Find your "why" in the "why" question“
The battle to win a weight loss challenge or any behavioral change begins with winning in your mind. If you don’t win the battle in your head, you will never be truly successful. Sounds good, right? But how do you do it?? I just attended my own wellness retreat and I would like to write a few posts about the lessons I learned about winning the mental game
The first is identifying your WHY. Knowing why you want to achieve a goal will make you unstoppable – I found them fascinating, and I hope you will too. WHY needs to be a personal and deep decision to really drive action, especially when times get tough. We all love ideas like “I want to fit into my skinny jeans” or “I want to look good on the beach.”
So what does that process look like for me? At the conference, we had to come up with answers to the following: Why do you want to get fit, lose weight, and be healthy? Here's what I came up with:
To feel good about myself - that's the only way I can influence others, that's how I can be an example to my daughters, so that I have a sense of hope instead of hopelessness.
To have more energy - I want to keep up with my children, have enough energy to help my family even after a full day's work, and all because I get energized, I feel good. To be available - to say yes to the things I want to do, to go out and do things - because I know what it's like to not be able to do things without being a burden to my spouse and children when I get older.
To encourage others – my family, friends, colleagues…
If you still struggle with deep burdens, think about your experiences. We don't live forever, and there is no redo button. Scarcity drives action, so use that as emotional leverage in crafting your why. If you are a woman, your average life expectancy is 81, and for a man 76 years. So take your life expectancy - your current age, then subtract another 3 if you're over 30 kilos in weight. The resulting number is the estimated number of years you have left to live. What events will you miss if you don't change your path? Furthermore, you want quality of life, not just quantity. I'm about 35 - my kids will be grown by then, but I'll basically miss most of my future grandkids' lives. When we think of the amount of influence my grandparents have had in my life, that fact provides incredible momentum to recover now!
This post is meant to motivate, not depress. The goal is to find what your true motivation is, write it down and look at it often.
“Life is short.
If there was ever a moment to follow your passion
do something that matters to you,
That moment is now."”
Source: Jennifer Houtman