"Developing "Mental Toughness"

You might spend a lot of time thinking about how to get your body stronger, but have you ever thought about increasing your mental toughness? Think of your brain like a muscle you can strengthen, and you can improve your life. Mental toughness means you won’t fall apart with bad news, or when a challenge or a problem comes your way. With a strong mindset you can set goals, overcome setbacks (without unhealthy behaviors)." ~Chris Freytag

This article was not Christian related but boy can it relate to the Christian life. Here are a few tips about developing "mental toughness." 

First of all, God is our strength.
God said this once and for all; how many times Have I heard it repeated? “Strength comes Straight from God.” (Psalm 62:11 MSG)

So we will never be strong enough on our own to amount to anything.
That being said, I think we need to develop some mental toughness about facing life.
So my tip for the day is start each day with prayer and gratitude! Plank and praise is a really good way to express your joy to the Lord. 

Another idea about developing mental toughness is to keep your promises. I need to back up here for a second. I wrote a vision plan for my own life several years ago. I try to update the goals once a year. I call them "Pat's Priorities." If you feel like your goals are within God's will for you, then your goal is much like a promise that you intend to keep.

"When you do what you say you are going to do (from your workouts to meeting up with a friend for lunch) you are a person who keeps commitments. Whether it’s a silent promise to yourself or a commitment to someone else, keep those promises and you will be strengthening your mindset because you are a person of your word." ~ Chris Freytag

When we commit to ourselves that we will read our Bible on a daily basis or commit to a friend that we will pray for them, we need to keep that promise. Whether we are keeping a promise to a friend or keeping a promise to ourselves, we are developing that mindset that we will not disappoint our friends or ourselves.

If we continually break promises, whether to ourselves or others, life seems more out of control. We will break more easily in a storm. We will be more likely to forget that God ALWAYS keeps his promises…always!

One more tidbit about developing a strong mindset...

Two people are better than one. When two people work together, they get more work done. If one person falls, the other person can reach out to help. But those who are alone when they fall have no one to help them.

An enemy might be able to defeat one person, but two people can stand back-to-back to defend each other. And three people are even stronger. They are like a rope that has three parts wrapped together—it is very hard to break. (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10, 12 ERV)

Self-discipline doesn’t have to be about how much temptation you resist, it can be about how smart you are about creating an environment that supports you. Do you hang around others who want to grow in their relationship with Christ? Do you have friends and family supporting you and your goals? Do you have an accountability partner or a friend who pushes you a little bit? Each day commit to a little more "mental toughness."

An undisciplined, self-willed life is puny; an obedient, God-willed life is spacious. (Proverbs 15:32 MSG)

So much is said in this short verse. Undisciplined is what I am at times and my life starts closing in. Put the discipline back in and life does seem to be more spacious.

To be obedient to God requires discipline. We don't wait until we feel a rush of emotional desire to spend time drinking in his wisdom, spending time in prayer. To wait for the emotional feeling to be obedient means we are living an undisplined and self-willed life. 

ACE(quote from Mark) acting cures everything. When we begin acting in obedience, the feelings follow.

I praise you because you made me in such a wonderful way. I know how amazing that was! Psalm 139:14 ERV

"Working on your body image is a long-term job. Many of us have spent years comparing ourselves to models and Hollywood stars and we're so used to putting ourselves down that it's a difficult habit to break." ~ Paige Waehner

I was reading this article and I thought about how the enemy wants us to feel bad about the way we look. The more he gets us discouraged and depressed about our appearance, the more we take our eyes off the Lord and become frantic to try to look better. Think about this for a minute…would God ever ever look at us in disgust and say "you are so unattractive!" 

Next time you are tempted to compare yourself to someone else, stop right there and retrain your thoughts. Start praising God about the way we are fearfully and wonderfully made. I start thanking the Lord for the way he made my legs really thick:):):). The world will not ever complement me on my legs. But God made me exactly this way and he loves my legs...and I sure can walk around good with these legs!

What Do you Fear About Being More Healthy?

How many people want to lose weight and just cannot begin and take the first step? I am a former couch potato, at one time weighing over 80 pounds my present weight. Actually this is not at all the significant part of this blog. Let me assure you that the significant part is that I am actually keeping it off. That is another story.

But let's assume that the losing part is what you need to do right now. Perhaps you have health problems that are motivating you to lose pounds. Maybe you want to improve your marriage(and it WILL improve your marriage!). Maybe you just want to run around with your kids or grandkids and you are not able to do this with your present weight and fitness. I have been in your shoes!  What I am going to write is not a quick, easy fix to losing weight. But I am going to be tell you some secrets that you need to understand deep in your heart for  you to do this and maintain this weight loss.

Yoda is 100% correct…you must "train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose." What I had to do and still have to continue to do is to not have a fear that I will starve or ever feel a hunger pain. Many of us a real fear of getting hungry. The thought of getting a little hungry scares us and we want to eat to get rid of that feeling. People in third world countries deal with a more than a little hunger every day of their short lives. We will not starve! I think that if I had visited India when I was 80 pounds overweight, I would have had such a feeling of remorse over my fixation with food when I saw how little the kids had to eat.

We have way too much food to eat in America. We have a fast food restaurant on every corner. We have grocery  stores full of every known food. But I think that is exactly our problem. We fear that a healthy eating plan will starve us and make us do without the stuffed feeling of overeating. We fear that we may have to do without our favorite food and feel cheated. We fear that we will not have enough variety in our food; that our diet may be plain from now on.

Try this experiment for one week. Write down every single food that you eat or would like to eat if it was available. Now at the end of this week, take every single item that you wrote down and ask yourself,"Is this item of food more important to me than my health, my marriage, my children?" Be honest with yourself. Which food item is worth more than these things? If the answer to every single item on your list is "no, they are not more important than these things," then it is time to face your fears.

Are you afraid to face the idea that you may not need to eat a bag of chips or the amount of cookies that you must have to feel full?  I made a box and put inside this box the food items that I felt like would be good for me to eat. I put things like vegetables, fruit, lean meats, healthy protein shake, yogurt, etc. I left off things like cookies, chips, french fries and even my favorite thing in the world…cheesecake! I had to grieve over the loss of each one but I decided that there were things in life more important than these items of food.

I think someday I will write a blog about naming your "why" that you want to commit to something. But for now, write down your "why" for wanting to lose weight and beginning to exercise. If your "why" is powerful enough, you will get over your fear of becoming more healthy.