What will motivate you to exercise, eat more healthy and take your medicine? This should not be a difficult question to answer. You don't need to make a public declaration or tell your doctor you will lose 50 lbs. by next Christmas. Your doctor cares, but he probably hears lots of declarations. If it's just "feeling better and not going through the sugar roller coaster every afternoon at work" or "I want to see my grandchildren graduate college not in a wheel chair", you need some motivation. The book "Finding Your Zone: Ten Core Lessons for Achieving Peak Performance in Sports and Life" by Michael Lardon is a popular book that tells the story of making your own dreams come true. Lardon starts out with dreams, which is not exactly what most people think of when they want to get into shape or eat a better diet.
Michael Lardon writes for athletes, yet his method is not limited to them or even to spots. The idea of turning dreams into a reality is something that many people tried to explain. There are many methods, from visualization to step by step techniques of setting goals and working on achieving them in daily life. Lardon comes to this from experience and research. He stars out with an introduction into lucid dreams and the way Hopi Indians have used dreams to achieve their goals. He also describes many situations where people turn their dreams into reality without really thinking about the details. In Lardon's work with athletes he worked on the idea of "The Zone". According to many observers and athletes, there is a psychological state where people "Zone Out". They become so focused, they are somehow isolated from the physical world and just do what they think about. In sports this happens during practice and competition. This idea of "The Zone" has been around for a few decades, starting out with the East German athletes in Olympic games in the 1970's. Western athletes noticed how the East Germans were "psyching themselves" into a zen like state of focused hypnosis. Some saw it similar to meditation or a state of euphoria. Once the iron curtain fell, some Eastern German coaches and psychiatrists revealed some of their techniques. Lardon's book is similar to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi' books on "Flow". Csikszentmihalyi's Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (his name is the hardest part to pronounce and the easiest thing to remember when you are starting) is a classic on this idea.
I recommend this book to anyone that needs to set out a plan and want to do something above their current sport ability. Only by really doing more with sports will you get into shape. These is nothing mysterious about this idea, but in real life it is easier said than done. Just doing IT! as the Nike motto goes is not enough. There are people who have studied and taught motivation, they can help. Some of the ideas here are not common and will look strange. That's only a first introduction. Once you get the ideas and practice them, you will see that there is much more your motivation can do than you ever anticipated. This is a secret that many professional athletes have known, but not revealed to the rest of the world. It is also a secret that many people inside sports, specially coaches have seen but not understood. Once you see this in action you can judge for yourself if it is worth doing. If you are a lone athletes, running, biking or swimming day after day, a book like this is absolute god sent. If you are part of a team or a coach, this will open your eyes to a whole new world of coaching. Let me know what you think and how you use these techniques in your fitness program.
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