Jealousy is a powerful tool

July 19, 2017January 30, 2018Leave a comment

“The only person you should try and be better than is the person you were yesterday” – Matty Mullins

We have all felt jealousy at some point in our lives!

When you look at another person and experience an inferiority complex, it’s generally an indication that they have something you want – this is a good thing! You can choose to use this as motivation instead of letting it provoke thoughts of assassination. If it’s something you want so much that you’re actually super annoyed when you see someone else with it, it’s time to take the steps necessary to get there rather than accepting your present reality as being good enough.

Paying attention to what is making you feel jealous is the key to alerting yourself to your very next step. This genuine awareness will help to shape your goals around something you intrinsically want. This kind of information is invaluable. It may also inspire you to make moves in your personal or professional world that are based around what inspires you.

In a moment of jealously, don’t forget to also take a moment to reflect on what you have achieved and what you love about your life. Allow yourself permission to shift your attention towards your own accomplishments and all the good things happening in your world.

Facing hard truths

June 19, 2017January 30, 2018Leave a comment

“Meaning is discovered in experience” – unknown

Being confronted with a hard truth is one of the most challenging, exciting, thought-provoking, derailing and life-changing things that can happen!

See here’s the thing, at the end of the day there is something we all must admit: Throughout our lives, we are going to get knocked down……… a lot.

BUT!

It’s in these moments where opportunity presents itself and you have the potential to create a story that can change you forever. This is a very very good thing. I can’t emphasise enough how important and necessary these moments are. No-one wants to hear the story of someone that was given everything their whole life, worked for nothing and became hugely successful.

At the end of the day, we are all defined by our attitudes towards our circumstance rather than the circumstance itself. It’s all of the learnings attained through self-awareness that will shape your next step and direct you towards to the person you will evidently be. And if you fuck up, guess what? You can’t have strength without falling first and the character-building circumstances you face will prepare you for a future that will be truly embraced with open arms.

Doubt kills more dreams that failure ever will. Personally I’d rather fail at something I want than settle for something I don’t, there will always be other opportunities!!

Take the risk in being seen by others and putting yourself out there. The benefits of doing this are so incredibly positive and will present an opportune moment to seize your full potential.

Humility keeps us honest

May 19, 2017January 30, 2018Leave a comment

“A great man is willing to be little” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Humble yourself or life will do it for you.

Staying humble can be one of those things that takes a little extra conscious awareness at times.

I realised that in order to make any kind of achievement in my life that I was going to be satisfied with, I needed it to feel earned. Properly, earned. If you go about that the right way, you can’t really have an ego. They are almost mutually exclusive. If you don’t open yourself up to the world around you and allow it to offer you what can potentially be incredible insight and a new perspective, you are limiting your growth significantly. Ego also gets in the way of you seeing the small things. If this happens to you, you won’t be grateful for all the things you do have because you will believe you deserve so much more.

As hard as this is to hear, but you probably have exactly what you deserve in a way, for the good and the bad. Perhaps there is something you need to be doing differently to get to where you need to be if your current circumstance is not working for you. Unfortunately, not everything in life is going to be on your terms. That doesn’t mean your not a good person who isn’t trying so so so hard to get to where you need to be, it just means you might need to try a different strategy. In moments like this it’s easy to give up and look for an excuse as to why it didn’t work out. If you do choose to take the easy route and give up, you will fail and not achieve your goal 100% of the time. But if you do honestly want it, admit to yourself that you may need to try harder and fight for it with everything you have, and even when that’s exhausted, keep fighting, you might be totally surprised about what you can handle and what your threshold really is. It’s likely MUCH greater than you could have ever imagined. The sky really is the limit and as long as you truly believe that you’re giving yourself the best possible chance of reaching it!

Be aware of your filter

April 19, 2017January 30, 2018Leave a comment

“Your fear shouldn’t be doing “it”, it should be not doing it.” – unknown

We all have a filter; our lens, that guides how we see, feel and act.

Why does the scraping sound of a fork across a metal plate make you cringe yet the person next to you barely noticed?

Why do you find Chris Hemsworth attractive but your best friend doesn’t?

Why is eating nut butter out of a jar in your underwear a secret single behaviour for some while others couldn’t care less about it being a public display?

Each and every person sees the world differently because of we all put our own lens across reality. It’s a projector screen that is showing us a second story running side-by-side with the one we are watching – I want to thank Jim Carrey for that last line, he says some good shit sometimes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80yu3M1b7NU .

Being aware of our filter and judging whether it is working in our favour or not can provide us all with the kind of insight that will provoke a series of actions that help to shape our life in a snowball effect.

Rather than only listening to what you want to hear, you may need to begin listening to what you don’t want to hear to get to where you need to be. Be prepared to be called-out on your bullshit, hold your head high. Accepting your faults is accepting who you are in that moment and acknowledging areas for improvement – this takes courage to do this rather than showing weakness. Constantly adapt and change, it’s okay to let others know they had an effect on you and their opinion may have influenced yours.

A self-destructive behaviour I used to have was I used selective attention when it came to any form of added weight training. I didn’t want to hear about the benefits of heavy lifting (I know!) because that would be admitting that it’s something new I could try and that my current method wasn’t perfect. My ego was getting in the way of my growth. Once I opened myself up to the possibility of being wrong, about anything really, is honestly the only point in my life when any real change started to take place.

Is obsession constructive?

March 19, 2017January 30, 2018Leave a comment

“Kindness is a language the deaf can hear and the blind can see” – Mark Twain

Notice the types of thoughts you are having, are they negative? Are they obsessive? Are they focused primarily on the end game? Isn’t it funny how we kind of thrive off the obsession but then when we seem to be making noticeable progress a part of us withdrawals and suddenly we have an urge to eat a bag of maltesers?

It’s very common for people to have a threshold for “feeling good”. Most of us have spent the majority of our lives working towards a goal and not sitting in the space of having achieved what we set out to achieve. Occasionally we might be feeling so good it’s almost like we can’t take it for long periods of time because it’s so uncomfortable and unfamiliar and this is generally when self-sabotage begins i.e binge eating, excessive drinking, eating food you know you’re intolerant to. Generally these feelings have very complex reasons attached to them and I won’t go into them here. But as a result, we can’t handle our “feel good threshold” because we feel like it’s going to crash down around us at some point so we self-sabotage to get in there before it does to feel in control / safe again. It is here that you need to remind yourself that you now have years of experience and a whole lot of new things in your life that will protect you that you didn’t have before. Try and hang in the space of feeling uncomfortable and learn to breathe into your new life and focus on the experience rather than being in your head and getting controlled by your triggers. Increase your “I can have this” level and allow yourself to feel like you deserve it.

Take the reins and saw as high as you can and stop war-ing on your body.

Goal weight: Sexy AF

How to avoid a mid-life crisis

February 19, 2017January 30, 2018Leave a comment

“In order to have, you have to do. In order to do, you have to be.” – Charles F. Haanel

Below I’ve listed how I think buying an unnecessarily expensive car when you can’t afford it, getting a bad haircut or a life changing tattoo post 45 can be avoided.

A little story for you …

The thing about going on a truth seeking adventure, is it can be pretty exciting when you start to figure some stuff out. You feel the need to talk about it with a lot of people because it’s on your mind a lot. It’s also kind of a big deal to you because you’ve spent a large chunk of your adult life pondering thoughts of action, then you actioned it, then you had multiple ups and downs and now you’re kind of in a happy place that you feel you’ve been working towards basically since you were little. Then you might call your Mum to tell her about it and you get a response that sounds something like “That’s great honey, I’m so proud of you” and then go back to talking about how they’ve started doing yoga classes with a friend of a friend’s neighbour. It can make it all feel a little inconsequential. But that’s the thing, perhaps it needs to be. Let me explain.

It’s all so bloody hard at the beginning. Everyone is scared of change, so other people in your life (your “support network”) may not immediately jump to supporting huge life changing decisions for you straight away. They want to protect you and anything relatively unsafe or off-track has the ability to make your life worse. They are hesitant to support you because then you will be taken out of the “I don’t have to worry about you” box and put into the “Worrying about you will occupy every second or third thought of mine for an indefinite period of time now” box. But ultimately your decisions don’t really affect anyone else, you both think it will at the beginning but it doesn’t. Life will go on for everyone, so it has to come down to what you want because you’re the one left with it. Everyone has all their own stuff going on and at the end of it all they’re not thinking about you 24/7. It’s important to remain accountable and make a decision based on what you want in your life and what you need to do to get there, anyone who doesn’t understand this path should not be walking it with you.

Really, it shouldn’t come down to needing an Eat Pray Love moment in order to find happiness. You’re whole life can be an Eat Pray Love moment if you allow yourself to wake up and see what is really staring back at you in the mirror. Learn to listen to what is in your heart and action only what feels right and what your gut is telling you. Then maybe you won’t have to walk away from it all and hurt a bunch of people in the process in order to find clarity.

I never do anything my heart isn’t in anymore and I make an effort to do small things on a daily basis that make me feel fulfilled in as many ways as possible. It started with learning to be more mindful and honest about what I really needed. None of this stuff is something you learn and automatically apply for the rest of your life – it takes a deliberate, conscious, frequent effort. It may start with you writing down a couple of things you can easily accomplish that day, opening the door for someone you pass down the street, telling a colleague they did a good job or offering to cook dinner for your partner. Lastly, you could end the day with being grateful for what you have, being proud of what you’ve accomplished and setting new goals for the following day. If you do this, it almost feels like the rest of your life is a bonus. Don’t get me wrong, we spend a great deal of work shaping our career, giving time to family and friends, working on our health and fitness etc, but all of those things will be a lot more enjoyable with a strong, positive, healthy mentality, and it all takes around 5 minutes a day. If you can’t give yourself 5 minutes a day to be mindful and work on yourself, then you never really wanted the rewards in the first place.

One thing I’ve realised is many books/blogs/articles/TV shows etc all support the notion of finding your purpose; without direction you don’t have a path to walk on. I’ve read so many things about our life being a GPS and without plugging into the destination you’re just left staring at a map with a bunch of stuff on it wondering where to go next. I feel like the point of taking that perspective is to encourage movement rather than just standing still and expecting answers to come to you – this part I agree with. However, it can be disabling to think that we all have a life mission we need to fulfil, that we all have a “purpose” or “destiny’. This is a massive, highly pressurising situation and can at times feel quite intimidating. It puts more people into shock than it encourages positive, constructive, forward-thinking change.

Perhaps it’s better to recognise that you’re biggest impact on the world is giving 100% into everything you do even if it’s not the “ultimate” thing you thought you’d be doing. Choose to go out and do the things you know you’re good at, and if you’re not quite there yet then practice so you are if it means something to you. There are dreams, and there are goals. Dreams are fantasies that are fun to think of doing, generally as the ultimate “plan b”. You might think to yourself, “I don’t hate the idea of my current position falling on it’s ass because I’ll just get a bunch of new qualifications and open my own salon because that’s my real calling in life, I’m just choosing not to that now because the time isn’t right”. This is a fantasy most of the time that we don’t tend to pursue because it’s our safety net, a happy day-dream. GOALS however, are deliberate well-thought out plans that we work towards, personally and professionally. The fundamental difference is one implies an action. Everyone’s goal really, should be to find that thing they can’t imagine NOT doing. Remove the word “should” from your vocabulary and fill your life with a bunch of things you can’t imagine your life without. Things that you’ll look back on later in life and feel so proud of and willing to talk about. To me, there would be no greater fulfilment. Great fulfillment = no mid-life crisis!!

Body and Mind by Design

Thinking by choice and not by influence

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