(ThyBlackMan.com) What’s going to make your new year more successful than the previous one? What does it take to really get something out of your life in the New Year that you failed to get before? The answer? Get rid of ‘mental fat’.
If too much body fat (dead weight) is bad for your long-term physical health, then too much ‘mental’ fat – the residual effects of bad relationships, negative people and unproductive attitudes – is detrimental to your long-term spiritual health and can cause you to miss your flight to your destiny!
Let’s face it: we all have issues. The question is do your issues control you or do you manage your issues?
It’s important that we don’t take mental fat into the New Year. Which of your issues (bags) will cost you your flight to your destiny? If bad relationships, negative people and unproductive attitudes robbed you of your peace in 2015, here are four motivators to remove the mental fat from your life as you enter 2016:
Motivator#1
Take Control – dream again.
Mental fat seeps in when stop dreaming. Think back to the beginning of 2015. You were determined to change your life, weren’t you? What happened to your dreams? New Year fatigue sets in very early. Most people’s dreams tank by the end of January – before they’ve even taken flight! When did you stop dreaming BIG? What was it that caused you to abandon your greatest desire for your life? Most people run into one of these three roadblocks and lose sight of their dreams:
- Our dreams are ridiculed
- We accept our ‘assigned dreams’
- We lose our dreams in the fog of life
Choose to experience your life as captioned by the words of Dawn Markova: I will not die an unlived life. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid…
When we stop dreaming we forget our landmarks – the great things 
that have happened in our lives. We become less afraid and more apt to dream when we remember our successes. So dream again and become less afraid. We now know from neuroscience that dreams are strong urges to do something; to get something out of us. Dreams are our subconscious cheerleaders.
Motivator#2
Step out of the Herd – define your set-point
Mental fat shows up in groups. A set-point is a tennis term meaning one player is one point away from winning the set. The ‘herd’ is group-think.
Define your own set-point means determine for yourself what is best for you and learn to drown out the voices of the group. Why? Because the group is not likely heading the direction that you need or want to go:
- Think in the same direction
- Move in the same direction
- End up at the same destination
Milton Berle was right on target when he famously quipped: A committee is a group that keeps minutes and loses hours.
For a set to be won in tennis requires extreme focus, determination and courage, such as that exhibited by arguably the two best tennis players in the world – Venus and Serena Williams. Watch them, as they drown out the hecklers and focus on the set point. How do you define your set point? By staying focused!
From studies of the brain we now know you literally have to ‘override’ your brain to limit the effects of group-think. A part of the brain emits an ‘error’ signal when an individual deviates from group opinion, triggering a host of behaviors designed to get us to conform to group behavior.
So remember the words of Grove Patterson: The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice – it’s conformity.
Motivator#3
Empower Yourself – don’t think limitation
Limitation leads to mental fat. Fear leaves us with a feeling of being stuck. When we get stuck we lose enthusiasm. At some point, our state of mind shows up in our language – ‘when-speak’: ‘when I go back to school’ or ‘when I get a better-paying job’ or ‘when the kids leave the house’ – that’s limitation thinking!
A driver’s education instructor noticed one of his students strapped in and ready to go on his first guided instructional drive. The student was furiously racing the gas pedal with a look of excitement. The instructor tapped the student on the shoulder and says, “Son, you can’t move forward while parked in neutral.” You cannot move your life forward when you are stuck in neutral. You must think BIG! Or, as my eight-year old son Jayden put it:
Think so far out the box that you can’t even see the box anymore!
The average person says ‘no’ at least seven times a day. When you say “I can’t” you need at least seventeen people to convince you that you can. Today, become ‘I can do it’ oriented!
Motivator#4
Design the Outcome – Use your editorial power.
In the Holy Scriptures, the prophet Habakkuk is instructed to:
“Write the vision; make it plain upon the tablets”
In other words, write down your dream and rewrite it for simplicity’s sake. I call that ‘editorial power’ – the power to rewrite our story. We must not fear this ‘editorial power’, because we as humans alone have the gift of imagining and reimagining how we want our lives to be; we alone have the power to write and re-write our stories, our dreams, our hopes and our aspirations. But most people fear this editorial gift – they withdraw from it because they have become demoralized with the first draft. Soon, they just give up. Before long, others have begun to write their stories for them, thus the accumulation of mental fat. That’s why Jim Rohn was on point when he said:
If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you will fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much!
On your computer you have two options in editing a document: redo or undo. Did you know that you’ve been given that same power in life? You can give your life a ‘redo’ – you can do it over and over and over until you get it right.
The residual effects of bad relationships, negative people and unproductive attitudes – is detrimental to your long-term spiritual health and can cause you to miss your flight to your destiny! Don’t let that be you in the New Year!
Staff Writer; W. Eric Croomes
One may also visit his personal website at; http://wericcroomesblog.wordpress.com.