Once Upon a Time...

So my employer does some serious training every year and one course I recently took was presented by the people behind http://www.corporateathlete.com/, an organization that takes professional athletes and teaches them what it takes to "complete the mission".

  O. M. G.  LIFE.  CHANGING.  This was such a fabulous, fantastic, educational hour of pure enlightenment.   I'm already making changes in my own life and I am not bs-ing you when I say that I already feel like someone took down a puffy cloud and put me on it.  My energy is up, my happiness is up, things are done at my home, my relationship with my husband is perfect, I don't feel overwhelmed - just wow. 

  Do you know that feeling you get when something great is happening tomorrow or when you have to wake up in the morning and go on some wonderful, exotic trip, or you just got a check for a billion dollars?  That is what this feels like.  I suddenly feel like success is just right around the corner. 

  Things like being out of shape, feeling like there was just too much to do at home, resentment that I was doing too much, unhappiness that I still haven't reached my goals and accomplished the things I want to accomplish have all stopped making noise in my life. 

  Some of the strongest takeaways:

• What is your story?  What are you telling yourself that makes what you are doing ok?
• Rewrite your story.  Don't say "this must have happened because".  MAKE things happen!  Don't say I can be abusive because I was abused.  That's your old story.  This is your new one.
• "If I don't change my story right now...."  what will happen?
• Your brain needs oxygen and glucose to function.  Without oxygen, you die.  Without glucose, you aren't sharp.
• Energy = oxygen + glucose
• By doing things, you create energy
• Never go more than 4 hours without eating.  Eat low-glycemic snacks between meals.
• Meals should be one handful protein, two handfulls grains, and two handfulls fruits and veggies.
• Don't beat yourself up for one day "off course".  Get back on.
• Stand up/move every 45 minutes.
• Human beings aren't made to sit all day, we are made to be active.  Lower back pain is the top complaint among people in the corporate world.  We can't hold up our torsos anymore!
• We are like muscles.  We have to have stress to grow.  You have to have periods of stress and periods of recovery.  Two minutes throughout the day are small recoveries and a MUST 7 hours of sleep at night is our major recovery.

  But the most profound thing was the declaration that human beings do not have willpower or self-control.

  I know, you think these people were nuts.

  Really, we don't.  We truly ARE creatures of habit.  We fail at diets for this reason.  We fail at exercise plans for this reason.  Until you make it habit, until you have a routine, a schedule, you will fail.  Until you know what is important to you and why are you doing something, you will fail.   Until you impress upon yourself what will happen if you keep doing what you've always done, you will not get it, you will not change, you will not grow.

  Complete the mission.