Mind Body Bowl: Think, move and eat your way to a more balanced life. Annie Clarke
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Название: Mind Body Bowl: Think, move and eat your way to a more balanced life
Автор: Annie Clarke
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Кулинария
isbn: 9780008191122
isbn:
Within a few short weeks I was exhausted! My hips were killing me but I was loving every second of it and I didn’t want to slow down. I soon came to realize that on top of my work with my blog, which was growing quickly and bringing its own opportunities, I couldn’t sustain the pace if I wanted to look after my students and myself properly. I didn’t want to miss an opportunity or let people down, but I quickly learned that to do something well takes commitment and time, and the more thinly I spread myself, the less likely I was to give my best. That was enough to encourage me to take a few steps back.
‘Most of the time I feel better than I ever knew I could: I have energy, I’m rarely stressed, I let things go and feel a lot less anxious … I am a lot more comfortable in my own skin.’
I always try to bring myself back to the reason why this all began. I started on this journey because I was trying to look after my own body and mind. If one of those, or both, becomes neglected then, within reason, I try to rein it in and see what can be done to find my balance again. Most of the time I feel better than I ever knew I could: I have energy, I’m rarely stressed, I let things go and feel a lot less anxious. My stomach is generally much happier and I am a lot more comfortable in my own skin. I am still human and I am still learning. Sometimes my stomach plays up, or I have a week where I am feeling sluggish. There are still days when I don’t feel so confident in myself. It is OK to feel that way sometimes, but I just try to remember not to indulge in it too much. You really can be so proactive in managing the way you feel; understanding what works for you is actually a really amazing skill to develop. It feels so wonderful to know that there is so much you can do to help yourself, so that even if you don’t feel your best 100 per cent of the time, you can set yourself up for a pretty strong average.
A few last words before we begin
Start from a place of positivity and allow yourself the space to grow and learn without judgement or boundaries. If you wait until you ‘feel like it’ every time you want to make a change, you might stay the same forever. Which is, of course, totally fine if you are happy where you are – but presumably the reason you’ve thought about doing something in the first place is because you feel you have something to gain from making that change.
I can’t tell you the number of times I have sat down and meticulously planned a week so that I can get my work done, see all my clients, get to the gym and do my yoga practice, and been really excited to achieve it. But then it is Monday morning, or Tuesday afternoon, or any time in any day and I just don’t feel like doing whatever is scheduled for that time. I remember that the washing needs doing or that I really must get through my emails, or that I ‘need’ to do absolutely anything else.
Whatever your goal is, you need to understand your motivation in order to be truly committed to achieving it. Rather than think you want to eat more healthily, be stronger, fitter, lose weight, spend more time with friends or whatever else it is that you are striving towards, take a step back and think about what you will gain by achieving it. For example, if you are hoping to lose weight, what will be the impact of that on your life? Perhaps it will improve your confidence or allow you to be more active? What are the results that will make a positive difference to you? Once you start to understand why you want to achieve something, you have a much greater level of motivation to spur you on if it gets tough at any point (and the chances are it will at times).
So often we resolve to make changes because there is something we don’t like in our lives. The trouble is we then tell ourselves that we will be happy once we make this change.
This mindset of changing because we don’t like where we are poses a problem if we don’t see results: it can be pretty frustrating and we bring ourselves down or feel as if we’ve failed if we don’t get exactly where we wanted to be. If you can make a conscious decision to accept yourself first, everything shifts a little. It’s so much more positive to make healthy changes to your lifestyle because you want to care for the amazing body and mind you have and look after them the best you can, than to make changes because you feel negative about yourself. It may be easier said than done, but it makes everything so much more manageable if you can accept yourself for who and where you are right now, before you embark on creating change.
Finally, allow yourself to be a beginner, to make mistakes, to figure out some things quickly and find other things much harder. Don’t expect everything to fall into place straight away; in fact, try not to expect anything at all. This isn’t about miracle cures or overnight success; it’s about taking care of yourself, and learning exactly what you need.
— 01
Like most of us, you probably go through each day without really noticing what you are thinking about.
Recently ‘mindfulness’ has become a bit of a buzzword and there are all sorts of programmes, apps and concepts that enable us to become more efficient in the workplace, develop a positive mentality and generally become happier. This can all seem a little strange if you didn’t feel as though anything was ‘wrong’ in the first place. But no matter how comfortable you already are in your mind and thought processes, mindfulness can benefit all aspects of your life.
Your mind is a wonderfully complex thing, and each of our minds works in an individual way, making understanding others and ourselves a life-long adventure. For a lot of people the mind ticks away without them really giving it any attention. Others may choose to try to understand a little more about how it works, how it influences their actions and how it is connected to the physical body, through practices such as yoga and meditation.
Put simply, being mindful means being aware of the present moment and having a conscious understanding and acceptance of the way you feel. I guess the thing to realize is that a mindfulness practice doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing to each person. While some people consciously commit to a specific exercise to connect with themselves in a certain way, others may have a subconscious mindfulness practice that they include in their daily habits without even realizing or planning it.
As I shifted towards my current lifestyle and left old habits behind, I made a decision to accept that I can’t predict where life will take me and I began to think more deeply about what I really wanted. I came to the conclusion that I wanted to be two things – healthy and happy – to give myself the best chance of coping with and enjoying the twists and turns of the future. So what did I need to do to equip myself to deal with whatever might come my way? What did being truly happy mean? What constituted health? Did that include my mental health as well as healthy attitudes? Suddenly there were a million things to consider and it all seemed fairly complicated.
As these thoughts developed, I asked myself СКАЧАТЬ