Instant Emotional Control
This chapter is about making choices about your state of mind that will help you to achieve your ideal weight, have the healthy body you so deserve, and live a long, fulfilling life. Understanding states is critical to achieving everything you desire. The key to success is to consistently take on an attitude that inspires you to just go out and do it. You don’t think about it, you don’t talk about it, you just do it.
To be able to achieve anything in life, you have to be able get yourself to just go out and do it on a daily basis.
In the Western world, we are taught that mind and body are two separate things. In reality, that’s far from the truth. Mind and body inevitably affect each other. So if they affect each other, they must function as a whole. For example, numerous studies have shown that lower back pain can be attributed to emotions around money and the fear of becoming broke. Without a doubt, when it comes to eating, our mind and emotional states are in control of what we do to our bodies.
Think back to a time when you were totally succeeding. I guarantee you were in the most positive states, and those states were pushing you to follow through, to just do it. Can you remember a time when you were sticking to your exercise routine, and every time you weighed yourself you lost a little bit of weight? You achieved one of the most important states; you created a massive amount of momentum. You were on a roll. You would look at the scale and get so excited, and that gave you the momentum to keep going, to keep taking action.
You have also likely had the opposite experience, times when you say to yourself, “I have to go exercise today,” but you just can’t get yourself motivated. What’s the difference? You’re the exact same person. You have the exact same skills and talents at your disposal. So why are you
“on fire” one day, and the next day you’re struggling just to get through the day? One day you stay on your weight loss 69
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program, and the next day you’re eating everything in sight.
The difference is the neurophysiological state you’re in.
Let me explain. There are empowering states and disempowering states. Examples of empowering states are confidence, happiness, love, joy, ecstasy, belief, and inner strength, just to name a few. Then there are states that are disempowering, such as frustration, anger, guilt, depression, fear, anxiety, and confusion. These latter types of emotional states leave us feeling helpless. Very often these states lead us into emotional eating, giving up on exercise, mentally beating ourselves up, and so on.
To have success, to achieve your ideal healthy weight and keep it forever, you have to learn how to take action on a consistent basis. And the way you do that is to learn how to put yourself in the most resourceful of states all the time. Yes, there are going to be times when you go into a bad state; that’s life. But the real key is to become consciously aware of when you go into negative states, and be able to pull yourself out of that state in a matter of seconds. Most of the time, we put on weight because we get into negative states and we stay in those states for long periods of time, day in and day out, month after month, or for some of us, year after year.
If you can get control of your emotional states throughout the day, very soon, not only will you win the war on weight loss, but you will also prevent stress and disease from entering your body. It’s very hard to allow stress and disease to impact the body when you’re brimming with happiness and vitality, full of energy, and striving to have the
body you so deserve. Once you get control of your emotional
states on a daily basis, your life will completely change.
Think about why people overeat. It’s often to soothe uncomfortable emotions. Food can take the focus off of anger, resentment, fear, anxiety, and a host of other emotions we’d sometimes rather not feel.
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When he feels bad, my friend, Jim, loves to binge on junk food. At first, he gets good feelings from the food.
For a short period of time serotonin is produced, and it begins to turn off his appetite and turn on his good mood, giving him instant gratification. Soon, however, the emotion of guilt creeps up on him and he enters into a state that disempowers him. And the cycle continues. If Jim changed his state, he could change his behavior.
How you respond to other people’s states is just as important as managing your own. For example, if your friend eats a bunch of junk food, ends up in a state of guilt, and lashes out at you, instead of getting angry at that person, you could choose to come from a place of compassion.
You know that’s not who they really are; it’s just the state they’re in at that time.
Why choose to put yourself into a disempowering state to play their game? Once you enter that state, you too are at risk of choosing to emotionally eat, losing your motivation to exercise, and giving up on your goals. If you choose to consistently put yourself into negative states, you have a good chance of introducing disease into your body. Do not get caught up in this trap! Watch how other people’s states are affecting your own.
What exactly is a “state”, and why does it matter?
State control is one of the most important things you will ever learn. It will help you achieve your ideal healthy
weight and maintain it for good. State control equals weight
control. Just think how exciting it’s going to be when you’re
able to snap your fingers and put yourself into a state of high energy: you’re excited for life, you’re sure of success, your mind is alive. My goal is to teach you how to literally snap your fingers and instantly go into these great frames of mind that will consistently give you fantastic feelings and Chapter 4: Instant Emotional Control
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motivate you to take action. You are going to learn how to control your states to make them work for you.
So what is a “state”? It’s the sum of the millions of neurological processes happening within you which defines what you’re experiencing at any given moment. There are two main considerations to understanding what puts you into empowering or disempowering states. First we’ll dis-cuss internal representations; then we’ll explore physiology.
When you link these two together – internal representations + physiology — they produce a state, and that state drives behavior.
Internal representations include the pictures and thoughts you create in your mind (content) and how you create them (process). Most of our internal representations have become habitual patterns that we learned in our earliest years from other people. They make up our beliefs, attitudes, values, and interpretations. Now don’t get scared and think you’re stuck in the model your parents have provided for you. You can change it. What really matters now is how you represent things to yourself. Throughout this chapter, I am going to teach you to represent things to yourself in a way that will empower you instead of placing limitations on you. It’s your choice how you want to represent things. How you think is connected to your nervous system, so what I am going to do is give you a brand new way to run your nervous system so you can produce positive results.
If you spend the majority of your days in an uplifted, positive emotional state, you’re not going to turn to food to get a quick hit of good feelings. Moreover, when you spend most of your days in uplifted emotional states, it’s a lot easier to get yourself to exercise day in and day out.
As a result, you’ll live a longer, healthier life.
What does physiology mean? Your physiology includes numerous elements: muscle tension, food intake, breathing rate, posture, and overall level of biochemical functions.
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These bodily functions greatly affect your state. In a state of happiness, you will be walking around, smiling and glow-ing, your body will be upright, and you will be full of life. So your internal representations (what and how you picture things and talk to yourself), combined with your physiology (how you hold your body, how you breathe, your facial expressions), create your state. This state then governs your behavior.
I hope you understand why this is one of the most important things you will ever learn. Think about when you feel physically vibrant and alive. Don’t you perceive the world differently from when you’re overweight and out of shape? People who achieve their goals in life are people who have learned to tap into their most resourceful states.
The amount of time you spend in positive, uplifted states each day is going to determine your overall success.
Everything we want in life is simply the desire for a state. Actually, there is only one thing in the whole world that each one of us wants, and that is some kind of positive state. We only differ in the methods we use to achieve it.
Do you want to eat that chocolate cake? That cake will put you in a state by evoking a feeling or emotion. But it’s not the junk food you really want, it’s the state the junk food will provide for you.
Is it really a relationship you want? No, you want the state that relationship wil put you in. Relationships are supposed to give us good feelings, like love, happiness, excitement, and so on. But just think if you could consistently give yourself those good feelings and not have to turn to food or to somebody else to achieve this. Now I am not saying you must live a solitary existence. What I am saying is that when you know how to control your own state, you don’t need to turn to food, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, or other people for those good feelings. You can rely on your own personal power.