You Are As You Think: The Power Of Your "Cognitions"

Cognitive psychology is a product of the last few decades of the last century. The central premise of cognitive psychology is that what you think determines how you feel. Understanding this connection will be central to your success at fitness or anything else in your life is.

However, people are sometimes reluctant to accept this basic truth, because it requires them to acknowledge responsibility for what they experience in their lives. Some people prefer to believe that their feelings either precede their thoughts, or exist independently of them. Yet the truth is that our feelings, good or bad, are the products of our own thoughts.

It's impossible to have a feeling about something until we first become aware of it. This means we have to think about it before we feel it. For example, if your mate gets upset with you for some reason during the middle of the day, but you don't find out about it until later in the day, at what point do you have a bad feeling about the event?

No matter how upset he or she was with you all day long, you had no feeling about it because you didn't think about it. Many people suffer needlessly because they have this relationship backwards.

If you believe that your feelings come before your thoughts--that your feelings come out of nowhere and land in your head like a flock of stray birds--then you place yourself at the mercy of whatever feelings happen to be "descending on you" at the moment.

Taking Responsibility Gives You Power

To gain the power you need to make positive changes in your life, you can't afford to see yourself as a powerless victim of external factors. This denies you the responsibility for your own experience, and prevents you from enjoying the power that is rightfully yours.

To use that power, you need to understand how it works in connection with your beliefs.
It isn't that believing actually makes things happen--though sometimes it does. But when you believe something strongly, the "how to" of achieving it comes to you virtually without effort. What you need to know and do somehow flows magically into your awareness.

In other words, the power of your belief becomes a magnet for the precise solutions you need. The stronger the belief, the better solutions you attract. This phenomenon is at the core of our human creative process. Once we are fully focused on what we want to create, and then believe we can create it, our results are virtually assured!

Stated another way, once we're sufficiently clear about what to do, we need not struggle to figure out how. You see, much of the failure of traditional weight loss is the result of trying to force something to happen. Effort, struggle, and relying on will power are all signs that we're fighting with ourselves, that we're at cross purposes with our own deeply held beliefs. But when our beliefs are clear and positive, all we need to do is "let it happen."

What Is Your Stage Of Fitness Consciousness?

With anything you do in life, psychologist Abraham Maslow tells us there are four distinct stages of consciousness you can be at:

Stage One: Unconscious Incompetence. This is where we are when we aren't reaching our goals and don't know where to look for the problem, or may not even know that there is a problem. An incredible number of people are at this stage concerning weight loss and fitness.

Stage Two: Conscious Incompetence. At this stage we have become fully aware that what we're doing isn't working, and we know we need to be doing something else, even if we're not sure what it is. This is where most people are when they start working with this success system.

Stage Three: Conscious Competence. After the first 3-4 weeks of Success Exercises, you will have identified your problem beliefs and attitudes and very consciously will have begun to replace them with self-supporting ones. You are now solidly on your way to...

Stage Four: Unconscious Competence. This is your ultimate destination. At this stage of development, you now automatically and effortlessly do the things that keep you fit and at your ideal weight. You may or may not get there in 7 weeks, but you will be unstoppably on your way if you stay with the program.

If the task of changing your beliefs seems a bit overwhelming, keep this in mind: Every single belief you have right now was put into your mind with your own cooperation. In other words, you're already a "seasoned pro" at creating beliefs. However conscious or unconscious the process may have been, you played a central role in the adoption of all of your current beliefs.

And it is you who keeps them alive today and lets them run your life by not challenging their validity. Not a single one of your beliefs can survive without your constant support. You are the only one who can keep your beliefs alive, and you are the only one who can replace them.

But, contrary to many people's notions, your beliefs are not just a bunch of thoughts confined to your mind. Your beliefs are interwoven into your body and spirit as well. Have you ever gotten a "sinking feeling" when you heard bad news? Have you ever felt like you were hit in the stomach when a lover did you wrong?

That's how we humans are built. We're multi-level, multi-dimensional beings, and to ignore that fact while we try to make changes is to guarantee failure. And that's also why you should never try to change your beliefs through mental processes alone any more than you could change your weight through physical processes alone. Instead, you need to take the much more powerful approach, by involving your body, mind and spirit in all you set out to do.

So, if it's a new experience of life you seek--even on the physical level--you need to begin the process in your mind. Your mind is the control center for your behaviors, and your behaviors are what determine how you look and what you accomplish. If your current experience of yourself is not to your liking, don't run off to the gym or seek out the latest diet. The secret of your success is much closer--between your ears. If you want to change your life, start with your mind!

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