Aligning your perception with your health goals
May 22, 2023
Perception has a profound influence on how we experience the world and navigate our lives. It shapes our beliefs, molds our understanding, and influences our actions. Basically, perception shapes our reality, and when it comes to health it can be either a powerful ally or a formidable obstacle. How we perceive ourselves and our bodies impacts our choices, habits, and ultimately how successful we are at achieving our goals.
The powerful connection between perception and health is often overlooked, and I think it’s really important to discuss because by leaning on the power of the mind-body connection, you can pave the way for transformative and sustainable health and wellness.
Aligning perception and health goals.
Story time - I started working with a client not too long ago. Let’s call her Stephanie (name changed for privacy). During Stephanie’s consultation, as normal, we spoke about her goals. She started showing me pictures of other women to highlight the aesthetic goals she wanted to achieve. She then went on to tell me about her relationship with food and the struggles she’s had in the past with extreme dieting, extreme training, and even going through bariatric surgery. She didn’t want to put the weight back on, but she also wanted to get back into exercise and nutrition in a healthy way. She wanted to build a healthier relationship with food and exercise.
This is something I’ve personally struggled with in the past, so I was super excited to meet Stephanie and get started. However, I noticed all the pictures she was showing me were of intense body builders, and the captions were all about taking more extreme measures - all of the things that Stephanie was trying to move away from.
Before I say more about Stephanie’s story, I want to first mention that if this is the approach you take in your health and wellness, that’s totally fine! To each his own. The point I’m trying to make is that this approach was something Stephanie did NOT want for herself. She had come from that in the past and didn’t want to go back there again. That messaging was not aligned with the goals that she wanted.
So one of the first things we did together had nothing to do with food or exercise. It had to do with social media. I had her go through her social media and unfollow accounts that weren’t aligned with her goals.
I’ve done this with other clients in the past, too and it’s worked wonders. Anyone can apply this to any goal that they have in life - take inventory of the content you’re consuming and ask yourself, “Is this aligned with the life that I want? Is this messaging supportive for me and my goals or is it keeping me in a reality where I cannot achieve what I want?”
By doing this you’re opening up your mind and changing your perception on ways to live a healthy lifestyle that ARE aligned with how you view health and how you want to feel in your body.
Stop following the accounts that are feeding into a mindset that isn’t supporting what you want to achieve and start following people that show you a reality that your goals are possible.
Mindset alignment for health goals.
Aligning your mindset with your health goals goes beyond social media and into the people, content, TV shows, podcasts, news outlets, music and everything else that you’re surrounded by on a daily basis. These things have a massive impact on shaping your view of the world, your reality, and your perception of what’s going on in your life.
We all have different perceptions and they’re processed through our own different filtering systems. So what doing this work does is opens up your mind to different possibilities that exist beyond your own beliefs. Unlimited potential exists out there in the Universe way beyond what your perception is. As soon as you can realize this, you can start to shift and move past those beliefs that may be holding you back from your goals.
We all have access to this at any point in time. But it can be really challenging when you’re constantly surrounded by certain messaging and perceptions that are perpetuating your own belief system. In order to change your perception and beliefs, you need to tap into what exists beyond your current reality.
And that’s where you can find alignment.
If you really want something but you’re perpetuating a reality that’s not aligned with what you want, then it’s going to be hard to get. So you need to start by going beyond your current reality and into different possibilities. And from there you can expand and tap into a new reality that is aligned with what you want, with what your values are, and with what your idea of health is.
Back to Stephanie - she was amazed (as was I watching her transformation)! She did a complete 180 within 2-3 weeks. By the end of our 10 sessions together she was a totally different person. But we needed to start with the very basics, with something as simple as unfollowing old views and starting to welcome different approaches.
The mind is a powerful tool. The great thing about it is it’s flexible and can change!
If you’d like support with this, it’s one of my favorite things to help clients with in our 1 to 1 coaching sessions. This is what practicing holistically looks like! Reach out and let’s connect about what working together looks like.
Sending you love.
Carissa
xox
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