It seems like everywhere I look, I’m bombarded with advertisements that encourage me to change my authentic self in some way or another. A new crash diet can supposedly give me the body of my dreams. Workout classes encourage participants to just “power through” their discomfort to achieve the ultimate goal of “looking good” on the beach. It seems like the idea of wellness has been completely tarnished to the point where we focus more on what we need to lose than what we need to gain.
Focusing on what we want to positively manifest into our lives is a concept that was introduced to me through the Law of Attraction, or LOA. This law became a widespread phenomenon after Rhonda Byrne published her book, The Secret, in 2006. While it can seem a little intimidating to delve into the LOA, I’ve found that it’s actually simpler than I expected it would be.
The main takeaway I learned from The Secret is that we bring more of what we think about and how we feel into our lives, often without even realizing it. Once you understand that you have control over your thought processes, you can use them to your benefit to attract positive experiences, people, and things into your life.
So, how does this all relate to health and fitness? Over time, I’ve realized that every diet I ever attempted had ultimately failed. I started to consider that some workout classes I attended were not even enjoyable to me personally. So, naturally, none of these tactics were working in my favor.
Over the past few years, with the help of the LOA, I’ve began to shift my perspective on wellness from one that focused on what I was lacking, to one that focused on what I was hoping to gain. I reconditioned my mind from wanting to lose weight to wanting to feel healthier and more confident in myself. I began to re-establish a sense of joy in what I was doing, and once I started to feel good, I noticed that I began to see the results I was always trying to attain.
The two most instrumental changes I made were eating foods that were both healthy and energizing, and finding workouts that brought me joy. I didn’t restrict myself from eating anything, rather, I started to look at food as fuel that would give me enough energy for the day. I also pinpointed cycling, yoga, and Zumba as classes that were so fun for me to do that I forgot that I was even working out when I was doing them. I realized that life is too short to feel miserable while dieting and dragging myself to unfulfilling workouts, just because that’s the only way I’ve been conditioned to believe that I can be in shape.
Ultimately, health and fitness are very subjective, because what works for one person may not work for another. But what can work for us all collectively is focusing on eating foods and doing workouts that we each personally enjoy, because that will yield the best results in the long run. You’ll be happier, feel better, and finally won’t cringe when you think about getting a workout in for the day!
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.