I’m not one to casually instruct others, but in this blog I’m going to preach. If you aren’t prioritizing your health, you’re fucking up big time. As I navigate life in my mid 20s, I’m appalled at the blatant disregard for physical, spiritual, and mental health that some of my friends and family exhibit. My intent is not to shame you or my loved ones, but I carry a burdensome and unreasonable guilt associated with not speaking up. I only hope that the right eyes read this and comprehend that I come from a place of love with my words.
Obesity, diabetes, depression, anxiety, alcoholism, escapism, the list goes on. If you’re experiencing one or more of these symptoms, heed my advice objectively. The remedies to these illnesses have deployable solutions, but you have to want to change and believe that change is possible. As habit-driven creatures, we repeat positive and negative behaviors that yield predictable outcomes. The solutions I’m proposing involve interrupting your habit cycle to implement a new routine and generate desired outcomes.
TAKE ACCOUNTABILITY
It all starts with radical accountability. Start by taking responsibility for ALL of your habits, good and bad. When you acknowledge your ownership in the process, you grant yourself the authority and ability to change. There is only one person with the power to make you do something in this life and it is you.
ELIMINATE EXCUSES
Stop bullshitting yourself. The mind is masterful at coming up with excuse after excuse to exonerate you from taking action. If you hear that little voice give you a reason to give up or give in, write it down and read it out loud. Then, take that piece of paper outside and burn it.
IDENTIFY A SPECIFIC GOAL
If you don’t have tangible experience in goal setting and more importantly goal accomplishment, make this your first. When you create a goal, you must be specific. What are you trying to accomplish? Why are you trying to accomplish this goal? How are you going to accomplish it? When are you going to complete it?
Example:
Mike weighs 275 pounds and is morbidly obese. His quality of life has gone down and he is experiencing depression, apathy, and newfound health problems. Mike decides he is going to do something about it. First, he accepts that his sedentary lifestyle and poor food choices have led him to become severely overweight. He wrote down his excuses for letting things slip and attributed it to being chronically fatigued and never having enough time or energy to exercise after work. After reading his excuses and hearing them outloud, he sacrificed his excuses to a flame and set out to make a change. He sat down in front of a piece of paper and drafted up a specific goal, his why, how, and when he’d accomplish it.
- Goal: Lose 25 pounds and fit into a XXL shirt comfortably
- Why: I’m upset with my body, I always feel tired, and I’m fearful of my health declining
- How: I don’t know much about weight loss or exercise, so I’m going to start with nutrition. I will start by cooking all of my meals at home and swapping junk foods for fresh fruit
- When: I’m going to give myself 6 months to drop 25 pounds. Losing roughly 4 pounds per month, I believe I can lose at least 1 pound per week from eliminating junk food and cooking at home.
Setting specific goals driven by purpose is the first step in the right direction. If you govern your decisions based on your Why, you have some internal guidance when encountering temptations. Mapping out your How is critical to staying on course to reach the goal. Going into any pursuit with a realistic plan significantly increases the likelihood of creating desirable outcomes. With a deadline in mind, time is of the essence and you can operate with urgency.
IDENTIFY YOUR WHY
Pick a reason to prioritize your health and be selfish. Basing your Why on others displaces your power over your choices, so take authority. Why do you want to achieve your goal? What do you stand to gain by carrying out your mission? Use the answers to fuel your action and commit to the results.
FIGURE OUT HOW ARE YOU GOING TO DO IT
Have a goal and don’t know where to start? Take advantage of your resources. We have the internet, research journals, peers, strangers, professionals, services, and more, but you have to seek them out. Set aside your ego and ask questions. Treat it all as a learning process. When you have an idea of the steps necessary to reach your health goal, write them out and create a behavioral roadmap. You must commit to seeing it through and genuinely trying to finish your goal.
SET A REALISTIC DEADLINE
You need to set a deadline for completing your goal. Following a specific timeline creates urgency, urgency inspires action, and action allows you to monitor progress. When setting a deadline, it must pass two bullshit detection tests.
- Are you capable of reaching this goal within the given window?
- Are you pushing yourself hard enough with this timeline?
Notice that Mike didn’t shoot to lose 100 pounds in two months. That timeframe isn’t healthy or realistic and it doesn’t set him up for success. His approach, simplified, was to lose approximately 1 pound per week for 6 months by adjusting his diet. Mike is perfectly capable of dropping 25 pounds at a steady pace without overreaching or burning out because he is making one minor change, not taking on 4 new habits at once.
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE SNOWBALL EFFECT
It took Mike 3 years to become 80 pounds overweight from poor diet and lack of exercise. At the time, he wasn’t consistent with a gym routine and was eating out 4 times per week. As time went on, he stopped going to the gym altogether and his energy started dwindling. He began ordering delivery more often and it eventually replaced cooking his meals at home. Mike’s bad habits didn’t seem to bother him until they snowballed, opening the door to depression and other health concerns. One or two meals didn’t cause his weight gain, but the gradual compounded effect of his actions led him to that point. As gamblers say, “You have to get better the same way you got sick.”
Under this same premise, the snowball effect can be wielded for positive outcomes too. When Mike reached his goal he didn’t just lose 25 pounds, he spent 6 months developing a healthy habit. Motivated by his accomplishment, Mike carries less weight around and has more energy. After seeing results from the past 6 months and his newfound energy, his sedentary lifestyle doesn’t seem as justifiable anymore. He plans to maintain the eating habits that yielded him the results he wanted, but he’s set a new goal to incorporate exercise for the next 25 pounds.
3 years later, Mike replaced his poor eating habits with cooking at home, lost 90 pounds, and is in the best shape of his life. He set goal after goal, pushing himself along the way to replace his shitty habits with healthy ones. His health problems were reduced and his depressive episodes seemed to fade with the pride in his consistent achievements. His success was based on small wins that accumulated into a major achievement.
CREATE SMALL WINS
Prone to getting overwhelmed in the process and falling off the rails? Everyone is. Track your daily habits to recognize the sequence of events (triggers) that produce unsavory results. When you analyze these triggers and find yourself in the situation, make a conscious decision to act based on your why. Positive choices have a snowball effect too, so create small wins for yourself. When most of your day is composed of small wins, you start to develop a winning attitude. That mindset carries you across the finish line.
DEALING WITH SETBACKS
Things won’t always go smoothly and striving for perfection will lead you to madness. Instead, shoot to get it right 97 out of 100 times. When you inevitably encounter setbacks, you must buckle down and visualize reaching your goal. Remind yourself repeatedly of your Why and leave no room for excuses, no matter how justified they may feel. Be resolute in your actions and overcome.
PROGRESS DOES NOT ALWAYS DESERVE REWARD
Rewards are great for motivating action, but they come with hidden consequences. If you incentivize every step of your goal, you’re developing an insidious inclination toward instant gratification. If you’re struggling with obesity, instant gratification should be your sworn enemy as it is likely how you got to this point. When you make progress, be proud of your accomplishment and keep moving forward. Remember: you don’t celebrate the act of wiping your ass, so why would you reward yourself for doing the right thing?
WHEN YOU REACH YOUR GOAL
Celebrate! You deserve to reap the benefits of accomplishing your goal and the pride that comes with this completion is so much sweeter. Your efforts have paid off and you should take note of how good delayed gratification feels. You made it to a mountain top, but life is a mountain range filled with valleys and peaks. Now set a new, more ambitious goal. The exact repetition of your How is subject to the Law of Diminishing Returns. Ramp up your process to achieve better results each time you go for a new goal.
I love you and I care about you. Go get after it this week!
Read my mind. 