My Favourite Tips For Tips For Living A Healthier, Happier Life.

In this blog post, I have put together just some of my favourite tips for living a healthier, happier life. And we’re going to get stuck straight in!

Number one, consistency is the key to happiness.

This is absolutely the most life changing lesson I have ever learned, and I never used to be consistent. I mean, I studied well in school and I was able to put the head down and work hard.

But for things I truly desired, if I really reflect, I kind of expected results and I’d be upset if they didn’t come. And that would be to do with anything. When I was first starting out my business, when I was trying to lose weight myself and get fit myself. If I’m honest, I really, really felt that I was obliged to get them. I expected them. So the biggest life changing lesson for me really was consistency. When I started showing up in my business consistently every day, every single day. And I consistently put in the work and consistently worked out and consistently drank water and my life just momentum started again. And it’s the coolest thing in the world. And I feel like shouting about consistency from the top of the rooftops, because I can see other people where I was, and I want to help them so much and you just have to be consistent. And I meet so many people and they’re so disappointed that they’re not getting results in the first two weeks or the first week and whatever it is. Their business or their exercise or their body and it’s just about putting in the work and being consistency and focusing on your action steps and trusting the process.

Doing something gung-ho and then not doing it at all is just so bad for you. Like, for example, just with exercise, like doing five workouts a week and then doing none the next week is literally like taking two steps forward and one step back yet. So many people do that. So many people have a good week, have a bad week. And it’s really about having a good week rather than a terrific week, one week. And if you could just consistently put in good weeks and get rid of inconsistency, you’re going to go places. You are absolutely going to win. You’re going to succeed.

Three workouts per week is so much better than five and none.

And three workouts per week with maybe one of them being brilliant, another one you’re not putting in great effort, and another one being average is still way better than inconsistency. So consistency is key and really put that in every area of your life. And question yourself, ask yourself in the areas of your life that you’re disappointed in. Like, am I being consistent? With relationships, your husband or your partner, your children, you want to spend more family time with them. Do you do it for a week and then revert to old habits?

It’s really difficult to be consistent. You have to be constantly questioning your behaviour, but it’s really, really cool when you do that. So I recommend that you do constantly question your behaviour and do ask yourself if you’re not getting the results you want, well, have I been consistent enough? Have I put in the work every weekday for six months, like one year. And when it comes to a business or something like that, like three years, four years, five years, day in, day out. Showing up when you think you’ll be better off quitting.

Number two, ask yourself open, positive, happy questions. If you ask yourself a question, your brain is going to find a way to answer it.

So think of it this way. If you ask yourself why you’re really stupid and inconsistent, you are going to find an answer for that. Your brain is going to find an answer for that. So it might think, why am I stupid and inconsistent? Maybe it’s because I was born that way or because I’m never good at sticking to things. Or picture this, you ask yourself from now on only positive open-ended questions. So you ask yourself, in what way can I improve upon this?

How can I make this better? And your brain, again, will look for answers. Like, well, I can start putting an alarm clock in my phone every time I’m due to go a workout. Well, and it’ll come up with really, really positive solutions. And I just think that’s terrific. And on top of consistency being key, asking yourself only open ended questions is key too. I’ve only discovered this over the past few years. I would just only ever walk around asking myself negative questions, negative questions that only could have negative outcomes. And it started from the moment I woke up out of bed, why is this? Why is this? Why does it have to be like this? Sure, how an earth? That’s torture. But you know what? You don’t have to wait to get out of this. You can literally just after this reading this blog post, no, actually right now you can just go, do you know what? I’m actually going to only start asking myself questions and just like consistency, listen to yourself. Ask yourself, how am I asking my questions? Is it positive or is it negative?

Eat less starchy carbs and get off the junk food if you want to lose weight. No need to calorie count, no need to track your macros, no need to go mad restrictive, no need to go mental on the new recipes. Get off the junk food and eat less starchy carbs. Starchy carbs being potatoes, pastas, bread, and rice if you are not happy with how you’re fitting in your clothes.

Definitely get off the weighing scales, they’re pointless. The weighing scales can’t tell the difference between muscle gain and fat. So it’s not really a great tool unless you’re very heavy. Of course, you’re going to see the weight loss on the scales. But if you’re not particularly heavy, if you’ve only got a couple of stone to lose and you’re exercising, you’d be much better off measuring yourself using your clothes and just getting off the junk food.

Maybe it just suits you to not have junk food and not just for the first while, while you get results. And definitely if you’re having starchy carbs at every single meal, like a sandwich at lunch, loads of pasta and rice at dinner and eggs with toast or muesli, granola at breakfast, that’s the problem. Make it simple for yourself, reduce the starchy carbs. Only reduce them, get off the junk food. And you’re going to start losing weight.

Number four, learn to dislike junk food, learn to dislike it.

Too many people say, I’m going to try and not eat chocolate tonight. Oh my God. The word chocolate makes it sound so good. But unless you’re going and buying the 70% chocolate, and you’re just having like the chocolate that we get in shops and the big bumper packs of crisps, they’re designed and made so that we want more and more and more.

They’re not going to fill us. So they’re really designed for binge eating. And I’m not talking to you, if you’re one of those people that can just have a small little fun size bar and that does you. I’m talking to the majority of you, including myself, that having a packet of biscuits, you’re having half a packet, you’re having a packet. Especially if you don’t eat it during the week, often. You tend to kind of have four or five or six, much more so than having the one. And deadly if you are the type of person that’s having the one, but in this, I’m not talking to you. So really try to learn to dislike it and start to go, oh my God, junk food is actually gross, because it is. And it’s really fattening, it’s really bad for you. It’s full of trans fats.

Now, I’m not saying like it’s not really tasty and I haven’t given it up, but try to make life easier on yourself. And don’t be saying, oh my God, wonderful milk chocolate. Try to say the words that are negative and associate junk food with how gross it is and how bad you’ll feel the next day. And I promise you, it will help.

Enjoy your weekends and stop worrying about enjoying yourself. Life is for a living. If you’re healthy, if you’re fit, if you’re feeling good in your clothes, if you’re working out, if you eat healthy during the week, most of the time, enjoy your weekends. And please don’t start picking them apart like, oh, I’m going to go for a meal, but I’ll be super careful. That’s not living. That’s dieting. Get out there, enjoy your meals. Starter, main course, enjoy yourself and say yes to the invite, say yes to brunch and have a really nice time.

Enjoying yourself at weekends isn’t binge eating, binge eating is binge eating. Binge eating is sitting down and having way too much than you need because you’re eating your emotions. Enjoying your weekends and going out to a restaurant on a Friday, Saturday night is you living your life. So just be very careful that you’re not being, ah, just really hard in yourself and you’re waking up on a Monday and you’re feeling guilty. Sure, what the heck do you to feel guilty about? You’re working hard, you’re working out, you’re eating well, you’re fitting healthy, enjoy your bleeding weekends.

Number six, make sure all of your habits and thoughts are still relevant to where you’re at now. It’s very freeing when you shake off the shackles from your past and sometimes you can grow and change and realise that the belief systems that you’ve learned over time, mightn’t be the same belief systems that you have now. And that’s cool because you’re your own person. And if you feel now that you’ve become fit and healthy or new good stuff has come into your life in terms of growth or maybe your kinder.

And you’re still seeing yourself with your old identity and some of your behavioural patterns are still the old you, well, it’s time to let them go. And if you are this new person who’s grown and developed through a trauma or through learning or coaching, then allow yourself to be that person and have the confidence to develop new belief systems and new ways of new core values and allow yourself to have new belief systems.

Number seven, take personal responsibility for your life and you’ll feel so much more happier. Just take personal responsibility for everything. Don’t blame your husband, your family, anybody for what’s happened. If you really try to let that go, you’ll really start to enjoy your life and feel your shoulders drop and get calm and become at peace. And although it’s very difficult to forgive people that have hurt us or that might be hurting us presently, it’s really important that you don’t ruin this present life that you have.

You’re never going to be younger than you are now. So figure out a way to take personal responsibility for everything. Let go of blame and by personal responsibility, I just mean if you are not happy now, figure out how to fix it. And you figure out how to fix it and don’t put it on somebody else. Hold yourself accountable, raise your standards of yourself in all areas of your life.

Number eight, get really routined. Daily habits and rituals means you don’t need motivation and successful people don’t actually rely on motivation. And it’s this kind of really cool insider knowledge that you learn when you’re just really consistent over a very long period of time that you really understand successful people have set up their days so that they don’t have to rely on motivation. Whether that’s having really repetitive action steps that keeps them grounded, like drinking two litres of water, having three meals and two snacks, working out at set times on certain weekdays, booking workouts in advance, journaling every weekday to keep them on their goals.

Always having work goals, always having deadlines. These little rituals throughout the day, make you very routine and very structured. So sooner or later, the want of motivation tends to go. And you, for example, approach workouts, not going, I don’t know how I’m going to do it. You know you’re going to do it. Now, you don’t want to still, the pre-workouts feelings never go away, but you know you’re doing it. So the battle of that is gone. Whereas when you’re at the start and you’re not quite consistent yet, you’re waiting for the motivation to go and do your workout. And that’s a dangerous place to be in because you can’t always rely on yourself for doing it. So as many habits and rituals as you can have throughout the weekday, do that.

Number nine, stop being hard on yourself. I remember my coach said to me a few years ago, oh my God, I’ve never met anybody as hard on yourself as you. Actually, it was much more than three years ago. God, it must have been, what? 2013. So Jesus, near nine years ago now. And I remember almost being proud of that and kind of accepting it as this really cool badge of honour. Whereas now, I understand that it’s boring and it holds you back and you know, oh, you’re so hard on yourself. I’m so hard on myself. Great. I don’t have a badge for you. Like what are you trying to achieve by being hard on yourself? Nobody gives you a medal. You don’t get more out of life. And I think if I try to unravel why I was hard on myself, it was potentially because I didn’t want anyone to think that I was getting ahead of myself or that I was confident or that, don’t worry, I know exactly all the flaws that are wrong with me.

Don’t worry, that kind of a mindset, that kind of a… ‘Don’t worry, nobody can be harder on me that I am myself.’ Oh, fuck that. Fuck that. Confidence is a good thing. A real sense of certainty in yourself is a good thing. And going through that, going from very low confidence, people pleasing to actually put your shoulders back a little bit is uncomfortable, but you have to not worry about feeling uncomfortable. And I used to worry about feeling uncomfortable. I used to worry that I would blush or that I would stutter a small bit. I mean, I don’t have a stammer, but I would worry that I couldn’t get the words out or I would worry that I felt confident, but I wouldn’t look confident because I’d feel uncomfortable acting and feeling certain.

Does that make sense? So instead of doing that, I would just revert to people pleasing. So yeah, I’m still uncomfortable sometimes being assertive and acting, feeling certain. Feeling certain, but in a way, when you are certain inside and you’re meeting people that have known you for a long time, physically, the physical way you hold yourself isn’t always natural. So it feels like really uncomfortable. So what I’m really trying to say to you is just let go of being hard on yourself now.

Number 10, don’t let people make you feel guilty or bad for your actions in that real subliminal silent way that people do. And if you’re a people pleaser, like you’re going to really respond to that by just going, oh my God, how can I make this better? How can I be a better person?

‘How can I fix this?’You have nothing to apologise for, defend yourself for, they are no better than you. They may be judgmental, they may want something from you, they may not respect your boundaries because you haven’t respected your boundaries in the past. So they’re used to you not respecting your boundaries and you’re respecting yourself. That’s all on them. That is all on them.

Number 11, drink lots of water. So important to drink lots of water. I mean just drink water every day. Two litres every day, get lots of fresh air, journal every weekday. I can’t tell you how important it is to journal. It’s just so important to journal if you want to achieve goals. Every day, don’t set goals with your coach once a month. And like, they’re going to fall by the wayside because life gets in the way. But if you journal every day, you’re constantly reminded regardless of what’s going on in your life and what you want.

Number 14 have work goals, have life goals, have health goals have during the week fun goals. Absolutely. Don’t just have boring goals. Have during the week fun goals, movie night Monday, movie night Thursday, running club with the family Wednesday. Whatever it is, have fun, happy, shoulder dropping goals in there, along with your serious goals. But in my opinion, goal setting is the coolest thing in the world. And so many women when they start with me say, but I don’t have life goals. That’s okay, take your time and find out what they are.

Give up complaining is number 16. Complaining just holds you back because it means your problem focused. And if you got rid of complaining and you spent 5% of your time on your problems, i.e. you acknowledged them.

And then you switched into solution mode and spent the 95% of your time on your solutions. You’d be an awful lot happier and you’d get an awful lot answers to problems quicker. So complaining, bitching, gossiping gets you nowhere. Giving out about people gives you nowhere. Become solution focused and try to not get sucked in to people giving out about people.

Number 17, everything good comes from exercise. You feel calm, in control, more productive, happy, fit, and healthy. All these things come from exercise. You don’t get that from eating healthy, you don’t get it from dieting, you don’t get it just from meditation. Exercise, everything starts with moving your body. You feel good. You get into a good mood. You feel certain, you feel calm, in control. It’s good for your internals, it’s good for your externals and from there you can eat healthy, drink water, meditate.

But in my opinion, it all starts working out in a sweaty way, at least three times a week. Forget everything else until you’ve got that nailed.

My last one, accept the temporary pain of everything that’s in the way of you getting your goals. Everything that you want is on the other side of pain, discomfort, out of comfort zone, not in the mood, couldn’t be bothered today. All, everything you want is the other side of that. The other side of that, get up, get it done regardless of how you feel and you’ll achieve everything that you want. Get up, get it done, get on with it. Get on with us. Get on with it. Get on with your life. Get on with your goals. Get on with your workout. Get on with your healthy eating. Get off the shyte. Get on with discovering why you eat shyte.

Get on with discovering why your comfort eat. Get on with it. In whatever is holding you back, get on with not doing it or get on with figuring out why you do it so then you can get on with not doing it. But everything just, you have to just get on with things and not dwell.

Again, take it from the person that used to dwell the most. The most, I could write the book in it. You have to get up and get on with things.

I really hope you enjoyed this. I really hope you got something out of it. All might love to you.  If you enjoyed this, will you let me know, comment below or just drop a <3

Jessica Cooke X