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Your Thoughts Impact Your Workout

By Dr. Patti Johnson

Did you know that you have about 60,000 thoughts a day?  Most are repetitive, and 95% or more are the same thoughts you had yesterday.  Some are positive thoughts, other negative, and some are fearful or dysfunctional.  In addition, most of your thinking is not in the present moment.  It tends to be focused on the past and/or an anticipated or dreaded future.

To think is to create, so you are constantly creating your experience through your thinking.  The problem is, most of us aren’t aware of, nor do we monitor our thinking with any real purpose.  It’s to your benefit to change that. The quality of your life experience at any moment is determined by how consciously you yield your intention and attention, followed by mindful action.

Let’s start with intention.  Your intention is what you want, and why you want it.  It is the motivation behind action.  It is part of the emotional body, your value system, and is responsible for the goals you set.  If you approach your workout with clear intentions, you know what you want, and why you want it.  If your intention is less clear, your results will fluctuate, and you might be just going through the motions to get a workout done.

 

Attention is where you place your focus. It’s what you think about. This is important because the “Law of Focus” states, whatever you place your attention on will increase, and you will have more of it.  If you hate an exercise and focus on your dislike of it, obviously you will dislike it even more and even avoid it.  When you are doing a workout, where are you placing your focus?  What are you thinking about? What are you paying attention to? As Arnold liked to say, “Put your mind into the muscle.”  This is aligning your intention with your attention.  This pays off in big ways.   Remember this saying, “Intention + Attention = No Tension.”

Lastly, we add mindful action.  These are the physical actions that you take.  A mindful action is doing one thing on purpose, in the present moment, for a specific length of time.  Set your goal with intention, place your attention purposefully on that goal, then take one mindful action after another.  This is the “Positive Trinity of Purpose.”  Doing these three things consistently will pay off with big results.

David JohnsonYour Thoughts Impact Your Workout

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