Tag: growth

Categories
Health Nutrition

The Secret of Maintaining a Slim Figure

I think in the US we’re led to believe that some women across the world naturally stay slim and it’s genetic. Unfortunately, to those of us born in the states, our genes must have mutated and now we all carry the fat gene. Can that really be true, even if our ancestors hailed from these magical lands of effortlessly slim people?

Of course it’s not true.

No one’s genes mutated. What changed are our daily habits and what’s considered normal here in the states versus abroad.

1) Walking- people in places who walk more stay healthier

2) fruits/vegetables/meat/fish – yes people in France and Italy love bread and desserts but it’s quality over quantity.

I read “French Women Don’t Get Fat” in college and it really changed the way I view food. It’s not our enemy but our life long love affair. We must eat to survive and we can choose to love the food we make.

3) We don’t eat enough soup- many cultures value eating soup for a meal or for a weekend to slim down after a particularly voracious week of eating.

4) Less soda, beer, and empty calories

5) Movement beyond Walking- walking is a part of daily life to get from point A to point B. On Google maps, you can choose a car, bus, or walk! That’s right, even Google maps considers walking a mode of transportation.

Therefore to maintain an ideal shape you must walk and put in some effort a couple of days a week with either light resistance weights, yoga, pilates, etc….

That’s it, it’s not a big secret. Unfortunately, we don’t want to give up our bad habits and we would rather take a short cut. Short cuts don’t last and on and on yo yo dieting goes.

The fitness industry has to be a 10 billion dollar industry these days, maybe more ?

If it worked so well then why are there new methods every day? Doesn’t make sense to me.

Categories
Fitness Health Mindset Personal Growth

Consistency: Why I love and loathe consistency

There are so many things that I love to be consistent…my morning coffee, my work schedule, my employees always showing up on time, my fiance making me quinoa or rice for dinner.

I don’t want to sound hypocritical right off the bat so let me say that I am very consistent at certain things like work. I rarely take a sick day, I keep to my hours and try to be the best leader.

However, there are dream projects that I’ve started and stopped over the years, like this blog and of course it’s gone nowhere. Am I surprised? Of course not but do I know where other people who started around the same time as me have taken theirs, yes I am painfully aware.

It’s not even the satisfaction of success, I feel satisfied in other areas and this didn’t need to be one of them. I’m not trying to escape my practice, I love it. But I do love the idea of consistently putting forth an effort on a hobby that I believe benefits others.

I was reading something my uncle, Sam Crowley at www.everydayissaturday.com posted and he said that John Lee Dumas did a podcast every day for 10-15 years and now he’s selling it for probably around 10 million dollars.

Of course it naturally evolved as things do, and he had paid guests to come on his show to pitch their ideas. He also has a website and sells courses.

But it really got me thinking what is the version of me doing that continued her blog 10 years ago and did it every day?

Of course, what is the version of me like who has stuck to everything that I said I’d do or never do again?

I think that version of me would be insanely fit and healthy, happy, joyful and grateful that I stuck to my commitments to myself.

I don’t know if I’m lying to myself to say I’m going to do better but I think I’ll try to keep my integrity to myself and give a little more effort.

Categories
Health Mindset

Failing Forward

So many people say that failing is growing but who actually believes that?

I’ve been reading “Mindset” by Dr. Carol Dweck and it has completely connected the dots on why people with a “fixed mindset” rail against the idea of failing.

I’m a millennial and we were brought up to believe we were special and talented, which in of itself sounds like a great idea. It was an improvement over the ideas of past parenting that said “you’ll never be good enough” or worse.

I think those of us who were raised in the late 80s, 90s and early 2000’s can all relate that it did feel good to know we were, okay, even if we didn’t excel at something.

The problem lies in the use of language. It’s amazing to me, how using certain phrases can completely change our psychology and impact the trajectory of our whole lives.

The idea of being special or talented means that you don’t have to try as hard to be good at something and you feel bad for those who do have to work hard.

While I was in high school, I could read something one time, regurgitate it and sometimes apply it better than my classmates who had spent hours on the material. Why? Because I was special. I have a fantastic memory and I enjoy using it.

I’ll never forget the many times my dad said to me that his wish for me was to be a great critical thinker not just a great regurgitator. I was so busy with sports, extracurriculars, volunteering and course work, that to be honest, I really didn’t care about becoming a great critical thinker because good regurgitators got good grades.

When I went to college, I found the first semester hard. My fantastic memory was not enough anymore, I needed to become a good critical thinker. Unfortunately for me that meant that I needed to apply myself. I thought back on what my friends did who needed to work hard and starting applying that method to my studies. My boyfriend at the time, was incredibly brilliant and he never needed to study or work very hard and I found myself feeling less than special because I now needed to work.

Thankfully, I put my pride on the shelf and my goals in front of me and realized that I needed to apply hard work to whatever natural ability I had to make a go of education.

The result? Success. To be honest, this was the first time when I realized how good it felt to work hard for something and be rewarded. Before, I felt like I had cheated, that I somehow hadn’t earned it because I didn’t need to struggle.

Looking back, I was cheating, cheating myself of the opportunity to push myself farther and learn more thanks to my natural ability. If I could go so far with my natural talents, then how much further could I have gone with some elbow grease?

I will always carry a little regret with me that I didn’t push myself farther in those early years, but I intend to make up for it now.

Back to Dr. Dweck and her mindset hypothesis. She makes the case for a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. Fixed mindsets are the ones where people feel they are special or talented and afraid to fail or be seen as less than special. Growth mindset people are people who want to learn and become better in whatever they are passionate about.

Inadvertently, I had gone from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset in college in order to succeed and then throughout my career in healthcare I have stayed mostly in a growth mindset.

It’s only been recently in the online space, that I have found myself reverting back to the fixed mindset, “what will people think”, “what if I’m not good enough, or as good at it, as I am as a chiropractor?”, “what if I fail?”.

Using the knowledge that I am reading in this book, which in of itself speaks to a growth mindset, I feel like I have good understanding of how these two mindsets interplay.

It’s okay to fail, it’s okay to be mediocre at first. I may not be the best blog writer or the best course instructor when I first start but through hard work I can become very good, maybe even great.

Become the best version of you through hard work

Morgan

For those interested you can pick up a copy of Dr. Dweck’s book below through Amazon, and I do earn a small commission if you buy through this link