3 Strategies to Increase Inner Strength and Motivation

You know when you are super excited about the possibility of a life change? You fantasize about this better version of yourself in your daydreams. You know you want this change to happen whether it is exercising more, eating healthier, doing more relaxation or meditating regularly-- or anything else you say and believe you want to do! You may start out with a ton of energy and enthusiasm! You’ve purchased a new exercise apparatus, cooking apparatus, meditation cushion, you feel set to make it happen…until…

One day the motivation is just zapped, it’s gone. Whether it’s when you are about to start moving forward towards this change or you’ve already begun making some progress and then suddenly you can’t seem to find the same energy you just had two weeks ago. Haven’t we all been there? What happens? Why does motivation go away?

I know for me it’s a negative space in my mind that tells me super mean things that zap my energy and motivation by appealing to my inner critic. These mean thoughts might be something like: “Why bother? What’s the point? You’ll never really stick with this because you never stick with anything.”  If this mean approach doesn’t work, my mind takes on a different tone…enter the self-saboteur…

The self-sabotage mode thoughts are more sneaky, they make it look like they are looking out for me and using my own words against me—they say things like, “You are too tired today.” “You deserve a rest day.” ”You will do ____________ later because you really should ______________ right now.” “You need some self-care time.” Any of these sound familiar? You are not alone!

In my personal wellness journey, my current goal is to sweat more. When given the option between walking and jogging, I usually choose to take a walk. When given the option between a power yoga class and a restorative yoga class, I tend to choose restorative yoga. There is absolutely nothing wrong with walking and restorative yoga--they are wonderful sources of moving the body in a positive way. But they don’t cause me to break a sweat and my goal is to sweat for at least 30 minutes, 3-5 times per week!

I have allowed myself to ease into it slowly so I don’t shock my body and cause an injury. I have experienced the benefits--like feeling healthier, stronger, and less stressed. Then one day--it showed up—you know that part of yourself that works super hard to sabotage your progress. I call this part of myself the Deal Maker. It always has a deal, and it is super convincing.

My internal Deal Maker works super hard to get me off track! The thing is, when I fall for it and think I will take this great deal (exercise later today, exercise longer tomorrow…) with the Deal Maker, there is always another deal…

This is where developing the internal voice of your Inner Strength is absolutely essential for motivation. You need to have convincing comebacks prepared for your Deal Maker. Knowing what your Deal Maker looks and sounds like is key. Knowing what helps to get you out of your funk—or your Deal Maker thinking--will help you move through and past your resistance to change so you can continue to show up for yourself, your goals and your life consistently. 

Here are 3 useful strategies to help you increase your Inner Strength. These strategies will help you build motivation, get you out of a funk, reassess your goals and get you back into consistent action mode! 

1.    Set a Specific, Doable and Desirable Goal with Action Steps

When you set a goal, you want it to be something specific, meaning measurable. You want it to be something that is doable within your daily life so you can make it happen. You want it to be desirable, you have to actually WANT to achieve the goal. The action steps are the little steps you take that move you in the direction of your goals. These steps are necessary to the process of creating the change you desire and to remaining motivated. They can also be simplified so that you don’t feel overwhelmed.

2.    Have A Comeback Prepared!

Having a specific comeback prepared for your Deal Maker will allow you to be armed and ready when it strikes! If your Deal Maker often uses the excuse, you DESERVE _________________, because ___________________. These deserving statements can be quite convincing and send you into a space of not following through on an action step- guised as “self-care.” This will inevitably be discouraging because you will not make progress if you do not follow through with your action steps. In order to stop these inner negotiations, you need to have a phrase or comeback prepared! Something like, “I DESERVE to reach my goals,” “I DESERVE to feel healthy,” “I DESERVE to feel successful.” When you have these prepared you are more likely to tap into your Inner Strength which will create the progress you truly desire.

3.    Make Decisions Based on How You Want to Feel

How do you want to feel? Motivated? Strong? Confident? Healthy? When you make choices that align with how you want to feel, you are more likely to follow the action steps you’ve created to reach your goals. Action creates positive feelings, action alleviates fear, action makes change happen! If you want to feel healthy, you have to actively choose to make healthy choices. If you want to feel strong, you have to choose to access your Inner Strength. Try setting an intention each morning. Ask yourself, “How do I want to feel today?” and let your actions, choices and decisions be based on this specific feeling. Notice the impact on your choices throughout the day.

These three strategies, when implemented together consistently is how you can make change happen. These three strategies will help you remain motivated and deal with any inner negativity that may arise, your inner saboteur, your inner fears. Action is the cure for fear. When you take consistent action, you will reach your goals. 

Try these three ways to increase your Inner Strength and let me know how they work for you!

Why Eating Well Is a Form of Self-Respect

Food is tricky. There are so many enticing foods out there. Food is often used as a motivator, a treat, and a reward. So how do we tease out eating well, intuitive eating, and being our best and healthiest versions of ourselves? This is super complicated and that’s what I am going to talk about here, so read on!

When you respect yourself and your body, you consider what you eat a part of the process of respecting yourself. While I DO NOT recommend food restrictions (dieting mindset) or withholding foods that you enjoy. This only causes feeling of deprivation, however, there are some useful guidelines that can help you make the best choice possible in the moment for your mind, your body, and for your future self—when the decision relates to what you are about to eat.

Here are a series of questions that you can ask yourself about the foods you are choosing to eat:

• Before you eat, ask your food: “what do you have to offer me?” Ideally, we want our food to offer nutrients: fiber, vitamins, minerals, protein, health fat, and carbohydrates in order to give our bodies the nourishment it needs to build healthy cells and tissues. Nutrients are the ideal answer to this question!

• Next, ask your food, “are you desirable and enjoyable to eat?” This is super important as well because if your food does not offer some form of pleasure, that may be placing you at risk of feeling unsatisfied. When you are feeling unsatisfied by a meal, you may end up mindlessly grazing other foods in order to feel a sense of pleasure and satisfaction. This contributes to the negative cycle of emotional eating.

• Next, ask yourself, “am I actually hungry for this food?” If the answer is yes, you will most likely eat the food! If the answer is no, you can ask yourself “do I want to eat this food for any reason other than taste and nutrition?” If the answer is yes, ask yourself, “why do I want to eat this food?” This is where it may get interesting. If you want to eat this food for comfort, to avoid feelings, to fill the time or to fill any other void you may be experiencing in your life, this is indicative of emotional eating.

Emotional eating is eating for the purpose of numbing out or disconnecting from uncomfortable emotions. This creates a disconnect between our bodies and our emotions. Here are some common examples of emotional eating:

• Eating when lonely which causes food to become your friend,

• Eating when you are bored which causes food to become something to do to fill your time

• Eating when you are anxious which causes food to become a way to calm yourself down

• Eating when you are tired which causes a sugar rush for energy

• Eating when you are sad which uses food to help escape the discomfort of sadness and to temporarily feel happy

• You can read more about how to heal emotional eating on my post: 6 steps to finding freedom from emotional eating.

These examples of emotional eating are not healthy reasons to eat. When you eat emotionally, you are essentially demonstrating a sense of lack of self-respect or honoring your emotions and your internal experiences.

Offering yourself empowerment when it comes to your food choices allows you to move away from a deprivation mindset. A deprivation mindset is: “I can’t have that” while an empowered, Inner Strength based mindset is: “I choose not to have that because it does not serve my health and wellness goals.” This mindset demonstrates a form of self-respect.

This is how you build your Inner Strength over time and prepare yourself to manage your emotions in another, healthier more empowered manner. You can read about this on my blog post: 5 Stages of Awareness. Emotions offer incredibly valuable information about your experience of the present moment. When you learn to become present with them, food can be just food, and this is where your power lies!

One way to begin practicing healthy eating as a form of self-respect is to go through these questions each time you make a choice surrounding food. Allow yourself to make empowered choices, listen to your intuition and your body and you will feel uplifted by your food choices.

If you are in need of support for your emotional eating, know that you are not alone. I encourage you to reach out. I have a workbook and expressive journal titled Wholistic Food Therapy: A Mindful Approach to Making Peace with Food. It is place to explore your relationship with food, emotional eating patterns, while offering exercises and practices to help heal and create a healthy and peaceful relationship with food. I also created the online course, Freedom from Emotional Eating, which is also designed to help you get to the root of your emotional eating and offers a step-by-step approach to heal your relationship with food as well as yourself.

Beginning Your Wellness Journey

Wellness has become something of a buzzword these days. When this happens, it can cause a word to lose its power. The definition of wellness is: the state of being in good health, especially as an actively pursued goal. Good health as a concept is quite broad as well, but I like to think of in this way: if I am in good health, I am mentally, physically, emotionally, energetically and spiritually grounded and feel an overall sense of contentment and peace. This is a true state of good health and wellness.

Isn’t this how we all want to feel? To feel well, be well and live well? But what does that actually look like from day to day? Creating your own definition of wellness and engaging in the practices that move you forward along your own wellness journey is a deeply personal process.

Creating a state of wellness requires having your health as a priority. To be in a state of good health and actively pursuing goals implies action, forward projection and the opportunity for growth and change. When you think of wellness as taking action, it opens up the concept of health and creates a more well-rounded approach to the journey.

When you consider what wellness looks like to you, it may look quite different than what wellness looks like for your friends, your family, or the people you follow on social media. Crafting a personalized wellness routine in order to make strides along your path to feeling healthy and whole is necessary in order to create the opportunity for you to take consistent action.

Wellness practices include elements that guide you forward towards a balanced life and creating the healthiest version of yourself. Wellness addresses you as a whole person and may include nutrition, exercise, relaxation techniques, self-care, social outlets, relationships, spirituality, spending time in nature, creativity and how you integrate each of these into your many daily responsibilities!

For so many of us, our wellness is unfortunately not always our top priority. It is hard to create new routines and patterns and then to integrate these wellness practices consistently in a way that creates the healthy life you may desire. Consider this integration and change as making a commitment to yourself. When you go about setting a specific wellness goal, choose just ONE thing to focus on to begin. 

Often, when we are feeling unhealthy or out of alignment with our vision of wellness, we feel as though we need a complete overhaul. This is not the case! It is best to begin by implementing one change at a time until that specific change is well integrated into your life. This means that you no longer have to over-think getting it done! Once that occurs, you can consider adding in another. Moving slowly and deliberately offers change over time and is ultimately far more sustainable for long-term change.

Any forward movement is movement no matter how small! However, becoming stuck can perpetuate negative thoughts and feelings and derail your momentum and progress. This is why starting small and using mindset, intention and action to create movement and build motivation is the most effective place to begin.

What is one area of your health that you can commit to begin taking decisive action on today? What is ONE goal you can set? Where do you want to start along your personal journey to wellness? Write it down. Take time right now to schedule in your calendar exactly when you will take this action.

Schedule weekly and monthly reviews for yourself to check in and evaluate your progress. When you commit to yourself you create motivation. When you commit to your health, really choose your health and wellness as a priority in your life, you are making a powerful commitment to yourself as well as to those you care about while creating inspiration for others.

If you are struggling with where to begin, reach out! I offer a variety of ways to support you when you are ready to invest in yourself and your future health and wellness. Investing in yourself allows you to move forward along your personal wellness journey towards your greatest health, healing and well-being. I am dedicated to helping you be well, feel well and live well by supporting the process of making a commitment to yourself and to your personal wellness journey.

Where are you along your path to wellness? I’d love to hear the wellness practices you will begin to use in order to focus on your future health as you continue to move forward along your personal wellness journey!