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I NEED YOUR QUESTIONS AND IDEAS FOR MONTHLY THEMES
Please send me your questions and challenges—I would like to address them. I also would love your ideas for monthly themes as I will be rolling out more focused training on based on themes for the month. Examples: Body Image, Night Eating, Saying No etc. please contribute your ideas on our Facebook page and LIKE us while you are at it!.SHIFT COMMUNITY ANNOUNCEMENTS Reminder: The next Shift Seminar has been moved to September 22nd, 2012.
FREE VIDEO TRAINING SERIES coming in May: I will be introducing a free 3 part video training series to motivate and inspire you and reinvigorate your Shift. This training series is also something that can be passed on to friends and relatives who may be interested in the Shift Process but want to understand more what “Making the Shift” is all about. COMING SOON!COME PARTY WITH US ONLINE! On Sunday May 20th from 10am-2pm PST we will be kicking off the official launch of the SHIFT-IN-A-BOX with an online webcast party that will be chock full of coaching, interviews, prizes and more. Mark your calendar and invite your friends and family on for this LIVE online event!
SMOKING CESSATION TAX SEASON IS OVER SPECIAL To celebrate the end of tax season I am offering a friends and family discount of $50 dollars off my STOP SMOKING GUARANTEED session.
"As a 2 pack a day smoker, I had tried everything to quit. I had reached the end my options. Then I tried Rita's quit smoking program. It took one session with Rita and I haven't smoked in over 2 years. Unbelievable! God Bless you, Rita. You saved my life!"Gloria Friedman, Bakersfield CAHere is the link to the site. stop smoking guaranteed
Interested parties should call Rita at 323 988 4574Dear Shifters,
Is Your Willpower Flabby or Buff?
“I can’t lose weight because I have no willpower at night.” Carol Samson explained her daily dilemma in careful detail to me as she sat down for a Shift appointment. Every morning she would wake up and eat a measured amount of cereal and fruit, pack a healthy lunch to take to work and even brought some almonds for when she got hungry in between meals. At work she was good about avoiding the vending machine, drinking water, and even using the stairs instead of the elevator occasionally. Up until 5pm Carol felt like she had it together in the weight loss department.
But then, every night, she told me, “It seems like I would go into this strange trance as I would enter my home. I would have the thought ‘I should exercise’ but then that thought was immediately overridden by this automatic urge to walk to my fridge, pull over the wine pour myself a glass and slice off 3 slices of cheese and shove then in my mouth. Once I do that I am a goner, it’s like I am not even there. I become this grazing machine. By the time my husband comes home for dinner I am pretty full but I still manage to sit down and eat a full meal with him! What is wrong with me! I want to be good. I want to eat right and exercise but why can’t I seem to pull myself together?”Carol’s dilemma is a common and frustrating issue among many people who struggle with their weight. We can be “good” the first part of the day but it all falls apart at night. It seems as though our willpower goes from buff to flabby as the day goes along—why is that and what can we do??
SAVING UP YOUR WILLPOWER
It seems that willpower becomes depleted over the course of a day. Studies done at Case Western by Mark Murhaven and his group of psychology PhD candidates claim that, “willpower isn’t a skill, it’s a muscle, like the muscles in your arms or legs and it gets tired as it works harder, so there’s less power left over for other things.”[RB1]
In short, the harder and longer your day is the less willpower you have by the end of the day—hence the 5pm dilemma with the wine and cheese or whatever your drink and munchies of choice is.
The good news is that this muscle can be strengthened over time but it works best when conscious thought is put into preparing for the “point of weakness” and coming up with a solution ahead of time and then practicing a better outcome to the situation.SOLVE IT LIKE STARBUCKS
Ever think about how it must be to make 200 lattes over a shift and deal with 50 complaints an hour and still be expected to keep your cool and not throw a Frappichino on some snotty customer? Starbucks trains its employees in willpower. They actually have created a training exercise, much like my “think through” exercise below that has employees write out anticipated points of weakness in their shift (snotty customers screaming, long line out the door, etc) and think through and practice their reactions ahead of time, therefore strengthening that muscle in their mind ahead of time for the moment that they really need the “always happy and polite Starbuck’s branded employee behavior” to be more automatic. THINKING IT THROUGH AND WRITING IT OUT ARE LIKE BENCHPRESSES FOR YOUR WILLPOWER
Carol and I walked through her routine as she went through her night. We looked at what her thoughts did automatically and pinpointed her “point of weakness” (when the thought to exercise gets pushed out by the thought to drink wine) and looked for ways to interject new more powerful thoughts and then practiced having those thoughts override the old thought process. Next I gave her the home work of writing out her new behaviors at her “point of weakness” which were her walking through the front door, go to fridge, get a glass of tomato juice instead of wine and put on her sneakers and go for a walk. Next, we had her practice thinking through the new improved and powerful routine 5 times before she got out of bed in the morning and started her day—thus lifting those mind muscle weights and getting them ready for that day’s 5 pm challenge to come. She also put the wine in the back of her fridge and the tomato juice in front and put her tennis shoes where she could see them when she came home.A week later she reported to me that after 2 days of consciously coming home and going through her new night plan it began to feel natural and effortless. The willpower needed to get “over the hump” was now turning into full brainpower because the conscious pattern was on its way to becoming subconscious. A month later she had released 8lbs with ease and more importantly felt confident and pleased with being able to “show up for herself” in such a powerful way.
COACHING: PUT YOUR WILLPOWER THROUGH SOME CIRCUIT TRAINING
This coming week I invite you to focus on strengthening just one “point of weakness” with a new powerful thought process and behavior and see the power in this.1) Write down a habit that undermines your weight release on a daily or weekly basis, maybe it’s something similar to Carol’s situation or when you go out to dinner or lunch or when someone brings bagels into the office.
2) Write down your “point of weakness” in that scenario.
3) Think through the thoughts you would rather have, such as, “I choose to avoid those bagels today”. Write out how the winning thought process would occur in your mind 5 times.
4) Write down the actions you would take after the thoughts. Such as, I will walk away from the bagels and go make myself a cup of tea instead.
5) Create a strong vision of what the winning outcome would look like (sitting at my desk, without a bagel stuffed in my belly while everyone around me complains about just eating too much bagel!)
I believe writing this out—especially with resistant behaviors helpful but even thinking it through and really practicing your new willpower action plan will be like doing 12 reps with 50 lb weights with your mind’s willpower muscle!Have a great week Shifting your willpower!
Oxox RitaP.S. I highly recommend “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg which was thi source of some of the cool studies in this coaching session.
P.P.S. If you want some coaching and hypnosis to help I recommend the following CDs found at the Shift Store. LINK
-Shift into Exercise (has a great “come home and exercise” session)-Graze -less (focuses on strategies and hypnosis for mindless eating)
-Inner Coach (coaching and hypnosis to build a more powerful inner dialog with yourself in this area)
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