Recently I decided to workout 30 days straight. I made the decision after positive peer pressure from one of my best friends.

After completing 30 days I thought I’d continue and try go to 60. I’m now on day 52 as I have lost weight and I am gaining strength. One thing I realised pretty quickly was that it wasn’t enough to just workout. I had to eat right too. In fact most workout and dietician gurus will tell you when it comes to your body goals the importance of diet over working out is major. That you can workout as much and as hard as you want and never really see the change you want because of what food you put into your body. You can eat your self into a body you want or don’t want, but you cannot work yourself into a body you want. Diet is the key. Over these last 40 days I have realised there is something about what goes into your body that gives you the strength you need, to work at the level you need to so you can develop the body you want. This whole thought and idea got me thinking and made me realise the chilling parallels there are between diet and working out physically and our mentality and lives.

You see we all have goals that we are trying to work towards. Some of us are working so hard to develop the life we want but struggle sometimes when we don’t see an inward shift in us. I have realised that our mental diet is just as important as our physical diet. If I do not fill my mind with healthy things, people, moments, time for myself, and so on I will not give my mind the ingredients it needs to work out stronger and better my mindset so I can achieve my visions and goals. I speak to people all the time who want to work their mind, but don’t understand the importance of what they feed it. The mind is where everything you do happens before you do it. What comes out of your mind is what you allow to go into it. My life doesn’t change until my mind does. What voices are in your life that are not helping you to move forward? What voices are in your life that are trying to hold you to the old you? What limiting beliefs do you have about yourself that are being reinforced by people or things in your world? Are you busy discussing people or ideas? Are you busy talking about things you have no control over or are you choosing to take responsibility for the things you do have control over? Stop feeding your mind junk food. Feed it soul food. Food that enables you to think better and live better. Food that doesn’t let you do what you want but what is right. The difference between the life you want and the life you have isn’t just the work you put in, but the diet your mind has. Eat right, think right, think right, live right!

Your life is a mental intake decision away from being the life you have always wanted.

Here are some tips to help with your mental diet.

1. Stop eating junk – physically and mentally. What you eat matters. Sometimes your not emotional, your chemical imbalance is due to what you are eating.

2. Sleep – something’s aren’t that deep when you have had eight hours sleep. Before you over react, respond by sleeping and then thinking again.

3. Voice frequency – you need to get the right voices on the frequency you want to at in your life. If you do not have voices in your life at the level you want to live at you will struggle to have mindset needed to get there.

4. Space – having space to think through things is important. Instead of waiting for things to happen and then thinking about them, choose to find space in your day or week where you give the time to think on certain issues that take emotion, time and headspace. It’s better to be intentional about that then to be blindsided in a moment. If something happens, make a decision to not let it interrupt your day, and put in the thinking time in your diary.

5. Develop mind mantras. Sayings that capsulate your response to life and situations that vibrate on the same frequency of your beliefs and values.

6. Work out what you put in. Don’t just consume good content and do nothing with it. If you do so you will become obese mentally and not appreciate good content from people when you hear it because nothing you have listened to has caused action. When you put to work or action what you have learnt and understood it not only makes you stronger but hungry for more. Growth takes place from what we work out and what we put in. Keep putting the right things in and working out how it applies to your life.

7. Share with people what you have been taking in and listen to what they are taking in. There’s something about not feeling alone that is so helpful to us mentally. Share recipes and things that work are the same physically as it is mentally.

8. Pay attention not just to success stories but failure stories too. We learn more from getting things wrong than just winning. Failure isn’t the end, it just means we ain’t got it right yet.

9. Counselling – counselling is a great opportunity to mind dump and not have to worry about the impact of what you are saying. Someone is willing to listen, not judge you and help you navigate through whatever you need to process in your mind.

10. Have fun. Laugh. – laughter will always do your heart and mind good like medicine.

Hope this is really helpful on your journey!!

Love, peace and chicken wings

MD