The last few weeks we have been talking about my big personal journey, you can catch up here: How I Changed, Part I & How I Changed, Part II.
Along my journey I lost 12.5% of my body weight in the three-month challenge. I started dreaming and visualizing that I could do more and I started to believe that I could weigh less and that it was within my control to achieve any weight loss goals that I set for myself. Eighteen months later, I was down to about 205 lbs., having lost 60 lbs. and I know that I can keep the weight off.
This story is greater than a feel good, if I can do it, then you can do it, how to lose weight instructional. It illustrates a bigger process: How I changed. So, how did I change? I went through several phases during this process and you can use these too. Here they are:
- Motivation to change – Your motivation can be internal or external, mine was external and once I believed I could do it, it grew into an internal motivation to continue the process.
- Set a goal, with a target date – Goals must have a target date associated with them. Target dates are critically important because most people take the most action in the last 20% of the time (another tip: Start now, don’t wait.).
- Understand how to accomplish the goal – It’s great to know where you want to go, but you also need to know how to get there. Find others that have done what you are trying to do, listen to their advice and learn from their experience.
- Break your goal down into daily actions – At this point you know the big picture and how to get there, now you need to know what needs to be done this day, this week and this month to stay on track.
- Research, identify and implement proven systems – Systems are critical to consistent, long-term, manageable success. Find a system and stick to it. It can be as simple as a food journal or a calorie counting smartphone app but these systems are only as good as the user, that’s you.
- Create excitement to help you maintain discipline and develop habits – If you are excited about what you are doing, you will keep doing it. The longer and more consistent that you take action, the stronger the habit becomes.
- Get small wins early to build belief in yourself and the process – Find ways to boost your confidence by getting small wins early. Look into possible gamification ideas – how to turn a process into a game, especially creating friendly competition or competition with yourself. Everyone likes to win, right, and short term competition gets people excited.
What do you want to change? Think through these phases and apply them where needed and you too can have astounding, audacious, ridiculous success.
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