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Go ahead, close your eyes (just for a moment, since you can’t read with your eyes closed, doh!) and think of a really exciting time. Make it as exciting as you like. Go on, nobody is censoring your thoughts. Yes, X-rated is fine. Make it as EXCITING as you feel comfortable with, while still holding this magazine in your hands. Now open your eyes. (I sure hope you did this without this instruction, otherwise we’d be sitting here for a very long time). How do you feel now? Is your heart beating a little faster? Is your breathing shallower or deeper? Are your cheeks flushed? Are you sitting more upright? If not, you haven’t been thinking EXCITING enough. You need to go back and do it again, and this time really go for it!

What’s the difference between your emotional state now and how you felt just a moment ago when you started reading? Is there a big difference? Are you actually feeling better and is life looking brighter? If so, what caused this to happen? And how quickly did it happen? Just in the blink of an eye? Just because you made a choice to think about something EXCITING? That’s how simple it is?

Do you want to learn how to do this all the time, automatically, without even thinking about it?

Do you want to have this energy available at your fingertips, so you can snap into it whenever you need to, say when you’re coming up to the last mile and you feel like you’ve already done a hundred?

Your life is a succession of emotional states that closely relate to what’s going on in your head, so whatever is on your mind determines how you feel. What’s on your mind in any given situation is dependent on your previous experiences and personal history. If you have run a marathon and know you can make it, you will feel very differently about an upcoming race than a first-timer. You’ll feel different because of, you guessed it, what’s in your mind.

Do you remember a time when you felt fantastic? How easily did you get things done when you felt that way? Did everything just come to you? And the other day, when you felt a bit down after what happened at work, how did the rest of your day go? Was it easier or harder to come home and connect with your partner or the kids? Easier or harder to do your workout? What goes on in your mind not only affects how you feel, it determines what you do and how you do it.

What you think determines your life and gets you where you want to be (and sometimes where you don’t want to be). So who’s putting these thoughts into your head that make you feel happy or sad, romantic or lonely, motivated or lazy? You are doing it. You are choosing what you think. Of course, it’s easier to think motivating thoughts if you surround yourself with motivated people. You’re more likely to look at life as an exciting adventure if you create your environment accordingly. Whichever way, it’s your choice.

Lance Armstrong, the 7-times winner of the Tour de France, one of the most gruelling endurance events in the world, says in his autobiography, Every Second Counts: “Time is limited, so I better wake up every morning fresh and know that I have just one chance to live this particular day right, and to string my days together into a life of action and purpose. If you want to know what keeps me on my bike, riding up an alp for six hours in the rain, that’s your answer.”

So what’s keeping you on the bike? We’ll show you how to easily focus on what you want, filter any negative state and unleash the energy to get you where you want to be. Join us over the next few Fitstyler e-newsetters  we help you transform your mind and your life!

Headspace Activity

• Determine where you are at using our Perfect Life Wheel!
• The Wheel shows 8 important areas in your life.
• If you need to break down any of these areas further for finer distinctions, do so by drawing another line. For example,
   in the area of Relationships, you may prefer to look at Family and Friends separately.
• Draw curves and write percentages to indicate how happy or satisfied you are in each area of your life at this moment.
• The centre of the wheel represents 0% and the rim represents 100%.
For example:




•For the three areas with the lowest percentage, ask yourself: What am I thinking about this area in my life? What’s going
  on in my mind? What are my thoughts in this area? ________________________
•What are the feelings that come along with these thoughts? ______________
•If you had a clean slate and could make any choice you liked, what would you like to think in each of these three areas?
  ________________________________
•How do these thoughts make you feel? _______________________
•Want to know how to lock these ‘new’ thoughts in permanently? We’ll show you in the next issue article in the Fitstyler e-newsletter!

Author:
Thomas Haemmerle
A Perfect Mind
www.perfectmind.com.au

Published in Ultra Fit Australia
Issue 101, p76
www.ultafit.com.au