In Tune with Your Emotions Part 3
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Dan Bolton 03/01/2012 |
Rodney Coleman: “Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but don’t nobody want to lift no heavy-ass weights!”
Have you heeded the Rodney Coleman warning from last week and kept up the ‘heavy lifting’? It’s easy to slack off with this stuff, so I advise creating a routine for yourself that integrates some simple exercises... some light lifting in between the heavier workouts, if you will.
Keeping up with an emotional fitness routine is important for your emotional well-being in many ways. First, like a muscle if you don’t keep it up with exercise you will not be able to maintain muscle tone you’ve developed, and if your goal was to increase your muscle mass at all you can forget about it! Similarly, it is easy to fall back into old habits emotionally, revert back to more negative ways of thinking or ways you interpret situations in your life, lose confidence you’ve built, and won’t be advancing along your journey of self-development.
Keep up a routine of consistent exercises:
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1) Post your Personal Code somewhere in your home where it is in your line of vision. Re-read and re-connect with the set of values that you created everyday.
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2) Create a set of goals for yourself targeting areas where you would like to improve or develop certain aspects of yourself. Self-acceptance is vital to your emotional health, but that does not mean that you give up all drive toward self-actualization.
Tips for the mind frame I suggest you be in when looking at your progress:
- maintain a focus on the positives, the little progressions you make
- learn from the negatives; learn the lesson and move on from it; refrain from
dwelling on the negative
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3) Keep challenging yourself. Re-evaluate your goals on a continual basis (weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly). Check-in with yourself (or your therapist) about how well you are progressing on these goals. If you’ve achieved your goals, don’t stagnate, set new ones.
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4) Gratitude Exercise: What am I happy about? What am I grateful for? Who do I love? Who loves me? Reminding yourself of the good things in your life helps you keep a positive trajectory toward where you want to be in your life.
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5) If you are going to be effective you have to be selective about what you focus on. You can't focus on things that aren't going to help you. This will only bring you down.
Remember: you will make mistakes. This is part of the growth process. Life will go on, people and circumstances are constantly changing, and you have to be flexible mentally and emotionally to move with these changes, otherwise life and the opportunities available to you will pass you by.
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