Going Mental

I work in the downtown area of the city I live in. It's not a huge, sprawling, super duper skyscraper type city like Chicago or New York. Don't get me wrong, we do have skyscrapers, just not super duper. My city is what is affectionately referred to as a cow town, a government town and the capital my my fairly dysfunctional state.
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The Northern direction of the street that my office sits on, has a lot of beautiful, old Victorian houses. The streets are lined with ancient, massive oak trees and all the houses are nestled safely in their appointed lots. Far from the brutal world in the opposite direction.

Down the Southern end are restaurants and bars that I used to frequent at lunch not too long a go. A sort of dietary red light district. Places where I would gorge myself on beer and sushi, stagger back to my desk and pass out in a comatose meltdown. I can hear their moans as the Autumn winds whip down the street. Like the eerie mating call of the Canadian Moose, they beckon to me wondering where I have been and asking when I will return. "Not for a long time", is my reply as I cast my eyes woefully down the street in their direction. "Not for a long time."

Needless to say, when I have the chance to take a break from my grueling creative brain storming, I like to skip, very Yellow Brick Road like, up the Northern end of the street. I fantasize about owning one of those quaint little houses. Nice quiet streets, sharing my recycling bin with the local derelicts that live in the alley. I imagine myself, walking my dogs to the park at the end of the street playing frisbee with them and being the physically active owner they have always wanted.

A few days ago I was walking and imagining that unlikely scenario, and I realized something. If I could imagine what it would be like to live in this liberal bumper sticker, Crocs wearin', country garden havin', Volvo drivin', Trader Joe's shoppin' little piece of heaven, I could certainly try to imagine myself getting thin and healthy!

It wouldn't be hard. I already feel great due to my lifestyle change. The only problem is I don't look it yet. As I stated in an earlier blog, that is the part I have a hard time with. I take showers in the dark for gods sake! The visual reality is too harsh for me to deal with because it doesn't match the cool, groovy, super awesome way that I FEEL.

So the answer to my problem? How about mentally feed my mind a positive image of what I want to look like. I feed my body good things to eat right? Why not go inside my mind and paste my head on Vin Diesels body? Just with my tattoos. His suck. I can do that. It is my imaginary world anyway.

The good thing is that this is a fantasy that is becoming a reality. Slowly. Very Slowly. But that's Ok. I have already confronted those "Impatient Demons" and dowsed them with a liter sized bottle of Holy Smart Water! I HAD to do that first in order to get to this place. Not looking at the lower half of my profile in reflective surfaces helps keep me sane and patient as well. But that's another blog.

I read an article once that talked about an experiment that a high school basketball coach did with his team. On game day, during the warm ups, the coach had the team divide into two separate groups. One half of the team was given basketballs and told to practice their free throws as they would normally do. The other half of the team was instructed to sit on the bench in the gym and relax.

This group of boys were then told to close their eyes and picture themselves making free throw shots. For 15 minutes they were told to focus their minds on the movements of their muscles and visualizing the ball going into the basket every time. The very same movements they had repeated so many times before with an actual ball. The boys all happily complied and soon the game started.

The coach had someone keeping track of the amount of free throws each set of boys made. When the game was over he checked the lists to see the results and was shocked at what he found. It seems the boys that had done only the mental practice scored more free throws on average than the boys that actually practiced.

It really just goes to show that sometimes just DOING things isn't enough. In addition to the food tracking and the blogging and the sweating stuff, we need to take the time to go completely mental! Lately, this simple cranial exercise has helped me stay focused and on the path when I have wanted to chuck my motivational compass at the nearest gym membership and slip back into the abyss that WAS my life.

So let's whip out our imaginations! Take those inspiration collages you so carefully crafted from old magazines and commit them to memory. Have a crystal clear vision of who we are inside and who we will be at the end of whatever street we choose to walk down. Always try to keep our thoughts positive. We are already living a reality that is less than kind. Why not keep our thoughts positive and our mental pictures the Kodak moments we have always wanted. We all deserve it!