(CC BY-SA 2.0) by A Healthier Michigan/Flickr
If you are looking for two behaviors under your control that will absolutely determine your ability to be successful in reaching a goal they are commitment and consistency.
Commitment is the state or quality of being dedicated to a cause or activity, and consistency is the achievement of a level of performance that does not vary greatly in quality over time.
These two qualities are very powerful separately, but applied together they are unstoppable.
Seems simple enough, so why have you been stopped from reaching your goal?
The short answer is you are not committed and consistent.
Perhaps you may really want to fail so you do not put your effort into being committed and consistent, instead you may be focusing on reasons that you can’t be.
What Inconsistency Looks Like
The long answer often goes something like this: We decide that we need to lose weight. Great! Of course deciding on something will not magically make it happen, so after feeling good for a while that we made a healthy decision, we eventually try to do something about it. Perhaps we will investigate how to lose weight. That can take quite a while. Then we may even set goals for what we will lose and how we will lose the weight, such as looking into various diets and possible exercise regimens. That passes the time as we are proud of our progress.
Eventually we may try to do something, and even keep a journal of how we are doing with our goals. That may last a short time. Then we will notice we are not achieving our goals very well because we are not being consistent with our exercise and healthy eating. So what do we do? We make our goals smaller and more attainable. After all, achieving a smaller goal will, no doubt, motivate us to do better, but it doesn’t.
Our health goals keep getting smaller until finally we stop having health goals, and we may replace these goals with a list of things to do, like clean a room or throw out some stuff. That’s a great plan, as we figure that any goal achieved will motivate us to achieve more goals, and eventually we will get back to losing weight, our original goal, but it doesn’t.
What does happen, however, is problems occur. Our spouse or pet gets sick, or we have job stress, or any of the myriad of things that make up life. Then we become too overwhelmed with concerns that we just can’t add another thing to our lives, such as working on eating healthier and being more active, so we decide we will get back to it all eventually, which never happens.
I suppose this would all be fine if your original goal was to grow an award-winning orchid or even write a novel, but we are talking about health here. If we don’t achieve health, we achieve unhealthy, and unhealthy is not a pleasant way to go through life. In fact, it’s pretty miserable.
How I Do It
I can’t tell you how to be successful; I can only tell you how I have been successful. In short, I just do it. I exercise every day and I eat a healthy, clean diet. I find ways to motivate myself. Over the years I have built the habits to exercise and eat healthy, and created a long list of personal motivational ideas. I avoid excuses if I can. I look for reasons to do it. I try my best not to let failure happen. You will have to create your own personal motivation list.
There are obviously personal, serious reasons that we can not exercise on a given day or periods in our lives, such as an illness, injury or surgery.
When I first started running, it was usually after school or on weekends. Next I converted to a morning runner because consistency was easier that way as we never know what the day will bring. In medical school, I would sometimes have to run before 5 in the morning as I needed the time to get ready and to get to my first assignment of the day that some crazy person who was in charge had decided would begin at 6. Yet I did it, because I was committed.
Same with eating. I’ve written about how I was originally motivated by my karate teacher and that led to my consistently eating as healthy as I can. Then I transitioned my healthy eating into a style called intermittent fasting. That allowed me to cope with most of the issues others have with their eating, such as frequent temptations, eating late at night and eating too much, and it works for me because I am committed and consistent in doing it.
I’m not telling you this because I think that I will be inspiring for you. I want to tell you something that I’ve discovered about inspiration, but first watch this short video which I found very inspiring.
The next morning, after I saw that very inspiring video, I went for a run, I had the image of that amazing man and his words in my thoughts as I started out. That lasted about 200 yards down the road as I felt the reality that hard running has on a body. In that moment I thought about what I am writing now. What did I do? I ran on, knowing that I am my own inspiration, focusing on my breathing, my running form, the ground beneath my feet, the beauty of nature around me, and I kept on running until that day’s run was behind me. I do still like that man’s video and often reflect upon it.
I know I can’t really inspire you in the long term, but I also know you can inspire yourself if you really want to. You just need to apply commitment and consistency!
By Dr. J, a maxillofacial surgeon living in Florida. Dr. J has travelled to Haiti to treat indigent patients and has taught as an associate professor at a Florida dental college. In his spare time Dr. J is a dedicated runner as well as a pilot who flies his Piper Cherokee Arrow throughout Florida. He has a black belt in karate. Dr. J has written for CalorieLab since 2007.
SOURCE: CalorieLab – Read entire story here.
