A few years ago I had the privilege of working out on a regular basis with a multiple-time world body-building champion. He had won Mr. Universe seven times, Mr. World seven times, and Mr. Olympia seven times!

Overall, he’d won a total of over 200 body-building championships, so to say he’s competitive would be an understatement. He invited me to meet him at a high school near his house one time. When I got there he said, “Today is leg day Eric. You and I are going to do a competition of lunges three laps across the football field and back. Let’s see who wins, and go!”

He begins doing these lunges across the football field. He’s halfway across the field by the time I’m going, “Wait, what?” And he’s like, “Come on you slow poke! Come on out here. I’m kicking your trash.” And to say that he’s competitive would be a super-understatement.

At that time especially, I didn’t like leg day. I don’t know a whole lot of people that just long for leg day, right? Especially lunges. And at that time I wasn’t exactly fit by any means. But I am a bit competitive myself, so I started doing these lunges across the football field. Of course he is kicking my trash during the first 2 ½ laps.

By the time I got to the last part of the third lap, I was dragging. I thought, “I feel so exhausted!” And then I remembered a little mind hack. I teach this trick in my Fall In Love With Yourself – Master Your Body, Mind and Soul – online program.

It’s one of the many, many hacks that I give to them, and I want to share this with you. Because I remembered this one little hack, and I began implementing it. I began to speed up, and my energy massively increased.

At the very last minute, I passed him up and I beat him. And he’s going, “What just happened? What just happened? What did you do?” And of course he’s congratulating me because he was super proud of me, but at the same time he’s like, “What just happened? How did you beat me?” So I told him about this one hack, which I have used many times since then to have absolutely fantastic energy and strength. 

When I first started my weight reduction journey, my body didn’t do well with high intensity exercise. In fact, I actually needed very low intensity but really long duration workouts. So I sometimes would do two sometimes three hours of cardio at a time. I would spend multiple hours on the elliptical machine or treadmill at a time because that was what my body needed at that time. 

And you can imagine doing multiple hours of cardio can be exhausting. I’ve used this one hack over and over again to get a boost of energy and motivation and be able to complete every single workout that I’ve started. And I’ve never cut a workout short over the last year and a half. 

This is a trick I learned from my good friend Noah St. John. He is the creator of something called Afformations. Most people have heard of affirmations, or declarations, and that’s when you state something positive. For example, if you were lacking energy, these gurus that teach declarations or affirmations would say, “Just say it over and over again, ‘I have unlimited strength and energy.’”

There’s something to that, and there is a science behind that. Unfortunately, we have what’s called the Reticular Activating System (R.A.S.) which is the brain’s filter. It’s job is to filter anything out that it deems as untruthful or unnecessary. We literally pick up on (depending on the study cited) some people say millions, billions, or even trillions of bits of information per second with all of our senses.

Thankfully, we are only conscious of about roughly fifty bits of information per second because all the rest gets filtered out through our Reticular Activating System. Otherwise we would go crazy, right? 

What happens if our Reticular Activating System deems something as untruthful? It will filter it right out. For example, let’s say you were having a really crappy day. It’s just one of those days, and you tried to say, “Today’s a great day. Today’s a great day. Today’s a great day.” With you doing these declarations over and over again, your R.A.S. would go, “No it’s not. Today sucks,” and it would filter that right out. 

Now, some people say to use greater intensity and/or lots of repetition. Some people say to get your whole body involved, and do what they call “Incantations.” All of those are great, but what if there was a way to get it past the Reticular Activating System instantly every single time?

I like instant. I don’t know about you, but I like instant results. This is where my friend Noah St. John came up with Afformations, which is asking your brain Why questions. Instead of saying, “Today is a great day,” you would ask, “Why is today a great day?”

What happens when you ask yourself why questions? Your subconscious mind automatically goes to work looking for the answer. It goes, “We have an idea here somewhere. We’ve got an answer here.” It goes to work and says, “Oh, here’s why today is a great day! The sun is shining. The tank is clean. Oh, the tank is clean!” (Disney movie reference there for those of you who have kids. Comment below if you recognize the reference. Tangent over).

Your brain goes to work looking for those answers. I remembered afformations as I was doing the lunge competition across the football field. I started asking myself, “Why do I have unlimited strength and energy?” And my brain went to work looking for the answer, and I suddenly literally got a massive surge of strength and energy. My speed drastically picked up, and at the last minute, I beat him. I beat him in that last lap. I taught him this, and I remember him saying, “What? I wish I had known that when I was competing and doing body-building competitions.”

I used this one hack I can’t tell you how many times when I’ve been doing my workouts, when I’ve been doing those super long exercise routines because it allows me to have unlimited strength and energy. 

This is something you can use for your workouts. You can ask, “Why do I have unlimited motivation?” You could ask yourself, “Why do I have unlimited self-control?” Whatever it is, be careful not to use this in the negative. Some people are like, “Why do I always get sick?”, or “Why is this so hard?” Be careful with that because then your brain will go looking for the answer.

Again, these are called Afformations created by Noah St. John. He’s come and spoken at a couple of my events.

Use this. Put your declarations into why questions, and watch how much more energy you have.

If you haven’t joined our Enjoy Yourself Thin Facebook group, make sure to do so. We have lots of fun hacks and useful tips so you can literally enjoy yourself thin.

Join our Enjoy Yourself Thin group, it’s free. We’ve got people joining from all over the world; it’s really cool. People are getting amazing results. Some of the testimonials that people are posting, like this woman who dropped something like 33 lbs just in her first four weeks, are amazing to watch. In our first 12-week challenge, a couple people passed the 45 lbs mark in just 12 weeks! 

We are coming up on the end of our next 12-week challenge, and it’s been really awesome watching people, so make sure to join Enjoy Yourself Thin. As always, love you!

Watch, “How I Beat the Champion of the World” on YouTube.