OnePhatMan

Yesterday morning when I went grocery shopping I heard something on the radio I want to share. I was tuned in to the light rock station, and John Tesh’s morning show was on. Intelligence for your life, and all that. In this particular segment, John was discussing using willpower to stop eating things that lead to a less than ideal size.

While I don’t subscribe so much to the notion of willpower—I think it pits one part of you against another, which means you’re fighting yourself—he said something that struck a chord with me, because it’s something I’ve preached for five years now:

You should visualize yourself not eating the food that tempts you. Experts say that if you can’t visualize yourself doing something, you won’t be able to do it.

Think about that for a moment. If you can’t see it in your head, you can’t make it happen.

Back in 2000, when I made the determination to change myself for the better, the first thing I did was sit down and create a vision of what I wanted. What size I wanted to be, what I wanted my health to be, and what I wanted to be able to accomplish physically. Then I simply starting living as though I were the guy in that vision, and over time I transformed into him.

Except that guy was better looking than I am. (And, on a more serious note, didn’t have a bum leg and an achy shoulder)

Having a clear vision can work wonders. If you have an unclear vision (“I need to lose weight”), you’re going to have unclear results. Take some time to think specifically about what you want. How much weight do you want to lose? What do you want your health to be like? Physically, what do you want to be able to do? For each person, the answers are different. Don’t let anyone dictate to you what your vision should be. One person’s goal might be to bench press 300 pounds, while another’s might simply be to walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded.

Your vision should be personal, tailored to your body and your abilities. Just make sure it’s specific. Write it down, in detail. Think about it when you get up in the morning, and think on it again before you go to bed. Put it somewhere where you’ll look at it. The more you dwell on your vision, the more it gets impressed in your mind and the easier it gets to make the vision become a reality.

If you don’t have a great vision for yourself, how can you expect to achieve great things? With a vision, you’re focused on the outcome, and not caught up in limiting thoughts. Thoughts like “I can’t do this, it’s too hard,” or “I’m too fat to do this.” All those do is set you up to fail, and you’re better than that. When you set yourself free from limiting thoughts, the sky’s the limit.

So take a little bit of wisdom from John Tesh and my radio: create a vision for yourself of what you want to be. Lay it out, decide your course, then get out there and kick some ass making your vision a reality. You have to take action to make the vision happen; just thinking isn’t going to cut it. Having a written goal isn’t magical, able to create reality out of thin air. It takes you, off your butt, making it happen.

And it’s probably going to take a little sweat, and maybe even a little pain. (Caveat: by “pain”, I mean normal soreness, not limitations or injury) But know this: even if you sweat and hurt, you’re transforming yourself into something better, reshaping your body into what it was made to be like. That’s worth a little soreness and sweat, isn’t it?

What’s one thing you could do right now to make your vision a reality? Like with making a vision, this is personal. For one person, the thing they could do right now might be to throw away those chocolate chip cookies hidden on the top shelf of the pantry. For another, it might be dusting off the bike and going for a ride. What you do can be as much or as little as you want, but surely there’s something, isn’t there?

There’s nothing you can’t do if you believe in yourself and are willing to make the effort to achieve your dream. The question is, are you? Remember, the life you lead determines the destiny you have. What’s your destiny going to be?

I’m selling some DVDs on eBay if you’re interested.

health, fitness, health+and+wellness, weight+loss