How to enjoy your time at the gym and make the most out of it

I spoke to many people who really don't like spending time in the gym. Also my personal experience is that I often don't enjoy carrying out

It's a pity as the gym can really be a place where can spend our time efficiently and effectively by improving our health while enjoying it. I discovered a couple of simple things you can apply to have a much better time at the gym.

Save time

Choose a gym that is within max. 30min jogging distance from your living place. If you already dress up in gym clothing and run there you not only save the time changing your clothing but also the usual warm up time.

Don't compare yourself

The person next to you might have the perfect body but I guarantee you that he or she will envy you for some other part of your body e.g. the features of your face or your skin colour. Be aware of the fact that most people usually desire what they don't have at the moment.

Focus on your goals

Always keep in mind why you are here? Is it to please your spouse? Is it because of the great feeling that a healthy body gives you? Is it to look good in the new piece of clothing you just bought? Visualise how great it will feel when you accomplished your goal.

Take a friend with you

Everybody is so much more effective when other people are watching. It is also so much more fun to chat between different rounds of exercise. I also love to have someone counting e.g. when doing bench press.

Choose specific music

Create a playlist with music that you deliberately choose and that helps you to stay energised throughout the entire workout.

Pray

If you keep up the dialogue with God and ask him specifically for things like motivation, peace and joy you will be amazed by how much better and meaningful your workout will be.

Positive Thinking is ALWAYS the best choice

Usually I am skeptical about statements that contain the word "Always". There's a lot of truth in the saying "Always is always wrong".

However, this case is different. I can't think of any situation in which negative thinking makes sense. Zig Ziglar's famous statement is correct "Positive thinking lets you do everything better than negative thinking does".

This does not mean that you ignore pain, suffering and wrong things. Acknowledge the pain and let the tears run but then find the positive growth opportunity that EVERY situation offers and take massive action not to miss out on this opportunity. God is waiting to bless you for persevering in your faith. Don't waste the blessing by becoming negative and give into a lousy complaining attitude.

The Power of “Taking Action”

The message today sounds so simple that most people will think "I already know that". However, it is probably the most important factor that distinguishes successful from unsuccessful people: The Power of "Taking Action". Taking action is the difference between a mere dreamer and a person who is actively becoming the person who he really wants to be.

Taking Action gives you an enormous amount of energy: I am always amazed by how much purpose, excitement and energy you feel even if you just make a tiny step towards a goal that truly matters to you. If your goals is for example to own your own home or become successful property investor, you will feel the excitement once you start looking through various websites and talking to people about various forms of financing. If you want to become a motivational speaker, starting to write your first speech at home will be an great experience.

The biggest risk in life is not to take action: Let's be really honest. Once you come to the end of your life and look back, what does really matter? Do you really care about people that were negative about what you were doing? Do you really care about all those failed attempts in the light of your successes? Is it better to know that you tried everything but failed or to know that you gave in to your fears and never seriously attempted to live an extraordinary life?

There are many things you can do to facilitate taking action: One of the most powerful things you can do is to break down your dreams and visions into as many small measurable sub-steps you can come up with. Moreover it is so powerful to talk to as many people as you can that are already doing things in areas you want to explore. Never feel to shy to even call up people you have never talked before. If you explain your genuine motivation and passion most people will be really happy to help you. If they are not, just call the next one.

So challenge yourself by asking "Am I really taking action towards my goals in ALL areas in my life that are truly important to me?". And if you feel that you have heard this message already a lot of times keep in mind one of my favourite quotes by Rick Warren "We fool ourselves if we think that by just listening to a message we have internalized it".

Why it is so worthwhile going after your dreams (even if it seems impossible)

A lot of people never truly try to make their dreams happen. The most common reasons for that are the perceived lack of (a) time and/or (b) money. Or they think that it is not going to work anyway and hence don't even bother trying.

One personal example includes the situation at the end of my studies. I was confronted with the possibility to submit my thesis to a competition with the prospect of winning a lucrative price. As I had tried similar things in the past which didn't work out, I initially wasn't very motivated to apply and felt that I didn't have enough time and capacity to really have a chance of winning. Fortunately I thought about how amazing it would be to win and created a picture in my mind. This thought motivated me in a way that I applied despite all limiting beliefs and eventually won the competition. The crucial thing is that only one incidence of winning/of creating something truly extraordinary in this life makes all efforts worthwhile (including all past failures). Let no limiting belief or negative comment of other people destroy your desire to create something truly meaningful with your life.

Here are some additional useful thoughts that have helped me to cut through limiting excuses:

• Once you make a true commitment to do whatever it takes your mind suddenly gets a lot more creative at finding ways to make your dreams reality. You'll be amazed by how many more resources you can mobilize only by truly putting your heart into something.
  
• Who really cares what was necessary to make your dreams reality once you arrived there?
  
• Nothing in life is more satisfying than to fulfill the purpose for which your creator has made you. You get so much passion, joy and energy out of it. It's so worth it.
  
• NOT going after what you truly desire is the greatest risk you can take in life.
  
• Even if it doesn't work out 100% the way we think there might be another great opportunity revealing itself.

Regular commitments: Key to your long-term success

I recently created the following affirmation: "Regular commitments are so awesome. Being made in moments of absolute clarity of my true life priorities, they ensure that I'm putting into action what matters most - regardless of how I feel in a specific situation."

There is a lot of truth in it:

1. It is so important to take regular time to think about what is important in life and to define review our core values for which we are living. A lot of people today are addicted to high-frequency tasks and hence will feel uneasy and unproductive. Nothing could be further from the truth as it's better to ensure that the ladder is at the right wall before we start climbing it.
   
2. Based on what is most important to us we should set up regularly reoccurring times in our schedules in which we work on making our desires reality. Otherwise most people get caught up in other things as distractions today are omnipresent.
   
3. It is extremely important to have the discipline to really commit 100% to doing those things. Unless something more important – not something more urgent! – comes along we have to discipline ourselves to stick to what we previously planned.
   

I have plenty of regular commitments in my schedule. I set the time intervals in a way that it still leaves me with enough time to deal with unexpected events. For example I go to martial arts classes twice a week, study a stock market course once a week and catch up with one of my best mates at least every fortnight.

All three things support things that are very important to me. The regular commitment allows me to not listen to all the daily excuses I'm confronted with and after doing those things I always feel absolutely awesome as I made another very crucial step closer to my dreams. For example I usually feel a lot of thoughts going on in my head before martial arts classes like "I'm too tired. Today I could skip class once". However, as I know I have this commitment set-up it's so easy to disregard this rubbish that is trying to keep me in mediocrity.

Challenge Yourself: In which areas of your life could you establish regular commitments to ensure that you are really doing what is most important to you in life?

Accountability Partner – Why having one is so important if you want to grow personally

The reality for every person that I've met so far in my life is the following: Everybody needs at least one person to hold him/her accountable for achieving goals is life.

You probably know this from so many situations in life: If other people are watching you or even if you just feel others might be watching, you perform so much better. If you expect guest you clean up your apartment/house. If there is a big audience you perform better at sports.

The key is to use this principle and make it a regular system so it works on your behalf. How do you do it? By setting regular appointments with at least one accountability partner to analyse how you are performing against your goals.

David Deida described it in his book "The Way of the Superior Man" as follows: "Your close men friends should be willing to challenge your mediocrity by suggesting a concrete action you can perform that will pop you out your rut, one way or the other. And you must be willing to offer them your brutal honesty, in the same way, if you are all to grow. Good friends should not tolerate mediocrity in one another. If you are at your edge, your men friends should respect that, but not let you off the hook."

How does this work in practice? Let's say you are afraid of public speaking. So you set yourself the goal of speaking in public three times a week. At the end of each week you meet up with your accountability partner and talk about your progress. If you failed to achieve the goal in one week you'll have to do five speeches the next week. Once you feel that the goal is not challenging enough anymore, you might want to move on to other areas in your life that you desire to improve.

As with every post on this blog, the most important thing is that you TAKE ACTION. Don't just read this post but really DO IT. Call some friends, share the knowledge and set up a regular (weekly or fortnightly time) in which you just talk about your life goals and keep each other on track. You'll be amazed about the outcomes.

SRI – Use your breath to increase your well-being and reduce stress

I went to an SRI workshop this weekend with Dr Donald Epstein and found the techniques I learned very helpful. SRI stands for "Somato Respiratory Integration" and is a series of breathing techniques to reduce stress, increase well-being and improve overall health. SRI is especially powerful when we feel under stress and need to reconnect with our body.

I go to a Network Chiropractor regularly and find that SRI really improves the healing process of my body a lot. Over the past 12 months I've seen tremendous improvements in my health due to the Network Care that I receive. The most amazing thing is that normal doctors told me for so many years that I had to wear specially adapted shoes to outbalance the imbalance of my hip. Within only a few weeks my chiropractor managed to make adjustments to my body, so that I can just wear normal shoes: What an amazing relief after I thought that I could never wear normal shoes again. It turned out that the doctors who previously told me that my legs were of different length were completely wrong. In fact my legs are perfectly the same length and also my hip is 100% healthy, only my spine was twisted. I think this a perfect example of the limitations of normal medicine that is too often focused on treating the symptom (e.g. taking a painkiller or wearing adjusted shoes) rather than working on the cause (e.g. unhealthy lifestyle, twisted spine).

Based on my experience I'd love to encourage you explore the following opportunities:

1. Make an appointment with a chiropractor practicing Network Care (not the traditional chiropractic care)
   
2. Practice the first stage of SRI which is easy to learn and very effective (instructions e.g. available here: http://www.freemanwellness.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/Stage1.pdf )
   
3. When you go to a doctor don't see yourself as a patient asking the doctor to take care of your problem but rather a patient member with responsibility i.e. Invest some time researching skilled doctors in the respective area, ask questions to find out whether the doctor is really qualified: "Are you really focusing on treating the cause? How many people with similar problems have you helped in the past?"