3 Mindset Shifts to Help You Achieve (and Keep) Your 2017 Goals + Gift

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2017!

I hope that you all had a fantastic and memorable holiday season! I had a great time visiting my siblings in Seattle with my family and am now back getting into the groove of our New Year 2017. If you are like me, the holidays gave you some time to reflect on this last year (both the good and the bad) and in that pause you thought about some things you would like to change in your life to make it better.

Maybe in the past it has been hard for you to stick with the goals you made and you might be feeling a little pessimistic about your actual ability to achieve this year’s goals. Maybe you even say to yourself, “Why bother, I haven’t been able to…
…lose that last 20 pounds and keep it off..”
…be more productive with my time…”
…get back to the gym on a regular basis…”

You are not alone.

DID YOU MAKE A RESOLUTION BUT ARE DOUBTFUL YOU WILL ACHIEVE IT?

I want to share with 3 SPECIFIC MINDSET SHIFTS that will help you achieve (and keep!) your goal(s) this year…

Plus, I am giving you a FREE Mp3 download to help you create a VISION OF REALIZING YOUR GOAL.

Did you know that 92% of people making 2017 New Year’s resolutions will fail at realizing their New Year’s goals?

I know that statistic may seem depressing but it doesn’t need to be. It just means that the way we all have been going about “making change” isn’t working the way we wish it could.

The key is to change the way you make changes—BEFORE creating the change you want.

SHOCKING: 88% OF YOUR BRAIN COULD CARE LESS ABOUT YOUR GOALS AND DREAMS!

As a hypnotherapist, my soul mission in life is to help people achieve their goals in order to make their lives healthier and more productive. The main challenge that I see people struggle with isn’t that they are hopeless, or lazy, or a failure at life. My clients are highly functioning, smart and intelligent people!
The main challenge you face with successfully achieving your resolution and keeping it going long term is getting the 88% unconscious part of your mind that resists change on board with the 12% conscious part of your mind that made your New Year’s resolution.

REVOLUTION VERSUS RESOLUTION—Use 100% of your Mind

You can easily learn to use your mind more effectively and engage 100% of it in making the changes you seek for the New Year. Don’t just create a resolution—go for a REVOLUTION where you are engaged deeply in creating a powerful breakthrough in your life. SHAKE THINGS UP—don’t just achieve the goal—keep it once you get it.

In order to take action, we need to start where action begins—IN YOUR MIND. I would like to share with you 3 mental shifts to engage your unconscious mind (the stubborn and resistant 88%) and make your resolution a REVOLUTION in personal achievement.

3 MENTAL SHIFTS TO HELP YOU
ACHIEVE AND KEEP YOUR NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION

MIND SHIFT 1: DON’T “DO” YOUR GOAL—BECOME IT

Challenge: 12% vs 88%:
Chances are that when you made your New Year’s resolution, only your conscious mind (the 12% part) wanted the change. Your conscious mind was thinking:

• “Losing weight” — great idea!
• “Be more productive”  — awesome thought!
• “Get to the gym 5 nights a week”—sure, love the concept!
• “Don’t smoke anymore” —  totally makes sense!

So, rationally we are on board with making the change—great!  But wait, when we “try” to “do the thing”, it seems like just that—this thing that exists outside of us that we are trying to do. It may feel forced or like it’s not real or going to last and that is because the other 88% of the mind (the subconscious part) is not yet on board with the change.

You may get some short-term success with trying to lose weight, being more productive, or exercising, but because your mind is wired with beliefs, habits and self-talk that support your seeing yourself as someone who struggles with weight, wastes time, and doesn’t exercise consistently, the force of your unconscious will pull you back into what it has defined you as.

Mindset Shift to 100%:
Look at people who have really made big changes in their life.  My guess is that you will find one thing that they have in common. These people didn’t just try to change something.  They became one with their goal.  In other words, they stopped trying to make the change from the ‘outside–in’ by doing. They made their transformation by becoming the change they wanted:

• The weight struggler became a master of weight management.
• The time waster became a master of time management.
• The couch potato became a man living an active lifestyle.
• The smoker became a non -smoker.

When we become one with the goal, it changes how we see ourselves in the world. We need to change our beliefs and behaviors to embody the change and that takes imagination. Beliefs, habits and imagination all exist in our subconscious mind.  For instance, when we become a master of weight management, in a second we can let go of all our limiting beliefs that we’ve carried around as a weight struggler and become an apprentice of mastering our weight.

When we are an apprentice of releasing weight, managing our time, exercising consistently—we cannot fail—we can only learn how to get better at our lifestyle change.  This engages our unconscious in many ways:

• Our belief system now sees us as a learner and not a struggler.
• Our emotions are elevated because we start filtering ourselves through a more powerful lens—not as a failure but a learner becoming a master.
• Our habits now can slowly transform as we methodically focus on improving step by step into the new year—becoming more of who we set out to become bit by bit.

Action Steps: Become one with your Goal

1. Think of the change you would like to become.  Now instead of thinking of it as this thing you need to struggle with to overcome—think of becoming your goal. To do this you might ask yourself—“In order to make this change—what do I need to become a master of??”
2. Commit to your apprenticeship and mastery. Commitment is a powerful force—don’t just “try”—commit to your learning process as a lifelong journey.
3. Use a daily mantra to continue to condition your subconscious with your new role in life. Mantras are basically self-hypnosis. By using your mastery mantra you can continue to keep your new mastery mindset focused forward on change instead of reverting back to your old belief system.

• “I am now an apprentice of weight mastery—moving in the direction of achieving my ideal weight long term.”
• “I am now an apprentice of high level productivity—I am moving in the direction of mastering my time a little more every day.”

MIND SHIFT 2: MAKE YOUR GOAL ALLURING–NOT OVERWHELMING

Challenge 12% vs.88%:
There is nothing worse for your mind than an unreasonable goal. I look back at New Year’s goals from the past—over 20 years ago (I keep them in a box in my desk as mementos) and I laugh at my overzealous list.  Often, these goals were not only unrealistic—to achieve the goals, my life would have been a mad and crazy whirlwind of work, deprivation and a living hell–usually I would get overwhelmed and just give up and go back to my old patterns.

When a client comes to me with a goal they haven’t been able to achieve, it’s often because they have made that goal too unrealistic and too overwhelming for their mind to take on.

• “I want to lose 20 pounds this month”
• “I want to finish my screenplay, finish my last 3 years of taxes and clean my desk by Valentine’s Day!” (Did I mention the screenplay is an idea written on a cocktail napkin and the taxes are a heap of papers under the desk that is surrounded by more clutter?)
• “I want to exercise 90 minutes a day, 6 days a week” (said by a client who had not exercised at all—save walking their dog—for the last three years)

Our minds are easily overwhelmed these days. Our digital, online, wired world has made a lot of things easier but has also increased the speed of life at a phenomenal rate and our poor brains are doing overtime to keep up.

If you overwhelm yourself with a to-do list that seems unreasonable and—more importantly—not alluring to your subconscious—your mind will reject it and you will find yourself doing one of the following:

• Procrastinating getting started…
• Getting started, getting overwhelmed, and giving up….
• Forgetting to get started in the first place…

Mindset Shift to 100%:
The impulse to create big overwhelming “to do” lists often comes from this part of us that I call the inner critic. This is the part of us that that is highly critical and thinks we need to be super human just to be “okay”. This inner critic’s voice doesn’t come from you originally—it is a combination of parents, people from your life, culture etc.

My life changed when I got real with myself and started turning down the volume on the expectations of my inner critic. Instead of trying to fit a round peg (me) into a square hole (my inner critic’s expectations) I began by tailoring my expectations to my round peg reality and working effectively with myself.
I cultivated an inner coach’s voice. Unlike my inner critic that believed I had to accomplish huge things just to be loved, my inner coach helped guide me towards doable and achievable goals that I could master and build my confidence with.

One powerful strategy that I learned to achieve my goals is to create a very specific and emotionally charged vision of achieving the goal that I was moving towards. I use vision work a lot with clients and in my workshops because it works so well.

Research shows that weight strugglers who created future visions of themselves and focused on those visions daily were more likely to pass up fattening foods.

Creating a vision uses our imagination plus our emotions—two very big parts of our subconscious mind. When we can see it, feel it, hear it and feel the good emotions of achieving it, we begin to use 100% of our mind to align making that vision come to fruition. This also helps you with the idea of becoming one with your goal.

Action Steps: Create A Strong Vision

1. Turn down the volume on your inner critic and turn the volume up on your inner coach. Ask yourself if your New Year’s resolution is loving, reasonable and attainable with reasonable amounts of focus and effort. If your goal feels overwhelming– adjust it and find a goal with your reasonable and rational inner coach that feels more like a round peg that will fit in your round hole.
2. Create a vision of you attaining your goal that feels real, specific and alluring. Creating a bland and boring vision of your goal isn’t going to cut it—you need to excite yourself, inspire yourself to become MORE OF YOU! I think when we strive to become more of who we feel we were put on this planet to be, it is usually the most motivating starting point for creating an evolution and will endure.
3. Download and use this FREE GIFT Vision Technique. This session walks you through the steps of creating a powerful vision of you achieving your goal.

MIND SHIFT 3: HAVE SPECIFIC “VISION POINTS” AS STEPS TOWARDS YOUR OUTCOME AND REVIEW DAILY

Challenge 12% vs 88%:
One of the biggest obstacles to achieving your New Year’s resolution may simply be that your initial enthusiasm fizzles. After some initial effort, we may see some results but the big pay-off seems too far away and we begin to lose:

• Our initial head of steam–
• Our focus as day to day life intervenes
• Our faith in our ability to follow through

Life gets in the way of our good intentions—especially if we are only using the 12% conscious mind. Remember the unconscious 88% of our mind wants things to stay exactly as they are. It doesn’t really like change. Atrophy sets in and we go back to the status quo not because we are lazy but because we haven’t engaged our mind effectively.

Mindset Shift to 100%:
One way to work more powerfully with the vision of your goal that you create is to create more short term milestones—what I call “Vision Points” along the way.

These divide the journey of achieving your goal into more doable chunks. This makes it easier to stay focused on and give your 100% mind something tangible to work towards and then the confidence and rewarding feeling of reaching the milestone—one step further in the journey.
-Losing twenty pounds becomes releasing five pounds each month.
-Being more productive becomes completing 3 do-able tasks per day
-Exercising more becomes starting with 20 minutes 3 times a week and builds ten minutes each week.

Not only does breaking it down into milestones help but so does focusing on your short-term vision point help your unconscious mind stay focused and excited.

Action Steps: Break Down Your Vision Into Reachable Steps

1. Divide your overall goal into short term milestones—either by time or an achievement.

For instance, with weight management:

• 30-day vision points—every month forward marks your journey
• Weight release vision points —every 10 pounds (or whatever you choose)
• Fitness vision points—running without being winded, walking a half marathon etc.

2. Think about your overall long-term vision daily and then focus on the specific vision point that you are working towards. This is great to do in the morning when you are laying in bed.
3. Download and use this FREE GIFT Vision Technique. This session walks you through the steps of creating a powerful vision of you achieving your goal.

SUMMARY:
There you have the 3 Mind Shifts that will help you achieve and keep your 2017 goals.

1. MIND SHIFT 1: DON’T “DO” YOUR GOAL—BECOME IT
2. MIND SHIFT 2: MAKE YOUR GOAL ALLURING–NOT OVERWHELMING
3. MIND SHIFT 3:HAVE “VISION POINTS” AS STEPS TOWARDS YOUR OUTCOME AND REVIEW THEM DAILY

When you take these actionable steps towards changing your life for the better, you will not only reap the benefits of what you wanted out of your goal but you will also feel more confident in moving forward and achieving other goals in your life as well.

You can apply this VISION session to any goal—weight or otherwise.

FREE MP3 DOWNLOAD VISION CREATING SESSION

Here again is the Mp3 download I am offering you to use for FREE as my New Year’s gift to you. This Mp3 is a very helpful VISION CREATING EXERCISE that will:

• Help you manifest a clear vision to manifest
• Give you the ability to create vision points along the way towards you goal
• Unlock the belief in yourself to achieve your goals

This VISION download is an excerpt from the Shift-in-A-Box, a 30-Day Hypnosis based weight mastery program that helps you shift from Fat to Thin Thinking.

Once again, Happy New Year 2017—may this year bring you and those that you love health, happiness and also bring you closer to being more of your best YOU!

Oxox
Rita Black

Director, Shift Hypnosis and Motivational Resources LLC
ALONE WE DIET–TOGETHER WE SHIFT

5 Easy Mind Hacks to Avoid Holiday Weight Gain

5 EASY MIND HACKS TO AVOID HOLIDAY WEIGHT GAIN

Research shows that in that magical time between Thanksgiving and New Year’s a.k.a. “The Holiday Season”, the average adult will gain a not so magical 3.5-6.7 pounds. If you are fretting that one of those people might be you– keep reading!

As a clinical hypnotherapist who is an expert in the psychology of weight management, I have spent years in my practice observing the mental side of setting yourself up for success at this time of year. I have also been a victim of holiday weight gain when I struggled with my own weight over twenty years ago—one year gaining 25 pounds during this time!

WHY DO WE END UP ON THE NAUGHTY LIST EVERY YEAR?

Why is it that so many of us head into the holidays with the best of intentions to “be good this year” and yet by the time the tinsel has hit the tree we find ourselves hitting the peppermint bark and eggnog?

Both the challenge of holiday overeating and the solution to lay in one place—your mind.

THE CHALLENGE: The holidays put our already overwhelmed minds into a mental tailspin.

• Running around stressed trying to get everything done
• Holiday parties with the social pressures of “tis the season to be jolly”
• Comfort foods with emotional ties to the past crossing our paths

THE GOOD NEWS: I know that you can have an amazing holiday and either maintain your health, mental peace and your weight—and even release weight if you decide. All it takes is making a few specific mental shifts.

I am sharing with you 5 MIND HACKS that you can easily implement over the next few weeks and not only survive the holidays with your current weight intact, but when you use these easy techniques you can actually THRIVE during the season.

BONUS: I am offering you a FREE Curb Your Sugar Cravings Hypnosis download (see below).  Use it to prevent getting hijacked by sugar cravings this year.

5 EASY MIND HACKS TO AVOID HOLIDAY WEIGHT GAIN

MIND HACK #1: PROGRAM IN A SPECIFIC AND SEXY VISION FOR JANUARY 1

Challenge:  Hoping or Trying To “Be Good” Means Nothing to Our Minds
Often our best attempt at dealing with the holidays is to make a knee-jerk attempt at “trying” or “hoping” to be good with no specific strategy or motivating outcome in mind. This only engages the conscious mind—which sorry to say—is only about 12% of our mind’s brain-power.

“Be good” means nothing to our minds.  Our brain needs clear directions with specific goals otherwise all the temptations and stresses of the holidays will quickly run our friends “hope and try” out of town on a train with a one-way ticket to the North Pole.

Solution:  Start Your Holiday Season with an Emotionally Charged Vision and Keep It Going
Our mind loves creating. When we create an exciting and emotionally desirable and exciting vision of ourselves feeling light, healthy, and proud of ourselves on January 1^st it engages our imagination which lives in our subconscious mind—the more powerful 88%.

Research shows that a powerful vision of a healthier slimmer you in the future helps you say no to temptations in the present.

Start Now: Take a moment and imagine yourself somewhere specific on January 1.
Imagine how good you will feel for having maintained your weight (or even released) this holiday. Experience the feelings of pride and happiness of achieving your goal now. Take a deep breath and lock this feeling into your vision—this is your inner script for the holiday season.

Daily Practice: Bring your vision to mind in the morning before rising into your busy day. Ask yourself “what do I need to do today to move myself closer to this goal?” and think through your day in your mind. Doing this helps leverage the power of your vision.

Note: If you chose to lose weight over the season, I find it helpful to be specific and realistic:

• SPECIFIC: Choose a specific goal and ask yourself—“what are the actions that I need to take to achieve this?” (example: Exercise 4 times a week, stay within 1500 calories a day, etc.). The more specific you are the more your mind can help you follow through on your goal.

• REALISTIC: The holidays pose a challenge for weight loss because of all the extra social activities. Be realistic with yourself and your weight goals. Trying to lose too much may just add “brain strain” and cause you to give up all together and overeat. Give yourself the option to reduce your weight loss goal or to focus on maintaining your weight through the holiday.

MIND HACK #2: OVERRIDE SOCIAL SELF SABOTAGE WITH “MENTAL MOVIES”

Challenge:  Holiday Event Habits Are Wired Deep
Some of the fattening holiday party habits that we have acquired may have been going on for years:

• -Mindlessly eating too many refined party foods
• -Drinking more than you intended and then eating more
• -Bending to social pressure from others— “Have another!”

These habits are wired into our subconscious—88% of our mind’s power (mentioned above). So even though our conscious mind wants to make healthy choices at the party and keep it light our subconscious mind wants “business as usual” even if it is fattening and may wind up making us feel bad and bloated later.

Solution:To override deep habits we need to work with the power of our mind and not against it.  The reward neurotransmitter dopamine plays a big role in creating that sense of excitement about having fun at a party and all the delicious holiday foods that we are used to indulging in.

We can use dopamine and the sense of reward to bypass the fattening habits by creating a mental movie of being at the party and bypassing the fattening foods that leave us feeling bloated for the lighter and healthier options. You can then imagine yourself at the end of the movie going home feeling light and proud for having truly had a wonderful party where you got to connect with family and friends but also stayed true to your bigger reward—your health and peace of mind!

Start Now: Try making a mental movie “Coming Attractions – Party”
Before you go to your next holiday party event take a minute and imagine the party experience ahead of time. Imagine both the business as usual party experience and how you will feel afterwards and then the healthy behaviors party.

In your imagination experience both party experiences from the moment you walk in the door to the moment that you leave.

HORROR MOVIE PARTY EXPERIENCE: Imagine yourself going to the party and you: -Eat all the holiday foods laid out on the buffet a feeling of fullness is coming on…

• Drink too much and begin to feel a head rush…
• Take the sugary dessert the hostess is offering.
• You don’t really want it but eat it anyway since it’s there in your hand…it takes you over the edge. The horror music begins to play.

Now imagine leaving the party—bloated, imbalanced, and wishing you hadn’t eaten all that food. Any enjoyment of the food and party is being blotted out by feeling bad about yourself and out of control.

Now your mind has a negative feeling related to the overindulging and now you are ready to ignite the dopamine in your mind to be excited about a different outcome.

FEEL GOOD FLICK PARTY EXPERIENCE: Imagine yourself going to the party and you:

• Make healthy choices at the buffet—allowing yourself some small tastes of the special holiday foods but you choose mostly lighter foods.  Your meal allows you to feel fed but not full.
• Stop at one drink and switch to water…feeling more even keeled…more relaxed.
• Say ‘no thank you’ to the hostess when dessert is offered but you make her happy anyway by offering to help her clean up some plates. That feel-good movie tune begins to surge…

Now see yourself leaving the party feeling good, confident and in control. What a rewarding feeling that is. Feel how your mind begins to get excited about this scenario instead.This is how we can begin to bypass old behaviors—by showing our deeper mind how much more satisfying the new healthy habits are.

MIND HACK #3: HIT DELETE ON THE “I BLEW IT—SO SCREW IT” IMPULSE

Challenge: Addicted to ‘Being Good—Being Bad—The Being Good Again’ Cycle 
Many people who struggle with weight have gotten into a habit of that goes something like this:

• Starting the week in “being good” mode: We drink the smoothie with kale, we eat the salad with chicken, we exercise and drink water. The halo shines above our head.
• Somewhere along the way we blow “being good”: We eat something “bad” or get stressed or go to a party and eat something we didn’t intend to and we think “I blew it!”
• We think since I already blew it—SCREW IT!: This is when we decide that—what the hell—I have screwed up so I will just let go and eat whatever until tomorrow (or Monday) when I will be good again. We trade the halo for the pitch fork and eat, and eat, and eat.

This cycle, my friends, is where most of the holiday weight is gained.

Solution: Interrupt the ‘Screw It’ with the Shift Technique
Here is a technique I teach in my Shift Weight Mastery Process. It is a cognitive shifting technique that takes you out of the impulsive instinct to give up and overeat and allows you to stay consistently moving forwards with your healthy eating plan.

SHIFT TECHNIQUE
When you feel like you are about to say “screw it” and overeat–

1. Take a deep breath—This interrupts your “screw it” impulse and opens you up to have a more mature and healthy interaction with yourself.
2. Forgive yourself—say “wow I ate that brownie—how human—I am still a good person and this doesn’t mean I’ve failed. Often we shame ourselves when we eat something bad which of course stresses us out and makes us want to eat more. Forgive!
3. Get out your Inner Coach and SHIFT into problem solver: We all have an Inner Coach that is the rational and wise part of us. This is the part you want to be speaking with right now—not your Critic or Rebel—they are the ones that run the good—bad—good cycle. Get your coach and get real about what happened. “I just ate three brownies without thinking.” Assess in a non-judgmental way, then solve the problem. Shifting like this puts your mind in a rational state rather than an impulsive and emotional one.
4. Assess and recover: Whatever you ate, you can move on from and recover, it will be much better for you and your waistline than keeping on eating.

For example: I had a client who went to a Christmas Party and felt like she overate and was about to say “I blew it—so screw it” but she stopped herself took a breath and reviewed the items that she overate. She realized that even though the two cookies and the couple of handfuls of chips were not what she intended to eat they also were not going to ruin her waistline or even her weight loss for the week it she got right back to her healthy eating at the next meal.

MIND HACK #4: PUT A FIREWALL BETWEEN YOU AND THE CARB ZOMBIE

Challenge: Overindulging in Sugary, Fatty and Salty Foods Wakes Up Our Inner Carb Zombie
One of the challenges with the densely caloric, sugary and fatty foods that abound during the holidays is that eating too many refined carbohydrates over a number of days tends to awaken a craving/fake hunger force within us that begins to demand more carby food.  I call this force THE CARB ZOMBIE.

Physically eating higher amounts of refined foods spike our blood sugar and when it crashes we get a feeling of being hungry—even though we may have just eaten! The sugar, fat, and salt dances in our head like the sugar plum fairy –stimulating our reward neurotransmitter dopamine and creating a mental craving to have more sugary foods.

When our carb zombie is awakened we:

• Feel hungrier even though we are eating plenty of calories
• Crave more refined foods—thinking about food a lot more
• Feel like an addict

Solution: Create a Firewall Between You and Carb-y Food for the Holiday Season
Our mind does much better when it is focusing on doing something rather than resisting something. “Trying not to eat sugar” seems hard to the mind—but abstaining from sugary foods except for a few special specified holiday treats gives the mind a clear boundary without shutting down the idea of treats altogether.

1. Create a “not an option clause” in your mind for all holiday foods except the few selected A+++ holiday treats that you will enjoy in modest amounts after a meal. Haven’t we tried all of those holiday foods before anyways—enjoy the memories of the holidays and the pleasure of the season—you don’t have to eat to enjoy—in fact you will enjoy more when you eat less.
2. Eating enough protein 70 grams per day—also helps balance the amino acids in the brain responsible for allowing us to feel stable and even keeled—less vulnerable to the carb zombie. Start your day with protein like eggs or Greek yogurt with fruit and not the carby bun or roll. You will feel better and have more energy. If you are doing a smoothie—make sure it has protein!
3. Eat your holiday treats after a meal or when you have some protein n your tummy. Eating sugar and starch on an empty stomach triggers the brain and body both—stirring the carb zombie from his slumber. We want to keep him in deep hibernation this season.
4. Listen to the FREE Curb Your Sugar Cravings Hypnosis session: This session helps wire your deeper subconscious mind to be more resistant to the idea that sugar is a treat—learn to be in charge of your relationship to sugar.

Curb Your Sugar Cravings Here 

MIND HACK #5: HIT YOUR “MENTAL REFRESH” KEY EVERY FEW HOURS

Challenge: Stress Shuts Down Our Willpower
Our lives are very stimulating. The holiday season is stimulation on steroids. When we get over stimulated our mind gets stressed. When we get stressed the hormone Cortisol floods our system shutting down our rational neo cortex –the impulse control part of our brain.  Guess what also happens when we are stressed—we reach for food to soothe ourselves and there is no willpower there to stop us.

Research shows that every two hours we need to give our mind a little break or we become overstressed and overwhelmed.

Solution: Hit Refresh By Taking a Deep Breath and Closing Your Eyes For a Minute
Give yourself the gift of self-soothing every two hours this holiday season. It won’t take long, you will feel better and chances are you will become a lot more mindful when it comes to those mindless nibbles at the office and home.

1. Take a deep breath
2. Shut your eyes
3. Tune into your breathing and count 20 breaths
4. As you are counting send breaths to any part of your body that feels like it is holding tension
5. Open your eyes and enjoy your lighter, more mindful, holiday season.

There you have your 5 Mind Hacks.  I hope that they serve you well. Don’t forget to get your FREE copy of the “Curb Your Sugar Cravings” hypnosis session.

Click Here for Your Free Sugar Cravings Hypnosis

Have an amazing mindful and healthy holiday where the sweetness comes not from sugar but from how sweet you are to yourself.

Cheers everyone,
Happy Healthy Holidays to you all!

Oxox Rita Black
Alone we Diet
Together we Shift

Who Are You Voting For: Fat or Thin Thinking?

Hi everyone!

 In honor of next Tuesday’s election, I wanted to discuss the two very different  platforms that we have running against each other — inside of us!!  We must decide which of these inner platforms will run our relationship with our health, weight, and ultimately, ourselves.  And, yes, just like we are seeing in this year’s election, this can be highly contentious. Which candidate and which platform are you voting for?  Which candidate are you listening to? Who is going to be your leader?  The choice you make will lead you on two very different paths.

Platform 1:  Fat Thinking

Here at the Fat Thinking campaign headquarters we have the 2 candidates:

The Inner Critic and the Inner Rebel

These 2 candidates join forces and work together seamlessly to

-Create a chaotic mindset that takes your power away from you

-Keep you struggling in that ‘good or bad’, ‘on or off’, ‘all or nothing’ kind of thinking.

The Inner Critic believes inherently that you are broken and need to be fixed and also that you need to be restricted and must only eat what is on the diet or else you are a failure.

The Inner Rebel will look for reasons to blow your plan.  They push hard for you starting again on Monday because “what the hay…you already blew it—so you may as well eat them all…”

The weight loss goals of the Fat Thinking platform are dodgy to say the least.  There doesn’t seem to be any clear documentation of how the Fat Thinking Party will make decisions in your favor with regards to healthy food choices, getting exercise or ever reaching weight mastery.

But, they have a lot of familiar sounding beliefs and slogans and often we get hoodwinked into voting for Fat Thinking.  And then, instead of the change they promised, we end up feeling frustrated, demoralized and bloated.

So this time around why not vote for something new??

How about casting your vote for Thin Thinking and the Inner Coach?

Platform 2: Thin Thinking

Here at Thin Thinking headquarters, things are looking powerful.

-There is only one candidate: The Inner Coach and one clear message—Show Up for Yourself!

That’s right:

-Your Inner Coach knows that you can achieve weight mastery.

-Your Inner Coach has a very specific action plan to create a healthy lifestyle that will take you to the vision you have for your health.

– Your Inner Coach is ready to solve the problems and create new solutions and doesn’t  believe in magic pills or diets.   Your Inner Coach believes in you!  They believe that you can achieve your ideal weight and stay there because you have made the Shift from the inside out.

How to Change Platforms

If you are stuck in the Fat Thinking Camp, never fear—you can always change parties.

The good news is that we all have a strong and willing Inner Coach inside of us, ready to take the lead!

Get Started:

1) Start to tune in and get conscious to the rhetoric of the Fat Thinking Party.

Start by tuning in to the way you speak to yourself. When you really tune in, you can begin to hear how false the Critic and the Rebel sound: impulsive, negative, emotional.

• You can separate yourself out from the BS and begin to Shift. Take a breath and separate yourself out from the negative self speak and see it as separate from you.  In fact, imagine the negative inner voice sounding like the candidate that you are voting against–that will start to poke holes in the power that the negative voice has over you.

2)  You can begin to get very clear on what it is you do want versus what you don’t want.  The more you focus on a clear and definable outcome, the more your Inner Coach can begin to take clear and actionable steps and the less the Inner Critic will pull you to the dark side.

• Don’t try “not” to do something like “not eat chocolate in the afternoon”.  The mind doesn’t hear the negative, focuses on the action, and leaves us feeling tempted and deprived so that we often fall back into the old pattern.
• Instead, set a doable goal that you know is achievable and focused on the outcome that you want. “I will have a pear and some almonds as my afternoon snack”.  Imagine how good you will feel when you accomplish that goal–this gets your mind excited to achieve that goal.

3)  You can begin getting your facts and budget straight with precise data and logical thinking.

Track your food to see what you really are eating, what you crave, where are the trouble spots in your environment (that car ride home from work? the office parties?) and what habits are not serving your healthy wishes.

• Once you have real facts, and can view it simply as information. Instead of using it to judge yourself for not being perfect, you can begin to solve the problems and seek new workable strategies.

4)  Practice showing up for yourself every day in these small ways, making the one healthy decision at a time and you will quickly begin feeling more powerful and confident.

VOTE FOR THIN THINKING

VOTE FOR YOUR INNER COACH

Be sure to check out the newly relaunched Shift Weight Mastery website.  We’ve added Free Hypnosis sessions including a 5 Day Night Eating Program that will tackle the mindless grazing so many of us do in the evenings.  www.shiftweightmastery.com

Good luck at the Inner Voting Booth—I know you will make the Shifted choice!

Oxox Rita

Stop! Thief!!

Stop! Thief! As you head out for your summer travels, I want to warn you about two thieves that are out there waiting to rob you blind and ruin your summer holiday experience.  Those thieves are your Inner Critic and your Inner Rebel. That’s right– these two mental criminals work together masterfully and catch you by surprise.  First, the Inner Rebel appears—disguised in such fun time holiday thoughts as… -“It’s my holiday I am going to let my hair down and drink three Pina Coladas with the umbrella!” -“I have to try the local fudge…and pastries…and bread and cheese…it would be wrong not to since I will never get to taste this fudge again and I am sure it’s waaaaay different than the fudge I can get at home.” -“Exercise?  Ha!  Lifting the beers to my mouth while I lie on the beach is all the exercise that I will be doing!” Next, the Inner Critic swoops in spoils your fudge buzz …the Inner Critic is not so disguised and can really hit you hard with such thoughts as… “Ugh, why did you eat that fudge, you didn’t even like that fudge, now you feel gross and it’s all your fault—you have no self control!” “You said you were going to exercise on this vacation and you haven’t even gone on a walk, no wonder that’s why you feel so flabby!  Lazy bones—you blew it!” “You can never manage being away—you are as out of control on vacation as you are at home!” You can see when these two vacation thieves work in tandem, things get grim fast!  I remember when I struggled with my own weight, I would spend many vacations letting my hair down and then beating myself up, letting my hair down again and then beating myself up again. I paid good money to be in a gorgeous holiday setting but it all looked like the prison of my own FAT THINKING too me.  That is why I urge you to plan ahead to be successful on your holidays. Here are a few things to remember to stay in THIN THINKING: 1.  Remember to HAVE A VISION of feeling light and vibrant the day following the day you get back from your vacation. (not sluggish and bloated). 2. Remember to HAVE A PLAN as to how to make that vision a reality— -Exercise (how much will you try to achieve on a daily basis?) -Focus on getting lots of fruits and veggies, keep the starchy carbs to a minimum as they trigger the “eat more-I’m more hungry” valve in the brain. 3) MAKE A DECISION ABOUT YOUR OUTCOME— about how to stay within your calories budget for release or maintenance (make the decision early whether you are going to release or maintain this week). 4. Remember to show up for yourself with power thoughts by staying connected to your Inner Coach. Here are some powerful Inner Coach Travel Thoughts: -“If I eat that now how will I feel three hours from now?  Will that really make me feel good?” -“If I walk for an hour I can treat myself to a local treat.” -“I know I am going out tonight so I will eat more light and protein based meals earlier to save room for the calories.” FOODS TO PACK AND BRING: Personally, when I travel, it’s important for me to keep my blood sugar levels stable not only for my weight maintenance but for my brain.  I have happier saner thoughts and feelings when I keep away from the refined foods and keep my body and brain nourished with healthy fiber-filled and protein based foods.  I don’t know what is going to be out there on the road and gas stations are notorious junk food palaces so here is a list of what I always bring: -Zen fiber cakes from TJs (80 cals each and full of fiber—great snack on road) -Munchy veggies like carrots, peppers, sugar peas -Mozzarella cheese sticks -Little bags of almonds (portion control) -Hard boiled eggs (great easy road protein source) -Greek yogurt -Apples -Air blown popcorn -Turkey jerky Also, I bring my workout clothes and make a point to move somehow—somewhere, if I can, because exercise =happy body= happy brain. How are you going to set yourself and your brain and body up for a sane, shifted, enjoyable holiday?? Have a great and restful August! Oxox Rita