Which enemy do you battle with the most?
We have a new series starting at church this week called “The Battle Begins”. Arnie (my pastor) spoke about how the enemy comes into our lives to stop us from being effective in our Christian life. While listening and jotting down notes I realised that the same enemies to our spiritual lives are also the same enemies to our mental, emotional and physical lives.
I am aiming (and I hope you are too) for this year to be the Best Year Ever and I realised that I need to be alert to enemies that will come against that goal. Not just alert and aware but also armed with battle strategies to fight them!
These enemies can cause havoc with your goals and may tempt you to give up. We need to decide that we have what it takes to get through all roadblocks, obstacles and these 7 enemies to reach our goals. My main goal this year is to lose weight so I will comment on each enemy in relation to my weight loss goal. Of course these can be related to any goal that you have – be it to do with your finances, relationships, work or recreational life.
Here are 7 enemies to look out for – Be Alert, Be Aware and Be Armed!
- Denial – this is a biggie. We all need to face the truth about our current lifestyle and choices – we need to ask the question – are my choices and my current lifestyle moving me towards what I really want? Once we face the truth – we enter into freedom. Facing the truth about the need to lose weight is hard and scary but the consequences if we leave it is massive. It is time today, now, to jump on the scales and face the truth. Once we have a starting point we can set goals and move towards a healthier you. Does your current spending habits move you towards financial freedom? are your current relationships healthy? What are you in denial about? It is time to take our heads out of the sand and live intentionally.
- Desire– in the beginning, your body will still desire foods that are not in alignment with your goals. Addictions. Chocolate is a biggie , right? How do we combat this? hard work basically. We need to retrain our taste buds to desire foods that will nourish our bodies and not harm them. It’s getting tough with yourself. I have learned that it is easier to be tough when you have clarity about your Why.
- Distress – the arch rival to weight loss. The old me – the 2015 version of myself – consumed copious amounts of chocolate when stressed. To battle this we need a bit of self talk. Tell yourself – “I don’t need this to get through today”. Develop a game plan of actions that you can take (that are healthy) when feeling stressed. A walk/jog does wonders. The afternoons are the hardest for me. Around 3pm, chocolate is calling. My game plan is to have something planned to eat at 3pm.
- Depression – been there and survived and you can too. If you suspect you have depression I highly recommend that you go to your doctor and take someone with you. If you are diagnosed with depression it will be very hard to focus on setting and achieving goals without medical help. Basically your one goal this year should be to turn depression around. To survive and come out the other side a more happier and positive person. I strongly encourage you to seek medical help and not to try and get through it on your own.
- Discouragement – this enemy’s goal is to stop you gaining momentum. Last week I was discouraged. I had 6 awesome weeks of losing weight – every week. Then last week I stayed the same – exactly the same weight. Two weigh ins, my weight was exactly the same. How can that happen? This enemy plays on your mind and gets you into a downward spiral in your thoughts. It tells you that you need to give up – it’s not worth it – you didn’t even lose anything this week. My battle plan this week for discouragement was to recognize that the discouraging thoughts were lying to me. This is what I tell myself -“I can do this. I have what it takes and I am not giving up”.
- Doubt – ah , this usually follows straight after Discouragement! when we are discouraged or disappointed we go down the path of doubting whether we should even have the goal, whether we have what it takes to achieve it and whether it is all worth it. This is where having clarity on what you want to achieve this year and why is very important. I have an image in my mind’s eye of a dress that I am going to wear on my birthday at the end of the year. I call up this image whenever I have random doubt and discouragement thoughts. Some people have vision boards . Others develop a vision statement that gives them clarity to combat doubt.
- Distraction – Oh there are so many distractions that take our focus away from our goals. This is where setting priorities are very helpful. I try and make it my game plan to work on my daily and weekly priorities first. Social media and entertainment are big distractions for your time. In terms of my eating – not having a weekly eating plan keeps me distracted from my weight loss goals. Every week when I do my food shopping I plan our the week’s evening meals. At the point of writing down my grocery list, I enter my dinners into myfitnesspal.com . Easy. Now, no more daily distractions – I know exactly what my evening meal ‘costs’ in terms of calories and it makes it easy to know what I can use up to 5pm.
Don’t give up Rachel I’m really enjoying what you have to say. Your readers may be few, but you never know where small beginnings might lead to.
Thanks Sandra – that meant more than you realise!
This is great..needed to hear this today 🙂
Hi Carolyn! – Yep I needed to hear my own writing. I had discouragement come and visit today. It really is an enemy – it wanted me to give up on writing because I can’t seem to give it enough time. After being attacked for a couple of hours I finally recognized it as an enemy that I had just written about! – I told it to go.