My Little Blog for the Third Act of Life
My Little Blog for the Third Act of Life
I am 56 years old and I have never felt good about my body. I have never once felt comfortable taking my clothes off. For the first half of my life I was super skinny. I mean super skinny, 27 inch waste, concaved chest, biceps the same size as my forearms, had to shop in the boys department, skinny. I seemed to go straight from that to having a gut. I have had moments where I felt better than other times, but never, never, never felt good enough to just take my shirt off in public, swim at the beach, or not be thinking about myself instead of the naked guy in front of me. I could have been standing in front of the guy in the picture above and no matter how much I was turned on, my first thought would be, “I can’t take my clothes off in front of him”.
Let’s get one thing cleared up. I’m not drinking the cool aid. I’m not one of those people that say you should love your body no matter what you look like. I know what a good body looks like and I know what my body looks like. I know that I don’t have a good body and it would be dumb for me to sit here and make myself believe I do. That’s not saying I have to look like the guy above. Different people have different ideas of what is good looking but let’s be honest, we all know what is not good looking. I get it, some people think smooth is hot, some like hair, some like a lot of muscle, a little muscle and some like the skinny that I once was. My sister likes her guys to have a gut because it makes her feel less uncomfortable about herself. All of that is fine for each person. Here is the deal with me though. I know what I like and I should have the same expectations for myself that I have for the guy I am with. It’s as simple as that.
I need, for once in my life, to feel good about my body. I think until that happens, I’m never going to be comfortable being with someone else.
It is my fault I have never had the body I wanted. I am the one that didn’t consistently eat right or work out as hard or as much as I needed to. I am the one that didn’t do what I needed to do to have that body. I need to do that now. But how? How do I overcome the apprehension of going to the gym? Or get myself to find the time. Exercise at home. Ride my bike. There has to be a way to motivate myself on a daily basis to do what I need to do to have what I want to have. So here is the deal… I am going to try a number of different tips and tactics to get myself motivated to work out. The first is…
I heard something today that made sense to me.
That makes sense to me. If you subconsciously don’t believe you will succeed then your mind will find reasons to not even try or to quit before anything can happen. That is huge. In order for me to have a good body, the first thing that must happen is I must believe I can have a good body. Easier said than done. Just because you want to believe something, doesn’t mean you can. If someone said, “believe Putin is a nice guy”, that doesn’t mean you can just believe it. Mainly because nothing that I know and nothing that he has done has shown that he is a nice guy. I guess some people can drink the kool-aid, but you know how I feel about that. That’s not going to happen.
So what makes you believe something can happen or is likely to happen?
This means that motivation; desire to obtain a goal, need to obtain it, fear of not obtaining it or incentive to obtain it, doesn’t matter. It doesn’t increase the actual ability or likelihood of achieving it.
The other piece of the puzzle, I believe, is confidence and comfort in what you are doing. Its much easier to go to the gym you feel comfortable in your body, know how to use the equipment and in general, feel comfortable being there. It’s easier to go to a party when you know other people and you know those people like you. Speaking in front of a group is easier when you are confident in what you are speaking and have an excited and attentive audience. Your success is much greater when you are confident and comfortable in what you are doing.
How to have greater confidence in working out;
I have been a big goals guy for a couple decades now. I have had a vision board, a list of goals in one place, for just about as long. The vast majority of those goals have come to pass too. I would say about 80% of everything I have put on a vision board has come to be. What I have come to realize over the last couple years though is it isn’t the goals that have made them come to pass, it is me taking some type of action towards achieving them. I always gave the act of putting the goals on the board the credit but it was truly the steps I took to reach the goals that made them obtainable. When I wanted to go to London, it wasn’t adding a picture of Big Ben to my board, it was booking the flights. Booking that non refundable flight made it real, made it obtainable. It was the beginning of the process that would be taken in order to achieve the goal. When I wanted to live in a high rise condo on the Las Vegas strip, it wasn’t putting a picture of the condo on my vision board, it was contacting an agent to show me one. That started the process of achieving the goal.
Don’t mistake me here. You need the list of goals, in one format or another, or you won’t know what actions to take but you can’t stop there. It is the actions or process you take that make it happen. I say process, which I am defining as a group of actions, because most things don’t happen with one action. If you want a better body, it isn’t as easy as just “go to the gym”. It is more likely a process of actions that must happen; Go to the gym, ride your bike, learn healthier eating options, and more. You don’t have to do them all at once, but they are all part of the equation.
I have always been intrigued about hypnosis and audible has a few hypnosis books. The one I purchased has multiple themes, if that is what you call them, to the book. I will try them and let you know what they do.
Books/AudioBooks