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Take exercise, for example. The fact is, one of the major reasons people are overweight and out of shape is that they have trouble getting themselves to exercise on a consistent basis. Let’s say you’re on the treadmill, and you keep saying to yourself that you’re so tired you just can’t go on. This language will put your physiology into a state that will reflect those thoughts. Before long, you’re tired, your posture is slumped, and you’re breathing heavily. Soon, you’re sitting on the floor and can’t go on.
If instead you were to say things to yourself like, “I love exercising. I am healthy and fit. I can do this,” you would actually start to put yourself into a state of enjoying exercise. Even if you detest exercise, if you condition your nervous system by changing your physiology, eventual y you will start to love it.
Here’s another example of mind and body working together. Have you heard of laughing yoga? I was teaching a seminar once, and one of the other presenters was a laughing yoga instructor, so he had everyone following these laughing yoga exercises. I have to admit, at first I thought this was the most ridiculous thing I had ever seen, but I decided to go along with it. It was a new experience, and the more I did this laughing yoga, the better the state I found myself in. When we smile and laugh, we set off a biochemical reaction that makes us feel good. The problem is that, as adults, we laugh an average of only seven times per day. Kids laugh about seventy-seven times per day!
Model congruency
Congruency is critical to succeeding with your weight,
health, and life goals. What I mean by congruency is creating a sense of internal and external harmony; you have to walk your talk. Think about this. If you’re thinking about how you’re going to achieve your ideal healthy weight, and you’re repeating positive messages, but your tone and your body Think, Act, Love, Lose Weight
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language are weak, you are in a state of incongruence.
And incongruence can literally sabotage all the success you want in your life.
If you want to be the best you can possibly be in everything you do, if you want to be able to stick with your weight loss goals, your health goals, and stay motivated, it is crucial that you become congruent. Once you master congruency, you will produce outstanding results in every area of your life. You really only have to accomplish the skill of congruence in one area of your life and it will affect all other areas of your life.
Successful people have mastered congruency, so model them. Pick three people you know who are extremely congruent, and mirror exactly what they do. How do they hold their bodies? How do they sit? How do they stand? How do they move? What are their facial expressions like? What type of gestures do they make? How is their physiology different from yours?
Take a moment and stand exactly the way one of these people would stand. Mimic one of their facial expressions and gestures. Now notice how different you feel. By mirroring their physiology, you will start to send signals to your brain to produce the results you’re after.
You’ve probably heard the saying, “You become like the people you surround yourself with.” If you hang around with people who are depressed, it’s easy to start to mirror their physiology. In fact, you start doing this unconsciously, and soon you’re wondering why you’re in a state of depression.
If you don’t have a lot of people around you to model, find a DVD of anybody you would like to mirror – Martin Luther King Jr., a dynamic motivational speaker – and do exactly what you see on the DVD. Breathe like they breathe. Use the same tonality. Move the way they move. You will start to activate the same parts of the brain they do. Once you understand how to do this, and after you have done it a Chapter 4: Instant Emotional Control
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few times, you can start to tap into parts of your brain that will free you from the struggle you have had with weight for so many years.
You now have ways to change your state without having to turn to destructive things like food, alcohol, drugs, and the many things we turn to that harm our bodies and our health. By breathing differently, moving your body differently, having different facial expressions, you create new patterns that will give you the same result as food, drugs, alcohol, smoking, and other destructive habits. You will change your state by changing your physiology in healthy ways.
State change exercise
Let’s do an exercise that will teach you how to get into an uplifting emotional state at any time. Most of us are a lot better at putting ourselves into states like frustration, stress, depression, anger, guilt, or feeling overwhelmed, just to name a few. Once you learn how to put yourself into empowering states on a consistent basis, your life will completely change. Being in a positive emotional state will help you take action, follow through, and give you the extra drive you need to succeed.
Here is what I want you to do. Think of a dream that you would just love to achieve, something that gets you really excited. I want you to think of this dream as achievable; no matter what, you can make this thing happen. Stay focused on this dream that gets you emotionally charged up, as if you could not live without it.
Now I want you to sit the way you would be sitting if you were just wishing this dream would happen, as opposed to feeling absolutely certain you will achieve it. How would you hold your body? Say to yourself, “I wish this would happen.” Put the expression on your face that matches your state of just wishing. Experience that state you’re putting yourself Think, Act, Love, Lose Weight
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in right now. Really feel those feelings. Now stand up, and stand like you’re just wishing that this dream would happen.
Make a gesture as you repeat your dream again. “I wish I could achieve my health goals.” “I wish I could live a long, healthy life.” “I wish I could make it to the gym five days per week.” I wish I were happier.” “I wish I had a good spouse.”
“I wish I had a new spouse.”
Say the words to yourself once more, as if you were just wishing your dream would happen, and take a close look at your physiology. Notice how you were breathing. Was it short and fast, or long and slow? Notice your tone. Was it quiet or loud, varied or monotone? Did you talk fast or slow? What happened with your body? Did you rock back and forth? Did you stand to one side? Were your shoulders slumped or pulled back? Was your head up, looking down, or turned to the side? Was there tension in your body?
Notice how you made your gesture. Was it slow and care-less, or fast and precise?
Now repeat your dream again in this state of just wishing, and pay close attention to your internal representations.
It’s important to understand how you create these states that hold you back. What did you picture in your head as you were in this state of wishing? Did you picture exercise being hard, or you fighting with someone? Become consciously aware of the kind of pictures you create in your head to get yourself into this state. Did you see yourself succeeding, or did you see yourself failing? Was the picture in your head near or far, bright or dim, big or small? Were you associated or dissociated? Associated means you are seeing the event through your own eyes. Dissociated means you are floating above yourself, and seeing the event from above.
Did you feel “blah”? Or did you feel nothing at all?
I’ll bet your speech slowed down, your movements slowed, and you may have rocked back and forth. Your breathing probably became shallow; the pictures in your head became dark, distorted and dim; and you saw things not working out. You may have stood to one side. This Chapter 4: Instant Emotional Control
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is what most of us do when we get ourselves into these disempowering states.
State of total confidence
Now put yourself into a state of total confidence. Create a picture in your head of total confidence. Stand the way you would stand if you were totally confident. Breathe the way you would breathe. Create the expression on your face and make a gesture as if you were totally confident. What would you be saying to yourself? What is your tonality like?
How would you hold your head? Where is the energy in your body? Go right into that state. Experience it right now.
This is the state you want to be able to access at any time to have great success. Feel that state; be in that state; enjoy that state. Say these words to yourself with conviction: “I’m going to find or make a way because I just know I can. I’m going to get the weight off and keep it off forever this time.” Put that determined look on your face as if yoùre going to find a way no matter what obstacles confront you. No matter what it takes, yoùre just going to make it happen. Nothing is going to stop you. Then add to that a feeling of excitement. You feel confident, and it excites you to know that you’re going to make it happen.
Yoùre excited for the new body you’re going to create.
Even if it seems impossible, you will find a way and you will get there.
I want you to do whatever it takes right now, even if you think it is impossible, to double your confidence in your ability to create a new body. Now doesn’t this state feel a lot different than when you were just wishing for something to happen? What would your life be like if you could access this state at any time? Do you think that you may be more motivated to achieve your goals? Of course!
Now let’s go back and look at what you did to get yourself totally confident.
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Notice your posture. Were your shoulders pulled back?
How were your feet placed? Were they firmly on the ground?
Did you lean forward? What did you picture in your mind?
Notice if the pictures were near, big, and bright. Could you see things working out for you? What did you say to yourself? What tone did you use? Was your speech fast or slow? Was it loud or soft? What were your facial expressions like? How about your gestures? Were they different from when you were just wishing? Were they strong with the conviction that you were going to succeed?
Now when you’re in this strong state of confidence, do you think you can lose all the weight? Yes! When you’re in this state, if your boss walks up to you and says, “You’re fired!” what would you say? “Fantastic! I was ready for bigger things anyway.” If someone were mean to you when you’re in this state, what would you say next? What could you do in this state? Anything! You can achieve anything because you just find or make a way. You don’t even know what the word failure means. You just keeping going and going and going until you achieve the thing you want. If someone says to you “You’re overweight!” when you are in this state, you will say, “Yes, thanks. Watch me get in great shape. Now get out of my way!” This is all it takes for you to become extremely successful in anything that you do, and that is to understand how to put yourself into a powerful state. This is what is really going to get you to keep exercising day in and day out. This sense of power is what gives you the motivation. It goes a lot deeper than just saying that you are motivated. By finding the power to be motivated, you can produce lasting change in your weight and your life.
Once you discover the strategies that will change your thought processes, you no longer have outside forces controlling you. You will no longer give the key to your brain away, as you do the key to your house. And that’s exactly what you’re doing here, finding out how to operate your brain. Now you should be convinced that all you have to do is make some small changes in your state, and you can Chapter 4: Instant Emotional Control
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completely change how you see things. The behavior you are engaging in has a powerful ability to take you out of any kind of negative emotion you’re in at the time. When you’re in a good emotional state, you can produce outstanding
results in anything. State control really does equal weight
control. In fact, state control equals life control. Remember
how easy the process is. Control the internal representations running in your head and change your physiology and,
“voila!” you have a change of state.
Rewiring the brain
I have a client who was having a lot of trouble trying to change her state. Whenever she was alone, she would eat everything in sight, whatever she could get her hands on. It was only when she was by herself that she would start to binge. After a modest meal, she would wait for guests to leave her place, then she would eat everything in the cupboard. I mean, everything, until there was hardly anything left; until she made herself sick. It became a very deeply rooted anchor for her. Every time she started to binge, she held her body in a certain way, her head was lowered, and her internal dialogue reflected a negative tone and disempowering words. She became used to engaging in this destructive behavior to the point where it would not feel normal if she did not conduct herself this way. She had lost control of herself, and her self-esteem was at an all-time low.
The way she final y got control over herself was to change her focus. She had been focusing on wanting to binge when nobody was around. By figuring out how she was training her brain for disaster, we were able to fix the problem. We helped her change her focus and her physiology, and rewire her brain. To this day, she has not once gone back to her old pattern, and enjoys a very healthy lifestyle.
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Master your emotions
The key to mastering your emotions is to become consciously aware of when negative emotions surface, and learn to redirect yourself. Here’s what I want you to do for the next two to five days.
The first step is to record and appreciate your emotions. It’s very important to record your negative emotions when they arise. Have a journal handy specifically for this task. When you notice a negative emotion emerging, write down what brought it on, and then how you dealt with it.
Once you recognize the negative emotion, learn to appreciate it for what it may teach you.
The second step is to analyze the emotion. How is the emotion directing you? Is it telling you to look at the situation from a different perspective? What direction are you going in, and should you be changing direction?
Step three is to redirect. In order to change an emotion and the direction you are taking, ask yourself the right questions. What emotion do I really want to feel? What would I have to change in order to feel that now? What action will I take to change my state right now? What positives can I take from this?
Step four is to get confident. Think back to other difficult situations that challenged you, and how you worked through them. This time you even have more tools to use.
Follow this formula and you will start to produce positive emotional states on a consistent basis, and that’s really the path to success. So for the next two to five days, really work on noticing when your negative emotions come up, and follow the steps I have just laid out for you. Then, watch your life change.