Activate Your Life
Author: Andrew McCombe

As a sport scientist, personal trainer and performance coach, I have been working for many years with clients who come to me for advice about how they can improve the performance and quality of their bodies. Some want help to lose weight and tone up, others need to reduce their blood pressure, some want to put on muscle and everyone wants to look and feel better.

However, I have found that it is never my client’s physical body that requires improvement in the first instance. My experience has shown me that the body is a barometer for life; if something isn’t going well in a certain area of life, it manifests through the body. It was only when I addressed the underlying cause of their dissatisfaction that their physical body responded with a lot less effort and they began to see amazing results in all areas of their lives.

Ultimately what I found was that my clients had a perceived gap between who they were and who they wanted to be and this gap manifested itself as some form of dis-ease in their physical body. Therefore in order for you to get your body working optimally (and live a life of ‘ease’), you first need to look at your thoughts, feelings, beliefs and behaviours.

The following are guidelines to help you achieve a life of ‘ease’.

Step 1
Activate your ‘being’
Activating your ‘being’ is about you designing the person you want to become and then being this person now. To do this, write down your answer to the following three questions:
1) Who are you?
2) Who do you want to be?
3) What is your life purpose?

Step 2
Activate your thoughts
Thoughts are the root cause of your reality, therefore you must begin to master them in a positive sense in order to manifest a life of ease. You have the ability to achieve all of your goals and dreams but before this happens you must first know exactly what it is you are looking to achieve and then begin to focus on your goal with positive thoughts. To help you do this, write down what it would be like to live your life of ease?

Step 3
Activate your feelings
Perhaps the most important aspect of manifesting your life of ease is to focus your attention on the feelings that achieving this ideal life will give you. An excellent way to maintain these feelings is to find some pictures or images of your goals and create a collage with them, place it on your wall and view it at least twice daily. Additionally, write down what it would feel like to live your life of ease.

Step 4
Activate your beliefs
Beliefs are thoughts repeated constantly and held as true. Therefore the best way to believe your life of ease is possible is to associate with the people and the things that you want to be like. To do this, you can read books, attend seminars and associate with the people and places that you are aspiring to become.

Step 5
Activate your behaviours
Creating an action plan and then implementing it is the final step to creating your life of ease. A successful action plan contains the daily behaviours, obstacles, solutions, support, and rewards that are necessary to achieve your goals. To help you do this, write down what behaviours you will need to perform to achieve your goals and also what obstacles, solutions, support and rewards do you need to achieve your goals?

Establishing a system
Too often we become caught up in the ‘doing’ of every day life and we forget that it is meant to be enjoyed. Establishing a system for ease will help you to put the fun back into your life. The following are five systems that are all geared towards helping you live your life with a lot more energy and productivity on a daily basis.

1) Establish a system for efficiency
Your time is precious. Time is the only thing in the world that all people have exactly the same amount of every day. How you choose to spend your time is entirely up to you but wouldn’t you prefer to spend it on things that are meaningful to you, things that fill you with satisfaction, that add value to your life, that make you feel fulfilled? If time were money, would you be spending it on some of the things that you currently do every day or would you invest it more wisely?

The key to getting greater results from your time is effective planning. When faced with a set of tasks most people will dive straight in and start performing the most urgent tasks first, without any planning. Working like this continually results in you becoming very busy and working very hard at chasing your own tail. You can only keep this up for so long before you create dis-ease in your life.

The key is to learn how to work smarter, not harder. When it comes to planning your time, the most important skill is knowing how to prioritise. By identifying your real priorities you will achieve more. Deliberately focus 80 percent of your energy on the tasks that are most important to you and the other 20 percent on the urgent, less important tasks. You will be amazed at how much more time and fulfilment you have.

2) Establish a system for elimination
A system for elimination gives you the means to remove toxins and unnecessary clutter from your life. Toxins can be mental, emotional, spiritual or physical and often come in the form of addictions and unfinished business. Unfinished business can be anything that you have started but not finished; this traps energy in the past. If you do not have 100 percent of your energy available in the present you will not be as productive as you can possibly be.

A well structured detoxification program is designed to rid your mind and body of addictions and toxins. Your body becomes toxic when you consume more toxins than you can eliminate. While the body has an amazing ability to detoxify itself through breathing, sweating and going to the toilet, it can often use a helping hand.

Some simple tips to help you remove toxins from your life include:
1. Write a list of all your ‘unfinished business’ and complete all of it within the next seven days.
2. Remove toxic thoughts, feelings, beliefs and behaviours from your mind by focusing on what you do want in your life, not on what you don’t want.
3. De-clutter and simplify your life, your house, car, garage, wardrobe, office and so on. Eliminate any old energy that no longer serves you.
4. Eliminate all toxins for one week. The following is a list of toxins and addictions that you should eliminate for a seven day period: Meat (except fresh fish), dairy products, refined sugar, caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, recreational drugs, processed food, more than 60 minutes of television per day, gambling.

3) Establish a system for exercise
Exercise is the perfect natural stimulant. Performing some form of exercise on a daily basis will provide you with so many benefits, both physically and psychologically. Physically, exercise improves your aerobic and anaerobic fitness; muscle strength; power, flexibility and tone; energy levels; sex drive; sleep quality and insulin levels (which helps to reduce sugar cravings). Psychologically, exercise improves your confidence and self-esteem, feelings of well-being and stress levels.

It is important to incorporate a balanced combination of different types of exercise into your routine, including:
• Resistance exercise, such as weight training, which increases your muscle strength and tone as well as your bone density (to reduce your risk of injury).
• Cardio vascular exercise, such as aerobic or anaerobic training, to increase the efficiency of your heart and lungs and reduce your body fat levels.
• Flexibility exercise, such as regular stretching to improve your posture, to help you to recover from exercise faster and to reduce your risk of injury.

An effective exercise program should be developed around three to six thirty-minute sessions per week. For example:

Day Exercise Type Program Type
Monday Weights Chest, Shoulders, Triceps
Tuesday Cardio Intervals and Stretch
Wednesday Weights Legs and Abdominals
Thursday Cardio Intervals and Stretch
Friday Weights Back and Biceps
Saturday Resistance/Flexibility Abdominals and Stretch
Sunday Rest/Reward day

How are you going to fit your new training program into your busy schedule? There are 336 half hours in a week. If you use 112 of those for sleep, you are left with 224. Only six of those half hours are required to get the best possible results from your exercise – that’s only 1.75 percent of your week!

4) Establish a system for eating
To gain the maximum benefit from any exercise program you must combine your physical activity with high quality nutrition. There’s a great deal of information around about exactly what constitutes good eating habits these days and here is one system that works for many people:
Eat 5-6 smaller meals per day. Whenever you eat, you raise your metabolism as the body needs to expend more energy to break down the extra fuel that has been added. Therefore, by eating smaller meals more regularly throughout the day you will ensure that your metabolism is raised for a longer period of time, which means that your body will burn more fat.
Two-thirds of your plate should be plant (or natural) food. Incorporate six to eight servings of different fruits and vegetables into your menu every day – these are the best natural source of vitamins and minerals.
Have small amounts of protein throughout the day. Beans, nuts, eggs, seafood, fish, red meat, poultry and small amounts of full fat dairy products are all excellent sources of protein.
Avoid eating carbohydrates after 6pm. The energy that carbohydrates give you will be stored as fat if it is not burned off so eating carbohydrates after 6pm reduces your body’s ability to burn off any excess energy before going to sleep.
Make sure you eat breakfast every day. Breakfast is designed to ‘break the fast’ between the last meal you consumed yesterday and the lunch you will eat today. The ideal breakfast should be high in fibre and low in sugar, for example a low-sugar cereal, porridge or multi-grain toast. High fibre foods also play an important role in getting the digestive system going for the day, which is important in helping to reduce the risks of colon (bowel) cancer.
Try to consume low Glycemic Index (GI) foods. The GI is a ranking of foods based on their immediate effect on blood glucose (blood sugar) levels. Low GI foods are more slowly digested and absorbed, resulting in gradual increases in blood sugar and insulin levels which also reduces the risk of diabetes, mood swings and obesity.
Reduce your caffeine, alcohol and junk food intake. I always ask my clients, “Would you put diesel in a Ferrari?”, they all answer no, so I then ask them “Why would you pump your body full of ‘diesel’ (caffeine, alcohol or junk food) when it has a far greater performance capacity than a Ferrari?”
Drink 2-3 litres of purified water per day
Preparation is the key to getting the best results. Always prepare your weekly menu plan and shopping list before you go shopping and never shop on an empty stomach.
Have a day off and eat whatever you like! Rest is one of the keys to performance and by having one day off from having to plan and prepare your nutritious meals each week you will actually help yourself to adhere to your program more effectively on the other six days.

5) Establish a system for evaluation
Evaluation is perhaps the most overlooked aspect of any goal achievement process. People don’t want to know where they are at in case the news is not good. However constant feedback keeps you on track to achieve your goals – without it you may never arrive at your destination. Feedback is like good old-fashioned medicine, it’s hard to swallow but it’s good for you – think of it as an opportunity to increase the effectiveness and quality of your performance. Feedback can be subjective and objective. Subjective feedback is feeling-based. Your emotions and your intuition are excellent feedback systems. If you are not feeling good about something, then chances are it’s not right for you. Objective feedback is measurable and recordable. A nutrition, lifestyle and fitness assessment is an excellent way to get objective feedback on your current level of health. Make sure you check in with yourself regularly, a daily or weekly check in will keep you accountable for the direction you have chosen and ensure that you are evolving on a daily basis.

If you implement even one of the systems above you are well on your way towards achieving your life of ease so congratulations and enjoy your new life.






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Andrew McCombe Biography

Andrew McCombe is the owner and Managing Director of Activate Your Life, an Australian based preventative health and lifestyle management company. Andrew is the author of the book Activate Your Life and the weekly Activate Your Life monthly EASE-ine.

Activate Your Life operates private health clubs, corporate wellness programs, including the Activate Your Life 90 Day Program and has an interactive health based website, www.activateyourlife.com.au.
Andrew has over 15 years experience in the Health and Fitness Industry with the Activate Your Life vehicle providing a blend of complementary and traditional health and well-being services. Andrew has represented New Zealand and Australia at indoor and beach volleyball and has played at representative level in a number of other sports. It is from this active background that Andrew McCombe and Activate Your Life have developed a vision to inspire individuals to be the best they can be. Andrew McCombe is an author, a coach, a presenter and a trainer and is available to assist you and your organisation with your health, fitness, well being, lifestyle and motivational needs.

Andrew McCombe
PO Box 1229
Manly NSW 1655

Phone: 61 (02) 9977 3362
Email: info@activateyourlife.com.au
Website: www.activateyourlife.com.au

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