In order to make any lasting changes in our lives it is essential for us to realise that without changing the way we think and behave internally any change will be temporary. Our subconscious mind is the ship that runs our lives as all of our strategies, habits, psychological control and impulses are stored there. By increasing our awareness we can learn to recognise our patterns and take control in our lives by changing them from the ones that limit us to the ones that serve us.
Talking about fitness, it is a well-known fact that fit people eat healthy, balanced diet and exercise regularly. When an unfit person decides to become fit she needs to learn what kind of food and how many calories she should eat daily, as well as what kind of physical training should be done for the results to be achieved. This is the ‘outer game’ of fitness and it is by all means very important for a person to develop these healthy habits in order to become and remain fit. However, we are only able to change our habits when we change our mental attitude and develop new ways of thinking. The ‘inner game’ of fitness refers to these psychological aspects which means that we must be willing to look inside, be honest with ourselves and recognise the core reasons of our unhealthy lifestyle.
Essential elements of the successful ‘inner game’ are:
- Setting realistic and achievable goals
- Building self-discipline and motivation
- Replacing bad habits with the new healthy ones
- Reviewing self-image and mental maps
- Developing self-confidence and reviewing progress
NLP techique ‘Creating compelling future’ can be very useful in helping the ‘inner game’ of fitness.
One of people’s very important intellectual faculties is imagination as we can use our imagination to visualise any outcome or any situation we would like to become our reality. ‘Inner game’ success in fitness practice is achieved by creating a compelling future through visualisation process. By using our core values, love, praise, acceptance and our preferred representational system we can see, feel, hear and taste success in our mind as it is already there and keep our motivation alive.