What If The Only Thing In Your Way… Is You?

Thought For The Week

We can hold onto beliefs that no longer serve us and may in fact be doing us more harm than good. These limiting beliefs might be about who we are, the situations we find ourselves in, or our connections with others. For example, we might think that lifting weights is only for men, that we’re not built for running, or that we don’t have the time for exercise. Around food, we might think eating healthy is boring, that other people only eat healthy food to feel virtuous, or that we must eat nothing and starve to be able to lose any weight. Many of these deep-seated beliefs are formed in childhood, but we carry them with us as truths, because we walk through life looking for the proof to validate them. At the same time, we disregard any signs that might challenge our beliefs or suggest that there could be an alternative way of thinking. When we cling to limiting beliefs, we can miss opportunities to learn and grow; If we want to make change, we make things a lot harder for ourselves. So, let me ask you: What beliefs might you be holding onto that are keeping you from moving forward or making change?

Exercise Tip

It’s not that someone else has more free time than you—we all have the same number of hours in the day—it’s how you choose to prioritise your time. Sure, your job might be more demanding, maybe you have kids and they don’t, maybe you’re caring for ageing parents and they’re not. But at the end of the day, we all make choices about how we live our lives and where we place exercise in this hierarchy of priorities. You need to ask yourself whether your lack of time is really just an excuse not to exercise, or whether there is genuinely not a single spare moment in the week. Challenging this common-held belief may just be the first step you need to realise you have a lot more time than you thought, and it’s now a case of how you manage it.

Nutrition Tip

That we must eat nothing and practically starve ourselves if we want to lose any weight is another common-held belief. Perhaps it’s diet culture, perhaps we’ve tried but failed to lose weight in the past, or perhaps we don’t believe we can maintain our current weight loss and it feels like a good excuse should the weight creep back on. This one I can categorically tell you though, is not true. In fact, trying to eat nothing is probably the quickest way to ensure you overeat the next time you’re faced with food. And so if it’s a belief you hold, and it’s stalling your weight loss efforts, then it would be worth challenging it by firstly figuring out where it might have come from. If you’ve tried and failed to lose weight in the past, it might also be worth revisiting this, to try and identify if there were any other habits or behaviours that might have contributed to you not losing weight (aside from the not eating nothing). The more objective and honest we can be with ourselves, the more likely we are to be able to let go of the beliefs that are holding us back.

Links & Resources

Article: If you’re keen to learn more, this article on challenging negative beliefs is a good place to start.

Book: The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz offers practical guide to freeing ourselves from self-limiting beliefs.

Recipe: If you think healthy eating is boring, try my recipe for Roast Chicken Salad with Grapes & Almonds and hopefully I can help change your mind.   

Inspirational Quote

"If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced."

Vincent Van Gogh