The benefits that come from exercise seem endless. It helps boost mood, fights off diseases, gives you energy and makes you look good to name just a few.

With all the benefits that come from maintaining health, an important question needs to be asked: why does physical fitness seem so hard?

Finding the motivation and willpower to get in shape is difficult. For many of us, the lure of the couch is far too great to get up and head to the gym.

I’ll admit that before I got into shape, I would watch extremely fit joggers run by and wonder what they had that I didn’t. What were they doing so well that I wasn’t? Over the years, I’ve made it my goal to figure that out.

It took a lot of analysis and several years of trial and error in my workouts before finally finding some answers. But I’ve identified seven things that fit, healthy people do differently.

1. They schedule specific times to workout and stick to them

Working out “whenever there’s time” is too arbitrary to be effective and can open you up to a long list of excuses for not going. It’s important to set regular dates and times to work out so you can bypass the “lack of time” excuse.

By setting fixed times, you’re holding your actions accountable. It’s not something you do here and there, but a specific time that you need to schedule around. Most importantly, by setting a specific schedule, it becomes a part of your weekly routine – eventually it becomes something you do out of habit. And once that happens, you’re more likely to do it in the future.

2. They enjoy being active

For a lot of people, exercise is a chore – it’s something you feel like you have to do. But by looking at it this way, you turn it into something you never feel bad about abandoning. After all, chores aren’t exactly things people look forward to.

Fit people find joy in exercise and fitness. Whether it’s in the spirit of competition or the elation from breaking a new personal goal, fit people enjoy physical activity.

The external benefits that come from physical fitness might be the initial reason to start, but finding the joy in the activity itself is what will keep you coming back.

3. They understand that fit, healthy bodies can take time

Results don’t happen overnight. Getting fit requires determination and consistency that you don’t see in many other activities.

But it’s not just about seeing the reward far off into the distance and working your way to it. It’s also about finding the discipline to put in the effort to make it happen.

Fit people appreciate the discipline it takes to work out week after week. Finding the determination to keep moving forward becomes a matter of pride and a badge of honor – it feels good to know that you’ve put in steady effort towards a goal.

4. They focus on improvement, not perfection

There is no perfect body. There is no perfect workout or diet. In fact, eliminate all expectations about what physical fitness is supposed to be. Fixing your mind on perfect results will result in failure because you’re either demanding too much or setting unrealistic expectations.

Get into a mindset that focuses on improvement, not perfection. Rather than finding the perfect diet, aim to make improvements in your eating habits. Instead of looking for the perfect physique, look for what workouts you could be doing better.

Working out is more of a mental game than most people realize so it’s important to get into the proper frame to ensure that you keep going.

5. They make healthy eating a part of their life

It’s easy to get caught up in the new fad diet which makes lasting promises of change if only you follow the simple rules involved.

But the problem with most diets is that they’re often so restrictive that people struggle to maintain them over long periods of time. That’s why most people don’t stick with them.

A better approach to eating healthy is to look at it as a series of choices. You want to make slight improvements here and there by slowly cutting out unhealthy foods and introducing healthier options.

By slowing making better and better choices, you’ll eventually find that eating healthy becomes a part of your life; that also makes it much less likely for you to bounce back into eating unhealthy again.

6. They take sleep very seriously

Working out is rather pointless if you don’t get enough proper sleep. Sleep is when your body finds time to rebuild muscle and store new energy. Lack of sleep can be incredibly unhealthy – it can wreak havoc on your metabolism, mood and ability to handle stress.

Fit, healthy people do what they can to make sure they get the sleep they need. They make sure their bedrooms have the optimal conditions. They also make sure they don’t consume anything that will interrupt their sleep.

7. They realize physical fitness is a mental game

Fitness is often seen as a physical activity – sweating, muscle building, toning. At first, it seems to rely more on the physical than the mental.

But mental attitude towards fitness shouldn’t be discounted. It’s not just about brute force or sweat; there’s a mind-body connection as well.

It can take willpower and discipline to eat healthy. Sticking to a workout routine week after week takes grit and determination. All of these qualities originate in the mind. If you can focus your mind on these mental attributes, exercise and fitness become a lot easier.

Steve is the writer behind Do Something Cool where he blogs about travel, motivation, self improvement and adventure. He’s always looking for ways to make life more interesting. For fresh ideas on living life to the fullest, join his newsletter.

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Many times when we want to create something new in our life we go at it with this initial excitement. Yet, if we could probe our mind and thoughts we might discover that we keep replaying the same negative and discouraged frequency again and again.

Often times it’s a frequency of lack. This can take the shape of a frequency of ‘I’m not enough’. Or it might be the frequency of ‘I can’t’ or ‘it’ll just never to happen to me’. And I understand exactly what it’s like to want a change – yet something keeps holding you back. In this article, I want to give you some suggestions that have helped me transform my reality very quickly. I’ve been able to get nearly anything I truly want starting out with these simple steps.

Here’s an example, after my first marriage ended I was fortunate to find love again. I remember being so excited right before I was going to ask my current wife to marry me. We were in San Antonio, Texas in an area called the ‘River Walk’, and there I was, I had the ring in hand and I was walking back to the hotel room and I was planning out exactly how I was going to propose.

I found this little island called ‘Marriage Island’ on the San Antonio River Walk, this place that dates back to the 1600s – a tiny patch of land with beautiful energy and significance. Yet despite all the beauty around me in my mind I could still hear this record playing again and again – “Oh, you know what happened the last time…what’s going to happen if you mess up again? What would family and friends say? What would happen if she’s not the one that you think?”

All my fears started coming up. All the worry. All the anxiety. In that moment I could have changed my mind, chose to listen and let that frequency build the rest of my life from that place. Here’s what I am saying, I realized I had to play a different frequency. It wasn’t enough for me just to ignore it and keep going on. Because physically even if I ‘worked hard’, ‘pushed’ or ‘went through the motions’ it couldn’t last.

Here’s a KEY TRUTH: First cause is always what is being held in the mind.

We’ve got to turn off that ‘broken’ record if we’re going to see a different world. So many spiritual people are holding out for better circumstances. I see people everyday who think that God, spirit and creative source can make miracles happen WITHOUT our participation. Instead remember all of this reality works THROUGH YOU rather than to you.

Ask yourself this question: Is the Universe unlimited? Most people would say “Yes, Darius I think it is”. Then tell me what frequency does that unlimited Universe resonate at? Does the Universe play a frequency of ‘I’m not enough; I can’t; I’ll never happen to me’?

Here’s the key: I wasn’t nervous, I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t worried. My heart knew it was the right thing. Yet it was the record of my mind that had the problem. I had somehow developed a pattern in this one area of my life where I replayed this frequency. Even though my heart was telling me it was so, my mind had developed this pattern.

So I want to share a few things really quickly that will help you to shift this frequency.

First, the frequency and the messages you’re playing in your mind are actually creating your feelings, they create your moment to moment emotion. If you plug into a great frequency of ‘I can do it’ or ‘I am loved’ or ‘it’s possible’ or ‘look at how beautiful the world is’, your feelings change. When feelings change emotions change. So to change the frequency you can say, “Cancel”. On a vibrational scale the world ‘cancel’ goes deep and neutralizes the effect of a frequency that does not serve you. I’ve see this again and again.

The second thing to remember is that emotions transform how you act. They transform how you see, how you connect, the ideas you have, the visions, the excitement you bring into the world and the way people see you. They change the energy field around you. You want to transform fast, change the frequency or feelings. To do this transform the thought. The actions you take will either transform your world into a new one or will sustain the old world you’ve been trapped in. So after you say ‘cancel’ and feel yourself getting back into center – check back in with your heart. Ask yourself, “From the highest part of me is this still what I truly and deeply want?”. Lastly, plant in my mind pictures, images, scenes, feelings of the outcome you want. Do this until you feel your entire state change. This ‘state’ change is a frequency change. It’s critical to be able to become aware of when this happens in your system. You’ll know it.

The third is to remember that God Source gave us free will. In my own life I’ve seen source work most often through me. I said ‘through’ me not ‘to’ or ‘at’ me. This is because of free will. Source does not take away problems. This free will creates miracles, changes to situations, people and even inanimate objects based on the frequency we hold. Often times the ‘miracle’ we are expecting begins to open up at the moment we change our ‘thought frequency’ consistently. I’ve heard this again and again through so many people. Remember, reality happens THROUGH us more often than TO us. Dwell on that one for a while.

Let’s hold out the intention to turn over a new leaf today. See yourself today – this is my wish – as the Universe sees you, as unlimited and as expansive and as beautiful as Source. If you do this repeatedly, my friends, I promise you your world will change.

Intention Exercise: Put your hand back on your heart if it’s been moved and let’s just take a deep breath in, holding in the intention of pure possibility, breathing in the intention of ‘I am good’, breathing in the intentionality and vibration of ‘I am able’. Breathe in the intention that today is a new day, breathe in the intention of ‘I feel good’, and breathe in the intention that ‘I am love’.

Let your heart begin to expand out all around you. You may begin to see a bright pink light around your field, a bright pink energy source just connecting you. You may feel a peace inside. Just allow that to come in. And allow right now a part of you that needs healing today

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Darius is the founder of the transformational http://ift.tt/1f9U0cY enlightened education and broadcasting community dedicated to helping people connect to their power, genius and gifts.  With over 170,000 loyal subscribers in more than 250 countries the You Wealth broadcasting platform has become one of the largest and highest grossing ‘enlightened’ tele-education communities in the world.

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