Real Motivation

You can have all the support around you - the right people, the right nutrition, the right workouts, but no one is going to carry it all out except for YOU! You make it happen! You go to the gym, you make the choice what to put in your mouth, you, change your attitude, you organize your life! Give yourself the credit! When you need motivation, what and who do you go to! Other's motivation lasts for a moment. The motivation inside you - that is lasting.

A friend of mine suggested a good book to read that I've probably mentioned before titled, "Life's Greatest Lessons" by Hal Urban. In it there is a chapter on motivation. He says, 'I don't believe in making wild promises like "you can have it all" or "you can be anything." I think people want and need something that lasts longer and helps them deal with life as it really is. We need to know two things about motivation, 1) Successful people accept responsibility for their own lives - the don't wait for someone else to motivate them; they do it themselves. 2) The origin of the word motivation comes from motive, which is defined as "that within the individual, rather than without, which causes him or her to act." In other words, all of our actions have motives, or reasons. They come from needs deeply felt inside and no one else can fill them for us.

The Three Keys to Motivating Yourself
~Do you have enough desire to attain it?
~Do you have a real belief that you can accomplish it?
~Do you have a clear mental picture of yourself achieving it?

If your answer to all three things is a confident YES, then you're ready. Because these are the keys to being self-motivated.

Motivation starts with a sense of desire...When you want something, you become motivated to get it. ~Dennis Waitley~

The Way I Look Today

The way I look today isn't going to be how I look tomorrow! Today I worked my quads until they shook! Tomorrow I will have more muscle! Today I ate 100% on plan with clean and whole foods. Today I drank at least 128 oz. of water. Tomorrow my body will show me what I've done to it today.

My body will also reflect tomorrow the attitude I have today and today I feel the best I've ever felt in my life! I look the best I've ever looked in  my life. I feel vibrant, healthy and sexy! I've exceeded my own expections in my training for competition and my body shows my hard work! No matter what anyone else says, that is my truth and I believe it down to the core of me.

Last year my summer shorts didn't come out of the closet, neither did my bikini. The way I looked last year is not the way I look today. Change is possible. Amazing change is possible. I believe it and so should you!

Last week I started working heavily on my posing practice. Muscles have memory, even in posing and I want my muscles to remember the poses so well that I will know by feeling how to position my body. My poses need work and I'm glad to do it. Each step takes me closer to my goal.

This week the intensity and frequency of my workouts has changed. I'll be in the gym six days a week and increasing my cardio from three sessions to four. My eating is still geared toward muscle building so I'm on surplus calories right now. Staying on surplus calories has been a challenge mentally, but I've stayed focused on the fact that when in training for a particular event, one must do what needs to be done to prepare the body to perform at it's highest potential.

I'm six months away from the big event. I've come a long way and have more to go. The stage will be just a moment in time so I'm enjoying the journey there by celebrating a new me every single day.

Running on Rocks

My whole life I've wanted to be a competitor. I was a sprinter when I was young. I could run on rocks barefoot and beat anyone I ran against. There's one day I'll never forget when I was challenged to an unofficial race against a boy who later went on to win the state sprinting championship - I beat him! I grew up on a farm in South Dakota where I worked hard. We lived so far from town that staying after school for any extra curricular activities was nearly impossible. I had to get up early to do chores and come home from school and do more chores. My whole life was working on the farm. I credit all the heavy lifting of feed buckets for the animals for the foundation of my muscles. I loved that life, but I didn't have the opportunity to explore my athletic ability as much as I wanted. My dream was to go into ballet, but because of the beliefs of the church my family attended, I was not allowed to dance and was signed up for piano lessons instead...for five years. Needless to say, I did not excel in that.

Now, for the first time in my life, things have come together - my attitude, my support system, my finances, my determination - to make it possible for me to shoot for my dreams - to challenge my body to do things it has never done before and I just want to shout out that I'M LOVING EVERY MINUTE OF IT! Yes! I'm not going to let age stop me. There's a fire burning inside me and that can't be put out. I feel better at this time of my life than I ever have before - sore muscles and all!

Watch me train!

Lifting weights, running on rocks, I love it all!