My past is littered with start/stop attempts to exercise!

I remember when I turned 30, I decided that this was the time to get finally become one of those people who exercised regularly. 🏃🏼‍♀️🏋🏼‍♀️

So I joined a gym and went consistently for a while and then life got busy and my sporty-spice activities became less regular until eventually I stopped altogether.

Then in my 40s I tried again with the same stop/start results whether it was yoga or the gym or even walking regularly because there were always too many competing demands on my time.

Something had to give and you can guess what it was!

Bye bye Sporty Spice, hello Busy Spice … ok so I made that new Spice Girl up but in my girl band she was always the lead! 

Sound familiar?

Now your thing may not be exercise … maybe it’s meditation or healthier eating or getting more sleep or taking up a hobby like painting … but the pattern may be familiar where you start doing something for yourself only to give up because you say to yourself …

• I’ve got too much work to do
• The kids need me to take them to sport/help with their homework etc
• I’m too tired
• Life is just too busy at the moment … I’ll come back to this later when I have the space
• I should be spending time with my partner/elderly parents/friends etc 
• I need to clean the house … I’m sure there’s a floor somewhere under this mess!
• I just can’t find the time

These might sounds like good reasons but they’re not!

They’re really the excuses we use to sabotage ourselves and give up on the thing we thought we wanted … which means Busy Spice is actually Sabotage Spice!!

So the question is why?

Why do you give up on yourself? 

Why do you put everyone else’s priorities and needs ahead of your own?

What’s the missing magical ingredient that will stop the sabotage and give you stickability to do the things you have decided are important to you?

Ready for some tough love?

The awkward truth is … you just don’t love yourself enough to keep going!

Ouch …

When I realised this a few years ago, I squiggled and squirmed and tried to wriggle out of accepting it as the reason because though I could see it in others it surely wasn’t true for me! 😱

But when I finally stopped wriggling and took some time to become curious, I realised that if I scratched the surface of all of my very rational reasons for why I kept falling off the exercise wagon, it was because …

• I didn’t love myself enough to make myself the priority when there were so many demands on my time. 
• I didn’t love myself enough to move through the discomfort and keep going when the initial enthusiasm wore off and it became an effort.

If you’re squiggling and squirming as you read this, I invite you to take a moment and be curious … might these also be why you past is littered with unfulfilled plans like mine was?

Self Love is the magic ingredient that creates lasting change

You see, without self love as the solid foundation for the change you want to create, you’ll give up when it becomes too inconvenient or too much effort or too unfamiliar

And let’s be real here … if you want to create a significant change it is going to be all of those things to varying degrees and because your Taught Self craves the status quo and likes to keep things easy and familiar, you’re going to find ways to sabotage yourself either sooner or later.

It’s not because our Taught Self wants to hurt you or hold you back because it’s not that smart! 

The Taught Self responds and reacts based on the accumulation of beliefs we have created throughout our life that we think will keep us safe.

The Taught Self doesn’t generate new ideas or create change outside that past learning which is now running on automatic. Anything new or different means you’ve gone rogue and so the change needs to be corrected to get you back on the old track!

So your Taught Self convinces you that what you want can be compromised or sacrificed because it’s too hard or not really that important and when that happens the key is to connect back into the deeper reason you wanted to create change in the first place.

You remind yourself that you want to be healthier because you love yourself so much that you CHOOSE to feel fit and vibrant as you go through your day because that makes life so much more fun. 🥳

Or you remember that expressing your creativity helps you feel your Light and your joy, so the time you put aside to paint becomes a sacred space that you gently guard against interruption because you love yourself enough to make yourself the priority … even if only for an hour a week. 🌟

Or maybe you commit to sitting in the garden for 15 minutes a day without any distractions because you know that when you do it’s easier to hear the wisdom and guidance from True Self and it’s such an exquisite and loving gift to give yourself that you turn off your devices to immerse yourself in it. 💝

The Power of a Decision

When you start to feel Sabotage Spice try to take back control and your commitment to yourself begins to wobble, you DECIDE that there is nothing more important for you to do in that moment than to put your Self Love into action.

Even if only for 5 minutes and you’ll be amazed at how the universe will support you to continue.

And this is exactly what I do now on the days when I feel like I can’t be bothered going for a walk or jumping on the rebounder and I say to myself,

“I’m not just doing this to get fit, I’m doing it because I love myself enough to do what it takes to be active and healthy for at least another 30 years so I can keep enjoying all the magic that I am creating in my life.”

You might notice that we go on and on [and on!!] about Self Love because it really is the "secret sauce" that creates magic in our own lives.

That's why we're excited to share this 5 minute video with you so you can start using the power of Self Love as the generator of change in your life too. 🥰