Vegetarianism – Weight Benefits

Taking another break from our Communication Series, I would like to spend some time talking about diet and nutrition.

January 2009 is when I first began to explore the world of vegetarianism. Since that time, I have kept to this diet while also exploring other similar ones like raw foodism and veganism. I didn’t really know what to expect at first, other than decide to experiment with this new lifestyle and I’d like to explore a little bit the results I’ve been getting.

Weight-loss
I don’t actually know whether or not I’ve lost weight because of the food that I’ve been eating, but I know I have minimized weight gain because it forces me to not eat food that would cause me to gain weight. Being in college doesn’t help when it comes to staying healthy and losing weight. Nor is it easy to find others that will eat as healthy as you would like to either. What’s nice about being vegetarian is how easy it is to say no to eating at places like McDonalds, Burger King, Buffalo Wild Wings and many other places where college kids usually hang out.

By not eating at these places when I’m invited to tag along, I prevent weight gain because I don’t easily succumb to eating these types of foods. Ever since I began college, I have noticed a consistent weight gain due partially to an inefficient exercise regime and to an inefficient diet. This is why I chose to make a difference in my lifestyle. I would say that I am most likely losing weight because of my exercise regime, but I attribute a lot of my change to the fact that I don’t eat hamburgers, buffalo wings and other high fattening foods that would have normally contributed to my weight.

Though weight-loss was my first motivation behind this lifestyle change, I have found other reasons, more motivating than weight-loss, to continue this venture and continue to explore other diets. I do feel that health-wise, my decision has provided to be very successful, but I also like the other benefits that come with these type of diet, like the effects they have on the planet-at-large.

I challenge you to push your diet and see what benefits that may come out of them. If losing weight is something you want to do, I encourage you to try this kind of diet because you can’t eat many of the fattening foods that would encourage an overweight lifestyle. Then see what happens. Don’t forget to be smart about it and make sure that you talk with a medical professional before you make changes to your lifestyle.

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Communication Part 2 – Authenticity

Here is the sequel to the first article of our Communication series. I’d like to bring up the topic of authenticity and how it pertains to the previous article of Trust. One thing I would like to address is the authenticity as it pertains to building trust. With the advice I gave before, some think this would encourage lying and the like. One thing you have to take into consideration is how, if anything, it encourages you to be authentic. It is a motivation to walk your talk. You will eventually lose the trust you’ve built if you consistently lie. Yes there is a chance you won’t get found out in the short-term, but that doesn’t mean that in the long-term you won’t eventually be found out.

Think of an actor who portrays a character that is lying. Even thinking ‘lying’ can give you away, because if your audience is aware enough, they will notice the very subtle body movements that make you incongruent with your speech. The audience may not have the proof to prove that this character is lying, but they know because the actor is acting like he/she is lying. They are giving away their position because of the small, almost unnoticeable body language. An example of this would be to twitch, or intensely blink when certain phrases are heard. If you see someone subtly reacting to the things you say in a pattern, this means there is some deceit concerning the stimulus. This is the general idea behind lie detectors. If your pulse spikes in response to certain phrases or words, that means that there is a layer of deceit correlating to that stimulus.

Don’t you think that after a while, others would notice this incongruency? As they say, you end up creating lies to cover up the initial one. In the long-term, you actually have to be the kind of person you are trying to portray. Let’s say for example you want to portray someone who is honorable. Well, in order to keep trust and use effective communication, you need to, eventually at some point, actually be an honorable person. In the short-term, you may be successful, but the inconsistency will eventually be noticed and they will figure it out. Like I said, this actually encourages you to walk your talk.

Compatibility
You lose trust in an instance once others realize you aren’t authentic. The reason why unauthentic people are the way they are is because they are afraid of what others will find and they won’t be love you. This is a two-fold issue, one being that you think you’ll only be loved conditionally and two; you can’t accept that there are certain people that you just won’t be compatible with.

You never need to be afraid of not being loved because there is nothing but unconditional love around you, all you have to do is turn towards it. There is always the choice to unconditionally love yourself. If you don’t love yourself, then who will? Unconditional love is powerful and no matter where it comes from, it doesn’t change its ability to heal. So make the choice to love yourself, because you deserve it. (You will also find it easier to accept others, but we’ll continue on this topic for our next installment.)

You can also accept that there are people that are not compatible with you and you have to understand that it is okay. You lose your personal power if you base your existence and happiness on others not liking you. It is better to authentically be yourself, than it is to shallowly deceive others that you are something you’re not. Keep in mind you can be anything you want to be if you truly accept that you are. So, it’s perfectly fine to want to change something about yourself, as long as it builds your consciousness. To choose to be more honorable is not to say that you are not accepting of yourself. Being more honorable empowers you and increases your awareness. Trying to like something that you feel is inherently wrong lowers your consciousness. If have to lower your consciousness to impress someone, this simply means that they are not compatible for you.

Your goal, when using effective communication, is to connect with those that are compatible with you and encourage growth. Don’t use your communication skills to lower your awareness. It doesn’t do anyone any good. You must realize that as much as you would like everyone to like you, some simply will not, while others will. It is better and more fulfilling to have genuine relationships and communication with a few, than having deceitful and shady relationships with many. Once you’ve had the taste of authentic relationships, you won’t go back. There is simply no comparison.

Drop the relationships that make you lower your consciousness in order to fit in. As the saying goes, “Why try to fit in where you were meant to stand out?” Effective communication includes, being congruent, consistent and thirdly, authentic. True skillful communication occurs between two individuals who are authentic with each other. Find those who are compatible with you and only change yourself when it encourages your growth.

Our next installment in our Communication Series will cover the topic of Full Acceptance. Enjoy!

Communication Part 1 – Trust
Communication Part 2 – Authenticity

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Fitness Workout Sheet

Workout Sheet Image

Let’s a quick break from our Communication series to talk about exercise. I’ve been working on a workout sheet for myself and some friends, since we’re going to start working out together. It’s always useful to record progress, so I decided to come up with a fitness workout sheet. I’m pretty proud of creation, because I feel it will be very helpful. I figured readers could benefit from its usage as well, so I would like to present to you the Fitness Workout Sheet. There are a few things I’ll have to explain to you in order to use this sheet to its full potential.

Recording Your Workouts
As you can see the page is divided into five sections indicating the five weekdays. For my friends and I, our only workout days are Monday through Friday. Saturdays and Sundays are our days off. Underneath each weekday, there is space to write down what kind of workout you will be performing for that day. The types of workouts you can engage in are strength training (strength, power, hypertrophy and muscle endurance) and cardio (bike, treadmill, elliptical, running, swimming, walking, etc.). A few of the many kinds of workouts you can do.

You have space to write down 15 exercises for the day. If you are doing some cross country, you will only need to write running as your one exercise. If you are strength training, you will need to write all of the exercises you participate in, for example, rowers, squat, bench press, etc. If you are doing circuit training, you will want to include each exercise in their exact succession. For example, you ran for 10 minutes (one set), 30 second bridges for two sets, Stairmaster for five minutes (one set) and then did bicep curls for six sets of five reps. Keep in mind when you record this, put your cardio time under reps. Do make sure you also write the number of sets even if you just do one.

Let’s say you decide to run the track. For this session, you run for 15 minutes, walk for three, run for another 10 minutes and walk for one minute. You would record this by writing running in exercise number one, one for the number of sets and fifteen for the number of reps. For exercise two, write down walking with one for the number of sets and three for the number of reps. Make sense? Again, be sure to right exactly what you did in succession. If you squat and then bench press, make sure you write squat and then bench press.

Strength Training
Underneath the exercise portion of the sheet, you will see a table with the four different types of strength training exercises. When you strength train, you can decide to do one of four different exercises, strength, power, hypertrophy or endurance days. Depending how your program design is set up, you will have days where you concentrate on developing you strength, power, hypertrophy or muscular endurance. The table shows you how to improve each of these components by manipulating the sets, repetitions and intensities of your exercises.

If you want to concentrate on your strength, when you perform each exercise, make sure you perform six or less sets of two to six reps at an intensity of 85% of your one repetition maximum. (Your 1 Rep Max is the weight you can perform, with proper technique, in one rep. Think of this like powerlifters where they perform their one event with the maximum amount of weight they can.) Think of this as your goal for the day.

Describing cardio exercises is beyond the scope of this article, but maybe one day I’ll write about it. If you’d like me to, just make a request!

Notes Section
Your notes section is just as important as your exercise section. Here is what you’ll write about what happened during your workout. Did you make your goal for the day? Did you increase your weight? How did you feel before and after the workout? Were you energetic or tired and sleepy? Did you use proper nutrient timing before and after your workout? These are just some of the things that you’ll want to talk about. They’re important because this will help you get a better idea of what is working and what isn’t working. If you haven’t been losing the weight you want to, you may not be doing the right exercises in their proper order. It’s always good to know because you can learn to find out what works and what doesn’t. Think of it as a trial and error process.

Let’s say last week you had to days where you didn’t meet your goal. In your notes section, you noticed that you didn’t use proper nutrient timing, while the other successful days you did. It is safe to say at this point that you need to make sure you do this correctly because when you don’t do it, you don’t have a good workout.

Keep In Mind
It is beyond the scope of this article to explain to you the fundamentals of exercising. That will either be saved for an article series, or for your personal trainer. I’d only like to share with you material that will help you optimize your workouts. The real benefit comes from using this every time you exercise. Recording your progress is where the real gem is. Having access to this information over the course of your exercise program will prove invaluable.

Don’t forget, by reading this article you understand that you exercise at your own risk. You take on full responsibility for any exercise program you prescribe to and must deal with any consequences that may arise. Be careful and make sure that you consult with a physician and/or certified health professional before beginning any exercise program.

Good luck with any exercise regime you begin and I hope this helps you reach your health goals. If you would like to comment on the sheet to suggest improvements, please let me know because I would love to read them.

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Communication Part 1- Trust

Effective communication has many aspects to itself and today I’d like to discuss the trust aspect of it. When it comes to communicating with others, of the talking you do deals with essentially convincing the other person of your genuineness. If you like strawberries and you’d like to communicate this, your goal is to convince them that you do like strawberries. This is a very low-level goal of convincing because the consequence of success isn’t that great. Compare this to higher-levels goals of convincing, that have much higher consequences pertaining to their outcome. An example of this would be if you were convincing your mate that you didn’t cheat on him/her. Trust is the essential component when persuading someone else of these kinds of things and so now the question becomes, how do you build trust?

Building Trust
When it comes to building trust, you have to show consistency of the bare essentials. There are many ways to communicate with others, but the two main methods are through speech and body language. Many people don’t realize how these two components compliment each other, but since these methods are the two most used, it’s within your best interest to understand their outcomes.

We’ll start off with a question, “how do you know when someone is lying?” Most people understand it on a very intuitive level, “I just know. I can feel it.” Others have no idea that someone else may be lying, either because the other person is a good liar, or they are not very mindful and aware. Breaking a liar down, to lie and get caught means to have an incongruency with the usage of speech and the usage of body language. There is a difference between someone telling you something and someone showing you. If you want to understand better what someone else is saying, you need to not only pay attention to what they are saying, but also be aware of their body language.

Be Congruent
For the longest time, I thought one of my sorority sisters could read people very intuitively. She knew when people were ‘off’ and this was always very helpful when we were trying to get things done. Not everyone is very vocal with what may be going on in their lives and this can make it very difficult when you are trying to coordinate projects. It is very easy to make the mistake of assigning the wrong person to the job. Everyone has off weeks or off semesters and knowing these kinds of things puts you in a position where you can find the right people that will get the work done. As I said before, I just thought she was highly intuitive, or just very psychic, but it took me a whole year to figure out what was going on. She understood very deeply the relationship between words and body language and she understood when they were congruent or incongruent.

This not only helped her when she was getting business done, but also socially. I noticed she tended to be very socially selective and I found that to be unfair. I didn’t feel she was giving people a chance. In my ignorance, I never realized what was really going on. I never realized that she was in fact giving others a chance, but when she found someone to be incongruent, consistently, she knew being around this kind of person was not good for her. If someone told me that they were doing this, I wouldn’t have a problem because I want my friends to be truthful and genuine. I don’t see anything wrong with surrounding yourself with others that will be empowering for you. Like I said, I didn’t realize what was going on and once I did, I had a much deeper respect for her. Not to say I didn’t respect her before, but I was able to understand her better. Whether or not she is actually aware of this I do not know, but I don’t blame her for keeping it up since she can’t deny her positive results.

In comparison with myself, I had always been the kind of person that trusted others too much. I’ve always know this because, there have been times where I have been disappointed by others and it was just getting annoying. My problem had always been how I would always listen to what I wanted to hear, rather than also consider what the other person’s body language was telling me. If I was more aware, I would have known whether or not this person was lying, or what this person really meant by what they were saying. Taking a lesson from my sorority sister, I started building my awareness and understanding others on that deeper level.

To give a better description of what congruent communication is, it is the proper matching of speech and body language. If you see someone who is talking about how they’re excited, but is sitting hunched over and looks depressed, isn’t someone who is congruent. This person is sending two incongruent messages. Someone who is telling the same image would be someone who is jumping up and down saying how they excited they are. This is a very straightforward example, but the real skill in observation is noticing incongruencies on more subtle levels. Most of the time, it is usually in their body language where you see this, which is why building the skill of reading body language is very helpful.

Body Language
The saying, “I can read you like a book,” rings true with the component of body language. When you get to know others better and you grow closer, you can begin to realize when this person is lying or not. This is because the more you see and talk with this person, the more of a feel you get for their body language. You don’t necessarily need to be around someone a lot in order to tell whether or not they are being incongruent, but when you begin a relationship with someone else, most people tend to be more genuine and congruent than incongruent. They show you their good sides, the sides their proud of. When you get to know someone on a deeper level, you begin to see their demons, and whether they play these demons off or not, you can tell because of their congruency or incongruency.

Sometimes at this point you may hear the phrase, “I don’t know you anymore.” There are two things that are usually going on when you hear this phrase. Either the person wasn’t very aware in the inception of the relationship and didn’t notice the incongruency, or they just choose to not accept the person as a whole. This happens a lot in relationships, where there isn’t full acceptance of the person, warts and all. You cannot truly care for someone (friend/lover/family member) if you cannot accept them fully for who they are. If you only accept the good side and can’t accept the bad, you don’t truly care for them. It’s fine to not necessarily like certain aspects of his/her personality, but if you can’t accept it, then there will be problems to come. You must take in the person as a whole, rather than a series of personality traits that you either like or dislike. You will find your social circle to be much more fulfilling once you start to disconnect from the people you can’t fully accept and re-connect more deeply with those you fully accept. This builds a very powerful environment for yourself.

When it comes to the nit and gritty of the actual body language movements that are congruent with certain speech patterns, this will prove to be the more difficult part of the communication equation. Unfortunately these specifics go beyond the scope of this article, but there are many books you can read that will help you understand more deeply body language. If you’d like to know more, I suggest reading The Definitive Book of Body Language by Allen and Barbara Pease.

Be Consistent
The second piece to the trust equation is consistency. Not only do you have to be congruent with what you say and how you show it, but you also have to do it consistently. If you can’t do this, they will either take you to be a dishonest person or wishy washy. You want to be neither, since this doesn’t help your persuasion capabilities. You want to be a genuine and honest person, but if you can’t learn the skills to portray this, then you’re working on a lost cause.

Let’s take for example actors. In the movie Fight Club, Brad Pitt plays a character named Tyler Durden. There is a scene where he lets himself get assaulted by this Italian mobster-type guy. Tyler Durden freaks this guy out because he acts as if he actually enjoys getting beat up as brutally as he was. His friends around him looked at him like he was crazy and stood stunned because this was completely incongruent with his normal behavior. Tyler is the cool, calm and collected leader that everyone looks up to and to act like this was to go against the normal way in which he portrayed himself. Once the mobster left, he went right back into his normal character and his friends realized that he was just putting up a front to scare the mobster. If the people you surround yourself with are even somewhat aware, they will know when you are putting up a front. You don’t want to put up a front because, like I said, you will not be convincing to say the least. If anything you ruin your reputation with them.

Once you break the trust of another, it doesn’t take one conversation to rebuilt it. You need to show that your whole nature has changed. Let’s say for example your spouse knows you had an affair. In order to regain the trust of this person, you need to consistently show that you care for this person deeply. You also have to show that you can be trusted. Just like Stephen Covey said, “You can’t talk your way out of something you’ve behaved yourself into.” You need to show your spouse that you’re a different new person. Instead of being the unloving, cheating partner, you need to show that you are now a loving, respectful and honorable partner. To prove your authenticity, they need to see this over a period of time. Depending on how long this takes depends on the people and the situation, but it can take weeks, even months to rebuild trust. This is not something that changes over night.

Bringing it Together
To sum this all up, in order to achieve effective communication, you need to build trust and rapport with whomever you are communicating with. To build trust, you need to be congruent and consistent. When it comes down to it, effective communication is essentially what you always aim for when communicating with others. What’s the point of communicating if they don’t understand what you’re saying, don’t believe you and don’t want to listen? That will just end up in no communication at all and it’s been shown scientifically that human beings are communal creatures. There have been studies that showed how babies need to feel human touch and be talked to, or else they essentially die; even when they are fed and cared for on the level of survival. You could even go so far as to say communication with others is essential for survival. It’s not necessarily on the level of physical (food, water and shelter) but on the level of emotions.

Don’t take communication for granted, because if you can develop strong communication skills, you can bring so much life into your existence. Build a supportive and empowering environment for yourself. Surround yourself with genuine and honest people and you will find life to be much easier; no drama, no un-needed social stress. Building this kind of environment is very helpful when going through transitional or difficult periods in your life, especially when you are trying to achieve very difficult, but meaningful goals in your life. So take the challenge and surround yourself with the right kind of people. You’ll be glad you did.

Communication Part 1 – Trust
Communication Part 2 – Authenticity

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Plant the Seed

I’d like to continue the topic of finding the input that will give you the wanted output from the previous post. Here, I’d like to use another analogy that will help you conceptualize this idea.

When we each come up with a goal we’d like to achieve, it is essentially a seed that we are planting in our minds. As does a successful gardener, a successful achiever nourishes and cares for his/her seed. The seed gets fed water, planted in healthy soil, has enough sunlight to bloom and is cared for every day. A successful achiever builds an environment that supports his/her goals, adopts successful habits and tends to his/her goals consistently.

Like a plant, a goal can’t materialize in one night. It is nourished and tended to until the day in which it bears fruit. If you reach for an orange from a young tree, you will not find any fruit. Don’t get angry at the tree because you can’t control when it will bear fruit. You must accept that it takes time to grow fruit. You can’t change the rules just because you want instant gratification. Blaming the tree is like killing the goose that lays golden eggs.

Self-Mutilation
If you imagine yourself as the tree, you will realize how debilitating self-mutilation really is. You can’t grow fruit, or achieve your goal in one sitting. Remember you are the tree and you have to be nourished and supported in order to bear fruit. Don’t blame yourself for not producing results just because you failed. Avoiding failure is like reaching pre-maturely for fruit; it just won’t be there. You may not always find success, but you will always find failure when you look for it.

Don’t constantly evaluate to see if you’ve accomplished it because you will most always be looking too soon. If a farmer is looking to harvest his corn in July, he will come to find that there is none. The farmer watches his crops to know if the plants need more water or sunlight, but he doesn’t expect to harvest earlier than nature allows.

A caterpillar doesn’t turn into a butterfly by spending one day in the cocoon. It takes more than a day to grow into a monarch butterfly. The caterpillar is patient enough to let nature do its thing. You can’t get around and bypass time. It takes more than five workout sessions to lose 35 lbs and build muscle. You need to allow your body time to adapt and build the muscle you want.

Patience is a virtue for a reason. Do you want to bear the fruits of your efforts or not? Do you want to lose weight or not? If you said yes, you’ll have to learn to be patient when working towards goal achievement. You make it harder and it will take longer to see results if you don’t take the time to nourish your goals. Accept this simple truth and you will see results. Acceptance is easier said than done, but in the end, taking care of your goose becomes much more fulfilling than collecting the golden eggs.

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No Good News/Bad News

In much of our society today, there has been a prevalent failure-phobia. We’re taught from a young age that failure should be avoided at all costs. You are worthless if you are a failure. What’s so hypocritical about this idea taught is us, is how as a culture we revere those who have unknowingly failed the most. Babe Ruth, home run slugger from the earlier part of the twentieth century, is revered for his ability to pitch a strike over home plate and hit one out of the ballpark. What many don’t realize is that not only did he have the highest home run record at the time; he also had the highest strikes-at-bat record as well. He’s a renowned baseball player who happens to also be, what would be considered as one of the biggest failures, if not for his amazing home run record. Because he did so brilliantly, we don’t look at his failures, but rather look at the amazing things he did accomplish.

I have been one such soul who has severed not only from fear of failure, but also fear of success. Having these phobias can be very debilitating indeed, but one way to overcome them is to change your perspective. While exploring the idea of failure and success, I came upon a very nice metaphor that is very helpful when shifting from a fear based perspective, to a more empowering one.

Input and Output

I remember when I was learning mathematical equations, my teacher taught me to think of it like plugging numbers and signs into a machine that pops out the answer. In a math equation, you input numbers that result in a particular output. This is a nice metaphor for the things you want because it illustrates quite nicely the relationship between habits and your goals. If think of your habits as the input and your results as the output, failure and success become very different things entirely.

One of the interesting things about working towards your goals is that sometimes you have to search for the right values for each variable of the input. Take for example the following math problem, x + 2 = 5. By solving the problem, you know that x + 3. When you first start out to achieve your goals, sometimes you will find that there are variables (x, y, z) in your equation and you need to try to find their values in order to get the result you want. Let’s look at the following real life example:

Let’s say you’re a bit hefty and you decide that your goal is to slim down. The first question you might ask is how did I get so hefty in the first place? You notice that whenever you eat greasy foods like pizza, hamburgers or French fries, you feel sluggish, unhealthy and you gain weight. You decide to change your input and eat healthier foods like fruits and vegetables. You notice that your body feels lighter, energetic and you don’t gain the weight like you did on your greasy diet. You have changed your input to bring you your wanted results.

From this perspective, it’s very defeating to be hard on yourself when you don’t get the results you wanted. You aren’t unworthy of what you want and you’re not a failure either. It’s self-defeating to stop when you feel you’ve failed. Failure is your friend. This is the process of trial and error and you happened to see error from this particular trial. You need results to know where you are at and this makes your next move that more intelligent.

Going back to our math problem, x + 2 = 5. Let’s try to solve this problem via trial and error. Let’s try to see if x = 1. What is 1 + 2? Three certainly isn’t five, so that must not be what x equals. Let’s try 2. No that doesn’t work; 4 doesn’t equal 5. How about 3? Yup, that looks like a 5, so that must mean that x = 3. It only took us three trials, and three failures, to find the right answer. That’s nothing compared to Thomas Edison, who went through 1,000 failures before he invented the light bulb. A reporter asked him how he was able to be so resilient and persistent with his invention. Edison responded that he didn’t fail 1,000 times, but rather found 1,000 different ways in which the light bulb didn’t work.

So the next time you experience failure, remember there are only results. No good news, no bad news, just news.

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Step-By-Step

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” ~Lao Tzu

One very common mistake many people make when they look to accomplish a goal is to go for checkmate on their first move. Boxers know that going for a knockout in the first round only works when you’re fighting against a complete novice. When the rank of your opponent increases, you must adapt and come up with a new strategy. Boxers do this by studying their opponent, build a plan of attack and then put all of it together to win the fight.

Achieving your goals in one blow only works when you’re working on a novice/easy goal. When you increase your difficulty, you need to change your game plan and adapt. Just like a boxer, if you go for the knockout on your first move, you will find that your goal requires much more than that to conquer. You will find that your goals will beating up on you quite often.

Goal Planning:
Building a strategy to achieve your goals is a way to bring down the beast one move at a time. Essentially, you want to build a game plan where you make the right small steps that will add up to the big steps. Let’s look at a student’s goal to receive an A in her class. If she were to try and learn a semester’s worth of information in one night, she will find that she’s bit off more than she can chew. A more intelligent approach would be to do a little bit of studying each day.

What things can you do that will add up to your goal days, weeks or months from now? What can you do everyday for the next four weeks that will bring you closer to your goal? Turn your goal into a series of small steps that you can do over  a certain period of time.

Enjoy Working on Your Goals:
Cutting up your goals like this rids yourself of a lot of stress. When you can make the shift from doing it all at once to taking small chunks at a time, you can enjoy doing what needs to get done. It’s not a stressful, tedious chore that the other model made it. You don’t put yourself down for not accomplishing the goal in one night. You don’t feel pressure to work because you’re right on schedule. It’s not the overwhelming task it was because you’ve simplified it. You’ll feel a motivation to get up and work. Heck, you may not even call it work anymore because how can work be so fun?

The 3 Phases:
When you go about planning your goals, there are essentially three stages that you will go through from the goal’s inception, to it’s completion. These stages are : 1) Setup, 2) Action Foundation and 3) the Knockout.

Pick a goal that you want to start working on and use the descriptions before to help plan for it.

The First phase is your Setup. During this phase, take the time to do a bit of research. Find people who have already accomplished your goal and see how they do it. Use their method as a way to help build your plan. What worked best for them? What didn’t work for them? This is the learning phase where you learn all the useful information you can. Learn enough to project into the future what might happen if you take your strategy in certain directions. What do you think would happen if you exercised 5 days a week? You are essentially looking for habits you will need to develop in order to get to where you want to go.

After you’ve setup your goal, now you need to create a scaffold system that supports goal achievement. This stage is called Action Foundation. Here you’re trying to build momentum and build an environment that supports your success. Let’s say you’re trying to eat healthier. This is the stage where you begin throwing out all of your unhealthy foods and then eating healthy alternatives. From the research you did in the first phase, you are now able to go to the grocery store and buy healthier foods, along with your alternative foods. Build an environment that will support the new habits you are developing. Having junk food around does not support you if you are trying to eat healthier. Brainstorm ways you can help yourself make habits that stick. What things can you do that will put you in an advantageous position to successfully change your habits?

The final phase is where you take your opponent out by going for the Knockout. You’ve educated yourself, built a system that supports you and now this is where you execute your plan. Going back to the healthy diet example, you would at this point be doing what you’ve learned from stages one and two. You’ve dumped your junk food, found food alternatives, bought healthy food and found new recipes. Phase three is where you put your strategy to practice. You monitor your progress and how well you are keeping your habits. This is essentially your time trial where you put your plan to the test. If you are having difficulty holding your habits, what things can you add or shave off from your strategy? Tweek your plan, make those changes and see what happens. Keep working until you find the combination of habits and environment changes that bring you to your goal.

Rome Wasn’t Built in One Day:
By spending and putting in a fair amount of time and energy into the first two stages, you bring it all together in practice in phase three. What matters after that is the amount of consistency you are able to develop. In order to lose the weight you want, you need to consistently eat the healthier foods you found in the first two stages. There isn’t anyway you will lose the weight you want to lose by eating well for one day. You need to continue to eat these healthier foods to lose weight. It is progressive and adds up to goal achievement over a period of time.

You have to understand that prescribing to instant gratification will only bring you frustration and disappointment. This three step model is designed to move away from the thinking of instant gratification and bring you to your goals in a healthy and intelligent way. Accomplishing your goals in this way will not only bring you results, but will also build confidence. Like strength training, you will be able to undertake progressively harder goals. Even though your work with one particular goal may end after a month, in the grander scheme of things, your work with goals won’t be over until you hit the grave.

Use this model to help you learn how to accomplish goals and then go out and do it! Just remember to break it down to three stages: 1) Education and setup, 2) begin to take steps to build an environment where you can achieve your goal and 3) move in for the knockout.