Yep, what you wrote excites me too, it is possible to change, I love your bucket metaphor. Cool comment.

So for a couple of months I only did half of what my plan was, never increased my weights and grizzled about that fact I wasn’t seeing results.

I read in a book recently about creating new beliefs around anything in your life. The book itself was on trading psychology while in the markets.

Anyway its starts with having (1) thought or desire then (2) creating a goal to work towards (3) create a rule to live by so you don’t deviate from the new belief you are creating.

In my case it was (1) desire: increase fitness, burn all my fat and increase muscle. (2) to increase all weights by 1/3 by the end of 4 weeks. (3) My rule: I will go 5 days a week regardless of how I feel, do my full program each session, and each week I will increase my weights up a notch.

Any conflicting thoughts I have about the gym that stem from my old belief about life being easier, I refer to the rule I am committed to. The old way of thinking is disrupted and with constantly re-directing your thoughts towards your new rule, beliefs begin to change. The internal conflict goes away and action becomes natural. Its a bit like having two buckets and the old one begins to tip into the new one. Energy is taken out of the old one and focused into the new. Eventually you’ll have a nice full bucket and the old empty one. Any internal conflict means that the old one still needs emptying. Eventually, we will have a new clear belief where we operate automatically.

I have found the now I WANT to go to the gym more than I don’t. The voice sometimes pops up when experiencing pain on the machines. Refer back to your rule and challenge the old thoughts.

Think of all the places where we operate automatically (many of them not useful) and imagine operating automatically in the direction we want to go.

That excites me.