Success in the Subconscious

Have I missed something, like July or a warm and sunny summer day? I spent my life savings on a hammock and a fancy picnic table with an expansive umbrella that cranks open and tilts. They sit on my deck like long-suffering golden retrievers with balls lodged in their mouths waiting for me to come out and play. It's too cold to play and it looks like rain.

Rise and shine, kids. We are not meant for moping in gloom and growing reserve fuel deposits around our middle and backside. If we were, most of us would be getting awards for outstanding achievement. Today we talk about revving up the metabolism, stimulating muscle response and mobilizing fat. This does not happen without exercise.

I hear the ruffle of newspaper as pages are swiftly turned to the Arts & Entertainment section. Good. That leaves you and me for some serious conversation. Exercise is a primary ingredient in preventive medicine and the medical practice of life extension, two of the largest growing specialties in the medical field today. Treatment is not entirely holistic and not without the presence of sophisticated prescription drugs. But progressive and healthy mind management, exercise and diet govern the direction we go as time passes.

The masses join the masses in mass success seminars, multi-level marketing rituals and jubilant self-improvement movements that arouse hopes, stimulate latent crowd-adrenalin and light fuses of dynamite emotion only to resound in a small pop. You want to move on, consider spending some time with yourself, undistracted, un-frazzled and friendly. You're the best you've got.

Some of us find this easy and desirable. Some spend too much time alone and most find it uncomfortable without music, TV, a crossword puzzle or other distracting mechanisms. We are social creatures and there is nothing like a close friend, a good group and an occasional crowd. In the city one can accomplish solitude in the ever-present mob with practiced facility. Learn to be alone, to get alone with yourself and let there be you. Put things together.

What things? No, not things like who are we and where did we come from. I'm talking about exercise. Don't expect permanent and healthy body transformation without it. Training performed properly and consistently is an intimate experience. Haphazard exercise is neither effective nor satisfying. However, may I remind you, exercise done badly works better than no exercise at all: practice makes perfect.

Are your workouts going well, okay or so-so? Oh... not at all? A minor setback, not to worry. Could be worse. You could be reading the comics while eating a donut with your morning coffee.

Did you know that designing a solid workout routine and a sensible menu is the least difficult part of arranging a program for a hopeful trainee? The confounding task is to get him to do it. Motivation. Incentive. Purpose. Downside consequences. They are novel to only a few and act as stimuli for only a short time. I wonder if this is changing?

My purpose for recommending time alone to put things together is directly related to establishing exercise and its associates (good food and eating practices, constructive attitude and behavior) as your life-long companions, not the temporary nuisance they appear to be. This can be done via willpower and determination and discipline but such qualities are obviously in short supply. The remaining option is as old as mankind: self-programming, much the same as one programs a computer, through intentional and consistent input of positive data. I call this positive thinking with muscle and might.

It's time for a little soul searching. Who are you, who would you like to be and what do you want to accomplish in the fitness area? Pose the questions clearly and emphatically and establish the answers with muscle and might. Visualize them in realistic and uncomplicated detail and present them to yourself with passion and truth. Imagine them as being real and already accomplished, a sort of constructive fantasizing.

Now do you see the need for private and undisturbed time? The procedure calls for freedom. Hey — retain your humility.

Recognize that the process works though you don't understand the miracle anymore than you understand your heartbeat. It's a slow process but as sure as passing time. You are in some painless and invisible way accelerating toward the goals and visions you imagine and feed to your silent invisible partner, the subconscious. I have oversimplified a fantastic process that has helped me for a hundred years.

Do you recall in the spring when I applied mild pressure to get you in your sneakers, out the door and into a vigorous walk? This is the oldest and most reliable method to begin the exercise process and prepare one for more productive and specific exercise that builds muscle and strength and burns fat. I like spontaneity and recommend you practice the free-spirit approach on occasion to stretch your comfort zone, feel the rush and identify its power. It is during these walks that you can research and apply the fascinating procedures sketched above.

Recently, I presented a survey to a group of overweight adults committed to the process of losing weight and shaping up. The only participants who were successful at achieving permanent weight loss were those who added regular resistance exercise to their life-long regimen of smart eating. Their visualized self overcame their old self in thought and deed. They were once troubled and now stood out like brightly colored wild flowers in sun-parched fields.