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Cadel Evans Tour de France win was an amazing effort from a truly inspirational person. It’s also a great story that highlights the importance of never losing sight of your goals.

After coming overall second in the 2007 and 2008 Tour de France by tiny margins (23 seconds and 58 seconds respectively), even Cadel admits most people had written him off.

Yet his refusal to give up, no matter how extreme the situation, shows us all that we, too, can be triumphant when we focus on our goals. I like the saying:
perserverance overides resistancee.

It was a do or die moment. Cadel faced a seemingly insurmountable task that could have lost him the race. After three failed attempts at the Tour de France, and with only the narrowest of losing margins, it would have been quite easy to give up.

But this was moment that Cadel’s fighting spirit, self belief and extraordinarily strong-minded determination allowed him to overcome a very desperate situation and excel.

We all have our personal battles, small or large. However, we can climb those personal mountains if we truly believe in our abilities and the possibility of success.

Too often our limiting beliefs stop us from achieving levels of greatness, even if the challenge is as small as making simple changes to our diet to reduce the chances of diabetes or cardio vascular disease.

I really like the idea of using Cadel’s “never give up” philosophy as a tool to believing in ourselves.

Life can be as wonderful and awesome as you make it. Cadel’s win is testimony to the fact that years of heartache, anguish, frustration and anxiety can lead to a wonderful crescendo of happiness and fulfilment.

Written by Andrew Talati

The once invincible athlete Tigers Woods has his lost belief on both a professional and personal level.

Currently ranked 7th, while this is a truly awesome effort, for someone who was number 1 for 11 years, only missing out in 2004, one can hypothesise what lead to the current situation. Ultimately it’s all about your belief system.

Tiger’s belief system was constantly reinforced with daily affirmations made 3 times per day:

I will my own destiny
I believe in me
I smile at obstacles
I am firm in my resolve
I fufill my resolutions powerfully
My strength is great
I stick to it easily, naturally
My will moves mountains

So with 623 weeks at number one and Tiger’s nearest rival, Greg Norman at under half with 331 weeks, what went wrong?
Well Tigers extremely risky behavior was of a person who believed no matter what they did, they would succeed, even if this was of an unacceptable nature.

Tigers affirmation’s gave an indication of his resolve, that no matter what the situation, he cannot be beaten. Think about a time in your life when everything you did was perfect, no matter what you did, I liken it to playing a game of billiards. There have been times when no matter how I held the pool cue, the ball always went in. However once you lose your confidence, the situation can quickly change and the negative thoughts and self belief quickly spirals out of control.

Once you lose your belief, you lose that road map that shows you the way to your goals, it can be difficult to get back on the path.
At some point we all confront this situation, while some can prevail above the uncertainty, some never quite recover.

Your goal may be weight loss but once you lose that belief in achieving the goal, you can quickly lose your way. If you have changed your belief system, you need to change your mind set.

When people talk about their emotional drivers behind the urge to go shopping, we could have just as easily substituted the word eating.

We often find ourselves as emotional eaters or frequent shoppers which when we have a closer look shows 2 distinct parallels.

A lot of socialising is associated with catching up at cafés and eating, and when we catching up with our friends will often meet at a café will come around to our house and have a tea or coffee with cake.
Quite often shopping is also a social event to catch up with friends.

Shopping can make ourselves feel better, to feel better about ourselves and to reward ourselves.

So before we know we have created that downward cycle of needing that hit of excitement which quickly dissipates once these items are in taken home.

Then we may experience buyers remorse as to why you spent the money on these unnecessary purchases when your wardrobe is full of clothes. Similarly you may go out and eat plenty of yummy food which may not necessarily be healthy for you.

Some time passes and your purchases or what you have consumed is forgotten and you get into that downward spiral of feeling down or needing a lift so you go shopping again or o buy some food.

Like any habit that we are trying to break and introduce healthier habits, we need to find the underlining driver behind our behavior.
But first we need to acknowledge that our behavior is a be added control or not manageable or more importantly acting on our house or our financial position.

So we really need to take ownership and identify how much we are actually spending on shopping or alternatively what and how much we eating per day so we can actually quantify the effects of our behavior. This is the first step in bringing about change.

Once we have reprogrammed our minds, we achieve success:))

When people say it’s too difficult to quit smoking, I often wonder whether the person is consciously and more importantly unconsciously ready to take the next step. After talking to the owner of a local restaurant, she decided to quit smoking after 25 years of smoking one packet a day.

So the restaurant owner, lets call her “H” commented that the first 24 hours were extremely difficult with the regular withdrawal symptoms being experienced however once the discomfort passed she managed quite comfortably to maintain being smoke free. Whenever we set ourselves goals, be it giving up cigarettes or weight loss, we really need to be happy within our own life both emotionally and physically to undertake the change.

People trying to achieve the goals with everything in life is moving in the right direction, life is good, they find it easy, nothing is too hard and everything is very positive and bright. However once the situation around and the person is stressed, suffering from anxiety or the pressures of life, suddenly achieving the goal is impossible. Suddenly everything becomes too difficult, too hard and the energy and time involved to achieve a specific goal becomes unattainable.

The amazing thing is that since quitting smoking, H is looking fantastic and has become more physically active, she sold her motorbike and purchased a bicycle that she commutes with up to 30km per day. H looks a lot healthier and her complexion is noticeably improved with more vibrancy and energy.

The single most important factor in achieving this goal was that H was ready and everything in her life was aligned in a more positive light.

But often we will set goals for the wrong reason, in many cases people make peacemaking due to convenience their partner pressure from friends and family while really the person accepts the risk of cancer and is perfectly happy to continue knowing the risks.

So when you are really at a conscious/subconscious level then anything is possible

Great story about Tsunami survivor and his belief system, it’s a case of you can NOT you can’t.

Faced with certain death after the surf tour boat he was on capsized, lawyer Rob Marino’s only option was to squeeze from a tiny porthole or concede the immediate fate of death.

Faced with this situation, Rob decided to choose life and managed to squeeze from this tiny orifice.
From Rob “You are left with two choices, you either make an effort to survive but I didn’t want to do”

Quite often the motivating factor can determine whether you make the effort or not to reach your goals, living is a pretty good motivating factor.

When we say sticking to a diet or an exercise program is too hard, we are really saying that we don’t won’t to, ultimately it comes down to the deeper reasons why we resist, a behavior or thought process that was created in the past. This is often not addressed and can lead to failure to achieve your weight lose or fitness goals.

However when faced with a life or death situation, suddenly survival becomes a motivating factor and our deeper reasons for resistance are over ruled by instinct.

If you don’t undertake the prescribed weight loss or exercise program, you will not die, although a lifetime of abuse can lead to cardiovascular and heart disease.

However throw into the equation if you don’t stop drinking alcohol or smoking that you will die within 6 months or alternatively you are a father of 2 young children and you risk having a heart attack, then suddenly the motivating force is once again a fatal outcome.

So maybe mentally you may not be ready, it’s all too hard or hopefully you aren’t faced with a life or death situation to achieve a change in your thinking.