You may know that I have a young baby at home.

 

He’s just over six months at the moment and has just started eating.

 

So, we’re all very “Who’s a clever boy?” and “Wow Charlie, that’s brilliant”

 

100% positive reinforcement and encouragement.

 

No telling him off when he gets food all over his face.

 

Or berating him for a ‘Code Brown’ as we’re trying to leave the house.

 

Because that’s what you do with kids, isn’t it?

 

Praise the positive, ignore the negative.

 

But it stops at some point, doesn’t it?

 

How many times have you been praised this week and how many times have you been criticised?

 

How many times have you praised yourselves and how many times have you criticised yourself?

 

I should imagine, in both cases, it’s way more criticism than praise, yeah?

 

And that can, very easily, make us feel like we’re failing at life.

 

The good stuff we do just become a given.

 

‘Expected behaviour’.

 

And we can feel like all we’re getting is negative feedback.

 

Now, we know, of course, that life can’t be 100% positive encouragement.

 

We need to know when things aren’t quite right.

 

We don’t live in some marshmallow covered cloud cuckoo land.

 

But we can redress the overwhelmingly negative balance somewhat.

 

Because, when you look at it the right way, you’re doing great.

 

Doing one or two workouts this week is awesome.

 

It’s not missing the other two or one workouts.

 

Having a couple of ‘blowouts’ is actually having 19 good meals that week.

 

You get to work everyday, even when you don’t feel like it.

 

You put a roof over the heads of yourself and, possibly, others.

 

Forget about the people you don’t get on with and concentrate on those that you do.

 

It’s fine to aim for ‘better’ (and next week’s find-out-more meeting might be your first step to doing that –> myrise.co.uk/briefing-meeting).

 

But don’t forget how well you’re already doing.

 

And don’t ‘write it off’ if it’s not ‘perfect’.

 

And do the same with others.

 

People flabotage you by waving crap food under your nose?

 

Praise them when they don’t.

 

Family or friends not on the same page about healthy eating and exercise?

 

Praise and encourage them when they do anything remotely in that direction.

 

Praise the positive, ignore the negative.

 

What you appreciate appreciates 🙂

 

 

Much love,

 

Jon ‘My three boys have definitely inherited my appetite’ Hall and Matt ‘Milo gets his from me’ Nicholson

 

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RISE Macclesfield – myrise.co.uk

 

Serious transformations. Fun times!

 

Enter your details at myrise.co.uk for more information about what we do.

 

Or check out our monthly find-out-more meeting if you want to learn more about our free ’20lbs weight loss in 8 weeks’ and ‘Beach Body’ challenges –> myrise.co.uk/briefing-meeting

Jon Hall
Jon Hall

When not helping people to transform their lives and bodies, Jon can usually be found either playing with his kids or taxi-ing them around. If you'd like to find out more about what we do at RISE then enter your details in the box to the right or bottom of this page or at myrise.co.uk - this is the same way every single one of the hundreds who've described this as "one of the best decisions I've ever made" took their first step.