January 1st: You said "I am going to............this year!" You had a goal, you were excited, and you had a plan.
January 14th: Life happened, you got frustrated, tired, lost some motivation, and now your sitting in front of the iPad with a Glazed Doughnut and a Glass of wine!
Don't Worry! Some of us....many of us.....ALL of us fall off our course sometimes. The difference maker is our ability to course correct. To put ourselves back on track, and to set the stage for us staying there.
Do you need a Course Correction this week? Chances are that you do. Here are a few practices to get you back on track.
1) The 2 R's: Re-Write, and Re-Frame your goals.
Re-Write: Go back to your goals and write them down again, make them more specific, and write out a plan for dealing with your stumbling blocks. For example if your stumbling block to weight management is reaching for snacks and overeating after lunch, schedule a walk right after lunch to keep you out of the kitchen.
Re-Frame: Go back to your goals, look at the outcomes, and start to focus on cultivating the habits to get you where you want to be. For instance if your goal is to lose 40 pounds, if you just focus on the numbers on the scale you will get frustrated You might take shortcuts like fad diets, extreme exercise, and dehydration to, to get closer to your goal, and not develop habits for long term success. Shift your focus to developing the habits that will sustain and enrich you over the course of this year, and beyond. For example instead of saying "I will lose three pounds this week." say "I am going to walk for 30 minutes each day, after I eat a healthy, balanced Lunch." See yourself as a walker, a runner, as a Healthy Eater, not as someone who needs to lose 40 pounds. The lifestyle change is really what we are after, building lasting positive habits are the real long term goals.
2) Give Yourself Permission to Fall Down, but not to Stay Down: You messed up, you feel of the wagon, you went off course, it happened, you can't change it.....but you can choose where to go from here. This is your chance to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and ask yourself "what did I learn?". There might be a strong urge to just quit, to fall even further, to throw yourself a little "pity party". Ultimately, your success will not be determined by your stumbles, but how you react to them, how you learn from them, and how you avoid making the same mistake twice.
3) You Can Always Do More: What we think are our limits, what we believe about ourselves, how capable we think we are.......are just our opinions, our poorly educated guess on our potential, and our threshold for greatness. You have no clue how far you can go, how much you can achieve, how strong you are mentally, physically, and spiritually. Shift your focus from negative self talk "I can't, I'm not good enough, I don't have discipline......etc" to positive self coaching, to looking for the small victories, and small changes you can make to get the moving in the right direction in even the smallest increments. Replace the "Im not good a running" to "I am a Runner". Nobody Said you had to be Good at it, to be Successful to be good at It! Run for one lap, then walk another lap." When that gets easy run for two, walk for one. When that gets easy run for three, walk for one. Pretty soon the "I am not good at running", has transformed into "I am a Runner." The power is not in being the best, the fastest, or the most skilled. Its about showing up, about being consistent, and staying the course. The magic is in the output over time, not the outcome of today.
Put the Pastry down, replace the robe with your running shorts, leave the pity party, and join the race. Your life is waiting on you to live it, but it won't wait forever!
-Joshua Page, Hickory Academy of Martial Arts
Academy Page: www.hickorykarate.com
Healthy Eating and Living Project: www.blackbeltkitchen.me