What if Changing One Word Could Help You Get Fit?

Benefit #14: Positivity Helps Us Embrace Exercise

Benefit #14: Positivity Helps Us Embrace Exercise

The first personal trainer I ever worked with was brilliant at getting results – for a certain type of client. Having been fat as a kid, he learned to exercise, shed the weight, and got his degree in kinesiology (the scientific study of human body movement). He became focused on health and started a personal training business where he worked primarily with elite athletes: Olympians and professionals in a variety of sports. I couldn’t have been further from any of them. But I was fairly young at the time (mid-30s) and willing to do the work. So I got results, too. But not without crying a few times because he pushed me so hard. Life changed, and I stopped working with him. I got married and regained all the weight I’d lost with him, and then some.

My husband and I are good together, but we were not a good influence on each other when it came to our eating and lack of exercise. What’s more, we suffered two huge back-to-back losses when his father passed away in December 2014, and a little more than a year-and-a-half later, my sister died, too. Between our bad eating and grief, we were on a dangerous path to heart disease and worse, and we knew it. Fortunately, I met another personal trainer, Miles Beccia of Mind Muscle Memory, and we began working with him. I was in my late 40s by then, and found out that with age comes a change in metabolism. I worked as hard as I had with my first trainer, but it was much more difficult to get back in shape the second time around.

One thing Miles did was adapt his training regimen to our needs. Thank goodness! I wondered at first why he started us on such light weights and simple routines – and kept us there for longer than I thought was necessary. But he knew what he was doing: helping us train our muscle memory to retain the routines. Hence the name of his company, Mind Muscle Memory. The idea was to train us not just to work with him, but to train us for life. So if we ever had a setback – can anyone say covid? – we could get back to our exercise routines without too much of a derailment. It’s been a little more than two months since I got sick, and I am almost back to full health. More than anything, I am ready to get back to exercising again. It’s not like I jumped out of bed eager to sweat and have my muscles burn, but I always felt better afterward – and I like the results.

There’s a really simple trick when it comes to mindset for the things we really aren’t all that excited to do. It has to do with changing ONE word. How different would it be, if instead of saying, “I have to work out in the morning” you were to say, “I get to work out in the morning”? Have to means viewing it as a chore; get to means viewing it as a privilege.

And it is a privilege to exercise because it means you’re healthy enough to move your body. It means you have prioritized your time to allow for exercise. It means you have the right clothes for working out. It may mean you have the money to join a gym or hire a trainer.

Get to is a positive perspective. Have to is less so. Positivity works in so many areas of our lives, including the will to exercise, nourish our bodies properly, drink enough water, and get enough sleep every day. A positive self-perspective enables us to view ourselves (including our physical bodies) as worth the effort.

Exercise has too many benefits to list here – but it does work reciprocally with positivity. The more positive you are, the more easily you will embrace exercise. And the more you exercise, the more positive you will feel.

If you really want to make positivity a priority, sign up today for the 30-Day Positivity Challenge. This complimentary 30-day series of tasks and exercises gives participants a variety of assignments conducive to feeling better, overall. According to inspirational speaker Abraham Hicks, “Few realize that they can control the way they feel and positively affect the things that come into their life experience by deliberately directing their thoughts.” Abraham Hicks says we accomplish this by simply “reach[ing] for a better feeling thought.”

The decision is yours: Use positivity to start moving your body today … or settle for whatever may come, healthwise.

JOIN THE 30-DAY POSITIVITY CHALLENGE TODAY!

#fairypositive #blogboost

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Laura Orsini is an author, speaker, consultant, publisher, and creator of Fairy Positive, an antidote to the worries of the world. Find her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.