We're on a mission to help one million people RISE by 2030 - join the movement at www.myrise.co.uk

I’ve mentioned many times that the inspiration for these blogs and videos comes from conversations with people.

After all, if one person is expressing that they’re unsure about something or struggling in some way………….

They won’t be the only one.

Sometimes, coincidentally, we have the same conversation several times in a row.

This happened the other day.

Whilst we weren’t able to meet people in person, we were doing a lot more online conversations.

Voice and / or video calls with members to go through things and help them ‘course correct’.

Whilst we’re back able to meet in person now (and that’s always preferable), we will continue to do this as well.

The thing that several people in a row said the other day was “I just need to stop”.

You know – of a particular behaviour.

Drinking, snacking, finishing off what’s left in the serving bowl, finishing off the kids’ meals, having a tub of ice cream or a bottle of wine in front of the tele, etc.

And, on the face of it, that sounds like a valid plan.

It is, however, the same plan that hasn’t worked.

Usually many, many times in the past.

We’ve probably said “I just need to stop XYZ” many many times before.

And maybe have for a few days or a week.

But then started again.

Just stopping rarely works.

It leaves a hole in our lives.

There was a reason we were doing that thing before.

To change to way we feel usually.

That’s what us humans are ‘designed’ to do.

Make ourselves feel better.

And not doing the thing that’ll make us, at least momentarily, feel better……….

Means we’ll have to use willpower to force ourselves to continue to feel not as good as we’d like.

Which will only ever last so long.

Replace that thing with something else………

Something that makes use feel better to, at least, a sufficient degree………

Without / with less of the ‘downside’………..

And that might be something we can keep doing.

Eating something else (perhaps less calorie dense), exercising, going for a walk, taking a few deep breaths, meditating, doing something we enjoy for a few minutes……..

Something that has the same (or sufficient) benefit in the same way the thing we want to ‘stop doing’ does……….

Could be an approach that, on average, lasts………

Much love,

Jon ‘It’s Hammer Time’ Hall

We're on a mission to help one million people RISE by 2030 - join the movement at www.myrise.co.uk

I was doing the school run the other day.

51 mile, four location round trip if you didn’t know.

#BlendedFamily

And a song came on the radio.

Long term readers will know that music on these car journeys has inspired many a blog.

It’s was “Holding Out For A Hero” by Bonny Tyler.

Which I always thought sounded like how a Scottish person might describe an attractive person covering up the wall in their bathroom.

As an aside (and marginally more obvious), I always thought Minnie Driver sounded like someone who likes those little cars.

Anyway, banging tune isn’t it?

Powerful.

It would possibly be seen as a somewhat dated concept nowadays – a woman holding out for the man she “needs”.

But, we’d all like a hero in our lives, wouldn’t we?

The good news is, we already have one.

There can only ever really be one hero in our lives.

We don’t need to keep holding out, to keep waiting.

We don’t need anyone else to come and rescue us.

Other people can be part of that whole process, sure.

But, ultimately, it’s us and us alone that have to do the actual things.

Take the actual steps.

Make those choices that serve us better.

Where’s the street wise Hercules to fight the rising odds?

The white knight upon a fiery steed?

It’s that person you see staring back at you in the mirror every morning.

Much love,

Jon ‘Total Eclipse Of The Heart’ Hall

We're on a mission to help one million people RISE by 2030 - join the movement at www.myrise.co.uk

Have you ever said that to yourself?

Or someone else?

Maybe you’ve set out to do something.

And you’ve kinda done the opposite?

Planned on getting more sleep and stayed up till the early hours binge watching NetFlix?

For “no reason”

Meant to do a workout?

And not………

“For no reason”

Demolished a tub of Hagan Daaz and / or a bottle of wine………..

For “no reason”?

There’s a reason for every choice we make.

We are rational creatures.

We may question that rationale later.

But it was there at the time.

Every choice gave us something that we valued at that point.

A change in how we were feeling, our state.

Relaxation.

Connection with others.

Convenience.

We got to do something else instead that we valued for it’s benefits.

There’s always a reason

Telling ourselves there’s no reason will never lead to a solution.

We’ll just keep spinning our wheels and keep doing things for “no reason”.

If we can get clear on what that reason is…………..

We might choose to change some of those choices for others…………

That still serve us in that same way………..

But lead to that net benefit, rather than net loss over time.

What else could we do to change the way we feel short term, which doesn’t negatively impact the way we feel longer term?

How else could we relax, feel connection with someone else, gain convenience, etc?

“No reason” = no power.

And nothing changes without some power.

Much love,

Jon ‘D’etre’ Hall

Jen Harden - hear about Ninja Coach Jen's journey from member to coach and mother of two since we've known

We're on a mission to help one million people RISE by 2030 - join the movement at www.myrise.co.uk

We're on a mission to help one million people RISE by 2030 - join the movement at www.myrise.co.uk

Last Tuesday (the 6th) I mentioned that I’ve been watching the TV series Cobra Kai with my two older sons.

We’d actually finished on the Monday but, you know, I write these bad boys in advance (I’ll cover why tomorrow).

My goodness the final episode of Series 3 was good!

Even if you’ve never seen anything to do with Karate Kid, if you were alive in the 80s, you probably heard people say “Wax on, wax off. Paint the fence”.

My Miyagi, the Karate sensei, had Daniel-san (his student) waxing his car and (you guessed it) painting his fence.

Not as slave labour.

But to help him create “muscle memory” of certain movements.

Which then helped him learning certain karate moves when they got to that part of his training.

Getting the reps in when it’s relatively easy is key to then being able to do that thing when it’s more challenging.

We probably wouldn’t learn much about Karate by getting beaten up by a black belt, would we?

Lots of relatively easy, marginal ‘stretch’ reps that make a little forward progress add up though.

Create that ‘muscle memory’ for the less frequent greater challenges, don’t they?

And it’s the same in all areas.

Little better food choices here and there………

Individual workouts……….

Decisions to go to bed earlier, to not have a drink tonight, to try a meditation, etc……..

They don’t do much by themselves.

But they add up over time.

And they mean that when we’re faced with the greater challenges, we have that volume of training behind us.

When we require more of our body, it has that muscle memory.

When we’re faced with some more challenging eating related situations, it’s not our first rodeo.

Get those easy reps in while you can………..

Wax on, wax off.

Paint the fence.

Much love,

Jon ‘Used to have that toy where you tried to catch the fly with chopsticks’ Hall

We're on a mission to help one million people RISE by 2030 - join the movement at www.myrise.co.uk

Who knows what you’re supposed to do if you fall into quicksand?

That’s right – stay relatively still.

Maybe slow movements as you start to pull yourself out.

But slowness and minimal movement is key.

We all know this.

I heard it many times in my childhood.

I’ll be honest though, it’s turned out to be less of a problem in adulthood than I was expecting.

Most of life is the opposite though.

We become more stuck by staying still.

“I’m feeling stuck” is a common phrase.

We’ve all said it.

When we don’t quite know what to do to change the situation we’re currently in.

The body, the energy levels, the job, the relationship, etc.

Or, probably more likely, we know perfectly well what to do, we just don’t seem able to do it.

The key, of course, to getting ‘unstuck’ is movement.

We’ll never get out without that.

There’s a total amount of movement that needs to go into any getting ‘unstuck’ in any situation.

But we sometimes feel we need to do the equivalent of doing that all in one go.

Tearing ourselves vigorously free by going from zero workouts a week to six.

By eating like an athlete.

Doing every bit of work that needs to get done in one day.

Either fixing that relationship straight away or walking out on it.

And when we can’t do those things, we find ourselves doing nothing.

But little movements add up.

The equivalent of wiggling our foot to start to get it out.

A single workout.

A single better food choice.

Some work.

A conversation.

They all add up.

And we build momentum.

We may get to the point where we’re completely ‘free’ and things are exactly as we’d like.

We may stay a bit stuck but be moving.

But movement is the key.

Little ones, big ones, whatever we can manage ones.

It’s not quicksand.

The answer is the exact opposite to staying still.

Much love,

Jon ‘Stockholm’ Hall

We're on a mission to help one million people RISE by 2030 - join the movement at www.myrise.co.uk

We all have our routines.

Things we do pretty much the same day in day out.

We’ve developed a habit of a series of activities over time.

Often without really realising it.

But there are certain parts of our life that we pretty much do on auto pilot with little to no thought.

And that’s fine.

Until it isn’t.

Take away the O, I, N and E from ‘Routines’ and what do we have left?

‘Ruts’.

“a habit or pattern of behaviour that has become dull and unproductive but is hard to change”

Behaviours that aren’t really serving us.

But have just become ingrained habits we do without much thought.

As we’ve mentioned before, a habit has parts.

And by knowing what those parts are and recognising them in what we do, we stand a much better chance of changing them.

Cue, Craving, Response, Reward.

The thing that starts that chain of thought……….

The desire to to the thing………..

The thing we do………..

And what we get from it.

All habits have these sections.

All routines are just habits.

All ruts are made of of these four parts.

Only by realising that and looking where and how those things are happening where we have ‘ruts’ do we have any chance of changing them.

Of getting unstuck from those ruts we are in.

Speaking of “getting stuck” – I’ll cover that tomorrow 🙂

Much love,

J Hall (I dropped the O and N but it’s not all that obvious is it?)

P.S. We’re back in the club in person today – check www.myrise.co.uk/apply if you want some help getting out of your ruts 🙂

We're on a mission to help one million people RISE by 2030 - join the movement at www.myrise.co.uk

Out of all the things that people tell us they struggle with, “motivation” is the number one.

Which I get.

We start out all excited when we begin something new.

We feel full of energy and enthusiasm for something.

After a week or two that has waned somewhat.

And we don’t really feel like it.

It soon becomes a bit of a pain.

And it starts to slip.

Until we realise we haven’t done it for a while.

And feel that we have to “start again” at some point.

The thing is though, no one is motivated to do a workout.

No one is motivated to make those better food choices.

Not directly.

If we wait to be motivated to do them, we’ll be waiting for a very long time.

We have things we value in life.

The sort of person we see ourselves being and becoming.

The kind of life we want to live.

What we hold to be important to us.

We try and live our lives in line with other people’s values and it’s a struggle.

Our parents, other halves, friends, society as whole.

That’s when our lives are filled with “ought tos”, “shoulds” and “need tos”.

All stuff we don’t really want to do.

Live our life in line with what we value and it all gets much easier.

We’re already motivated by what we value.

There are things in our lives that we’ve done consistently for years or decades aren’t they?

Because we value them.

Or we can see how they tie into what we value.

Maybe we turn up for work absolutely fine.

Because we value doing it.

Or we value the money it brings and what that allows us to do with our lives that’s important to us.

Or a mixture of the two.

Maybe we value family.

Or creativity, enthusiasm, being a leader, relaxation, ease, challenge, variety, setting a good example, being present or any of hundreds of other things.

If we can see how exercise and better eating choice tie in to that………….

We don’t need to create motivation, it’s already there.

A slight shift in how we see it can mean we have all the motivation we ever need for these things because we see how it helps us live the kind of life we want to.

The most important thing in the world for us being a parent?

What helps with that?

More energy, better mood, more patience, etc?

What helps with that?

Exercise, eating well and getting enough sleep.

What to do important things at work and / or earn loads of money?

What helps with that?

Energy, stamina, focus?

What helps with that?

Exercise, eating well and getting enough sleep.

Want to be able to relax and connect with people that are important to us?

What helps with that?

Getting all our work and other stuff done quickly and effectively, having other areas of our life ‘in order’ so we genuinely can relax and not be worrying about them?

What helps with that?

Exercise, eating well and getting enough sleep.

—————————————–

If there were no benefits to healthy eating and exercise, I doubt anyone would do them.

I know I wouldn’t.

We’re not motivated by the process.

No one is.

But we can tie that process into what we are already motivated by.

By how those things helps us live a life that we want to.

What are you motivated by?

And how does healthier eating and exercise help with that?

Much love,

‘Mr’ Jon Hall

We're on a mission to help one million people RISE by 2030 - join the movement at www.myrise.co.uk

Have you ever seen a picture on Facebook of someone who’s about the same age or older than you doing something particularly impressive………..

Maybe they’ve got in shape, ran a marathon, completed some sort of event, etc………..

And it’s accompanied by the phrase “Age is nothing but a number”.

I see it quite a lot from fellow FitPros.

Alongside a client success of theirs.

And I get it.

But……………

No one ever died of a number did they?

People die “of old age”, don’t they?

I know there’s a specific reasons they’ve finally died, of course.

But it’s generally accepted that the body can only take so much “living” before it packs in in some way.

Often the FitPro sharing the “Age is nothing but a number” comment is relatively young.

Injury, illness and ache and pain free.

And there’s nothing wrong with that, of course.

Be nice to be back there again, wouldn’t it?

But, does dismissing the affect of our aging bodies completely help?

Maybe we could see our bodies more like a car.

We know as it gets older, it’ll require a bit more TLC.

The first third or so of it’s life we usually do next to nothing with it.

Then, gradually, it requires more ‘work’.

We can slow that aging process considerably.

Some 10 year old cars have been scrapped already due to not been taken care of.

Some look and run not far off as good as new.

Some classic cars are still in great nick after half a century or more.

The age is a consideration and not to be ignored.

But how much care has been taken over those years is, arguably, the bigger factor.

The main difference in the analogy of our bodies to our cars is that of the ‘cost’.

We could keep spending a bit continuously and keep our car roughly as is (at least massively slowing down the ageing on it).

As we can keep on top of exercise, eating, etc (and the cost of time and effort that go into them) over the years.

Or, maybe, we’ve let it get a bit ‘run down’.

There’s a bigger bill to pay now to get it back to where we’d like it.

It might never quite get back to that showroom look.

But we can probably get much closer.

Age isn’t just a number.

But we can minimise the effect that number has to have 🙂

Much love,

Jon ‘Wang’ Hall

P.S. If you feel you want to start ‘fixing’ a bit of that wear and tear, we can help. You can apply for a place on the programme at www.myrise.co.uk/apply