I Go Out Walking

Francois and I love to go out walking most days, as long as it is not pouring rain. I must say though that right after a rain a walk smells delicious. It is late spring and almost summer so the Alberta Wild Roses are out. It was amazing to walk around a bend in the path a few mornings ago and be hit with the incredible floral scents. Lilacs are out in full bloom right now too.

Consistency is the new habit that I am building. It is a powerful habit. Doing something every day, day after day builds new pathways in the brain. Rael Kalley my habits coach has me working on creating this exercise habit over my 100 Days Of Fire. At first I hated it, but now I am actually looking forward to it. It seems to be working. I have gone for a walk at 10:00 PM to make sure it happened, so I must be committed to it.

The parks in Calgary are fabulous. There are so many great pathways to take. Lately we have been to Edworthy Park, Bowness Park, Bakers Park, Nose Hill Park and all of the other parks attached to it. I think though one of my favorites has been the park out at Cochrane. There is a path in the backwoods there that will give you quite the work out. I would not recommend going in the rain because you may slide ride off the trail but it is a very cool walk in the park. There are also these awesome stairs that you can climb to get right up to the big cowboy sculpture.

Each day that I go out walking I consider it a miracle. I really did not like to exercise in any way only a few short months ago. It took saying an affirmation, "I love to exercise," 6 times a day for four months before I was even ready to try it. Now that we do it every day we don't like to miss it at all, and I am still saying "I love to exercise." I am now starting to mean it when I say it. Learning to Lie To Myself has been a useful tool.

The journey of weight-loss is continuing one step at a time. Each day that I go out I get a little closer to my goal and the scale is showing it as well.

How is your journey coming? Tell us about it below and be sure to sign up for updates from my blog at the top right hand corner of the page.

Being Too Busy

Calgary View Nose Hill Park

There is nothing worse for creating new habits than being too busy.

Life is busy, isn't it?

All that being busy gets in the way of change. We have our routines and those routines are how we manage. Change means we have to disrupt the routines.

My routines prior to making these changes on May 1st were all BAD. Yep. No nice way to say it.

I got up as late as I could. I tried to squeeze the last few seconds of sleep out of my night and that caused pressure on my overall performance, but that was my habit. I was protective of that rest and would argue I needed my beauty sleep. Even though there was absolutely no evidence to support that it was somehow making me more beautiful, and perhaps there was even evidence to the contrary.

I would stagger down to the kitchen and let the dog out and then with my eyes half open I would feel my way around the kitchen and get a coffee into my miserable self. I would stand at the counter feeling gross and try to stir myself up to face the day.

The day then got very busy.

I would go up to my computer and try to get as much done as possible in an hour, get everything packed into my briefcase and rush out for the appointments, the training classes I would teach, or the schedule that I had set for myself. I was very busy. That amount of busyness was keeping me from reaching any health related goals. My days were going from one appointment to another. No time for exercise and no time for thinking about what to eat.

I didn't eat breakfast which kept my body in starvation mode. Then I was so hungry I would eat a heavy lunch that fed my soul. On cold days I wanted something hot so in the restaurants I was ordering the burger and fries with gravy and Reuben sandwiches . I smothered everything with cheese and sour cream. I didn't order salad because it was cold. Ew... cold...

I did not take the stairs. I did not like exercise.

When I finished up my appointments I went home and right back to the computer to do more work. My ass was getting bigger and bigger. Sometimes I was having trouble fitting into a chair in a restaurant. I did not like that feeling, but habit was keeping me there.

Working with my habits coach Rael Kalley has opened up my eyes. I realize now, I am my own worse enemy. I have this big gang in my head that has sprayed my thoughts with ugly graffiti and as soon as I try to clean it off or repaint they show up with bats and swear at me. They try to take back their territory. I have to fight for it every day. One of their tactics is to remind me just how busy I am. I have no time for exercise.

Whispering Walkway
Nose Hill Park

Since I started the 100 day program I am no longer responding to those gangsters. I am making time for exercise every day. We have been visiting the parks all across the city and taking pictures and videos of our experiences. We go for a walk either early in the morning, or in the evening, and we have been fitting it into our busy lifestyle with more ease than I thought possible. I am actually really enjoying the exercise. I would not have believed that was possible.

Following a plan for what I eat is also easier than I realized. It just requires some pre-planning. Once you get into the habit of buying fruit a couple times a week, it is not hard to juice each morning. Once you buy a few bags of meal replacement protein powder from Arbonne you have something around for those times when you are too busy to make good choices. Making a new plan priority is not hard once you have made it priority. The difficulty is in our mind before we get started. Once we get started it gets easier.

What are you too busy doing? What do you do now to overcome it?

Tell us about your changes, and subscribe to hear more about my journey at the top in the right hand corner.

Lie To Yourself

Apparently what we tell ourselves is important. We continually tell ourselves all kinds of things. Much of it is negative. Much of it is not true. We just think it is true at the time.

For instance we typically say things to ourselves like "I never am on time." Is that true? Are you NEVER on time? Isn't that an exaggeration? If you have a job, you must be on time some of the time or you would get fired. So that can't be true.

We all lie to ourselves continually so it is important to tell ourselves lies that bare good results. You have heard of faking it until you make it. Some people think that is not real. I happen to know that it works. There were lots of things that I faked it on. I pretended to be good a public speaking. I pretended over and over and over and over again. I faked it so much and I told myself that I was good at it. Now most people would agree. I rock at public speaking. That was not true the first time I did it. My knees knocked. I forgot what I was saying. I shook. I had no confidence. I just made myself do it and I told myself I was going to be good at it. Eventually I became good at it. I am sure you can think of something that you faked for a while too, and then you got good at it.

Affirmations can feel like faking it at first. I have heard folks say affirmations don't work. Well actually they do, but you also have to work. You have to keep saying them. If you write out one sentence and say it sometimes. You won't get much of a result.

A few years ago when I first went into business, I knew I had to change the way I thought about things considerably. I was making no real money and I had to change the way I was thinking about money. I had realized that I thought money would only come to me through hard work. Money came to others without hard work. Money came to others who were seemingly undeserving, so that meant it should work the same for me. I wrote down, "Money comes to me easily." I put it on the lid of the toilet seat so I would see it every time I went to the bathroom. I put it on my steering wheel in my car. I wrote it out in my journal and stuck it to the top of my computer screen. I said it several times a day. I doubled my income that year, and the next and the next after that.

Affirmations worked. I knew it. I had seen it.

Rael Kalley my habits coach reminded me of that when I started working with him last December. His plan was a little more radical so I decided to give it a go. He taught me to write out my affirmations with a lot more detail and to spend 5 to 7 minutes at a time thinking about how having that thing would make me feel. He also encouraged me to say them a minimum of 6 times a day. Things started to change right away in some areas.

I was saying "Money comes to me in an avalanche of abundance through my brilliant ideas." In less than 48 hours I had a really huge brilliant idea. It made me a bunch of money really quickly. That was very cool.

The affirmations that I was saying about what I ate took about 2 months to kick in. I wasn't ready for change immediately. My head rejected the sayings at first and recognized them as lies. I was saying, "I only desire foods that drive me closer to my ideal weight of 150 pounds." I laughed out loud the first few times I said that. I thought about the beer and pizza I was planning to enjoy and giggled as I ate them, but I kept saying it. Within 30 days I was desiring less pizza. In fact, I was rejecting milk products like cheese and sour cream without even thinking about it. I was not ordering them when I was at a restaurant, instead of insisting on them bringing me a vat for my baked potato. I stopped ordering extra dressing and condiments. I had 1 beer instead of 3. My cart at the grocery store was suddenly full of fruits and vegetables instead of processed foods.

My exercise lies took even longer. The first month I said "I love to exercise," and I physically grimaced when I said it. I thought of going outside and then I shuddered. Yuck. Who wants to do that? I did not even have excuses. I didn't need them. The answer was not even "No." It was a loud, "HELL NO!"

Kerry George
Walking at Nose Hill Park

I made my first commitment to exercise in January and by mid February I realized I was not going to do it. I was not ready. I decided instead to just keep lying to myself until the lie seemed closer to truth. It took a few months. In March I tried to go for a walk. I took 5 steps and went back in the house. Yuck. Then it snowed. That was a great excuse to put it off for a while longer. It was in April that I realized that I felt ready. May 1 was going to be the big day. Francois was going to help me. He was going to go with me. We were planning to do it 5 days a week. Now we do it 6 days a week. Last night we went bowling as well. It is awesome when you have a partner or even a friend who will support you. Now I had 1 less excuse.

Affirmations work. If you work the affirmations, they will work for you.

Write out your affirmations. Not just one line. Write out how you want it to be as though you already have it. Write about wealth, and health, and things you want to accomplish as though you already did it. Write out things you want to have, as though you already have them. It should be several sentences long. If you don't like to write, start with, "I love to write." Tell yourself some worthy lies that you want to become reality.

Now I love to lie to myself and the lies are good ones. I tell myself I am what I want to be so often, and so hard, and with so much emotion that I am becoming the lie. It is my new truth.

What kind of affirmations are you writing for yourself?

Tell us all about it below in the comments. In writing out your commitment and sharing it with the world you are one step closer to doing it always. Also please subscribe to these blogs on the top right hand of the page.

Whispering Walkway
Through the woods in Nose Hill Park