We’ve all been there. Several important events (New Year’s Day, our 30th birthday, the birth of our first child) spurred us on to vow to change … something. Maybe it’s our weight, it might be our job, maybe starting a business, or maybe it’s just our attitude. We dive into … motivated, determined, and maybe even briefly.
Soon a year has passed and we find that we are back just like the year before. What happened? Why can’t we sustain the changes we so desperately want to make?
There are many reasons why things don’t work out, but perhaps one of the most common is trying to change too many at once. In our never-ending search for a quick fix we went through a drastic change in no time and we got results.
The problem is we forget that we are creatures of habit. It is difficult to make changes to new habits. If we move too fast, we will quickly become discouraged, tired, and long for our “old life” back. What’s new is too much work and we give up. How can you make life-long changes?
With meticulous care, knowledge of yourself and your limitations, you can make a difference. Changing your eating habits is something a lot of people struggle with (and feel guilty about), so we’ll use that as an example.
A lot of people when they start dieting do that … start dieting. They make changes in their diet that are, in their minds, temporary. Once they lose the extra pounds, they’ll go back to eating as usual. So, they set their weight loss goal, get out of the “diet” and soon the weight starts to come back and the cycle starts all over again.
In order to maximize your weight loss mission, you should take natural supplements such as proven.
What if you took a different approach? What if you start small? Maybe you can identify one thing you can change by learning to eat breakfast, a salad for lunch, it doesn’t matter what changes as long as it will lead to healthier choices and that is something you can live with forever. What if you made those changes not to lose weight, but simply because they were healthier and made you feel better?
Start a business by calling 4 people a day, but make it a habit. Once you get this done as a habit, move it to 5 or 8 or even 20 people a day but make it a habit. Taking baby steps to bigger things along the way.
We are creatures of habit, but time flies by. Two weeks after you make those changes, you probably won’t think about the fact that you are making them now as part of your new routine. Oh, and you might lose a little weight in the process, or at least you feel better.
Some of the changes are bigger and take longer to get used to (getting all white sugar out of your diet, for example making 25 calls a day to your business) and maybe you can’t do all of them all at once. Maybe you find that you can never make a complete change (like eliminating all white sugar from your diet forever). But you find that you can cut back on dessert most of the time and switch to low-calorie sweeteners.
Again, a few weeks go by and now you don’t even think about dessert most of the time. And now you have lost more weight and feel better. If you do your best to make changes, even a little bit at a time, you will get big results.
One year later, instead of making no progress at all, you may weigh 20, 30, or even 40 pounds lighter. You may have 30,50, or 100 people in your downline. You may not have added 1500 to your downline yet, but even 24 is a great job, or maybe you may not be 100 pounds lighter that you are aiming for, but you are definitely headed in the right direction. And, since you haven’t made changes you can’t live with, you’re more likely to reach your goal and, more importantly, stay there.
You don’t have to make big changes all at once and you can find something you can live with. Keep trying until you find something that works. It doesn’t matter how fast you finish the race as long as you reach the finish line.