Awesome question, right?
In life coaching, we are in the business of asking awesome questions. When you ask awesome questions, you get awesome answers.
Try it.
Answer this question right now: “How can I have fun while reversing my diabetes?” Sit with it for a minute. Focus your mind. If you do not direct your mind, it will wander where ever it likes to. And for many of us, negativity rules its usual roaming grounds.
Notice what answers come up for you. Do you feel creativity and inspiration offering you ideas? Recipes? 😆
Or do you hear your mind mocking this question with retorts like: “Who are you kidding? This is going to be hard.” Or, “Fun?! How about miserable?”
Notice.
Your response matters.
The story you tell yourself is a window into what you believe. If you think it’s going to be hard work and suffering or that the fun comes once you are successful, you probably will never get there.
Why? Because our brains like to put off hard things for a “better time.” We are programmed to seek pleasure and comfort. If you think it’s going to be miserable, you won’t ever get to the fun part.
Success is not an arrival point after a long road of hard work. What it takes to get to “success” is what it takes to keep it. If you think the fun comes later, you’re going to be disappointed when it doesn’t.
Many of us have learned that work is separate from fun. And that more work equals more success. We think work is serious business and that fun doesn’t fit it with serious.
This thinking actually repels success. When you are miserable, feeling like you are being punished, feeling deprived or wallowing in self-pity, you’re not in a mindset that compels you to make good decisions for yourself.
It looks like this: Everyone in your family is having homemade milkshakes after dinner, but you have not planned this in your day. You think: “It’s not fair that I’m the only one missing out.” You feel: left out and sorry for yourself. These feelings drive you to isolate, beat yourself up, resent your family. Your result? You choose to miss out on family connection and you are not fair to them.
You make yourself miserable with this kind of thinking. How long do you think you can keep this up? If you make the process of taking control of your diabetes and future self-punishment, how will you ever get there?
This is why you must learn to have fun in the journey. Because nothing outside of you is going to create the fun. You have to bring it to the party.
You create fun. Not your glucometer. Not your A1c. Not your medication list.
You create fun with your THOUGHTS. 💭🤯
People confuse fun with pleasure. They think that the process has to be pleasurable or it isn’t fun. What if it could feel challenging and still be fun?
Think of an experience that pushed you to grow. A time where you set a goal for yourself that was a real beast to tame. You were going to have to give it 100%.
The most recent experience I can think of in my life that relates to this is setting the goal of running a 50K with my husband just outside of Zion National Park. Do you think I found it pleasurable to run 15 or 20 miles in the winter on a training run? Or to leave my family for 4 hours to go for a “run?” Not so much. 😕
Even the race itself: getting lost for 2 miles; running 1 mile straight up a 1500 foot elevation gain; feeling like I was dying when I still had 12 miles to go. Not so much pleasure during those parts. There was actually a lot of pain involved, alright?
But it was one of the most fun and satisfying experiences I’ve had. The whole thing–not just when I crossed the finish line.
One sure-fire clue that you are believing the fun part comes at the end is if you are in a rush to get there. If you notice you are doing this, you need to slow it down and take a look at why you’re not having fun now.
I love the example I’ve heard before about the plane ride to Hawaii. Think about it. On that plane ride, there’s no reason to be having a lot of fun. You look out the window and there’s nothing great going on out there. We’re in a cramped seat for hours and hours. But most of us are pretty excited to be on that plane. We’re anticipating the reward at the end, knowing we are going somewhere amazing.
Could you think about your health journey in a similar frame of mind? Knowing that you are doing something incredible and that the future you are creating for yourself is amazing makes getting there fun.
If you focus your mind on having fun, it will find the fun.
I don’t know about you, but I like having fun. I want to have more of it anywhere I go. It’s tremendous fun helping people crush their goals reversing Type 2 Diabetes and getting off their meds FOREVER.
I want to tell you about a free training I’m putting on next Friday, January 24th, 2020 at 4 pm MST/ 5 pm CST. I’m giving you a solid foundation and teaching you real tools to reverse Type 2 Diabetes.
It’s called: A Beginner’s Guide to Reversing Type 2 Diabetes and Getting Off Your Meds Forever. Make sure you sign up now — don’t miss out!
