By Jaime Brenkus, L.E.A.N. Living
Face it, you’re going to have those days when you want to give up. You’ll have days you just can’t resist binging on food. Days you don’t do any movement. Days you are not healthy at all. Days you are going to flat out fail.
You know what the latest research tells us? It’s okay to fail. It’s healthy to fail. We learn from failing. You empower your focus when you give yourself a free pass on failing.
Failing is an opportunity to turn a breakdown into a breakthrough—a learning lesson.
Set a NEW and different goal—What do I mean by different? I mean something that works for you.
What excites you about life? What turns you on? Taking new family photos? Participating in a walk/run for charity? Wearing an article of clothing you would never wear in public.
Now, here’s a simple 3-step process to reach your goal.
1. Identify the necessary actions you must take to get to your goal.
Take your goal, and add “by (insert daily action step here).” Want to lose weight? Change your goal of “lose 15 pounds in 2 months” to … “lose 15 pounds in 2 months by eliminating soda from my diet and by eating at least 100 grams of protein every day.”
2. Develop specific habits that you will act on, and practice every day.
Let’s go back to the above example. Now that you plan on eliminating soda from your diet and eating x amount of protein every day, act on it every day. See, the problem isn’t that we don’t know what to do. Because 99% of the time, we already do. We just don’t act on what we already know.
3. Forget about the goal you just set.
Just build on the new habits every day. So now we’re taking “my goal is to lose 15 pounds in 2 months by eliminating soda from my diet and by eating at least 100 grams of protein every day” and turning it to “I’m going to eliminate soda from my diet and eat at least 100 grams of protein every day”.
Next thing you know your goal has been achieved.
The key thing to achieving any goal is to focus on the process, not the end result. By doing this, your goals simply become a byproduct of the habits you’ve formed.
The Lean Living Progress in Action. When you follow my Lean Living plan, inch loss is a natural result. It will take time, but it’s promised to work. Instead of obsessing over the scale, here’s how you develop your own daily victories of lean motivators:
“I’m a success if I can count 5 or more fruits and vegetables I’ve eaten today. ”
“I’m a success because I got up a few minutes earlier today and did my daily fitness workout.”
“I’m a success because it’s been three months since I’ve weighed myself—and I dropped three pants sizes.”
“I’m a success because I had a donut this morning, and it didn’t make me think that I failed; I had a healthier meal at lunch.”
“I’m a success because I didn’t compare myself to the newly-crowned Miss America. I don’t have to be perfect.”
“I’m a success because I listened to my feeling of fullness and ate only 3 ounces of steak, rather than 8 ounces.”
And finally, “I’m a success today because every time I sat down to eat, I asked myself, ‘Is this food choice going to get me closer to my goal or move me further away?’”
Good luck Harvesting your Health. As always, we’re here for you.
