Motivation

New Year’s Resolution – The Trick to Meeting Them

Habits, Mindset, Motivation - , , , -

Yep, it’s that time of year again.  As soon as we make the leap over the holiday season in a couple weeks, out will come the new year’s resolution.  “It’s a new year and it’s going to be a new me!”“This is the year I am finally going to lose weight, eat healthier, exercise more, stop smoking, make more money…”

Not to throw a wet towel on the excitement, but the reality is that only about 8% of people ever accomplish their new year’s resolution.  And, most don’t even stay committed to their resolution after the first 30 days into the new year.  At this point you might be thinking, “I’m going to be one of those 8%,” but you’re really not clear on HOW you will be part of that elite group.  Or, you’re totally discouraged because of your past new year’s resolution failures and so you aren’t going to bother making one. 

Before you charge ahead or give up, read on and I’ll give you 3 tricks of the trade for achieving your resolution.  And yes, you NEED to write things down in whatever medium you prefer.

First things first. What’s your resolution?  Have that in mind.

Trick # 1: Answer the Question, “Why Is This Your Resolution?”

This is trick of the trade #1 for a reason. It’s the first and most critical thing to ask and answer for yourself.  Too often we make a resolution because it’s the thing to do.  Everyone around you is making them. Gyms drop their membership and/or initiation prices.  You are inundated with sales on dieting programs and all sorts of other things.  But, if your why is just the thing to do and it isn’t important enough to you, you will fail! 

Let’s look at one of the most popular new year’s resolutions, to lose weight.  You may want to lose weight, but why?  Ask yourself “why” at least 3 times, each with a different answer.  Dig deeper than “it’s healthier.”  For example, “I want to lose weight.” 1) Why? “I want to look great in my clothes.” 2) Why? “I think people would take me more seriously at work.”  3) Why? “I’d have more confidence in myself.”  Now you see that it isn’t about just looking good, it’s about being a person that is confident.  What could this confidence in yourself bring?  A promotion, motivation to begin a new career, a happier marriage, meeting someone…?

Trust me, if you can’t come up with a bottom line answer that makes you feel good, then it will be an uphill battle to accomplish your new year’s resolution.

Trick # 2: Ditch Your Resolution! Have A Goal Instead.

This may sound like the same thing, but they are vastly different.  A resolution means you resolve to do such and such.  “I resolve to lose weight this year.”  Great!  Now what?  How are you going to do it?  Exactly when are you going to do it?  Resolutions are vague while goals have specificity.  A goal gives you direction, a sort of roadmap to follow.  Using the “I want to lose weight” example, your goal must be:

Specific…specifically how much weight do you want to lose?

Measurable…easy enough with a scale

Actionable…what are you going to do (i.e. exercise x days/week; cut xx calories/day)?

Realistic…are you giving yourself enough time to achieve it? (Realistic weight loss is 1-2 pounds per week.)

Timely…when do you want to lose the weight by?

If you really want to increase your chances of success, think in quarters of the year instead of a whole year at once.  Start your new year by creating a much smaller “New Quarter Goal” rather than a year goal.  This will seem easier to achieve  and give you confidence.  And you can make quicker changes if something isn’t working.  Once one quarter has ended you’ll make a new goal for the next quarter based upon your progress to date. 

What if by doing it this way, you ended up losing 15 pounds by the end of the year instead of the 20 pounds you really wanted?  You’d still feel really good!  You will have made fantastic progress and be confident you could keep the weight you lost off.

Trick #3: Schedule Time to Spend on Meeting Your Goal

Bottom line, if you are really serious about meeting your goal, you need to know what you are going to do and when you are going to work on it.  Each Sunday, look at your calendar and plan out your week.  For example, if weight loss is your goal, you need to block out times you will exercise that week.  This simple action works for anything you want to accomplish, whether it’s the one thing you have to get done that week or you want to spend uninterrupted time with your family or friends. 

So, be in that 8% of people that accomplish their new year’s resolution!  Just remember…

  • Know why the resolution is important to you,
  • Turn your resolution into a goal and start the new year by creating a much smaller “New Quarter Goal” to increase your chances of success, and
  • Set aside time to work towards your goal.

Goals or Daily Habits: Which is More Important?

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Without goals you will have difficulty achieving a significant level of success.  This stands for anything you really want, whether it is health related like losing weight or career related such as becoming a CEO.  Without goals you don’t have a road ahead of you to follow.  If you don’t know where you are going how are you going to get there?

But, your goals are worthless.  They REALLY don’t matter.  It’s just a fantasy, a story of desire you tell yourself, unless…

UNLESS your daily habits are 100% congruent with your goals.  So, let’s look at daily habits. 

Let’s say one of your goals is to run a marathon in 6 months.  Great!  Your daily habits are as follows: 5-6 hours of sleep, run no more than 7 miles/skip workouts, poor eating habits. 

Results: Failure, or worse, serious injury trying to finish the marathon.  So, what did it matter what your goals were if your daily habits didn’t match? 

This is not to say you have to be perfect every single day.  You are human after all.  A slip up in your daily habits or a day off will not deep six your goals.  But, that can’t become your reality or you may as well have never made the goals in the first place.

How can you make your daily habits match your goals?

First…ask yourself what you need to do differently each day to make your goals a reality.  For example, if one of your goals is to lose weight, do your daily habits include exercising at a specific time and eating healthy meals?

Second…be honest with yourself.  Are you cheating and consuming more calories too often?  Are you skipping too many workouts, are they of a high enough intensity?  Do you need the help of a fitness professional or dietician?  Are your daily habits really matching your goals?

Third…make yourself accountable.  Whether you do this daily or weekly, you need to evaluate if what you’re doing is getting you closer to your goals.  If not, what changes do you need to make to your daily habits?  If it helps, have an accountable partner you check in with at least weekly.

So, which is more important, goals or daily habits? 

Goals are important to know where you are going.  Daily habits are important in getting you there.  Goals don’t mean squat if your daily habits don’t match up with meeting those goals.  So, if you want to make your goals a reality, your daily habits have to be the means to get you there.  Focus on the right daily habits and you will have success.

Want to Lose Weight and Perform Your Best? Avoid Telling Yourself This…

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When it comes to weight loss and exercise, there is a missing ingredient in those diets and fitness routines that rarely, if ever, gets included and talked about.  And, it has a greater impact on how successful you can be reaching your weight loss and fitness goals, and being able to perform your best both professionally and personally.  That is, what you tell yourself matters.

Successfully Lose Weight and Keep it Off – Start by Eliminating These 2 Words from Your Vocabulary

Your thoughts and feelings have a great influence on how you act, or not, on something.  If you have a negative emotion towards it, say about exercising, then it’s likely you will not be rushing to do that cardio workout or pick up those weights.  This limits how often you exercise, and increases the chances you won’t lose weight or have the energy to perform your best.  Alternatively, if you have a positive emotion towards something, say eating a healthy diet, then it’s likely you will find ways to eat better more often.

But, telling yourself to be more positive likely isn’t going to solve the problem of exercising more often or eating a healthy diet.  Instead, consider the words you use.  Avoid saying these 2 words to yourself – “Should” and “Can’t,” and replace them with something different.

Why is “Should” so Bad?

Think about how it sounds, feels, or looks like when you say, “I should have exercised this week,” “I should exercise tomorrow,” “I should eat better.”  I should, I should, I should.  That word strongly implies an obligation or a sense of duty of having to do something, not out of choice.  Here’s what happens:

  • It decreases the feeling of having a personal choice, desire, and empowerment to act.
  • It’s a form of self-criticism and we feel bad about ourselves for not doing something that we know is good.
  • It decreases self-esteem, confidence, and motivation.

Contrast this with saying, “I want to exercise so I can lose weight,” “I am eating healthier (even if all you’ve done is substitute one unhealthy item for a healthier one),” “I desire to be stronger and more fit.”  Words like these are much more empowering and create a greater desire to do something that is good.

Why “Can’t” is Bad

The reason for avoiding this word is obvious.  If you tell yourself you can’t do something, well then you’ve convinced yourself you can’t.  It will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.  For example, have you ever said to yourself, “no matter how hard I try I can’t lose weight,” or “I’ve tried a handful of diets and I still can’t lose weight,” or “I can’t exercise, I’m too busy today.” 

The key is to be aware of the word when you use it.  With awareness comes change.  When you catch yourself saying “can’t,” ask yourself what you can do.  It could be as simple as, “I can eat a piece of fruit today,” or “I will get up from my desk and take a short brisk walk to get a bit of exercise and clear my head.” 

What you tell yourself matters.  It matters if you want to lose weight, be more fit, eat a healthier diet, or perform your best personally and professionally.  So, tell yourself nice things and this will increase your chances of achieving your goals.

Make Fitness a Lifestyle Instead of a Goal to be Reached

Fitness, Habits, Mindset, Motivation, Wellness - , , , , -

If being healthy and fit is important, why do so many of us fail at it?  It’s not from a lack of trying.  Truth is, each year consumers spend billions of dollars on weight loss products, diet programs, supplements, gym memberships, etc.  We spend this money to reach a goal of losing those 20, 30, 40…extra pounds we’ve been carrying around, getting 6-pack abs we see on TV, or being 60 and moving like a 30-year old.  

Are these goals bad or unachievable?  Of course not.  It’s important to know what you are shooting for.  But, it’s more than just about a goal.  It’s about creating a lifestyle, and it’s not as hard as you think.  In fact, you just might be more successful…Here’s why.  

What Happens When We Set a Goal?

Three unfortunate things tend to happen when we set a goal(s):

  1. We have unrealistic expectations.  Those 20+ pounds?  We try to lose them in a matter of weeks.  6-pack abs?  “My body can look like his/hers if I work hard enough.”  60 the new 30?  “All I need is that supplement.”
  2. We go to extremes, we try to do too much too fast.  We jump all in on the latest fad diet or workout trend only to exhaust ourselves, burn out, quit, and feel like a failure.
  3. We look at that goal(s) as the end all.  Once we reach it we think we are done.

Of course, as mentioned above, having a goal is important.  If you don’t know what you want to achieve, then shooting for something intangible is a sure miss.  We have to have goals.  But, if we focus more on making health and fitness a lifestyle, then our chances of not only reaching the goal, but maintaining what we achieved, are even greater.  

A Fit and Healthy Lifestyle…Yours for the Taking

Let’s look at 5 simple ways to make fitness a lifestyle.  Don’t try to do all 5 at once.  Just take one at a time until it is a part of who you are, then move on to what you think you can do next.

  1. Don’t deprive yourself of the foods you love, as it rarely lasts before you eat them again.  Instead, make them healthier.  Love pizza?  Make your own dough (it’s actually quick and easy) and load it up with more fresh vegetables than meat.
  2. Find exercise you like to do.  If you don’t like it, you won’t stick to it.  If you hate to run but love walking, make it really brisk walking to get your heart rate up.  Even consistent low intensity exercise is better than inconsistent high intensity, or worse, none at all.
  3. When you get off track, take 1 small step to get back on.  If you ate junk food today, make yourself a promise to eat 1 healthy meal tomorrow.
  4. While never easy, stop comparing yourself with someone else and how they look.  Your body is your body and it can be fit and healthy.  Our muscles aren’t built all the same and they won’t always take on the same look.  They don’t have to for you to be just as strong and healthy.
  5. Switch things up every once in a while.  Try new foods, mix up your exercise and physical activity/hobbies during the week.  You’d be surprised how this turns out to be a fun and motivating way to live a healthy, fit lifestyle.

Think about fitness as a lifestyle instead of a fixed goal to be won and done.  In the long run, it really is the key to long term success.

The One Thing Holding You Back From… (Excuses)

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You want to lose weight.  You want to look and feel great all the time.  You want a profitable business/career.  You want to ditch the dieting forever.  Once you lose that weight you want to keep it off.  You want less stress and more energy.  

These are great things we all want.  Why is it so difficult then to lose that weight, or get off that dieting roller coaster, and achieve everything we want.  The answer most often lies in the excuses we tell ourselves.  

There are good reasons for not doing something we want or intend to do.  It might be an emergency or something of more importance that comes up and we have to postpone that thing we wanted/meant to do.  Any reason we give ourselves is real and valid at the time. 

What happens when we keep using these “reasons” day after day, month after month?  Sadly, these once valid reasons become the “good” excuses we have for putting off what we wanted, intended, or knew we should do.  The excuses we made were good, but they didn’t get us anywhere.

It’s safe to say all of us have used these 3 excuses at one time or another.

Excuse #1: “I Have No Time/I’m Too Busy.”

Time to get real on this excuse.  We all have 24 hours in a day…not more, not less.  People that perform at high levels of achievement don’t have any more time than the rest of us, and in fact it’s likely they are even busier.  Consider Richard Branson, Brendon Burchard, Tony Robbins, Oprah Winfrey…the list goes on.  What they do is make time for what is important to them, and yes their fitness and health are critical factors to their high performance.

Here are a few options for busting through the exercise time excuse:

  • Been off the exercise wagon a while?  Take 5-10 minutes each day (no more until this becomes so easy and a habit) and do something physical.  Walk, jog, do a few push-ups, crunches, stretches, etc. 
  • Exercise in the morning before your day truly becomes busy.
  • Literally schedule exercise into your day, just like you would a meeting.  If 15-minutes is all you have tomorrow, then 15-minutes it is.   

Excuse #2: “I’ve Tried [such and such] Before and It Didn’t Work.”

There are two things about this excuse.  One, maybe the diet or weight loss program you tried really didn’t work for you.  Fine, but did you try something else or just give up?  Second, maybe you had a failed attempt at losing weight or reaching whatever goal you had.  Did you get discouraged and just give up?

The biggest problem with this excuse is letting failure have its way.  Everyone fails at times.  High performers do.  The difference is they get back into the “game” quickly.

How about trying this:  Have a plan for when you do fail.  For example, 2 days in a row of skipping exercise is all I will allow myself; or if I eat poorly 1 day, the next day I’ll eat a healthy breakfast and dinner.

Excuse #3: “I Don’t Have Money To [join a gym, pay a personal trainer, buy a program].”

This excuse requires a certain amount of honesty.  Do you truly lack money to make even a small investment in your health and fitness?  Is losing weight and being fit really on the top of your list of importance?  How badly and how fast do you want to lose that weight, be stronger, more mobile…?

The key to ditching this excuse is being able to answer these questions.  Because what is important to us, we usually put our resources into and accomplish.  And while money is a legitimate concern, running or fast walking outside and doing bodyweight exercises at home are free.  Small purchases of a few key pieces of equipment to have at home can help you level up. 

Bottom Line…

Examine your reasons for skipping exercise and continuing to eat unhealthy.  Have these become excuses over time?  If so, take one excuse and make just one small change to be better.  Stick with that until it is so easy that you know you can make a second small change.  The road ahead to losing weight, feeling great and having the life you want then becomes that much easier.

Decision Making = Success

Mindset, Motivation, Wellness -

Do you remember a time when you had a big decision to make and you just didn’t know what the right way to go was?  And, you just didn’t do anything and let whatever happen?

Of course, we’ve all done that before.  And in not making a decision, well, we’ve actually made one.  We’ve let fate, or whatever one might call it, make the decision for us.  In essence, we’ve given control over to someone or something else.

It’s human nature to mull over difficult decisions.  Humans want to weigh cost/benefit, even if just subconsciously.  Our expansive brain power allows us to analyze a situation and logically work out the next move, kind of like a game of chess.  This of course, is a good thing. However, sometimes it gets in the way of us taking action, any action, and just correcting it if we have to.

The most successful people, and you can name anyone from Richard Branson to Oprah Winfrey, make decisions, make them quick, and course correct if they have to.  In essence, they make a decision, then make it right, to achieve a successful outcome.

So, what’s stopping YOU from success?  What’s stopping you from getting in shape, losing weight, or simply improving your health?  Make a decision to do something, start something that will move you towards whatever goals you have.  If you want to be more fit, healthier, or lose weight, make a decision and take some action to get yourself there.

Let’s look at some tips to help with that decision making.

First, examine any excuses you might have for not taking action.  One of the most common is, no time.  Be honest with yourself.  Do you really not have the time?  Because if it’s something you really need to do than time is irrelevant.  At some point the time has to be taken to do it anyway.  Will your life be less busy in the future?  A simple tip is to start by just making a little time for what needs to be done, say 15 minutes each day, and build up from there.  Before you know it, you will have made significant progress.

The second most common reason for not taking action is no money.  Again, be honest with yourself.  Is there really no money for it?  How important is what you need to do?  If money were no object, would it be important, would you do it?  If the answer is yes, then consider these tips:

  • First, set the intent that you are going to find the money to do it. This helps shift your mindset so it is working for you, instead of against you.
  • Examine your finances to see where money may be wasted and target those dollars to help fund what you need.
  • Sell something that you no longer need or has been unused for a while to put toward it.
  • Much like the time commitment, start small. See if you can fund what you want by spreading the payments out over time.  Many businesses seem to be willing to do this more and more.  Or start your own fund to pay for it by saving your spare change.

Remember, be as creative as you like.

Second, consider the benefits of what your decision would bring over the risks of doing nothing.  Use this simple tip of making a list of the benefits of acting and the risks of inaction.  If the benefits outweigh the risks than make the decision to act—take the very first step you have to set your decision in motion.

Third, consider the future rather than your situation right now.  What would you like your future to look like?  Is the decision facing you in line with your goals for the future?  A simple tip is to write down your perfect future related to the choices in front of you.  If the decision to act on something fits into that future, say yes and take that first leap of faith.

In truth, “we rarely regret the things we did, only the things we didn’t do”.  So, start making decisions and then make them right.

Follow us on Facebook as we often put motivation tips and strategies along with great fitness and health tips.  We also offer complimentary strategy sessions to help you uncover strategies to improving your health and fitness.

Decision making is about taking action.  So…make a decision, then make it right.

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