Work Life Balance

People who exercise regularly are motivated for various reasons. Some individuals are driven by external motivation (improve appearance and/or praise for instance) while others are driven by internal motivation (health benefits, reduction in stress and/or depression, enjoyment, enhancement of self-esteem etc.). External motivation means that your motivation to attain your goal(s) comes from a source outside yourself. Motivation is a huge exercise barrier to overcome as many people find themselves thinking “why should I bother exercising?”, “I have so little energy left after work, it would be silly to waste that energy on exercise” or “I have tried to exercise so many times before and always quit…exercise must not be for me!”. Exercise barriers come in all shapes and sizes but some of the more common ones include:

• Lack of time

• Lack of energy

• Lack of motivation

These are the big ones but we also see exercise barriers like: excessive cost, illness or injury, lack of facilities nearby (transportation issue), feeling uncomfortable, lack of skill/knowledge, and fear of injury. This is not a complete list, there are others but if you have had, or are having problems getting started or staying active then you will surely be familiar with one or more of these barriers. But once sedentary people have overcome disinterest and started exercising, the next barrier they face is continuing their exercise program. Although I don´t want to frighten anybody I can safely say that maintaining a regular exercise regime is the heart of the problem….anyone with some training shoes and a spark of motivation can start exercising! But keeping that spark of motivation going and fanning it to a flame is the key. That´s where exercise consultants come in and try to help people find their motivation, solving problems like “why do I always always ALWAYS stop exercising after a few weeks and feel guilty afterwards??”. The truth is exercisers often have lapses in trying to stick to a program and possible reasons are:

• People are not ready psychologically to start an exercise program, they are just not in “the right place”

• Many exercise programs are overly restrictive and are not optimal for enhancing motivation for regular exercise

• Rigid exercise prescriptions based on principles of intensity, duration, and frequency are too challenging for many people, especially beginners!

• Traditional, exercise prescriptions does not promote self-responsibility or empower people to make long-term behavior change….there I said it!

Look for my next article where I will discuss the topic of Motivation

Astvaldur Heiðars

Sport and exercise consultant

Creating Successful Relationships Part 2 

In part 1 we explored how to identify problems in a relationship. All relationships have problems but with a few tweeks your relationship can become a successful relationship in no time.Their are allot of ways to do this and one of them is to explore how you feel about your personal boundries.

You also need to consider what your personal boundaries are and where you draw the line. Are you allowing the other people to go into your personal space or cross to your boundaries and then get angry at them for doing it. Ask yourself who is responsible for enforcing your boundaries? Do you always respect the personal space of others and when you do not how do they react?

Another important question to ask yourself is where are you coming from emotionally when you relate to the relationship you are in? Are you coming from a place of insecurity or from a place of love? Do you feel safe in the relationship, can you trust the other person, do you feel respected and loved? If you do not feel that you are in a relationship that has mutual respect, kindness and love you may feel insecure or disappointed maybe even hurt. Self doubt may come into play at this point and begin to manifest itself in all kinds of behaviors. You may feel that the safety net that used to exist not longer holds you. You have to go elsewhere to feel safe, respected and loved. Anger is a frequent visitor and seems to be like a snake that strikes without any warning, unpredictable and deadly.

You can clearly see the faults of the other individual, the obnoxious teen, the controlling parent or the spouse that is trying to drive you insane. You are as sure of this as you are that the sun will rise in the morning. The only thing missing is your part. You know which part I am reffering to, it is the part where you take responsibility for your feelings, actions and thoughts.

Your feelings are powerful; they can control your actions, manipulate your mind and take over your life. They can even ruin a perfectly good relationship. I wrote an article about how ‘’you can fall in love with a serial killer but that doesn’t mean you should be with him’’ in that article you can see that feelings should not trump our intuition, our common sense or our rational mind. We can all find our way back from emotional confusion, anger and pain but it takes work.

Don´t forget that every feeling you have had a thought attached to it. Think about where the anger and judgements that you have came from. Successful relationships take work but they are worth every bit of the effort you put into them.

Don´t forget to sighn up for the RRS feed and the newsletter.

Check back later for part 3

Drifa Ulfarsdottir

www.twitter.com/drifau

Copyright © Drifa Ufarsdottir 2009

Creating a successful relationship takes effort; you need to put in a little work each and every day. The effort you put in should be done out of love without an expectation behind it. When you give willingly and without an expectation of something in return you reap the rewards in spades. It is kind of like a Bonsai tree, you need to prune it every day, water it carefully, lovingly. You need to take the utmost care to give it what it needs because if you forget one day, neglect it for just a little while, it will begin to whither. To bring it back to its former self not only takes perseverance, love and nurturing but an understanding of what happened in order to get it to where was before. When you are taking care of it you don´t have any expectations of getting anything back, but the feeling you get from watching the tree flourish and grow gives you satisfaction anyway. How do we create successful relationships in our lives on a consistent basis? What can we do to make sure that we are on the right track, encouraging and nurturing the relationship rather than sabotaging and neglecting it? The first thing you need to figure out what you want out of the relationship. What are your core values, what do you need to feel complete, and what inspires you. If you look at your life through someone else’s eyes, what does your life and your relationship look like? When you look at your life, look into all the corners, check every nook and cranny, is the relationship that you have now the same one that you had with this person years ago? Has it evolved into something unrecognizable? Why is it like that? You need to really ask yourself what is going on. Sometimes when we are in relationships we look only at what the other person is doing to irritate us. Are they unfair or unloving? What is unloving? How are they being unfair, and to whom are they being unfair. How did it begin? Was it always this way, or has something changed? What happened to change this relationship from happiness, love, mutual understanding and respect to something you don´t even recognize anymore. A place where respect is a legend and love is a fleeting feeling that comes and goes.

only when you have bee able to see te relationship in its truefomcan you begin to change it into somthing that you feel good about.

This is part of a series so don´t forget to check back later.

Drifa Ulfasdottir Life Coach

Copyright © Drifa Ufarsdottir 2009