I spent so much time beating myself up when i did not follow through with a goal that i wanted to achieve or i guess you could say a should. Many times i could hear my inner voice say that i should do this or i shouldn't have done that and its really true that this does create added stress and resistance when you do it to other people and even to yourself.
I was thinking about how i missed out on the pride parade because i was sick and how it was mostly just about muscular guys and then my thought chain made me think about how i can just see these guys when i go to the gym and this lead to thinking about how i need to go to the gym to be motivated to workout. I then realized that I am pretty motivated to workout, I keep a journal of my workout sessions, I'm taking pictures to keep track of my progress and its not something that stresses me out, I feel more relieved when i workout and I feel good about going to the gym. Is this because I should myself? Definately not! I mean the odd time i will should myself about it if i'm not feeling up to it but I want to make progress.
So why am I motivated and keep working out? I mean i've been working out for about a year and a half now. Well for me, everytime i see those muscular guys i think to myself..."that is what i'm going to look like". The thought alone does not ensure that but adding the action will bring me there. I think that is the purpose of CBT. Changing Cognition to change Behavior!
That section in the relaxation program about imagining yourself the way you want to be, well that imagine is starting to grow strong in my mind and I think I want to try using the same method i used to motivate myself to workout, to motivate myself to become who i want to be.
So for starters I'm going to start off with a colage of people whom I feel have faced some pretty incredible limitations and got through it and are being who they want to be and listening to their own personal voice of motivation. I'm talking about people like Madonna, The Dali Lama and Susan Bole.
If i can i will make this image and post it up here in this thread and I invite you guys to make some too and share it with us
Mike