Some people appear to be born achievers whereas many of us feel that greatness in whatever form is the destiny of some other lucky person.

Feelings of not having the skills to start something knew; not having the knowledge to progress our career; not being confident enough to meet new people and make things happen are all too common.

There is always some reason or excuse why we just can’t do that thing.

As a health and fitness professional, the most common excuses I hear on a regular basis are to do with why the latest attempt to get a body that actually resembles a healthy and fit human being, has been derailed!

Most of the time, it is not because of a lack of knowledge on exercise and nutrition or a lack of time, but the lack of the unbreakable mindset.

Here’s how you can build it!

Peeling the onion is your first step.

This technique has many different names but I picked up ‘peeling the onion’ off a good friend and mentor of mine, Dax Moy.

Peeling the onion essentially involves taking time out to uncover why you are really choosing to go for your fitness goals at this moment in time.

Do not think for one minute you know the answer to this!

“I need to lose this bit off here because it’s embarrassing” is NOT the answer.

You may have a fair idea why you have chosen to get a personal trainer or join a new gym class right now, but the truth is, recent events are likely to have just been the finger that finally pulled the trigger on a loaded gun.

On numerous occasions I have had people get very upset during consultations when I began to dig deeper into their emotions for finally deciding they had to get their life in order by first getting healthy.

This is not intentional but an often unavoidable, and strangely productive side-effect of delving into the past and present to discover what effect being fat and unhealthy is having.

Sometimes it might be that a friend, relative or colleague used to make hurtful jokes about your size that you thought you had brushed off but that had in fact remained at the back of your brain, niggling for X amount of months or even years.

When you struggled to get into that dress, it may have been distressing but was in fact only the cherry on top of the cake of emotional pain.

Once you can get the emotions out and begin to understand yourself better, setting goals and sticking to them becomes so much easier as you have a much stronger source of inspiration on a daily basis. 

This stops you scrabbling around in the dark trying to make sense of why you’re never quite motivated to say no to bad food and go exercise when you’re not really in the mood!

Once you’re clearer on exactly why you have found yourself hunting for diets and a personal trainer, and you are willing to pay the prices required to achieve your goals (financial, sacrifice of social time, hard work in the gym etc), it’s time to start programming yourself for the future!

Unfortunately most people live their lives reliving failure.

If you’re one of these people you will find that unintentionally, you are constantly reminding yourself about how this went wrong and how that was a mistake and how you shouldn’t have done that because it resulted in negative consequences.

All this serves to do is to program your mind to believe that, yes, you are in fact a failure.

So why does this stop us progressing with new goals or projects?

In built in every human is what has been referred to as the ‘Creative Mechansim’ which is the part of our brain which causes us to act in certain ways according to what we believe we are supposed to do.

Don’t believe me?

Think about something that worries you.

Every time we have something coming up that we believe has a good chance of going wrong like a presentation, a date with a new guy or girl, a big tennis match etc, it is common to experience feelings of nervousness and anxiety.

But what are we basing these feelings and expectations on?

Imagery!

The future doesn’t exist yet, so these powerful emotions which can cause the sweats, shaking and heart palpitations emerge from little other than images we conjure up of stuttering on stage, saying something embarrassing to our date or serving up loads of double faults.

There is no rational thought behind it because there isn’t really anything to suggest this will happen.

The problem is that your subconscious brain doesn’t know the difference between ‘real’ images that are actually happening, and images you have conjured up simply through irrational, negative thought!

As we all know, this repetition and replaying of images of messing up often lead to the very actions we were scared of in the first place! 

We get nervous, lose concentration and begin to stutter, babble about boring stuff or fail to focus on the placement of the tennis ball that we can do with our eyes shut during practice.

The point is that many people perform ‘successful’ mental programming through imagery with negative thoughts every single day!

The key to achieving your fitness goals is to start using the creative mechanism with positive thoughts which program our brains to believe we are ALREADY a size 8, a champion tennis player, a strapping muscley bloke or whatever else gets you to work hard for your goals!

This requires using imagery on a daily basis until the brain accepts that it is already happening. You will start to see almost immediate changes in how you act.

You will find yourself doing what is required automatically – essentially like any elite athlete who doesn’t have to consciously think about every little action they take but instead make it look effortless!

You won’t be tempted by crap food because your brain will be making you act like a Size 8, sexy woman (obviously not if you’re a guy…)

You won’t have to force yourself to hit the roads because you’ll be acting like a 10km runner automatically.

You’ll do that extra painful repetition without thinking because your brain is convinced you are a ripped bloke with abs you could grate your organic carrots on.

The list goes on!

The point is that you have turned your negative creative mechanism into a powerful goal getting tool by setting aside time each day to intensely visualize what you are going to look like, how it will feel and how life will change as a result!

This MUST be done daily through use of videos of people doing what you want to do, photos of people who have already achieved the fat loss results you have even though they too were very overweight before and through written contracts with yourself.

For example, write down each day what a Size 8 would do such as drinking lots of bottled water, only eating carbohydrates after exercise, saying no to the 8th office bun run that week etc.

This is a written contract with yourself that you are not allowed to break! 

There are three key factors that are essential to make this work.

You’re brain will only accept the messages you want it to absorb about who and what you are (what you want to become) when…

1) The messages come from an authorative source
2) The messages are intense
3) The messages are repeated daily

Part 1 can only be achieved if you either have complete faith in your abilities to achieve your goals and so trust what you are telling yourself, or you hire the services of a top quality health and fitness professional.

If this person has the experience and results with others to give you 100% confidence that you too can do the same, then they become that authorative source who will dish out the messages which your brain will come to accept as the truth.

Random attempts at positive thought are fruitless when they don’t match up with your self-image as there’s too much conflicting information so you need someone who can engender complete belief that you ARE the goal you want.

Part 2 is achieved through taking time out to forget the daily hustle and bustle and stresses and build pictures in your brain which are so detailed you can almost touch them.

See every last detail of being a Size 8 – the dress you’ll wear, when you’ll wear it, the comments people will make about how great you look, the venue, how you’ll feel pulling on the dress and looking in the mirror, the confidence it will give you to talk to that guy you’ve fancied for 2 years etc.

Leave no stone unturned or your brain might slip back into believing you are meant to be a Size 16 like you are now!

Finally Part 3 can be achieved by doing this on a daily basis from every angle possible.

Talk to yourself on the way to work (out loud if no one is around!)

Read books about people who have already achieved your goal.

Eat properly EVERY DAY not just every other day as a token gesture.

Don’t watch TV programs which make it seem okay to be a ‘larger woman’.

Everything in your environment has the potential to program your brain and the more you are exposed to the stimulus the more powerful it becomes.

This is why companies like McDonald’s have adverts in every form of media – wherever you turn, the message they want you to see is there!

Unless you have programmed yourself otherwise, you’ll eventually crack and act in whatever way their marketing has instructed you to!

Constant effort and application are required to make things happen.

Believe me when I say that if you have the above processes in place, they WILL happen.

The human being is a goal getting machine.

It’s just not yet evolved enough to know the difference between what’s good and bad for us when it comes to mental programming! Put negativity in your head and that’s exactly what you’ll get!

You are intelligent enough to make choices, no matter who you are.

You are not the mistakes you have made in the past but capable of whatever you want by thinking rationally about the future.

However, you must take time to develop an unbreakable mindset first or face spinning your wheels and being drawn to the next quick fix answer to your problem even though you know it won’t work long-term.

I wish you well!