You will only achieve what you expect...so aim high!

What are your goals? What do you expect you can achieve?

Earlier this week I was engaging in some negative thinking about a future event that I expected would just bring difficulty and negative outcomes.

Some of you many have a similar psychic ability where you can see the future in detail, where the outcome is bad, where the people involved act to ruin your perfect world, where everything that could go wrong goes wrong, where you fail. Psychologists call it 'catastrophic thinking'....I call it 'having a tea party in my head'.

During one of these 'tea parties' I happened to look at a tweet that simply said...'don't see how you will feel, plan how you will think', and this really resonated with me.

I was allowing myself to be at the whim of my emotions that were being fuelled by my expectations about how other people will behave and how I would react. I don't have a magical ability to predict how a situation will turn out or how a person to behave, so where do these expectations come from?

Our past life experiences and interactions with people subconsciously create our belief system that determines how we expect others will behave and how we expect we will respond. Our interactions with parents, with teachers, with friends, with lovers, teach us what to expect. Sometimes this is a helpful learning experience that prepares us for the future; but equally this can lead us to behave in ways that actually hold us back from achieving or from engaging positively with people or situations.

For example, being told through your school years that 'sports just isn't your thing' and being picked last on any sports team, can lead to an expectation that you should not even try to get involved in exercise or fitness ...you are not sporty! You will fail, or at the very least you will embarrass yourself. But is that belief or expectation about yourself serving you positively now you are an adult? Is it real?

Having an expectation that you can't do sports reduces your expectation of any success if you try. Your concept of what you can achieve is unrealistically low. Your expectation of failure or embarrassment is like a wall that stops you trying. There is no way you are going to try a gym class because you just know you have no sense of timing. You can't possibly try yoga because you know people will think you are fat and hopeless.

I think most people set their goals too low due to their low expectations based on old experiences. As a health coach I don't want to analysis and dissect your childhood searching for reasons for your beliefs. I want to work with you to examine where you are now, what you are doing now that is holding you back, and how can you work forward into the future with new expectations and new ways to approach life so you can aim high and get there.

I expect that you will succeed, so should you.

Stay groovy

Kim

Not drowning just spinning

Are you one of those people that covers indecisiveness, procrastination, or fear of failure through embarking on a wild flurry of activity?     I am.

Are you being incredibly busy, jumping from task to task, generating new ideas in a flurry of energy - but not really getting anywhere?   I am.

Busy does not mean achieving. I am sure we have all worked with that person who constantly runs around proclaiming how busy (read, how important) they are but everyone knows they don't really achieve anything.

Well that is how I am feeling right now. After a couple of busy and productive months creating and developing my business concept I am now at the point where the rubber hits the road. Securing office space, advertising , selling myself etc.  But in an effort to avoid what is really the crunch of commiting my time to office hours, signing a lease, risking the chance of rejection, I have now started busying myself with a host of random tasks and signing up for courses including a seven day juice fast (what the ?) and am amassing more information than I know what to do with.

Deep breath 

Is this a pattern I am repeating? Yes. As soon as things get too hard, too overwhelming, too risky, I do the unthinkable and take more on in order to avoid what I don't want to face. But those times when I have been truly passionate and focused on a clear goal....wow I have achieved!

So the way forward is really about making sure I have clear articulated goals, planning the detail on how to achieve these goals and most, most importantly - taking action.

This I believe is also a fundamental process for achieving weightloss. Fear of failure and procrastination lead to indecision and lack of action. Intellectually you want to lose weight, you have a general understanding of what you need to do, you have paid money for gym membership, new training gear etc but never move from the planning phase to the action phase. 

This is where goal setting and action planning become important. It is also where having a coach (a friend or a professional) who challenges your negative thinking, who challenges your excuses, who helps you identify strategies to overcome hurdles, who holds you accountable, can make a big difference between thinking and doing.

I did a goal setting activity last night and already I feel like I am getting back on track and moving forward - not spinning in circles.

I will talk more about the goal setting process next time. 

Stay groovy 

Food is not the enemy

If I was to say 'Joe' has a negative unhealthy relationship with food what do imagine Joe is like. Someone who eats junk food. Someone who is overweight. Someone who has no willpower or control over what they eat. Certainly overeating is one type of unhealthy relationship with food, but what about the flipside?

Those who have an over controlling approach to food whereby their weight is strictly monitored, their food intake is strictly controlled and and any deviation is considered a failure. People who take such a restrictive approach to nutrition are no less obsessed with food than the overeater. Every minute can be consumed with thoughts of planning or monitoring food intake and/or punishing oneself for not following the diet plan. From the outside they look like very healthy people as their body weight and food choices seem to be healthy. But on the inside it is just a world of anxiety as the need for constant control and fear of losing control can be emotionally exhausting. Food becomes the enemy!

Learning to connect with intuitive eating and at mindful eating approach to food such as that shared in the Am I Hungry? (R)  mindful eating workshops can help develop a more positive relationship with food through helping the person connect with their body and their thoughts and beliefs about food. Food is not the enemy!

Health coaching is a solutions-focused approach to achieving your health and wellness goals; to achieving an optimal physical and mental state that allows you to live a happy energy-filled life. Health coaching is not just for people who want to lose weight, but can help anyone overcome negative lifestyle patterns, habits or beliefs that at getting in the way of being happy, healthy, and groovy.

Find your groove

Website launch and being vulnerable

LA big announcement this morning - my website happyhealthygroovy.com.au is up and running!

The funny thing is it has been up since Tuesday but I just couldn't bring myself to let people know about it. Everyday I would intend to get the message out via this blog or Facebook but I just avoided doing it. What is this about? 

So I have spent some time meditating and writing in my journal and it is simple .......I am feeling very vulnerable right now and for someone who has pretty much avoided vulnerability her whole life this is pretty scary. 

Now don't get me wrong, I have never avoided taking a risk, taking a chance, doing things slightly left of centre, but somehow managing to never really expose my underbelly.

So here I am blogging and putting my feelings, thoughts, opinions on the net for the world to see. And launching my own coaching business that isn't selling widgets but selling my skills. My God, what if I am not good enough, what if no one likes me, or heaven forbid what if no-one calls ... Ever! How embarrassing.

So I have decided

- I am good enough

- I don't have to be perfect

- I don't need to know everything in order to help people

- I have a lot to offer

- and this is not all about me ( now this one is still a little difficult to swallow)

But most of all I am so excited, I simply can't not do this....so lets get this show on the road!

A big thanks to Grace from gndesigns for doing my fabulous business card and website and for putting up with my total incompetence with anything IT related. And a big thanks to my daughter who believes in me and to my Gorgeous Guy who never fails in his patience and support.

Connecting the dots and finding my passion

What a beautiful spring day in Brisbane. Off to the Manly Farmers Markets and a coffee down at the waterfront. It was nice to relax, its been a busy week of finalising the Happy Healthy Groovy website design and content (it will be up and running this week), researching phone and internet plans, researching advertising options, trying to find a consultation room that I can lease one or two days a week, helping my daughter move and then to top it off my Ragdoll cat Milo had a paralysis tick yesterday and needed veterinary care. He is doing very well but has been shaved all over and looks hilarious. Poor boy.

Anyway this afternoon I got to reminiscing about my time living in Ubud Bali earlier this year where I was volunteer English teaching teenagers. I needed to get away and re-evaluate where I was going work wise and figured I should do something useful while taking time out. I spent a lot of time on my own, getting to connect back in with my dreams, my passion, my inner strength. I spent time meeting people from all over the world that were involved in raw foods, or yoga, or developing sustainable industries, and most importantly I spent time with local Balinese people and seeing behind the tourism glitz.

After five weeks I still had no clue what I wanted to do career wise and was starting to think that I just needed to get real and get on with my normal job which paid very well thank you...how ungrateful was I being wanting to live my passion when I was surrounded by people who had barely anything and were happy. Besides, what the hell was my passion??

It was while teaching food nouns one day when the lesson evolved from a boring lesson about nouns to a lively discussion about nutrition. What a great discussion, the class was really engaged, asking lots of questions, talking about their own concerns about how their traditional food is being replaced by processed food, talking about how they have heard too much sugar is bad but how can you not eat it when it is so yummy.

Well I lit up! Up until then the teaching was reasonably enjoyable, I loved the interaction with the kids but had realised that teaching English was not going to be my sea change. The class went for 45 minutes over time and I brought information on nutrition the next day for them.

It was later that night that dots started to connect. My lifelong involvement in yoga, my psychology training, my avid reading of all things nutrition and fitness based, my interest in organic skincare, my own digestive challenges etc etc.

I was talking to my Gorgeous Guy (he wanted a catchy name if I was going to be Groovy Goddess) on the phone from Ubud and said you know....everything just starts working out when you are feeling healthy, are eating well, are relaxed, feel comfortable in your own skin, feel connected with nature, feel connected with love....people just need to find their groove, because when you are in your groove their isn't anywhere else you need to be. I want to help people find their groove!

And that is how the seed for Happy Healthy Groovy started growing. So look out for my website and signup for the free e-book I have been writing and regular newsletters.

Groovy Goddess