When I first became a personal trainer I thought it would be pretty easy to help people. I was in good shape myself, and all I had to do was teach people how to do what I did – train everyday and eat loads of protein. lol!

If I wrote up a training program and diet plan I just presumed that the client would follow it and get results…

I couldn’t have been more wrong! lol.

Whilst having a solid training program and eating strategy are imperative, the two BIGGEST things that underpin success are…

1. Mindset
2. Habits

Improve the two areas above and pretty much anything is possible.

Creatures of habit…

Did you know that 95% of the time we’re on autopilot?

We are creatures of habit and do the same things pretty much every day, for example…

We operate subconsciously, most of the time we’re not even aware of why we do what we do, eat what we eat, think the way we do, etc, etc. 

We eat the same foods each week, drive the same way to work, watch similar TV programmes, listen to a certain type of music, see the same people, the list is endless – most weeks feel the same, because we do the same things!

That’s fine if you’re happy with your life. 

BUT sometimes It can be good to stop and ask yourself the following questions…

Are you happy?

Are you healthy? (mentally and physically)

Are you leading the life you want? 

Are your habits serving you?

Are you inspired and motivated?

If you said NO to any of the above then it could be time to look within and take yourself off autopilot and start re-wiring your mental computer hard-drive to serve you and improve your life.

Limiting Beliefs and Failure…

Einstein once said…

“insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”

In a nutshell people don’t change because they don’t do anything differently!”

Often one of the biggest issues we face when trying to make changes to our lives are what’s called ‘limiting beliefs’ – for example YOU want to lose weight and improve your health and fitness BUT deep down you don’t believe that you can or you don’t deserve it…

You’ve tried multiple diets, and exercise programmes, but then eventually reverted back to old ways. If this happens enough times then you start to believe that you cant do it and give up. Next time you start a new diet you go in with hope… BUT eventually those negative thinking patterns kick in again, you remember how many times you’ve failed in the past…and you end up back at square one, feeling powerless and beating yourself up for failing…yet again. This reinforces the failure cycle further, adding petrol to the fire and making that belief even stronger. 

These types of limiting beliefs are stored in your mind and influence your behaviour on a day to day basis. 

This is just one example of a limiting belief, often you’ll have more than one, in some cases there will be many. Combine this beliefs and they keep you trapped in the same place. 

If you tell yourself enough times that you aren’t good enough…

Guess what?

It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

You believe that you’re not good enough! You may let people walk all over you and any success that comes your way, you sabotage it… because you don’t believe you deserve it.

You may spend your life trying to make yourself happy with means such as: excessive eating, alcohol, drugs, plastic surgery or any type of quick fix that gives you some short term relief from your low self esteem. This is just an example, there are many more interpretations/consequences of such a limiting belief.

When it comes to changing your life, body shape, improving career success – or anything of such nature…

If deep down you don’t believe you can achieve it, or that you don’t deserve it… then you wont. It’s simple.

It’s time to eradicate those limiting beliefs that are holding you back and not serving you, and instead it’s time to rewire your system for success…

As Dr Wayne Dyer says “ when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change” – it’s all about creating change within, and re-wiring your brain, removing the negative computer programmes, and putting positive thoughts/beliefs in your head enough times that they become the default, instead of the negative system that’s not serving you. As time goes on you will evolve and those old thinking patterns will either disappear or wont have the same influence on your mind/behaviour. 

Before we dive into some tips for how to do this, let’s look into a simplified version of the brain…

The Human, Chimp & Computer…

In his two brilliant books ‘The Chimp Paradox’ and ‘The Silent Guides’ Professor Steve Peters simplifies the brain into 3 components, which are…

Human 

This is the conscious part of the brain. It’s the sensible, logical part of the mind, the part that thinks, reflects, and acts as a filter for your subconscious mind. The human part of the brain wants us to be happy, healthy, fit, and fulfilled. It has morals, standards and just generally wants the best for us. 

Chimp

This is our subconscious part of the brain, and the most powerful and influential when it becomes to influencing our habits and behaviours. The chimp brain is very emotional, in fact it’s like a small child, it lives in the moment and wants to be happy and do things that give it instant gratification. Your chimp doesn’t really care about the BIG picture, instead it wants happiness RIGHT NOW. The chimp wants chocolate, cake, likes on social media, compliments, Netflix, and things that make it feel good. 

The problem with this is that the chimps behaviour(s) don’t always serve us, for example we could be on a diet because we want to lose 2 stone, but then all of a sudden you have a bad day at work and your INNER CHIMP kicks in “let’s have some chocolate to make you feel better” – then 2 hours later you’ve devoured a large chocolate bar, ordered a take out and feel like crap. Your chimp is satisfied, however the human part of you, the one who wants to lose weight is now left to pick up the pieces, it experiences guilt and a negative aftermath making you feel rubbish.   

Computer 

The computer part of your brain is the hardware that stores all the information that both the ‘human’ and ‘chimp’ put into it. It’s basically just a large database… 

When we are young we pretty much have a blank computer system, but as time goes on more stuff gets put into the hard drive. For example we are influenced by our environment: our parents, carers, friends, etc. We are exposed to different stimuluses throughout childhood such as watching TV, trips, different people, cultures, and experiences at school, etc, and they all help to shape who we are and how we see the world. 

How the computer works…

Let’s say you’re a 2 year old kid, who see’s your dad freak out when he sees a spider (this is me by the way! lol) you learn that your dad is scared of spiders, which could mean that you also register the thought “spiders are dangerous” and therefore you develop a spider phobia. 

Now every time you see a spider for the rest of your life… you just freak out (it’s just an automatic response). In later life you may not remember how you got your spider phobia, and believe it’s irrational but you still have one because of your early trauma i,e. seeing you dad freak out! Your reaction to the spider will stay the same unless you re-wire your computer to come out with a more efficient response. 

How To Create Long Lasting Change…

In order to change your life you need to…

#1 Understand how the mind works – just having a basic understanding of the above: human, chimp and computer brain is a great place to start. 

#2 Build a better relationship with your chimp. Learn to watch out for it’s behaviours and treat it with kindness, rather than beating yourself up. It’s normal for your chimp to react to situations. Your chimp will react and that’s fine, but it’s how you react to that reaction that matters.

#3 Input new data into the computer – when your chimp reacts to a situation it will go to your computer for help. It will often react and then turn to the computer and say “what do I do now?” – lets say your natural response to stress is to eat food…so every time something bothers you…

Your chimp panics, looks to your computer for help and the computer says… “eat some food” – so you eat food. All you have to do is train your mind to come up with a different program, for example next time you get stressed instead of reaching for food, you instead go on a walk, or talk to a friend or write down your feelings in a diary. To begin with it’s hard because it requires effort, but then the more you practice the new behaviour, the stronger it becomes and eventually your new computer program will fire without you having to think about it.

In a nutshell…

To change a behaviour you first have to become conscious of what you want to change, then you have to think about how you want to react instead of your current reaction, then you have to practice that new reaction and keep practicing it until it becomes automatic.

Some times you’ll need help to get there, it’s not always easy to change alone and you may need a coach, mentor or some specific therapy to help you – so don’t be afraid to ask for extra help.

I hope you found this post helpful, if you did please give it a thumbs up or comment below – it would be great to get some feedback.

Thanks for reading,

Nick 🙂