About This Site. This site is the website of motivational speaker Craig
Harper. A constantly updated, one-stop
information, inspiration, education and motivation
station. Unlike many similar sites, it is a totally
free resource for anyone who is serious about moving
from mediocre to amazing in any area of their
personal or professional life. With hundreds of
articles covering a wide range of subject matter,
great interviews with cool people and inspirational
video posts, there's more than enough brain-food to
keep you busy for hours. Okay, days!!
Enjoy.
Click play above
to
see one of Craig's weekly segments on national
television. (9AM with Kim & David - Network Ten)
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Craig? Click
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Life Coach
Melbourne - Craig Harper
If
you are interested in maximizing your potential,
stepping out of that 'holding pattern' and being
privately coached by Craig click here.
Business Coach Melbourne -
Craig Harper
If you're a personal trainer, gym owner or studio owner
who is interested in growing your business and/or your
career, then mentoring with Craig could be a valuable
part of your overall success strategy and professional
development journey.
Biological Age Testing
- Craig Harper
In a recent test, Jan Frazer, who has a chronological age (the
number of years she's been on the planet) of 67 did a biological
age test which showed she has the body of a 37 year old female.
Pretty Impressive! How old is your body! Find out here.
Nutrition Melbourne -
Craig Harper
Many nutritional
experts are confusing people with jargon and pseudo-science.
Craig's HPN Service provides remote access to Craig's Director
of Nutrition to cut through the dietary confusion and
contradiction.
Public Speaking Melbourne - Craig Harper If you've ever
thought about becoming a professional speaker or
improving your public speaking then you can be privately
coached here.
Fattitude
- Craig Harper
While many books focus on food,
Craig Harper teaches that creating life-long change is more about the
dieter, than the actual diet. This book is perfect for people who have a
history of 'almost' getting in shape.
DVD
or CD - Renovate Your Body - Craig Harper In this entertaining presentation, Craig discusses the
notion of Renovating Your Body - once and for all. Many of us have a curious
ability to be able to get in shape for events (weddings, parties, reunions
and birthdays), if only we'd get in shape for life.
Craig Harper is a leading
motivational speaker
and educator. He is a highly
sought-after corporate coach and is considered to be
a leader and pioneer in the areas of personal and
professional development. Working with hundreds of
teams, companies and a wide variety of organisations
on numerous continents over the last twenty years
has given Craig a unique insight into, and
understanding of, human performance and all its
variables. Craig has an ability to educate, inspire,
challenge and make people laugh all at the same
time!
Today is more of a tip, a simple piece of advice, than a lengthy discussion or exploration. Something I've learned along the way which you may find helpful.
One of the biggest mental hurdles for many people on the road to self-improvement is getting their head around the notion of life-long behavioural change. Life; it's kind of a long time isn't it? Never to be the same again. Ever. Getting our head around the 'forever' thing can be a little daunting, especially when we feel like we're a million miles from where we wanna be. Sometimes the thought of changing certain behaviours, habits and attitudes for the rest of our life, can seem completely overwhelming, impractical and unrealistic. Terrifying even.
The Truth...
The sad truth is that many people achieve a certain level of success only to 'undo' their good work within a year or less. When I say many, I really mean the vast majority. You know what and who I mean. Just take a look around you. Or a look in the mirror. Most people who lose weight regain it, most people who 'give up' certain things, take them up again, and many people seem to alternate between loungelizard and athlete, in some kind of weird annual ritual of frustration. In fact, many people will spend the majority of their life on a perpetual cycle of starting and stopping a range of programs, diets, fitness kicks and short-term healthy endeavors. Almost changing on a regular basis, but never actually doing it. We all want the 'different forever' thing, but statistically very few people create it. Not because they can't, just because they won't.
So the questions that need to be asked are:
1. What approach is most likely to lead to forever results?
2. What is least likely to be effective?
3. Where do most people stumble?
4. When we take an objective, analytical, scientific glimpse at the various approaches (to change) and the results they produce, what do we discover?
What We Know...
We know that extreme rarely works but so many people continue to use the extreme approach anyway. Trying to create drastic change in a short amount of time (rapid weight loss diets, get-rich-quick-schemes) almost never results in life-long transformation. In fact, it invariably results in frustration and disappointment. The notion of trying to 'undo' decades of destructive behaviours and bad habits in a matter of weeks is stupid, but still we try. The quick-fix generation, with the quick-fix mentality mostly fixes nothing.
What About Emotion?
We also know that when it comes to creating forever results, logic, planning and strategy are infinitely more effective than emotion. Emotion is great to get us started and it's good to keep us proactive for a day or two, but beyond that we may need a plan. We need an approach which keeps us doing what we need to do, irrespective of our emotional state on a given day. Decisions often come out of emotion (which is okay), but that emotion needs to be harnessed to a logical, practical change strategy for it to result in anything worthwhile or permanent.
We know that motivation is a temporary state and therefore we need to be able to maintain focus, consistency and momentum even when the feeling of motivation is absent. This is where most people fail. They have an initial burst of enthusiasm and motivation, they change their behaviours (for a minute or two) and then when the motivation (excitement) wears off (which it will), so too do the behaviours. Back to square one. Again. And again. And the cycle continues.
Four Week Blocks. While it's important that we have medium and long-term goals, the reality is that we live in the present. Here and now. We don't live in the future, so we often find it hard to get our thinking in tune with the changing for therest of our life concept.
Working with thousands of people has taught me that focusing on 'the next thirty years' (solely) is for many of us, more debilitating than it is empowering. So while we have a big picture plan and some long term goals, it's actually more beneficial to invest the majority of our focus and energy into short-term installments, specifically, four week blocks, which in turn lead to long-term change.
With my clients I have discovered the 'four week' approach to be the most successful strategy in helping them re-invent themselves and create results over the long term. The irony being that by not focusing on forever we are more likely to create forever results. Clever huh? What I love about working with people in smaller installments is that the time frame is short enough to stay mentally focused and emotionally committed (crucial), but also long enough to actually see some real results (crucial). And when we see those results we also see a new peak in excitement, enthusiasm and momentum.
Forever Results
At the end of each four week period, we assess the progress, we high-five, we talk, we set some new goals for the next block and off we go again. My experience is that people love working this way because it's measurable, practical, realistic and it works. We simply break the big process down into manageable installments. While we have the big picture floating somewhere in our subconscious, my clients invest all of their energy into our four week short-term project. Within twelve months, we have usually changed habits and thinking for a lifetime.
Forever results without focusing on forever.
* Let me know your thoughts on this post and feel free to share a (brief) story. Just click on the comment thingy - even you chronic lurkers. If you would like to receive articles like this automatically, simply click on the 'subscribe to this feed' thingy at the bottom of this post and become a subscriber.
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Click play above
to
see motivational speaker Craig Harper in action.
DVD
- Renovate Your Body - Craig Harper
In this entertaining presentation, Craig discusses the
notion of Renovating Your Body - once and for all. (Also
available on CD).
Fattitude
- Craig Harper
While many books focus on food,
Craig Harper teaches that creating life long change is more about the
dieter than the actual diet.
Food for thought
- Craig Harper
In this book, Craig Harper
walks the reader through his 21 rules to Permanent Weight Loss.
So you've decided you want to get in shape (again)
- Craig Harper
Imagine a pocket-sized fitness book that takes just twenty minutes to
read. Craig Harper addresses the REAL getting-in-shape issues.
