleep will go a long way to improving how you feel.

3. Healthy eating
A diet of fresh fruit, vegetables and less processed food will enrich your body with good nutrients.
This leads to improved alertness, increased energy and general wellbeing.

4. Maintaining quality relationships with friends and family.
As a society we are becoming more isolated from the world around us. Having good friends and family members to talk things through is very therapeutic. Spending quality time with those you care about can be as simple as catching up for coffee or going for a walk.

5. Keep exercising
Regular exercise helps reduce muscular tension and improve the flow of oxygen, chemicals and nutrients through the body.

For further information contact your local GP or Beyond Blue
www.beyondblue.org.au

It’s easy to lose focus and lose direction even for an Olympic athlete.

To fall Olympians and world record holder Geoff Huegill, he had it all at the age of 25.
With Olympic silver and bronze medals, five world championships and eight times world record holder and on top of that five Commonwealth games medals.

However how can such elite athlete spiral out of control to 140 kgs. Well at the tender age of 26 with such her collection of world-class wins spanning his short career, Jeff decided to call he was highly disciplined lose his way so easily, by adopting a lifestyle of poor eating, lots of partying and not much exercise. Ultimately Geoff lost motivation and lost his way.

Well for Jeff it was all about not having any goals, if you don’t have any direction in your life, you don’t have any purpose, and without that purpose there is little motivation to even get out of bed in the morning.

Inspirational person Geoff

Well one of the most amazing comebacks in recent history fills you with inspiration and hope that anything is possible once you establish the direction of where you’re going. At the age of 30 Jeff recommenced training and managed to attain his ideal racing weight to qualify for world class events.
The goal was the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games and beyond that the 2012 London Olympics.

You may ask how can and overweight former athlete make such an amazing comeback to win gold in the Men’s 100 m butterfly at the Dehli Commonwealth games?

When setting goals it’s always about having a long-term plan, as Jeff says if you want to climb to the top of Mount Everest it’s all about having steps and the vision over a long period.

An unhealthy lifestyle happens slowly, so equally adopting a healthier lifestyle take time as well, it doesn’t happen overnight.

Any goal we may have, such as reaching an ideal weight, requires commitment and dedication to achieve.

There is an old saying that if you aim at nothing, you will hit it with amazing accuracy.

Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet to successful weight loss, but it does help to have key indicators that will track and measure how you are doing and the S.M.A.R.T system is a great way to do this.

S: Is the goal Specific to what you are trying to achieve

M: Is it Measurable? Can you determine if there’s any improvement i.e. clothes are looser, actual weight loss according to the the bathroom scales

A: Is it Achievable? Is there a high possibility that you will attain your given weight loss goal?

R: Is it Realistic? Like anything your goals have to be something that is within the realms of possibility. Having unrealistic goals will lead to failure, disillusionment and ultimately a lack of confidence in trying to achieve this goal again in the future

T: Have you given yourself the Time frame in which to achieve your weight loss goal? This can be be a specific date on the calendar, or a countdown of days i.e. 100 days to lose 5 kg.

However, always remember when setting you goals that there’ll always be externalities. These are factors that are outside your field of control that can have an impact on your ability to achieve your goals.

A big part of achieving your weight loss goals is to realise that subconsciously you may try to sabotage yourself and distract you and from your course of action to success.

Lastly like any goal your really need to be ready for the commitment to carry through all five steps of the S.M.A.R.T program.

Think about how we maintain our skin by exfoliating on a regular basis to create a clean environment for you skin grow and be healthy. You can exfoliate your bad habits the same way.

All those underlining bad habits that sit below the surface need to be systematically cleansed and removed over a period of time.

If left unexfoliated, it makes it hard for you skin to remove those dead cells and this can harvest a lot of nasty germs and bacteria. Similarity if we don’t exfoliate those undesirable habits or thoughts, then this leads to a proliferation of the bad habits that will continue until they have been at addressed.

So don’t be too hard on yourself regarding immediately removing these bad habits as they were created over a period of time and require similar period to be reprogrammed and replaced with good stuff.

So you have to continuously exfoliate those thoughts, reprogram those neurological pathways.

Quite often these habits may develop from an incident that happened some time ago, your feelings of self-worth and self-esteem may have been compromised.

All these bad habits that require exfoliating are what I call junk thoughts that circulate around in the mind, they can quickly overtake and have them commanding role in our actions.

Quite often the biggest barrier to achieving your goals is leaving your comfort zone.

The biggest hurdle that we confront when we are trying to make shifts to achieve our goals, be it for weight loss, improving your fitness level, general well being is the idea of going into a place where we are confronting our fears.

Ultimately this makes us feel uncomfortable and it’s a human defense mechanism to avoid anything which creates pain or discomfort.

How often have you heard that people would rather (metaphorically speaking) cut off the right-hand rather than speaking in public.

This makes the whole process of trying to achieve the goal being very challenging, we will place all types of barriers to avoid feeling any discomfort, we create legitimate reasons, that we don’t have enough time, too busy, it’s too hard, not ready at the moment, I’ll start in January next year.

While it may appear to be easier in the short term to take the easier option of inactivity, in the long-term would pay the price for not jumping over the hurdles that we create.

Maybe your goal is to change job or career however the fear of going into the unknown, of feeling discomfort and possible pain will relegate you to stay exactly where you are.

Initially we can justify not committing to a goal, for example improving your fitness level, however not having the time to exercise is like making small deposits in your health bank that accumulate over a long period of time, so the effects of not engaging in regular physical activity may have a detrimental effect on your health in the long term.

Maybe you have won in the gene pool tree of life whereby you can treat your body poorly and you will live to 100, however is this the sort of gamble your wish to take with your health.

While it is recommended that you perform 30 min. of exercise 3 to 4 times per week, for a person whose goal is to lose weight, the long-term consequences of avoiding the achievement of this goal is a predisposition to cardiovascular disease and diabetes, the possibility of osteoporosis and numerous other ailments.

It’s all about taking small steps, and removing those mental barriers that stop you achieving success at every level of of the process.

How often have you heard of people placing these barriers to avoid leaving the comforts zone, ultimately it’s about removing and changing the negative chatter in the mind that leads to the proliferation of these thought patterns.