2011 Salutation - If you haven't changed already - it IS time to change now!

My first blog post of the year and it is 12th January already. Apologies for being so tardy.

Hopefully you will have reprised what I said a few weeks ago AND what I said last January about resolutions and how to keep them. And seen my December's post called "Let's get emotional." If not, go there now. In old Army parlance (and also said in a gruff voice using RP) "I commend it to you!"

Time to change then. So what? It is time to change your attitude. Time to change your thoughts. We get what we think about, what we focus on don't we. We can pretty much accept that. That's why we always say to focus on the positive, use positive language. Here's a good example from the physical realm.

When you ride a motorbike, sometimes steering it is far harder than it looks. Trees, hedges, potholes all come up far quicker than they are meant to and leave you little time for evasive action. And if you look at the thing you are trying to avoid hitting, you tend to hit the darned thing after all. Obviously on a bike, this is to be avoided (ouch!). On your bike licence course they tell you, "Don't look at the hedge!" and it's true that when you ride, if there's a hedge looking a bit close and you tell yourself not to look at the hedge but, "Look at the road!" then you do end up leaning further and steering into the road and away from the hedge. Phew!

In the same way, you must stop negative thoughts now. Even seemingly innocuous ones can keep you trapped. How about if you are an ok weight but its not easy to stay that way. You are probably telling yourslef, "I'm an ok weight at the moment but its always a battle." Guess what, you are locking yourself into the belief that you have to have a battle to stay at a good weight for you. Your predominant thought is, "It's always a battle" so you perpetuate that belief, you take actions as if weight is a battle and hey presto, your weight is always a battle and always will be.

Now, change that thought. Change it to what you REALLY want and you'll start focussing on that thought instead and living like that. Take these people who go to "Fat Club" as they call it. Well, a Fat Club is surely a club where people go who are fat, just like Swim Club or Drama Club or Chess Club is a club for people who swim, act or play chess. So as long as they go to Fat Club, they will continue to be fat, perpetuating the focus and actions of being overweight. Why aren't they going to "Thin Club" if they want to be thin? And don't call it Slimming Club either - if you focus on slimming, you'll always be slimming! Celebrate "Thin Club"!!!!

Change your entire thoughts and you change your actions. Decide now exactly what you want, whether it is to be a size 10, to be rich, find a partner, whatever. Then think like it has already happened. Decide that you are already a size 10, do what size 10 people do, live like a size 10 person, eat like a size 10 person. Visualise putting on size 10 clothes, visualise your scales showing you the weight of a size 10 person. Then one day turn round and see that reality - you WILL.

Change your thoughts to change your life this year. Have a good one.