(ThyBlackMan.com) As a fit pro and life coach professional, I coach my clients to get rid of what’s known as ‘dead weight’. Dead weight shows up in the body as pounds, but in life it appears in attitudes. Dead weight is usually felt as the residual effects of sour relationships, negative people and discordant attitudes.
There are some self-defeating ways of being, seeing and thinking which, if persisted in, will do nothing but keep you from claiming your brand-new future.
These attitudes – what I call ‘automated mental reactions’ – can leave you feeling down and powerless. Here are four such attitudes that must be recognized and countered if we are to claim the brand-new future that is our birthright.
Attitude#One
I’m a Victim
Long ago a poet wrote, Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim. Who hasn’t been a victim? To be alive is to qualify for victim status. Our challenge: Don’t allow yourself to become permanently victimized; it’s a dead-weight attitude. Reframe your status.
The worst thing about the victim mentality is that it will always be convenient for you to pass the buck for your life. Don’t introduce this concept to your subconscious; it will faithfully execute your orders. Become an advocate. Launch a movement to change the circumstances which led to your status. Extract a positive from a negative. In this way you empower yourself!
Attitude#Two
I’m Broke
It’s been said that the lack of money is the root of all evil. Afterall, you get your check, you pay your bills and you see what’s left. The “I’m broke” attitude comes from a negative relationship with money; it’s a mind-set based on the fear of not having enough.
Money, though, is like a river; it’s always flowing. Retrain your brain to see that money at times does flows at a low ebb – but it’s always moving. Get into the flow. Do not trust appearances. The best way to counter the “I’m broke” dead-weight attitude is through the use of mental affirmation. Do not fear lack. Reaffirm a positive attitude with money. Edmund Burke said it best, If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
Attitude#Three
I’m a Single-Parent
Close to eighty percent of our homes are headed by a single parent. That statistic is a reality, but it does not have to shape our mentality. Each day in America millions of single-parents get up and workout, take care of home, pay bills, launch businesses, head corporations and non-profits, and chase countless other dreams – all without referencing their single-parent status.
Why should your status be any different? The fact is you don’t get a ‘get out of jail free card’ for being a single parent. No person does. When used to elicit sympathy, “I’m a single-parent” is a dead-weight attitude.
Wake up each morning with a determination to be your best – regardless of your parenting status. As Lisa Cholodenko writes, No matter what kind of family you have – straight, gay, married, single parent, separated, no kids, two kids, 20 kids – we all go through the human comedy.
Attitude#Four
I’m Too Old
This dead-weight attitude seeps into our minds when our reality outpaces our aspirations, when our dreams of what we could have become begin to fade into oblivion.
What you could have been is a myth. You are never too old to achieve! In fact, most people do not realize the success they truly desire until later in life.
Do not fear reinvention. Do not stop learning. Studies show that our brain cells are capable of learning well into our eighties and nineties.
We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing, writes George Bernard Shaw.
In order to claim the brand-new future that is our birthright, we must counter dead-weight attitudes that keep us feeling down and powerless.
Staff Writer; W. Eric Croomes
This talented brother is a holistic lifestyle exercise expert and founder and executive coach of Infinite Strategies LLC, a multi-level coaching firm that develops and executes strategies for fitness training, youth achievement and lifestyle management. Eric is an author, fitness professional, holistic life coach and motivational speaker.
In October 2015, Eric released Life’s A Gym: Seven Fitness Principles to Get the Best of Both, which shows readers how to use exercise to attract a feeling of wellness, success and freedom (Infinite Strategies Coaching LLC, 2015) – http://www.infinitestrategiescoaching.com.
