Step 4: Move Your Body In A Loving Way
Hopefully after last week’s blog you have a little better idea of what your schedule looks like and you have developed a more realistic plan for how to spend your time and better understand your expectations of yourself.
Take a moment now and look at your schedule. How much of your time do you spend sitting or minimally active? Do you have time set aside for some sort of exercise? If you do, how do you typically feel when it’s time to exercise? Is it something you look forward to or is it something you typically dread and skip if you can come up with some reason not to do it?
We know that regular physical activity comes with an enormous number of benefits both physical and mental. In fact, most people will tell you that they feel overwhelming better when they exercise. So why don’t more people exercise regularly?
As I’ve been working with my clients, I have found that there are two main barriers to regular physical activity. The first is making the time for it. Given that we talked about scheduling last week, I’ll let you decide where you put regular exercise on your priority list. It’s always in my HIGH priority category.
The second barrier, however, has a lot to do with the way in which my clients view exercise. Physical activity is often viewed as a means to an end. It is something to be endured, even suffered through, in order to accomplish a goal such as weight loss or finishing a race. Because of this there is often a sense of dread or at very least a dislike of the planned activity.
I’d like to offer you a different option. What if instead of planning to exercise, you just planned a daily opportunity to move your body in a loving way? What would that look like for you? Would you continue the same routine or would you do something entirely different?
When I applied this criterion to my life, I realized that I felt much more recharged and fulfilled after practicing yoga and riding my horse than I did after going for a run. I looked forward to yoga and riding. I would gladly give up other commitments to be able to do them. With running, however, I often found the opposite to be true. In fact, you might be impressed with how many creative reasons I came up with to skip a run.
The problem though was that my brain was convinced that to be as fit as I wanted to be, I needed to run. I had to challenge that belief and open my mind to the possibility of trying something different. I needed to start to believe that I could get all the same benefits from activity that felt more like loving kindness than punishment.
The truth is that I can always start running again if I want to, but the consistency that has come with focusing on activities that I love has turned exercise into an effortless pursuit. Would you like to learn more about how changing your beliefs can lead to countless benefits in your life? If so, then the Unicorn Doctor coaching program may be right for you.
