When you wake up and see that “Life is about Choices”, then you start to realize how often you were just on autopilot. Is making “Default” choices really living? Is your life on autopilot? How to stop living life on autopilot.
We often seek out comfort as our main priority: Our comfort zone, comfort food, and a comfortable lifestyle. These clichés are woven into our vernacular of life. So, when you make a change in life, it takes you out of your comfort zone and you need to turn off the autopilot and start making conscious choices, at least until you write a new program.
Programs become habits. So, when you are rewriting or writing from scratch, there is an opportunity to create new programming or new habits that will run on autopilot. This is a more efficient way to utilize the powers of your subconscious mind. Utilize that power.
You create your habits…
Then your habits create you.
What drives you?
Where does the motivation come from that drives you?
First off, there are two types of motivation and one combination:
* Away from pain or
* Towards pleasure or
* Both at the same time.
“Away from pain” has a naturally strong sense of urgency, so this is good for immediate actions. If you’ve ever touched something hot, you do not contemplate if you should move your hand. You move it immediately in reaction to the pain. But you were not paying attention to where your hand goes, as long as it is away from the hot object and away from the cause of pain.
“Towards pleasure” has a very definite direction. Especially the more specifically you can define what you really want. Someone might say I want a vacation, another might say I want to go to Europe, and another might say I want to go to Europe and see the amazing sites like the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, ride a gondola in Venice, etc. So, “Towards pleasure” can have a very specific direction. It can even have a built-in plan of the details of the logistics. But what it lacks is the urgency… Someday, someway, somehow, I will take that vacation…
The combination of “Away” and “Towards” Motivation builds a propulsion system. Stress and work and the BS of life build to a point where you need a break, so you plan a vacation. Away from the stress of day-to-day and towards the pleasure of some island where you can relax.
Picture an old horse and carriage. The driver has two tools to motivate the horse. A pole with a carrot hanging from it and a stick or a whip. He hangs the carrot in front of the horse to chase. Horses like carrots and they’re motivated towards the pleasure of eating and enjoying them. But when the horse slows down because it has been riding for a while and has not gotten any closer to the carrot, it has lost that motivation. The driver then hits the horse in the butt and it runs away from the pain. So, when you see the horse and carriage going across the horizon, you cannot tell if the horse is running toward the carrot or away from the stick. Because it is actually doing a combination of both.
So maybe you are already thinking of how you can apply this to your own life.
Life is about choices!
What is your motivation for health and wellness?
“Away from” some pain or ailment or a weight issue… OR
“Towards” feeling well and energized at your ideal weight.
Maybe you finally set some real goals for yourself and you stop living life on autopilot. And you may even realize how important your mindset is in relation to accomplishing these goals and staying on track.
So, if you look at the future as if you were at a crossroads of two possible futures…
And you realize “Life is about choices” then you can choose the best possible future that will lead you to your best possible life.
Your life is the result of all the choices that you make. So, first, you must realize that you are the cause. When you are living your life “at choice” and you are responsible and take responsibility for your choices, then you are creating your life by choice or by design.
Good choices = good living
Bad choices = not so much
So, the real answer is to have a strategy for how you choose and to have a conscious awareness that you are using this strategy and then you can make it automatic and trust that it is working.
Don’t set a goal to lose weight…
Focus on Achieving your ideal weight +/-
And maintaining it through a healthy lifestyle.
So, in any health and wellness goal, there is a target and then there is a lifestyle beyond that target. To accomplish these, you need a trainer.
This trainer can be yourself or someone else. You actually need two trainers:
A Personal Trainer and A Personal Mind Trainer (R) help you achieve your goals of making healthy choices in life
Most people know what a personal trainer is. They help you set and stay accountable for the goals that you set to become stronger. A personal mind trainer helps you to build your mental strength and abilities and to stay focused and accountable for your goals as well. So, a personal mind trainer helps you to work smart in addition to working hard and helps you stop living life on autopilot.
In conclusion, it comes down to one thing:
Life is about choices!
You create your habits
And your habits create you and your lifestyle.
Imagine you had a vision for your life and the mission statement of how you will live into it and you make the best possible choices and you are highly motivated as if nothing is in your way.
How will your life be even more enjoyable? Think about it.
Sometimes, all it takes is a small shift in your daily habits to create a new routine where you crave the discipline to master your health, wealth, and love in your life.
Because “Life is about Choices” and it is all about those habits that you choose to continue that shape your life. You can now make new choices that assist you in creating your life to include the best possible habits until living your best life just becomes automatic as if you rewrote the programming of the autopilot of your mind.
Mark Siegel
Related Posts
