Keeping motivated is one of the most difficult things people find in today’s world.

Why you might ask…

Well I am sure there are a lot of reasons for this which different people have for giving up on things so easy when the going gets a little tough.

I have always been told that grow is found in discomfort. Meaning when things get a bit tough all it comes down to a test to see to give up or to carry on to strive forward to what you want to achieve in life.

People tend to get unmotivated because mainly when the distractions step into their lives.

The question is how do i get motivated and more important, how do i stay motivated. I’m very sure that you have witnessed this first hand or seen other people act in this way of not managing to keep their motivation once started. One of the best examples i can give for this would be weight loss. I see lot’s of people go up and down with their weight like a yoyo diet, because the actual problem is they seem to lose lot’s of weight for a special occasion and they feel on top of the world and great about themselves, but then about 6 weeks later the pounds start piling back on. I’m sure most people reading this has seen this time and time again.

I truly believe that people who set goals achieve more because they know exactly what they want. I especially believe you need goals when bringing exercise in your lives when keeping your body and mind in shape, which the martial fitness routines and plans provide. It is also a great way to measure your successes in fitness throughout the year, as it show’s you where you started to where you want to be then actually achieving it.
“You need to have a set destination where you are heading for otherwise you will be forever going around in circles.”

One of the most important tips i can give with setting your own personal goals in your lives is to make sure that they are achievable goals. What we don’t want is to write down we are going to swim the British channel a week from today. Always start small and raise the bar. A start to achieving the swim across the British channel for England to France would be set a number of lengths to do in a local swimming pool. You see what i mean? Then we start to hit progress and this leads to… yes you guessed it, motivation! This is one of the keys to success.

The good part about having goals would be that you can keep adding to them when wanting to achieve more. So make sure you keep raising that bar of success and you will discover a whole new you.

Remember to set your own personal goals and make sure that you write them down. When doing this it tells plus helps you with what you have set out to do and accomplish from the start.
So now we understand a bit about your personal goals with the lifestyle aims, but now moving on to something which I would have to say is one of the most important things which will take you to the top in lots of aspects of life.

So what is it?

Three words….

Believe in yourself!

Believing in yourself and your ability is so important, so throw away all those negative thoughts that creeps into your mind which are keeping you at a job you don’t like or stopping you from achieving something you have always dreamed of doing. Trust me it is holding you back from gaining such big things in life and once you master this belief in yourself everything will start to fall into place and you will start to live your life how you want to be.

So get writing and believing!

All the best

Richard Huntley

One of the most common answers why people find it hard to commit them selves to do exercises is because they say that they simply do not have enough time.

Before we go any further, the first thing you need to understand it that we cannot change time. The good news is there are 24 hours in a day for everyone so we all have the same equal sharing of time on this spinning planet. It doesn’t matter if you how powerful and great you may be we all have the same amount of time.

With time understanding that good quality results come your way when you put the time in for whatever it is you are doing exactly.

An example I can personally share with you would be when I wanted to become a good quality competitor in the martial art of Jujutsu and be able to handle my own against some of the top ranked competitors in Jujutsu. Now I did understand that it was going to take time to become a good all round Jujutsu player, but to be good I needed to train as much and even more than the other competitors to even have a chance. With a lot of time training physically and mentally on the mats it nearly became that I actually lived on my training mats.

When certain classes had finished and all the students had gone home I would continue my training practicing things I had learnt and certain things I had to work on. You need to remember this is what i did for my job, training and teaching the art of Jujutsu for my living.

After putting a lot of time on the training mats, including self belief that I was creating the same chance as all of the other competitors out there and not forgetting carrying on practicing when everyone else would be getting tucked up ready for bed it came to the point when it all paid off and I got the opportunity to compete from Great Britain. What a great feeling it was to have that chance and I will never forget it as it helped me in more ways than just practicing Jujutsu it gave me the true understanding of importance of the value of time and how to make it work for you, not forgetting opening alot of other doors for me in life.

How to put it into practice?

What I am not asking anyone to do is throw themselves into lots of hours of exercise per week because most of all you will soon lose the interest in what you are doing and it will become more of a chore than a fun positive transformation.

I strongly recommend to people who want to learn and live an enjoyable fit and rewarding lifestyle to include picking 2 days per week and 20-30 minutes on those days. When doing this you will surely reap the benefits of your time put in.

One of the most importnat lessons i once learned that it’s what you do with the time that counts. People can spend over an hour running through routines to do, but you can really cut that time in half an get just the same results not even more if you know what to do.

To help guide you through this process you want to make sure that you are making the most of your time, and my book “it’s all about you” has a great selection of my own personalised RH Martial Fitness routines to help you keep motivated while exercising and also you do not run out of ideas. Whether it is with a partner or by yourself I think you need to check it out. My ebook downloadable version of “it’s all about you!” is out now at only £8.99 you will get over 140 pages of instructionals. This is a great to get started and introduced the RH Martial Fitness system.

So remember there is 24 hours in day for everyone all over the world, so what’s the wait? Get going and have a fit and enjoyable lifestyle.

Till next time…

Richard

P.S. Thank you all for the kind comments on recent articles. I’m glad they are helping everyone. Spread the word : )

I was with a class the other day teaching a group some advanced throwing techniques to them. This can be difficult trying to get an opponent to the ground, but once you master the art of relaxing to form the opening of  a throw everything comes together lke the pieces of a puzzle for a jigsaw.      The beautiful thing about the training in martial arts it is that it takes a lifetime of learning to really master each technique.

The class were not ready for what I was going to say next. “Demonstrate 15 different throws.” They felt the pressure, but they actually put most of the pressure on themselves.

I knew that this was going to be a good healthy test for the mind and character rather than how physical they could be, as they would have to rely on the mind not muscle.

All the class started off well as I certainly imagine they would have, but then coming down to the last 5 when the body is itching to finish and running overtime on adrenaline the mind just couldn’t keep up with it.

So I called for everyone to stop for the moment. Everyone went silent and turned towards me. I began to walk over to one of the students and placed the palm of my hand in front or their forehead as the class watched on. I then gradually moved my hand over the top of the students head in a smooth motion. “This is what everyone needs to do,” I said. People looked around and started to give me that confused look of starring into space. (You know the look i mean.)  I once again replied, “This is what we need to do.” Still all with having that same gazed look on themselves.

I said to them, “what are you thinking about?”  The answer should be clear mind. In jujutsu terms we call this Mushin, meaning empty mind, this also includes mind over matter. You see, you never want to be to far forward nor to far behind. You need to be here now! You shouldn’t be thinking about what’s going to happen later on in the day or the next week or what happened in work early. You need to be in the now, and if your not your in the now you are missing the boat.

Everyone in the class smiled because they knew the truth behind this. Everyone in class knows that this state of mind happens to us each and everyday  and they had bought this mindset it into class. That is the beautiful thing with the classes I teach, I like everybody to be in the now and not away with the fairy’s thinking what’s for lunch tomorrow or I need to get my car fixed. You miss all the great hidden treasures of knowledge if your like that.

So they cleared their minds. You know what happened? The throws just starting popping out to them more smoothly than ever.

You see they already know all of the throwing techniques already, but they were receiving what we call log jam. This is to many thoughts at once; it needs to be like a salt timer with only releasing one granule of salt at a time. If all the salt tried to go at once it would form a together like a log jam with the flow of salt passing through and everything would come to a halt. This is what was happening in class and this is what’s happening in our lives.

Thousands of thoughts cross over our minds every day creating like a log jam. We need to responsive with not allowing the log jam to step in and rather let the thoughts flow freely.

We need to learn to take out the trash. (Clear the log jam) Meaning remove all the unnecessary thoughts that gather into our prolific minds each day. This will make us think more clearly in life.

I know this sure helps me.

All the best

Richard Huntley

One of the most challenging things to do nowadays in life is to stay focused on what you are doing and what you really want. It’s difficult, I know! As there are a lot of distractions out there just waiting to jump out at you as trying to climb the ladder of success in life.

A lot of the distractions actually come from your closest friends and family members, as soon as they start to see a trickle of change producing in your life the “change alarm bells” will start ringing. You see, some people find it hard to change, so hard that they would rather marinade themselves in self-comfort and pick the easy things in life and not stretch themselves and think outside the box. Well let me tell you there is gold outside the box, you just have to break free from the box and go dip your toe in the water before you jump in!

I have seen so many examples of people holding themselves back just because they listen to what others say and let them dictate the way they live.

In life I believe we are all born here as creators, meaning we must get out there and create our own lives how we would love to live it. Not living your life for others but for yourself. So a key to staying focused is not to be influenced by others unless they have something constructive for you to add to your knowledge.

If you really want something bad enough, just like having your ideal job waking up every morning and becoming great in your specific niche you are in. You need to be the most focused and determined person you can possibly be with the tenacious mindset to be able to make you succeed in whatever you choose to do and most of all to be able to take the criticism that is thrown your way.

I have always been very focused on what I have wanted to achieve and I can tell you that as long as you get your mindset right, that is a very power tool to have. It will definitely take you to the top in your field.

A great saying my dad always use to say to me when I was chasing after to many things at once in life was “A hunter that chases two rabbits will never catch either” Meaning focus and complete on one thing at a time. You will be more productive and get more things done, rather than always chasing your tail!

So let’s stay focused and live life the way you want to live it. That’s what life is all about isn’t it? We must enjoy our experience while we are on this wonderful planet.

To your success

Richard Huntley

Have you ever heard this before? “ Yes I am going to start that activity or start to bring that into my life and I’m going to be great! But I can’t right now because I am a bit busy with my family or I have to work late some nights.” I am sure everyone reading this has heard one or the other of these sayings or should I say excuses? You choose.

There are different reasons for why people hold themselves back from achieving great things in life. It is a shame because there are so many people out there with hidden talents. In the end it all usually comes down to one four-letter word.

Can you guess it?
Fear

Lot’s of people put things off in their lives because of the fear in change. It happens when they step out of their comfort zone, meaning doing something that they are not use to or never done before. So the doubts and negative thoughts start to creep in when you move forward out of your comfort zone. For people it is very uncomfortable in life with changing, because most of all we are afraid of failing.

But the thing is, like a great saying I once heard  “failure should be our teacher not our under taker!” Meaning we must learn from our mistakes and move on towards where we are heading. We must not let our negative thoughts control us like puppets, but instead replace them with positive ones.

I know lots of people who do exactly this with putting things off for the moment. One person I know is talented aspiring martial artist with a lot of years experience behind him and he has real great attributes towards learning and sharing his knowledge with teaching.

He has said to me a few times that he would love to run his own classes to help people reap the benefits from martial arts.

So I said to him one day, that’s really good I am sure you would help inspire a lot of people through sharing your knowledge with others. I gave him some advice and said that I would always be on the other end of the phone if he needed some support.

I spoke to him about a month later to see if he had any more progress with his passion of running his own class. He replied no, and went on to say that he would but he couldn’t right now because it’s not the best time with work and all.

I asked the question, when is the best time? His face looked a bit puzzled like I was speaking in a different language to him. You see I have always felt that we must not hold ourselves back form achieving great things. You must ask yourself what are you waiting for? We must not procrastinate with holding ourselves back because their will never be a right time.

I guess he had never asked himself when is the best time and stop to think about what he wants. Rather than this he carried on in the same daily routine only saying that he will do things but not actually meeting his sayings. I’m sure you have heard the saying “actions speak louder than words” and this is very true. So while everyone else talks about what they are going to do, you need to focus everyday and head towards where you want to be in life and what you want to do. As long as you are making these small steps everyday in the direction of your goal you are heading with whatever it might be you will achieve success in what you are looking for.

So don’t wait any longer, the best time to start is now!

Richard Huntley