The Bevan James Eyles Show - The Fitness Behaviour Podcast

Are you stressed in your life right now? Or do you find that you struggle when stress overtakes your life?

Lately I've been thinking a lot about this…

'How do I reduce the time I spend in stress when it's overtaking my life?'

Through thinking about this question, I've developed a 6 step process you can do in times of stress that will help.

The results are huge!!! When I go through this 6 step process, my stress melts away and I'm quickly in a healthier, more rational place. In this week's video I'm going to teach you my 6 step process, a process I've never seen anywhere else so you can become a master of moving away from your stresses quickly.

Read this statement:

'If you are aiming to improve an area of your life, you want to use your time in the most effective and powerful way.'

Do you agree with this statement? I'm pretty sure most of you will. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't apply it when they are trying to grow. They…

• Just do what they have always done in the past
• Put their focus on the wrong things
• Don't spend time understanding and developing the most effective pathway forward

This can lead to a place where their progress is slow and frustrating.

In developing a growth pathway, we want to make sure we are using our energy in the most effective way possible so we can quickly create impactful change and continue to evolve down this path. I have a technique that I use when I'm trying to grow which massively helps me achieve effective and fast growth. In this week's video, I'm going to teach you how I use it and how you can apply it to the areas you want to grow in.

As someone who helps people achieve fitness goals, there's often a moment I see which leads to people moving backwards in their progress.

They have…

• Started a fitness goal
• Achieved the goal they desired
• Experienced amazing physical and mental benefits

At this point, if you ask these people if they want to maintain the progress they have made, 100% of them would say 'yes'.

But unfortunately, many of them make decisions that lead to them going backwards…and often it's to the place where they were before they started their journey.

We often see this in difference scenarios such as:

• Weight loss - we often hear of people who have lost weight only to put it straight back on
• Fitness – where someone has been successful with exercise only to fall away from it and reverting back to being unfit and inactive

While there are a few reasons why this happens, one of the biggest reasons is…

Once they achieve their goal, they pull away from the things that made them successful.

This is often because they think they can 'do it by themselves', or they move away from the investment of time and money that it took for them to achieve their initial goal.

If you want to maintain, and even progress further, one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to pull away from the things that make you successful.

In this week's video, I help you identify how you can become more aware of what you need to keep in place once you get to your 'success point' so you can maintain and even go further with the gains you have made.

There are a lot of people out there who want to live a passionate life but for some reason, they aren't.

This may be due to a number of reasons such as…

• Not knowing what they are passionate about
• Having so many life commitments that they don't have the time or energy
• They have given up on thinking that a passionate life is possible

Are you in this place? If so, would you like to change it?

If you want to create change, we need to put a framework in place that takes you from where you are right now to where you want to get to.

While there are a few hurdles to get over, to me, there's one that stands out as one of the biggest limiters…

It's that you have put the worst version of yourself into the time you need to develop this side of your life. For example, you plan to put work into developing your passion at the end of the work day…

Often when you are tired and unfocused, which can mean you procrastinate and put it off.

This can lead to a place where you don't make progress which reinforces to you that you can't lead a passionate life. In this week's video, I share how you can set yourself up for success so your passionate life project gets the best version of you and the progress it deserves.

One of the hardest parts of creating change is taking the hard actions when we feel resistance.

We know…

• What we need to do
• How we need to do it

But the resistance we can sometimes feel stops us from taking action.

I think one of the reasons for this is the story we build up in our head.

Have you ever…

• Talked yourself out of the action you know you need to take?
• Justified why 'now is not the right time' to take action?
• Made the action almost seem impossible to do?

If we want to grow or create change, we need to take action. We need to consistently do the hard things, even when we feel resistance.

In this week's video I want to share with you one powerful motivational tool that I use that helps me take action when I feel resistance. This is a tool that I've taught many people to use and it's proving to be a winner.

If you want to get better at doing the hard things, watch this video.

A few years ago I did an interview with one of the greatest triathletes of all time, a guy by the name of Peter Reid.

This 3 x world Ironman champion was known to be…

• An extremely tough athlete
• Driven to do whatever it took to win
• Able to endure 'hurt' more than other high-level athletes

In this interview, he talked about his driving motivation which was…

To prove to his father that he was worth something.

Peter talked about what motivated him but his insight was more about how his motivation was unhealthy for him.

He also shared an amazing moment where he lost all of his athletic motivation…

It was when his father sent him a letter telling him he was proud of him.

This interview opened up the idea of questioning if the motivation we have is healthy, because sometimes what we are chasing isn't good for us.

In this week's video, I share Peter's story and explore the idea of questioning if your motivation is good or bad for you and what you can do if it's working against you.

You may have heard David Goggins, the guy is a fitness freak!

He…

• Has been a Navy Seal
• Has held the world record for pull-ups
• Is an ultra-marathon runner and ultra-distance cyclist

You'd think that someone like me, who absolutely loves fitness, would be inspired by Goggins.

But I'm not…

The reason is because all I ever hear from David Goggins is about what he has done.

While he's clearly a bloody impressive human who I would have been inspired by in my twenties, I no longer get inspiration from people like this.

Nowadays, I'm inspired by a different type of person.

The type of people I get inspired by still achieve amazing things, they just do it in different ways. In this week's video I share where I get inspiration from, the type of people I want to surround myself with, to learn from, and to ultimately be one day in the future.

A couple of weeks ago I shared with you how I'm working through a back injury.

My main aims during this time are to:

• Get back to normal in the wisest way possible
• Minimise the damage that could be done during this time e.g. not putting on unnecessary weight due to unfocused eating.

While these are just a couple of my focuses, this time has also reinforced the importance of the self-development work I've done over the last 10 years.

You see, if I had this injury in my early thirties, I would probably have felt…

• Lost and insecure
• That I had to keep exercising in ways that would work against my injury getting better
• A threat to my life and career

Luckily for me when I was thirty, I realised that I was too one-dimensional as a person.

I was amazing at exercise but that was about it.

At this time I realised I needed to develop new sides of myself, to develop lots of 'esteem points'.

Now that I'm in a place where I can't exercise how I like to, these different 'esteem points' make it easier for me to make the best decisions around my injury.

In this week's video I share how I discovered that I needed to develop myself, what I did after that discovery, and how it's helping me right now.

Before I start, I just want to let you know that all of our running groups are starting on the 3rd of July. We have our beginner 5km group, our 10km group, and our winter half marathon group starting.

If you are looking to join our team and achieve an amazing running goal, go to www.extramilerunners.co.nz to find out more.

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A while I ago, I was talking to a recovered alcoholic and they said something to me that blew my mind away.

They said…

'Even though I haven't had a drink in over 20 years I think about having one every day of my life'.

This was quite a different experience to my own journey with alcohol. When I gave up 25 years ago, I never thought about drinking it again.

There's a difference between me and him…

I was a bad drunk, he's an alcoholic.

I asked him how he had been successful in keeping drinking away, when every day, he was confronted with this thought.

He shared a powerful technique/tool that he uses.

When I learnt this tool, I thought, 'this tool can be used in so many areas of life'.

So today, I'm going to share this tool with you that you can use when you have thoughts are pushing you towards actions you are trying to stay away from. This can help you stay on a better path.

Unfortunately, I hurt by back last week.

It's the kind of the injury that can take quite a bit of time to come right, so I have a journey in front of me.

This can be a scary time for someone who loves fitness and has a career in it.

Luckily I've learnt how to managed times like these so…

• I can get back to normal as quickly as possible

• I can manage the emotional side of dealing with this injury

• I can use it as an opportunity to develop other areas of my life

There's also another area that I think is key at this time…

'Do as little damage as possible while I work through this'.

I'm not talking about the injury here, I'm talking about not allowing myself to take a step backwards in these other areas:

• My mental health

• Weight gain

• Feeling disconnected

The aim during this time is to also look after these areas too so when I'm recovered I can get back to the fit and active version of myself I like to be as soon as possible.

​​​​​​​In this week's video I share how I approach times like these and what strategies I use to do 'as little damage as possible'.