Getting Your Mind-Body In Line

By Stacia D. Kelly, PhD How many times have you just said, you wish your mind would quiet down and let you focus on the things you know you need to do to get in gear for life? Yet, the minute you decide you’re going to head to the gym, you’re sidetracked with a million and one things you have yet to do for work, house, or family. You get to the gym, you’re overwhelmed. You go out to eat and while you know you should order grilled chicken or fish and veggies, you stray to the cheeseburger and fries. It seems as though we defeat our best intentions every day. There are ways to get your subconscious mind in line with your conscious decisions to be healthier, thinner, more fit and make good decisions for your body, mind, and spirit. With all the fad diets and talk of training plans, we’re inundated with information from a variety of sources. We all know what we need to do, and how we need to do it. We read about it everywhere. So why aren’t some of us actually doing it? Willpower is a muscle, and we need to work at it to get it to cooperate. According to Roy F. Baumeister, PhD,  a researcher at Florida State University, willpower is not a personality trait, a skill, or a virtue. Instead, it operates like a muscle. And as such, it can be strengthened--but also easily exhausted (Baumeister 2003). So, how do we strengthen our inner resolve?

1. Make a Plan – Create a meal plan, put exercise on your schedule. This way, you’re not giving yourself a choice. You already have your meals mapped out, your choices made. You’re not asking your willpower to exert itself in any way.
2. Meditate – Meditation, Prayer, Breathing exercises, all of these help you maintain your focus and help to strengthen your willpower. They help to keep your body and mind in harmony. You’ll also see a noticeable change in how you react to the world around you.  A few less flare-ups at work, a little less irritation in traffic, and perhaps, more patience for your spouse or children.
3. Ask for Support – People succeed because they surround themselves with successful people. If you’re making a nutrition change, ask for the support of your family. If they don’t bring the unhealthy foods into the house, it makes it that much easier not to eat them! Enlist a partner to get out and get moving. Ask your children to be your coach. Find a support network online or nearby to help keep you motivated.
4. Review the Why – Review, honestly, why you do the things you do that cause you stress. Do you eat because you’re bored? Do you hate moving because people made fun of you in the past? Do you let work stress you out because you hate your job? Take an honest look at the why’s and then, set some goals to make some changes.

Stress something we do to ourselves. Willpower can be strengthened. Give yourself a gift and just breathe.