Healthy Habits, Mental Health

Are You Tired of Being Tired? Me Too, Until I Started Doing This.

Tired of feeling tired? If you’re a woman over 40, the chances are, you’re busy. Add to that all the physical changes you go through as a woman, it’s not surprising that we can go through periods of time where we feel exhausted and overwhelmed.

It starts to get tricky when you want to improve your habits and get rid of unhealthy habits, as that’s easier said than done when you’re really tired. So, I want to cover in the short video below how to first of all fix the tired problem, so that you can go forth and take charge of any habits you want to improve on or get rid of.

My Free Goal and Vision Workbook may help you with habit setting. It’s totally free and all yours. Here you go

I hope you find this video below helpful, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Share them  with me in the comments box. 

Jessica X

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Mental Health, Mindset and Confidence

Are Your Perfectionist Tendencies Holding You Back?

I want to talk to you in this blog post about perfectionism and how much it can hold you back… and how, as women, we are so hard on ourselves and because of this we can sometimes stop progressing forward and we can be our own worst enemy. 

And I am such a culprit. I have been such a culprit of perfectionism in the past and not even understanding or knowing that it was perfectionism that was holding me back. You see, that’s the thing with perfectionism, you sometimes don’t even know what it is. And I had a really outdated opinion of what I thought perfectionism was. I always thought perfectionism was somebody who was so into the detail of something and they didn’t finish it or hand it up until it was done.

That was what I thought perfectionism was, and it is a little bit, for some people, but because I thought that’s what it was, I never realised how much perfectionism was showing up in my life.

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I was thinking, ‘Jessica, there’s no way you’re a perfectionist. You wouldn’t spend hours and hours and hours on one essay trying to get it absolutely perfectly right and then hand it up. That’s not me at all. I, in that situation, aim at doing as good as I can, and then just hand it up.’ 

But perfectionism can show up in ways that you don’t expect until you truly reflect on your behaviour. Let’s take your fitness health for an example. You’re working at losing weight and you’re working out, you’re drinking water and you’re eating healthy. And let’s say you’re also comfort eating on the couch at nighttime. Now, for some people, perfectionism can show up there when they say to themselves, “I am so down and so bothered about my food. What is the point of exercise? What’s the point of doing anything, if not everything is perfect?”

That’s perfectionism showing up in your life and preventing you from getting really good benefits from your workouts, drinking water, eating healthy, because you think everything has to be all going right, all at the same time. Now, many, many women do that. That’s why that expression, all or nothing, is so popular.

So many people describe themselves as that. Actually, it’s you not thinking that that’s good enough for now, that every single thing has to be absolutely correct. When actually, the person that’s getting on with their exercise, drinking water and allowing themselves to still be comfort eating, while they’re exercising and doing all the other healthy stuff, is the person that’s going to progress much faster. Yet the person that has been comfort eating and has stopped exercising because of that, is probably looking at that other person going, “What are you doing? Why are you exercising when you don’t even have the food in order?”

And that is where the problem lies. And that is where, as women, we can hold ourselves back so much from progressing. Have you ever looked back on your life and you’re doing a project or something and you just go, “No, no, no, no, not now. I need to study more. I need to get another course under my belt. I need to have all this correct.” That’s perfectionism showing up. Once you become aware of it… Well, I can only say what helped me. Once I became aware of it, I started to do things that I didn’t really think I was good enough at doing because I hadn’t A, B, C, D, sorted yet. But then I realised there’s two versions of me competing in a race. One, the me who lives in my head, thinking, ruminating.. and the other me, the action taker… who’s going to win?

What I found really helpful too, when I was dealing with perfectionism and working at getting rid of it, was, look at it from somebody that doesn’t know you’s point of view, that they’re looking at you and all they’re seeing is you doing nothing because the rest of it is in your head. And once I thought of it like that, it blew my mind, “Oh my God, I look like I’m doing nothing, when actually in my head I’m really caring so much, but that’s not coming across. It looks like I’m doing absolutely nothing.” So once you know this, for me anyway, I couldn’t unknow it. So you start to go, “Oh my God, I’m doing nothing. If it’s to do with perfectionism, that means I’m waiting for all these things to happen. God, I’m doing nothing.” So I hope you found that helpful.

One simple tip to take away the next time you are wondering if your perfectionism is showing up. is to imagine you’re a stranger, watching you. What do they see? Do they see someone taking loads of action or doing nothing? Do they see someone writing down loads of plans but not acting on any of it?

Are you literally doing nothing, and living in your head? Do you think you’re doing nothing but actually you’re just over-thinking?

Remember that all progress is good.  Taking action is better than doing nothing.

I used to exercise, drink water and eat healthy. I also used to comfort eat. I would comfort eat if I was happy, if I was celebrating, if I felt stressed, if I felt sad.

And that always made my weight fluctuate. And it wouldn’t matter how many workouts I did or the healthy eating plan that I would be on, that I would be eating or the water that I drank, it didn’t make a difference. My weight was constantly fluctuating. I was always gaining or losing weight, but throughout that time I was still healthy and I was fit. So just in terms of your fitness and your health, and if you’re working at losing weight, remember that you don’t need to be doing everything really well, that you can work out and have bad food or food that you’re not happy with, and you can be eating great and skipping your workouts.

But you know what? If you workout through that time, through the unhealthy thing that you’re doing, then when you have that cracked, all your lovely other healthy stuff will be lovely and in alignment.

I hope you enjoyed it, let me know your thoughts below.

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Jessica Cooke X

P.S. Take action and move forward X

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Mental Health, Mindset and Confidence

Do You Have An All or Nothing Approach?

I wanted to talk to you in this blog post about the all or nothing mindset.

We’ve been speaking a lot recently about roadblocks and setbacks and things that are in your way and that are holding you back from your true potential, the even more potential than you think you have now. And untapping that, getting to that, tapping that side of you that has yet to be cracked maybe.

That side of you that we all have, that we fear so much that it takes us out of our comfort zones. And a lot of getting out of our comfort zones, for me, what works for me isn’t trying to do more. It’s actually trying to unblock my old beliefs and move forward having unblocked it.

For example, if you’ve got perfectionist tendencies, if you’ve got all or nothing tendencies, if you never have a plan, if you never have goals and action steps to follow, it’s kind of figuring out how you are getting in your own way so you can move forward. Because sometimes that’s what really works for people.

Sometimes people don’t need to learn more, do more, study more. It’s more about setting themselves free from the things that they might even be subconsciously doing now that’s holding them back. So the all or nothing mindset is definitely a mindset that has held me back in the past and prevented me from getting further along when I wanted to.

An all or nothing mindset can come into your life in so many ways. If you take fitness and health for example, it can be that you don’t want to exercise because your food’s not as healthy as you’d like it to be, or you feel like you can’t do any healthy action steps because you have some unhealthy habits.

Or you might be trying to study or do a course and you feel that you need to have all your papers and pens ready to go along with three hours of quiet time, in a quiet house. And all these kind of little obstacles that we put in front of ourselves when we have the all or nothing mindset.

And it can really prevent us from getting ahead. Because as far as I can see with myself and all my studies of successful people and people I admire and follow, it’s that same old thing of a little bit of progress week in, week out that compounds over time is what gets you to success.

It’s going back to the consistently good is so far better than just this sporadically great.

And sporadically great is just no good. Trying to be so  super excellent. For example, bringing it to your fitness, your weight loss, not eating any junk food, doing so many workouts, putting other things in your life to the back burner for a little bit, doing things that you can’t keep up and can’t sustain.

And we fall into this trap when we start things that we think we can sustain, we trick ourselves. And we normally try to do more rather than a little bit less. Whereas for some people, and you see it in social media all the time, especially when you follow motivational people or business people, that there’s always, for a lot of the time there’s this more, more, more mentality, how can I be better?

How can I do more? How can I study more? But for some of you out there, you actually need to be told that a little bit less is good. And we spoke about this on Wednesday on our  LIVE chat, about allowing yourself to lower your standards a little bit, lower the bar a little bit and relaxing your standards.

 I think it’s important that I say relax your standards, not lower your standards. But for some of you out there, some of you listening to this now, that’s actually what you need to do. And I think that when you hear people talking about doing more, adding more, it just stresses you out and just makes you feel so overwhelmed and you’re more inclined to get back to that all or nothing approach. It can trigger you to stop doing anything at all.

And that’s me too. If there’s people around me stressing me out, or if I’m following somebody and they’re like, “And then do this, and then do this and then do this,” you’re just like, “Oh my God.” And for some of you that are perfectionists that want to do things really well, and for some of you that have all or nothing tendencies, that’s the last message you need.

The best message for you to get the best out of you, the most out of yourself is actually to just do a little bit, do a little bit. And I’m going to bring it back to the fitness analogy because it’s just the simplest one. If you say to me, if you start with me on Monday, and you say, “Jessica, I’m going to do five workouts and I’m going to do five walks.”

I would probably say to you, “You know what? I want you to do three workouts and I want you to get two little walks if you have the time. But the most important thing is for you is just to get three workouts done.” And if you approach it like that, you’re going to feel so successful.

You’re going to be so consistent. You’re going to get so fit and healthy without all the, all or nothing pressure, without heaping on pressure and pressure. And you’re going to want to, if you have tendencies like this, you’re going to want to do more, more, more. But then you start to recognise that yes, you do have all or nothing tendencies.

You do have the perfectionism tendencies. Because you’ve said to me ‘I’m going to do five workouts’, I say, “No, you do three.” And if you’re getting itchy feet all week and you’re like, “Oh my God, I really just feel like I’m not doing enough,” that can really help you get to know yourself and go, “Oh my God. Yeah, this is one of those times where I was going to race right in, do everything.”

Three weeks later, crash and burn. So let that be our message, you and me. My message for me, my message for you, your message for yourself today. That heading into the weekend, which I always love for reflecting and thinking, what are the things that you can take out and subtract from your life? Maybe you’re the type of person that doesn’t need more stuff added at this point, but stuff taken away.

And maybe for you, it’s not about getting your journal on Sunday and saying, “And then this, and then this.” Maybe it’s about you recognising that you say, “I’ll do this, I’ll do five.” And then catch yourself and say, “You know what? I am actually going to do less than I want to. I am going to do, I want to do five workouts, so I’m going to do three.

I want to say I’m going to do five walks, so I’m going to do two. I want to eat no sugar next week so I’m going to allow myself to have two evenings of treats. I’m going to say three litres of water a day, so I’m going to do two.” And just remember, take everything out there with a pinch of salt. Make it your own, suited to what best suits YOUR needs.

And include, when you’re listening to people, especially kind of stressy, “Do this, do this” people. Listen to it to what they have to say, but only take from it, what you need that works best for your personality. Edit it a little bit if needed and then go for it.

I hope you enjoyed our chat. And if you did, I would love to hear from you. Just write a little comment below, tell me what you think. All my love and take care.

Jessica Cooke

 

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Fitness Tips, Mental Health

Take Care of These Three Key Components of your Health If You’re a Woman over 40

There are three key areas to look after when it comes to your health. And very often, we can get very wrapped up in weight loss or fitness. And it’s a really, really nice idea to take care of yourself and take care of the three main components of your health.

Your fitness, your nutrition and your mental health. And if you can tap away at all three every week, you’re going to become a really healthy, more calm, more feelings of capability and in control, if you focus on the three things and not just more one than the other. Because you see, when you focus more on one than the other, other things start to drop.

If you go all crazy out on the fitness, you’re going to get really exhausted and feel really cranky. Same thing goes with the food. If you go all out with the food, you’re going to end up getting really frustrated and annoyed and it’s going to make you feel like you’re going around in circles. Because when you focus too much on the food, you get really obsessed, right? You have your breakfast and you’re thinking about what to have for lunch. You have your lunch, you’re thinking about dinner. You have what you think is a bad night and you get so annoyed with yourself that you feel like you’re starting over.

And the same thing when it comes to your mental health. If you’re only focused on meditation or journaling and you’re not getting any movement and you’re not taking care of yourself from a food perspective, again, you’re going to have a bit of a knock on negatively in other areas of your life. So in my opinion, the best way to take care of yourself is just to look at those three components of your life and ask yourself, “How am I getting on with the food? Am I nourishing myself well most of the time? Am I eating healthy most of the time? And am I having a nice, balanced, healthy day?”

The same approach when it comes to the workouts. “Am I getting good movement throughout the week? If I’m a woman over 40, am I taking care of my body? Am I doing some form of strength training? Am I building lean muscle? Am I making my bones strong? Am I actually moving, getting sweaty and getting good cardio fitness?” And then when it comes to the food, you would just want to ask yourself, “Am I eating healthy? Am I actually taking care of myself?” And forget the unhealthy habits for the minute. Because you can be healthy and have unhealthy habits. And I think that’s where a lot of people go wrong in the sense that they quit or they give up on themselves because they have these unhealthy habits.

Whereas actually, it’s a really, really good idea to focus on your healthy habits and see where you could improve. And then over time, focus on any unhealthy habits that you feel are holding you back. For example, you might leave long gaps between meals. So you might decide to yourself, “Okay, well next week, I’m going to make sure I have a good breakfast lunch and a dinner.” Now, you might be comfort eating alongside of that, but that’s okay. That doesn’t have to take away from the fact that you’re going to focus on having more regularly well-balanced meals throughout the day. So the two can go hand in hand.

So just don’t worry if you are eating crap on the couch late at night and you haven’t figured that out yet, or if you’re going crazy still at the weekends and you haven’t figured that out yet. Just remember that that doesn’t take away from the good work that you do during the day with your food. Keep it nice and simple. Keep it so simple and keep focused on being healthy. And over time, you’ll feel so good, you’ll get brilliant results and it’ll really empower you to want to do more if needed.

If you’ve any feedback or just want to say Hi, please post in the comments and you can also grab my free 5 Day Workout Series of my 5 Favourite workouts of all time here

Jessica Cooke X

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