Setting Your Mind & Commitment
We don’t have to meditate on everything that pops into our heads (although it’s quite easy to do so); we have the option of choosing what we think about. I can hear it already, ‘easier said than done’. Hey, I’ve said that too, a lot; and it IS easier said than done, if you just expect it to happen casually on its own. It takes intention and commitment on your part, and then with practice you quickly realize (as I am) that it really isn’t just easier said than done.
Thinking is directly related to one’s personal quality of life.
One of things I am learning to do more of is to ‘set my mind’. To set your mind means to make up your mind firmly. I read a good analogy of this in regards to concrete. Wet concrete can be moved with ease and is very impressionable before it ‘sets’, but once it does set, it’s in place for good. It cannot be easily changed.
To set your mind is to determine DECISIVELY what you will think. what you will believe and what you will do and will not do. Setting it in such a decisive way that you cannot be easily swayed or persuaded otherwise.
Why is this important? Not just in the context of fitness, dieting, eating well, training etc., but rather in most areas of life? Because NOT setting your mind decisively in advance of say, a temptation, makes it much, much harder to resist that temptation when you’re IN that situation. For many of us (raises hand) it’s often too late at that point. Making up your mind, setting your mind decisively in ADVANCE of a situation, really setting it (key word there is decisively) makes coming out victorious in whatever that circumstance or temptation is, much more likely.
It’s not as if we can avoid dieting temptations – they’re never going away. Just like cravings – accepting that they’re a reality leads to more victory than just willing yourself to ignore them, which you can’t, given the more you consciously think NO, the more attention you’re actually giving them.
Think ahead to potential events, situations, circumstances, and set your mind in ADVANCE. Make your decision, no matter what it is – let’s say it’s to stay true to your plan. Set your mind on it and commit. Let’s say it’s to relax and enjoy yourself at some event or whatever; set your mind on that then. Be decisive; there’s much more peace there.
Dieting success has a lot to do with setting our minds. Setting our minds to commit to our plans, which is more a commitment to ourselves than it is to our programs. It’s easy to commit to a diet the day after you ate 8000 calories of craziness. How about a few days later once you’re hungry again (another dieting norm by the way). If you’ve set your mind in advance, you’ll stick to your guns much more easily than if you just ‘take it as it comes’, especially through the more challenging days.
Make up your mind ahead of time. I guess ‘setting your mind’ can also be reworded as COMMITMENT. You’re either in or you’re out; there’s no such thing as ‘sort of’ committed.
Commitment doesn’t just show up. It takes a CONTINUOUS concentrated effort to commit and set your mind, but there are plenty of achievement rewards there that make it worth it.