Fitness And Health

Posts Tagged ‘Self Help’

by Renee Pullman

There is a great book about empowering women at www.NancyWylde.com. The book chronicles the authors transformational moments in moving from a life structured by other peoples ideas for her to one of freedom, to a life that she has created. Nancy compels all women to examine the beliefs the are living with and the effect of those on the life you are living. She also explores self improvement technologies that she has employed to advance her life.

The book teaches women, really anyone, to build self-esteem and create a vision of and move toward the life they want. Here is a short video about the book:

Nancy’s story in Ticket To Freedom is compelling and I had the following thoughts after reading the book.

At the heart of empowering women is getting them to a level of self-esteem where they know that they just don’t have to take all the crap anymore. This is true of men too – so don’t run off if you are a man – this book is for you too.

Self-esteem is a core identity issue, essential to personal validation and our ability to experience joy.

Once achieved, it comes from the inside out. But it is assaulted or stunted from the outside in. A woman with low self-esteem does not feel good about herself because she has absorbed negative messages about women from the culture and/or relationships.

The reign of youth, beauty and thinness in our society dooms every woman to eventual failure. Women’s magazines, starting with the teenage market, program them to focus all their efforts on their appearance.

Many girls learn, by age 12, to drop formerly enjoyable activities in favor of the beauty treadmill leading to nowhere. They become fanatical about diets. They munch, like rabbits, on leaves without salad dressing, jog in ice storms, and swear they love it! Ads abound for cosmetic surgery, enticing us to “repair” our aging bodies, as if the natural process of aging were an accident or a disease. Yet with all this effort, they still never feel like they are good enough.

Get better everyday

Plan to do one thing that will help you improves physically, intellectually, emotionally, even spiritually. Making just one change for the better will boost your attitude from the inside out. You can actually chose what you want to change in this category first. Things you do most are the ones you need to focus on. A simple task wont take that long.

Little things add up

It’s amazing, really. The seemingly meaningless things you do for yourself may not have immediate results, but after just a short period of time they’ll have you looking and feeling better. So add those bubbles to your bath, make sure you eat your vegetables, get enough sleep, think of doing something nice when you have nothing to do, and the results will be worth it.

Mirrors don’t lie

Catty acquaintances can. Well-meaning friends might out of kindness or fear of hurting the friendship, but if you’ve got spinach in your teeth, your mirror will point it out. These things can be bothersome when you thought you were in your best but end up like this, so keep in mind about how to look best every time and enjoy its benefits.

Just go

If you just can’t get rid of that cowlick in your hair, that pimple on your nose, or those extra three pounds from yesterday’s buffet, just throw some gel in you hair, conceal that pimple the best you can, and wear something that’s not too clingy.

Appreciate

To get that attitude going the right way, you need to appreciate your face and body for what it is. It may be unrealistic to tell you to love it, but you certainly shouldn’t hate it. You definitely need to value what life has thrown you. That’s easier said than done in this society of model adulation and unrealistic standards.

If you take a look at any success story and grasp the one element of similarity between them, you’ll notice that virtually every self-made, successful person has this one super-important object of success in their mind- a burning desire to succeed. What counts is your frame of mind. Age, location, ethnic origin, gender, or any other individuality have absolutely no part in your attitude to become what you desire.

If you are a woman this is a must read book. If you are a man, you have some of the same issues and again, it is a must read book. You will both learn from, be transformed by, and enjoy Ticket To Freedom.

Nancy Wylde, Empowering Women, Ticket To Freedom – you will not be disappointed.

The author of this post counts herself  a friend of Nancy Wylde and and was happy to receive a free autographed copy of this book from the author.

Affirmations are an aid to healing, getting fit, becoming successful, in fact they will aid you in any area of your life.

This post describes how you can record your own affirmations to play in the background or full up as you go through the day or just when you need a refresher. But I also want to state here and now that it is not necessary that they be recorded at all. Write them on an index card and bring it out and read them to yourself or aloud several times a day. It still works – I like them recorded and I let them play in the background on a loop as I work at the computer. Do it the way you’d like – just do it for yourself – do it to build yourself up to be the best person that you can be. That’s the most unselfish thing you can do – build a better you. You will, by becoming better, lift those around you. Even if you don’t intend to record affirmations stick with us for the background and a couple of ideas about writing affirmations.

Émile Coué is credited with popularizing affirmations with his famous ‘everyday in every way I’m getting better and better.’ Coué was a pharmacist who found that when he dispensed medicine with a good word that the medicine was more effective. From this he developed his daily affirmataions.

If you are trying to improve any area of your life from health to sports performance to how you do in school affirmations can help. Many people grew up being told various things both good and bad about themselves. A parents voice may ring in your head to this day and it affects your actions, what you believe you are capable of, what you believe the truth to be. The truth is, “what one man can accomplish, so can another.” The truth also is the mind has a powerful affect on the body and by putting your message in you can improve your lot. Put your message of the desired result and build yourself up.

Music is not required for affirmations but studies have been done suggesting that affirmations (and any form of learning) can be facilitated by playing Baroque music at the same time. Baroque music is at 60 beats/minute and that seems to be the key. Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” is one piece with suitable music (largo tempo).

Affirmations or self-talk have long been recognized as a way to affect the way you look at and interact with the world. Affirmations affect both the conscious and unconscious mind allowing you to plan and sink ideas and actions into your life almost unnoticed.

In reality affirmations have been around almost forever. Consider these verses from Proverbs 4:

20 My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. 21 Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. 22 For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh. Keep them in the midst of thine heart! Proverbs is promoting the idea of scripture as affirmations and keeping them in your heart.

Here is the whole idea Behind Affirmations:

1. State desired thought/action in a positive way.
2. Repeat.
3. Keep it in your heart, in other words keep it in mind all the time.
4. Keep to a single theme in your affermations for a few days or a week. Keep it short and repeat.

If you suffer from negative thoughts, create or find a good affirmation to replace it. Some people use Bible Quotes: Norman Vincent Peale in “The Power Of Positve Thinking” gave several scriptures for this purpose. Notably Philipians 4:13 – “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” He was also fond of Romans 8:31, “If God be for me, who can be against me.” There are many in both testaments of the Bible that can be used if you are so inclined. Peale, a minister also made clear that even if you were not a believer that the techniques would still work.

Your affirmation should be positive and reflect a desired condition: “I see a picture of myself as having already reached my goal. The picture becomes clearer day-by-day as I work toward and achieve my goal.” This affirmation includes instruction to visualize your goal, to see it as already completed. This is a huge success factor in anything you want to do. “I do the things I need to do to keep myself healthy, fit and feeling good.” “Life is a wonderful dance, I enjoy my life and experiences, I attract the very best into my life and I am grateful.” Use words like: “I have” or “I Am,” say it in the present tense. Just a few ideas to get you started in creating your own and remember, your thoughts create your life.

I like to record about a minutes worth on a common theme and then loop the playback with Real Player or ITunes. You can read more about it and download free affirmations on this blog. There are lots of resources on the web and many want to charge money for affirmation recordings but there is no need to pay. The formulas are very simple and you can do it for yourself.

If you don’t have audio recording software, try Audacity – it’s open source and free. It should be able to do anything you need. Here’s where to find Audacity and the basics of how to install it:

1. Download Audacity: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/latest/audacity-win/audacity-win-1.2.6.exe
2. Execute and follow the prompts
3. Download lame: http://www.rarewares.org/dancer/dancer.php?f=226
4. Unzip it and save the file lame_enc.dll to C:\Program Files\Audacity. Ignore the rest of the zip contents.
5. The first time you use the “Export as MP3″ command, Audacity will ask you where lame_enc.dll is saved. Point it to: C:\Program Files\Audacity

That should do it.

Remember keep your affirmations short (1 to 2 minutes). Keep it positive. Repeat.

Here are some books that can help you tune yourself mentally.
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As promised we are posting audio affirmations and will post more from time-to-time. You can subscribe on ITunes or download them directly here.

To use ITunes:

1. Pull down the “Advanced” menu.

2. Pick “Subscribe to Podcast.”

3. Paste the RSS feed URL:

http://fitnessandhealthblog.com/fitnessandhealthblogpodcast.xml

into the box.

4. Click “OK.”

When you play the file you will see it is just over 1 minute. It is important that you set your player to loop repeatedly on the audio. With ITunes you need to make a playlist and put the podcast into it. Then select repeat in controls as seen here:

If you have downloaded the mp3 file directly you can accomplish the looped playback in real player like this:

If you are interested in recording your own affirmations and more ideas about them you might want to check out this hub page.