LIFE CHANGES – UNDERSTAND TO CONQUER
LIFE CHANGES – UNDERSTAND TO CONQUER
I could write a very long list of all the positive life lessons and gifts that horses have given me. From lessons of discipline, patience, empathy to gifts such as purpose, passion and friendship. There is one gift that I try to promote. It is the opportunities that horses give you to keep physically fit. Just owning and looking after a horse injects an element of activity into your day. But they can be a tremendous inspiration to put more thought into your overall physical health. Improving our weight, core strength and physical fitness can make your horse feel more balanced and comfortable when being ridden. This can improve their behaviour and make them easier to work with. Also, it can help your mental and physical health.
Changing my diet and focusing on developing my core strength by doing pilates twice a week, has had a positive impact on all these things for me. It has made me a better rider and helped me overcome a back injury. However, when I try to encourage people to make these changes and consider tracking down a pilates or yoga class to attend, I commonly get a response from people that incorporating these things into their lives is difficult.
For this article I thought I would give you a quick insight into why it is difficult but some simple strategies people can use to make these changes. Firstly, our lives are run by our habits. We have habits for everything. Habits are behaviours that are triggered by certain environments, time of day, how you feel and a multitude of other things. From the time you get up to the moment you go to bed you go to bed you are driven by your habits. They can be things you do, how you feel about yourself or how interact with certain people. Habits are hard to change. But understanding habits and how to change them can be really helpful. Here are some ideas.
1. HABITS ARE CREATED BY TAKING ACTION AND REPETITION - Recently I started going to the gym very early in the morning. The first thing I had to overcome to instigate this habit was to get up and go to the gym This was really hard because I would lie in bed and start to think it was a much better idea to stay in bed as I was very comfortable. This was my subconscious brain always looking out for me and ensuring that discomfort in my life (whether it be physical, emotion or brain strain) is avoided. So, the first thing I had to do was get up and do it. I have learnt the need to take action and not let my subconscious brain talk me out of doing “hard things”. A great read that explains this beautifully is Mel Robbin’s book “The 5 Second Rule”. The hardest days were day 2 and 3 when I was experiencing some muscle soreness. My “discomfort avoiding” brain was starting to use the excuse that I had been good and gone to the gym the day before so I was deserving a rest! But each day I have woken up and got out of bed when my alarm went off. Mel Robbin’s advises counting down from 5 and then just doing what you have to do, don’t contemplate it, just DO IT.
The next thing I did was instigate repetition. The important thing for me to get my habit of going to the gym programed into my life has not been whether or not I completed my entire workout but the fact that I turned up at the gym. During those first few days when I was muscle sore, I just did a mini workout but I still went.
So to summarise, your brain will try to talk you out of doing hard uncomfortable things so don’t think – just do it and clock up your repetitions!
2. CHANGE HOW YOU IDENTIFY YOURSELF – I got this great insight from the book by James Clear called “Atomic Habits”. Changing your mindset about how you identify yourself is powerful. To change my diet, instead of being someone who was trying to change their diet and was attempting to cut down processed food and sugars, I become someone who just doesn’t eat processed food or refined sugars. In regards to my efforts to embed daily gym work into my life, I am not someone trying to get fit, I am someone that goes to the gym every day. This might seem pedantic but try it, it is really quite profound.
This is a photo of me very early this morning outside my gym. It was the first morning that my alarm went off and I had no voices in my head telling me that it was cold, I was comfortable and I had been good going to the gym so I deserved to miss a day. I have also been surprised by how quickly my body has adapted to my workout. All aspects of my workout have got easier. I remember warming up on the cross trainer during my first session and feeling exhausted after 36 seconds, now I can do 6 minutes pretty easily! The weights that felt so heavy, now feel much lighter. I started finishing my workout quicker and have now increased the number of repetitions….and this is only after eleven sessions!! Yes ELEVEN!! Plus, I am feeling good, I am sleeping well and feel I can think more clearly. Nothing has more evidence of having a positive impact on improving a range of mental health conditions and emotional states than exercise.
The human body is incredible in its ability to adapt, you just need to override its natural avoidance of doing hard things. Just like horses, understanding the “why” behind behaviour and learning “how” behaviour can be positively influenced can give you ideas that can make wonderful changes in your life. A friend shared a quote yesterday on Facebook that really summed up life –
“Whatever you are not changing, you are choosing….read that again”
There are so many things in life you deserve to experience, don’t talk yourself out of it….use ideas as tools to change 😊
