Diets and exercise

So, today I got this email, and it asked me if this stuff is really true? And does it apply to exercise?
Well Jan, to put it simply and at it's most basic. It applies to everything. It applies to weight loss, fitness, exercise, study, motivation, and competition. It applies to raising children and fixing cars. It applies to cooking and design.

If your first thought is that something is wrong then the outcome is assured. If you are having friends over for dinner and you start cooking, being sure that you are a hopeless cook and that everything will taste awful, then the chances are high that, that is what will happen. If you start to go to the gym to get fit, and you are that you are unfit and wrong then the chances are high that you will quit before making any change. If you study for an exam, being sure that you are stupid and will fail the exam, you probably will fail.

If we start from the point of being wrong or bad or are a failure, the outcome is failure. And this applies to everything. It even applies to relationships. If you are in a relationship where you continually make your partner wrong, they will resist. They will argue, fight, leave or make you wrong.

Until I understood this my wife and I fought all of the time. I would have it that what she was doing was wrong. And I would yell and stomp and shout and generally complain. (I do this a lot, you get that don't you). And she will resist. She will change the subject or walk away or argue with me. And it all comes from how I treat her.

When I treat her as if she is my queen and beautiful? When I act as if she is smart and intelligent? Then she responds to that thought. If I behave in such a way, as to show her that I believe that she is perfect, then that becomes our reality. And I no longer have anything to complain about and she does not resist.

Now, we are both human and we regularly realize that we have fallen back and have to change our mind again. But for the last seven years, and we have been married for several more years than that, I have been married to my girlfriend. I do my best to always act as if this is true. And if I fail, I do not make myself guilty or wrong or bad. I simply get that I have fallen over, I clean up with my girlfriend, apologise and move on. Sometimes this is not easy, sometimes it is very hard. But I persist because for me she IS the perfect person.

The longer I hold that line, the truer it becomes for me. Whenever I change my mind, a little bit of the old thought gets lost.