Family First

It's my first blog after getting married and just having spent an incredible 3 weeks away with my now wife, Jenny and firstly I'd just like to say thank you for the most incredible break ever and I'm well excited about this brand new chapter of our lives together.

Having been away, as well as completely switching off from work, I've had a great opportunity to reflect on a few things and one being something that I am very fortunate with: the support of a family.

When it comes to getting fit and healthy, I think traditional routes of becoming a gym member, joining a weight loss class or going on a super new diet can typically be lonely journeys and having a family supporting you or better still joining you makes a huge difference. It's worth me pointing out at this point that when I say family, this of course includes relatives but your circles of friends too. All the people who are close and important to you are equally as valuable in this instance.

What I'm going to share with you are a few tips to successfully encourage them to either be supportive or even come and join you. This is coming from experience and I'm extremely fortunate in now having a huge family which is very supportive but I've very much experienced moments of seemingly harmless ridicule at home of doing something I believed in yet not everyone else in the room did.

1. Let them know that your journey is important to you and their support is even more important. We live in a very busy culture where we are constantly being sold new concepts and ideas. It seems so obvious and simple but reminding people how important they are and that their support will make a difference and will be very well received.
2. Don't try and immediately become the salesman. Lead by example and your actions will speak volumes. By showing them how much the renewed sense of confidence, energy and results are helping improve your life, they'll be dying to join in with you. Once they see how much fun your having too, that'll be the straw that breaks the camels back and they'll be itching to get involved.
3. Be encouraging and not forceful. Sharing a house with people who lead different styles of life, there are invariably occasions and situations where there are conflicts. This could be as simple as having different foods in the fridge or having different sleeping patterns. All you need to do again is clearly illustrate the benefits that you're enjoying and maybe a little soft encouragement explaining that they too could enjoy the great benefits.
4. Show eagerness to both teach and learn. Whilst on your journey, you'll be brimming with new ideas and just bursting at the edges to share this with your family. Don't get me wrong, people love to learn and they'll be keen to learn more but this can come with a caveat. People don't enjoy being permanently broadcast too! By also being eager to learn from them and listening more, it'll clearly show that their advice and opinions matter to you. It'll help you see things from their perspective and be able to empathise much better and improve the level of understanding you are having. A completely win win situation.

Hope this is useful and I'd love to hear any feedback on this. It is all very common sense stuff but I'm sure that we can all agree that for some reason, family life can be hectic and common sense can often be absent.