Part Three … Using Business Success Strategies for Weight Loss
In this last article of the series, (I’d suggest that you read both previous articles before you read this one … so go to www.healyourhealthnow.com/blog and read the last two published; they have slightly different names but they’re about the same thing), I talk about some other mindset changes that are necessary to change your mind. Like being open to learning and creating community. Now we’re going to delve more deeply into some others, particularly weight-related ones, beginning with …
10X Thinking
I love this concept of … if I want to earn $1000 a month, how do I instead earn $10,000? Have you heard Jack Canfield’s story about how he asked himself, “How do I make $100,000 in a year? (when he was making only $8,000)” By the end of that year, he earned from writing a single book … wait for it … $92,326! Close enough! Then he thought … if it worked for $100,000, it should work for $1,000,000. The “Chicken Soup” series was then born and, as we all know, there are “Chicken Soups” for almost every soul we can think of now. And it also spawned a coaching empire for Canfield.
Canfield asked what Benjamin Hardy calls, in his article, “Two mental shifts highly successful people make”, “absurd” questions. When we ask huge, dream-big questions of ourselves, we tend to then find creative “thinking-outside-the-box” answers, as Canfield did, that lift you to another level.
Or, as Peter Theiss says in his book, Tools of Titans … ”the question will productivity break your mind, like a butterfly shattering a chrysalis to emerge with new capabilities. The ‘normal’ systems you have in place, the social rules you’ve forced upon yourself, the standard frameworks — they don’t work when asking a question like this. You are forced to shed artificial constraints, like shedding a skin, to realize that you had the ability to renegotiate your reality all along.”
The 10X idea also works really well on a small, individual stage when negotiating positive lifestyle change too. Let me explain. First of all, our focus on diets has not only hobbled but frozen us into a pattern that takes away our power but also our abilities to make choices and community as well as learning new things. And confines us into tiny menu boxes and outrageous rules … some not even scientifically- or realistically-based … that we’re continually trying to break out of (i.e. cheating). The result most often is self-sabotage, failure, and weight gain. So we now need to find another way.
What if, instead, we asked ourselves “absurd” questions like, “What if I became amazingly physically fit at 73 (my birthday is next month)? What would that look like?” This is a personal question I’m asking myself … because … I have to admit … it’s my sticking-point …
I’ve really conquered … for the most part … my compulsive overeating. I eat to my hunger (but, to be honest, I don’t know if that’s the be-all and end-all of controlling your weight [more on that later]) and eat pretty healthy. But exercise has always eluded me. So here’s what came to mind when I asked my exercise question above …
Absurd Questions Breed Creative Solutions
First I started seeing myself in my mind’s eye as amazingly physically fit … flexing my muscles and such. Then I saw myself in the mirror … not as a teenager but as a 73 year-woman who had conquered all odds. Then I began to list in my mind all the benefits of this for me. Because I badly broke my ankle seven years ago, and never got the flexion back, I’m terrified of lacking mobility. Working in nursing homes, I see that every day … all day.
See … when you ask absurd questions, your mind begins to percolate. Consciously AND unconsciously. So I’d suggest …
Journaling
Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, found that, when people journaled in her classes, they lost weight without even trying as they wrote out their feelings for her assignments. But here’s what I’d like you to do.
First … allow yourself to formulate some “absurd” question about your weight. Think big and brassy … like my exercise question. Dream … perhaps turn on a meditation online app like Buddify or Simple Habit and relax. Whatever you do, once you have the question framed, let your mind permutate on it at least a day or so. Put it on real or virtual sticky notes all over your environment to remind you too. Feel free to change it if you need to until you know that it’s the absolute right question for you to ask right now.
Second … ask yourself what that would look like if you had that thing or quality right now. Then grab your journal (it’s best to put this in some kind of book and actually write it with a pen) and write out the whole scenario. It doesn’t have to be literary … as a matter of fact, it’s best if you ditch punctuation and capitalization and do what many call “wild mind writing” … don’t think about it … just write …
Third … identify the feeling(s) that you get when you see the end result. This is vitally important, as isolating that feeling or feelings will carry you through when resistance takes over, which will inevitably happen. Name it … mine is exhilaration. Then feel where it is in your body … it starts in my heart and spreads both ways across my chest … puffing it out. Now I know that I can reproduce the feeling by puffing out my chest. And, by staying in the moment with the exhilaration, I can reproduce it again and again. Danielle LaPorte uses a similar process to cultivate successful business owners.
Fourth … now that you have a big picture, break it into smaller ones. We can’t do a whole concept, no matter how seductive that can be. Remember … Neo in The Matrix failed to leap across buildings the first time he tried (if you haven’t seen that three-part movie series, do. It’s actually a how-to primer for how dreaming big can become a reality). For example, yes, I can see myself as fit, but that’s just the first step. Now I need to set up a plan to take action. And find ways to combat … or cage … my lifelong resistance to exercise. Now I have two smaller things to work on … and I’m sure that I can now …
Fifth … plan action steps for each one. OK … the plan … I’m starting out by working out on my stairmaster today for 30 minutes. To do that I have to:
- Pick a time early in the morning to do it (I know from experience that works best for me)
- Put out my exercise duds and shoes the night before
- Do it! Record it in my journal! Puff out my chest and feel the feeling!
There … I planned at least 3 action steps to get me going. That’s enough for now … and where you should start … but … as Stephen Covey says … Begin with the end in mind … so don’t lose sight of that end! And … oops … perhaps I should have started with the lifelong resistance piece first?
P.S. Again, I’ve gone on too long … and there’s so much more … so I want you to know that we’ll be back next week with “I don’t want to diet but want to lose weight”. Eat it up!
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What type of inner work have you done in the past to lose weight? Did it work for you?
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