Emotions are one of the five key areas of MindWork (link to 5 key areas) and play a major role in whether or not you’ll succeed at losing weight, sticking to a diet or exercise routine, or just maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

What are emotions

You probably already have a good idea of what your emotions are.

Sometimes, these emotions are devastating…

Like when you break up with your boyfriend, an overwhelming sense of sadness flows over you.

Other times they feel great…

Like the joy experienced when you get a promotion or come first in a competition.

You may have noticed that emotions fall into two categories:

1. Positive Emotions:
Joy, happiness, excitement, faith, hope, pride and love.

2. Negative Emotions
Sadness, anger, shame, fear, regret, doubt, guilt and hate.

Your mind uses positive and negative emotions to get what it wants.

If your mind really likes something, it rewards you with positive emotions that make you feel good – it wants you to do more of that.

And when your mind doesn’t like something? It uses negative emotions to make you feel bad – to get you to stop.

By using emotions as rewards and punishments, your mind is encouraging you to do more of the things that makes it feel good and less of the things that make you feel bad.

But here is where it gets a little tricky…

Your mind doesn’t always want what is best for you.

And that’s when your mind uses emotions to stop you from achieving your goals.

For example:

Let’s say that after years of not exercising, you decide that it’s time to get fit.

Great!

You join a fitness class and mid-way through the first session, you are exhausted and don’t believe you can make it to the end.

This quickly causes negative emotions to spike. Doubt, frustration and even anger…

Then come the excuses.

“This is too hard, I can’t do this.”
“I didn’t really want this to begin with.”
“I tried, but it’s not for me.”

And before you know it, you have given up. But not because you wanted to. But because your mind wanted you to quit.

Your mind won. And it used your feelings of doubt and frustration to do it.

You may be wondering:

“Losing weight is a good thing. Why wouldn’t my mind want that?”

Good question! And what it boils down to is…

Your mind is lazy. It likes routine and predictability. It wants to feel safe. It likes things to be easy – it wants things to remain the same.

And that’s exactly why it’s so hard to change an unhealthy lifestyle or lose weight – it doesn’t want to change.

It’s weird isn’t it? I mean, You know that losing weight or sticking to an exercise routine will have long-lasting positive benefits.

But your mind doesn’t.

Your mind sees any change in diet, any extra effort spent on exercise or losing weight as something that could be harmful. I cover this concept in more detail here.

So your mind uses every trick it has to get you to stop…
And one of the most powerful tools to get you to give up? Using your emotions against you.

Your mind says:

“Don’t exercise. Stay at home, watch netflix and eat ice-cream instead. I’ll give you a dose of feeling happy”

So, you do exactly that. In that moment, you feel content, comfortable and safe. And so does your mind.

As you can see, it’s impossible to stick to a diet, keep an exercise routine, lose weight or lead a healthy diet with your mind using emotions against you.

The Emotional Scale

Overly Emotional – Emotional – Emotionless

Think of your emotions as being on a scale…

On the one end of the scale you have:

Overly Emotional
You are often overcome with feelings of happiness, anger, loneliness, etc. that you are unable to control. Often the emotions are over the top, compared to what triggered them.

For example:
You get really stressed because the shop was out of the food you planned on having for dinner. Feeling upset, you buy ice cream to overcome these emotions.

On the other end of the scale you have:

Emotionless
You don’t respond with feelings, even if the situation calls for it.

For example: You don’t really care that shops out of food, you are not that committed to your diet, so you buy junk food instead.

The more the scale tips in one direction or the other, the more your emotions will work against you.

In order for you to achieve your healthy lifestyle, you want to balance this scale. The more balanced your emotions are, the more likely it is that you will succeed.

Otherwise, your mind will use your emotions as an excuse to throw in the towel – that your diet or exercise routine isn’t worth it.

Unfortunately, you just can’t choose where you sit on the emotional scale.


Your emotional reactions and outbursts are unique to you. Your emotions were shaped by your upbringing and biology.

To put it simply, your emotions and how they affect you are unique. And to overcome them, you need a unique solution, one that is tailored specifically to you.

That’s where MindWork comes in.

MindWork focuses on identifying and balancing the emotions that are impacting your life.

Through one-on-one support, advice and strategies, you can balance your emotions once and for all.

Never again will your emotions:

• Cause you to give up on losing weight
• Skip the diet
• Choose Netflix over exercise

Are you ready to stop your emotions from getting in the way?

MindWork is the starting point is the first step to living the healthy lifestyle you always dreamed of.