Train Your Mind and The Body Will Follow

To implement an impactful change in your life, people often assume it has to feel hard, take time, and cost us money for it to be valuable. Sandy Joy Weston, keynote speaker and author, challenges this perception that something must seem impossible to be effective.

Sandy conducted experiments with clients to find that we actually just need 1 to 3 minutes a day to make lasting changes in our life. Sandy strongly believes in the mind-body connection and that if we train our minds, our bodies can’t help but follow. Sandy shares how we can start to reconnect with our body’s desire to exist in a state of peace and joy, in less than just 5 minutes a day.  

Your brain holds the answers you need 

With so many people on a mission to sell their “solution” to accomplish X result, whether that’s losing weight or feeling more energized, it distances our body from our mind. We are constantly looking for external influences to solve our problems and hoping for someone to tell us exactly what to do to live with 100% vitality, despite this never usually working out in the long run.

The key is really tuning in to what your body and your brain are telling you that you need. We have to buy into the idea that the body and the mind are connected because what starts in the mind will often be followed by your body.

Your brain was built for you to be happy and to be successful. When you tap into your creative part of your brain, that’s when your answers and your solutions will flow. It’s perfectly natural to be fearful, anxious, and overwhelmed but when you’re in that space, it’s important to recognize it and know that's not when the magic is going to happen.

It’s vital to realize how powerful you truly are. Our true essence is peace, joy, and love, and our answers lie within. The more you look within to find the answers and the more you spend time in the creative part of your brain (also referred to as your instinct or intuition), things will begin to unfold for you in a way that is beyond what you ever could have thought.

When you give your power away to a human who you believe holds the answer, you disconnect from you. Surround yourself with people who truly want you to find your way and be aware that there are so many ways to be healthy, to feel good, to have vitality, to be a healthy weight, and to be physically and mentally fit. There isn’t just one way.

The power of 1-3 minutes a day…

If you are confronted with a difficult task such as a tricky telephone conversation or work email you've been putting off, or if you’re about to deliver a speech, taking just one minute to check in with yourself can be completely transformational. For example, just before you do the task, stop to do a quick body scan. Is your chest tightening up? Is your jaw clenched? Is there tension in your neck? Your body will tell you what's going on.

The power of breath is incredible and we always have it with us. It’s inspiring how much a breath can help us find a moment of centeredness and so just by taking deep breaths, all of a sudden your body has the chance to calm down. It will center you before you go forth and do the thing you were tense about. This is just one example of many ways to recenter yourself, you could equally do a power pose or a dance to bring a sense of calm and confidence. People tend to discredit these things because they are so simple. The importance of just taking a breath is key because breathing can change the state of our body, which is something we need to recognize more.

Starting the morning in a positive headspace

When Sandy wanted to write a guidebook that allowed people to redirect their thoughts in a positive, focused manner, she studied people who exuded pure joy most of time.  She wanted to see if there was a secret sauce.  Sandy’s studies of 100 people led her to one common denominator between them: doing something in the morning to start their day in a positive headspace. This ranged from exercise, petting the dog, meditating, to playing the piano. It really  didn’t matter what it was, but they all started their days with a morning routine just for themselves.

After a year of studying people who lived a joyful life and another year studying successful people, Sandy created a five-minute approach to living joyfully and accomplishing your dreams and spent a year studying a group to use her method...

But it failed miserably.

When discussing it with some of the greatest minds that study the brain, she found that the only people that followed her program were people that already believed it would work. One of the people she had studied said that because of the barriers she’d got rid of, and the fact it wasn’t time consuming or expensive or painful, they simply didn’t believe it would work so they didn't take the 5 minutes to do the guidebook.

Fast forward to a reassessment of the approach, after a professor had advised that they might be more likely to do it if it took 1-3 mins, 80% of people did it this time. Even though they were still skeptical, they were willing to give it a shot for 1-3 minutes. Because they didn't have the belief system, it had to be a real “no brainer” task, so that once they created the habit, the magic could start happening.  And with this simple method of changing your life that even the biggest skeptics couldn't argue with, Sandy had massive success in helping people change.

If there’s one message Sandy wants to impart, it’s that we’re meant to have a joyful life so just making these small, quick changes will help you to enjoy more of life. It truly takes only 1-3 minutes to start anything that you want to do with your life. Build integrity with yourself and find little things to do every day that you can feel good about. For me, making the bed each morning puts me in a completely positive headspace and can change the course of a day. I choose to start my day by getting things done that are important to me, which then has a snowball effect on the rest of my day.