I found an interesting article about a study into weight loss that has shown that the mind can be tricked into believing the stomach is full.
The study says that mind can be fooled by the belief that the food about to be eaten is more filling than it really is.
Most Hypnotherapists will probably be unsurprised by this finding as we know how powerful beliefs can be, but it is always nice to see science back up what we Hypnotherapists have been saying for years!
If you want to find out how to take control and lose weight using the power of your mind, why not come to one of my Inspired Weight Control seminars in Great Dunmow, Essex. For more information on this exciting way to lose weight, click here: http://www.soundmindsystems.co.uk/wordpress/weight-loss/
When I did my NLP practitioner training, one of the areas of my life that I wanted to change was my approach to exercise. Many a time in the past I had decided to start doing some exercise whether it be going to the gym, swimming , or running, I’d always started off with good intentions and then the inclination to carry on simply faded away (sometimes in the planning stage- even before I had actually done anything!)
The idea of “getting fit” returned on New Year’s Eve when, after a Christmas of much eating, drinking and being merry, I put on a shirt I had received as a Christmas present. The shirt felt a little tight, but as the evening went on, I realised it was slightly more than a little tight!
I decided that this shirt was too nice to be wasted and at that point I also realised that if I was going to wear this shirt again, I was going to need a goal to aim for. I also realised where I had been going wrong all this time.
In NLP, we look at goals in terms of moving towards an outcome or moving away from a situation. If you were to think of it in terms of something such as wanting to quit smoking, most people start out by saying to themselves “I want to stop smoking” which is a moving away from their current circumstance. By rephrasing the statement as goal to move towards such as “I want to be healthier” or “I want to smell good, climb the stairs easily and feel full of energy”, a much more compelling goal can be planned and executed.
With this in mind I knew that I had to create a compelling goal to move towards. The shirt was a good start, but I knew that had a get out clause- I could just leave the shirt in the wardrobe and carry on as before. So I decided that my goal would need to have some emotion associated with it- something to make me feel good. It also needed to be SMART. By this, I mean it needed to be
Specific- It needed to be very clear exactly what the goal was
Measurable- I needed to know when I had achieved the goal and where I was on the way to that goal.
Attainable- I needed a goal that I knew I could achieve.
Relevant- The goal needed significance to my life and my greater good.
Time based- I needed to know when this goal would be achieved so that I could work towards it.
I started with the relevant part because I knew that if the goal wasn’t exciting and full of emotion, there was no way I’d attain it. At the moment, the most emotional experience in my life is my son Louis’ development. He was diagnosed as Autistic in November 2007 and since that time we have had so much fantastic support from friends, family and the local health authorities. The learning curve has been steep to say the least, but without these people and also the National Autistic Society, we wouldn’t have known half of what we now know or been able to cope as well as we have with the challenges. Because of this, I decided to raise some money for the NAS. So then I needed to decide how I was going to raise this money and do so in such a way that it would improve me too. That is when I decided that a sponsored run would be the answer- I could raise money and physically improve myself. Now I needed to be more specific and set an attainable target so I started searching online for running events local to me. I found a local 10km “fun” run that was at the end of May, which was a good few months off so I then had a specific event and a time to work to. I looked at last year’s finishing times and saw that there was a wide range of abilities- the slowest time was around an hour and a half, which I worked out to be around walking distance which I was sure I could manage even without training so I now had an attainable goal.
So I now have my SMART goal and I’m enjoying working towards the 25th May when I will run that 10km run.
The SMART method is a great way to get goals clear in your mind. I use it a lot with clients and my own goals. You might like to try it too and if you like, leave a comment on here to let me know how it goes!
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