Affirmations & Visualisations
I believe that setting goals for your health and your life is an essential step to help you achieve what you want
If you like this exercise you can create a vision board for every area of your life. A vision board is essentially a physical manifestation of your goals. I create two every year as I find my goals change throughout the year and the 6 month mark is a good time to reassess this. Vision boarding is a great way to get clear on your goals and motivate yourself to bring them to life.
You first identify your desires and write them down. Then you can select images (magazine clippings, print off the computer, pictures you draw, words of affirmations) that represent those desires. The simple selection process narrows down your focus and personalises your board with specific messages that matter to you. For example, say you want to do a morning ritual daily, when you visualise yourself doing your morning ritual, your brain trains your body for that reality. In fact, in one neuropsychology study, researchers found that the mental training of the physical exercise was almost as effective as the actual physical practice.
The key final step you need to take, which I realised only a few years ago, is to place it in a spot you see EVERY DAY. By doing this you create the opportunity for consistent visualisation to train your mind, body, and spirit to manifest your desires.
2. Affirmations and Mantras
One of my favourite techniques that is free, simple, and easy to apply, and can help you overcome your self-destructive thoughts, is daily affirmations and mantras.
An affirmation is a statement that evokes not only a picture, but the experience of already having what you want. Here’s some examples:
“I am beautiful and I make healthy choices for an ideal body.”
'I choose to life an optimally healthy and energetic life where my mojo is in full flow."
Repeating affirmations throughout the day, and writing them down in a journal, keeps you focused on your goal, strengthens your motivation, and programs your subconscious by sending an order to your crew to do whatever it takes to make that goal happen.
A fun and motivating way to bring your goals to life is to create; mantras, vision boards, inspirational quotes, affirmations. I find these all to be powerful tools to help guide you to your desired outcome.
What's great about these tools is that because they help activate the law of attraction they support you on the roller coaster of life where experiencing challenges and negative emotions is normal.
Writing down and/or visualising positive messages for your life, will over time start to reframe your inner dialogue.
The inner "nasty" voice that produces one thought after another. Like a difficult partner, it reminds you of what you did not do, what you shouldn’t have said, what you did not notice, and so on.
Over time this negative self-talk breaks down your confidence and can have a serious impact on your relationships, career and health.
Mentally repeating positive words and visualising positive images can help provide immediate encouragement when you are feeling negative. It also takes you out of the negative thought pattern so that your focus is on what you want.
Why not try one of these simple techniques to help you stay on track, and to keep reaching your goals:
1. Visualisations & Vision Boards
A powerful visualisation technique is to create a photograph or picture of yourself with your goal, as if it were already completed. If one of your goals is to lose weight so that you have your dream summer body, find a picture of the kind of figure you're after (be realistic) and cut out a picture of yourself and place it into the picture.
Another way to do this is to find a picture of you when you had your dream figure and put it somewhere visual.
Watch my video for simple ways to include this technique in your daily routine.