Playing A Winning Game.

[success]It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or demons, heaven or hell. ~ Buddha[/success]

It might come as a shock. But there’s a really good reason why you do the things you do.

And if you wish you could be doing something other than the same things that lead to the same results…read on.

Being watchful

Most days I see the same woman, walking.  Not once a day, like me, sometimes I see her four or five times.  And she’s not doing my measly two mile walk, more like six miles or more each time.  I’d lay money on it, that I haven’t seen her every time she walks, so maybe it’s even more than I know.

Can you guess what’s coming next?  You know me so well…Miss Nosey Parker moved into action.

Today, no longer able to contain my curiosity, I asked if she was training for something.  It turned out Harmony, yes I discovered her name too, had been a marathon runner since she was twelve but for health reasons had to stop.  But she couldn’t stop walking and lifting weights and generally working out.

She was compelled, she said, to do it. Hmm, methinks there’s a story here.

Grandma’s wise words

I remembered grandma saying we play a losing game when we try to change our world, while keeping our current concepts of ourselves.  Harmony’s concept of herself was of an athlete and whilst she couldn’t run marathons any more it was still necessary for her to be as athletic as possible.  That’s who she saw herself as and was impelled to act accordingly.

It got me thinking about the different images we have of ourselves.  Some healthy, such as Harmony’s and some not so much.

To change our life experience and expect it to stick, we must first change our self image.

Get those negative images out of your hear

My BFF in England was heavy and getting heavier.  Dieting, different eating plans, and various weight loss programmes were just a way of life for her.  She’d lose weight for a while, and then before too long she was back to where she’d started…oftentimes heavier and truly disheartened.

She saw herself as an overweight woman and couldn’t get an image in her head of being at her ideal weight, or if she did, she couldn’t hang on to it for long.

She talked about it with my mum who came up with a brilliant idea to help keep the image in her mind.

Copy the polka dot jacket idea

Hanging in her closet was a polka dot jacket that she hadn’t been able to get into for donkey’s years…who knows why it was still there…anyway, she was to hang it right at the front of the closet and every day when she saw it, she would imagine wearing it and how fantastic she felt.

Isn’t it amazing…it’s always the little things…and this little thing made all the difference.

She told me later that she had always been focused on losing weight and what she had to do to accomplish that, hence all the different eating plans and programmes.

Thanks to my mum she learned to play only success images in her mind,  over time creating a new self concept.  And the funny thing was, she found herself wanting to eat differently and to exercise and according to her, it was soooo much easier than in the past.

My mum was a star.  Oh, and grandma also said we will never rise above the image we have of ourselves;  that our self concept is like a seed you plant, that will compel actions, and experiences to appear that confirm the planting.  More ideas to conjure with, grandma was full of them!

Encourage one other.

Love Elle.

xoxo