In my most recent article, Know Your Associations, we talked about associations and how they rule your life. By recognizing, adjusting and directing your associations with diet and exercise, you can completely revolutionize the impulses that feed into your behavior, and thereby dramatically increase – I would say assure – your chance of success in achieving your goals.
But once you’re the master of your associations, what then? Will you be forever policing your thoughts to prevent a backslide into self-destructive associations?
Not if you use your associations to help you forge a new self-identity.
That sounds more dramatic than I want it to, but it’s the closest to the truth. The key to success when it comes to a lifetime of “effortless” fitness is your self-identity as a fit person. I’m not saying you have to recreate your personality. And I’m not saying you have to fundamentally change as a person.
What I am saying, however, is that, once your associations are in line with your goals, you must incorporate those associations and their resulting behaviors into your core identity.
You can do anything you want to do so long as you’re willing to start from where you are right now.For example, it’s not, “Okay, I’m starving and I’m going to have the chocolate cake. Just this once. I’ll work out tomorrow.” Instead, it’s “Okay, I can hear the chocolate cake calling to me, but I’m not going to eat it because that’s not who I am.”
Now, technically, if you’ve really revised your self-identity to that of the new, super-fit you, the chocolate cake won’t be in your house, so you won’t have the inner struggle. And that last part of the previous sentence is the beauty of truly incorporating an image of fitness into your self-identity. It diffuses and eventually eliminates the inner struggle with bad food and laziness. If eating poorly and sitting on the couch “just isn’t you,” and eating well and exercising hard is “who you are,” then the decisions already have been made.
Quick question: Have you ever read the origin of the word decision? It means to cut off all other options. But that’s usually not what a reasonable person does. More often than not we choose. We make choices. But choices are weak decisions that require no commitment. Decisions force you to cut off all possibilities.
As a professional fitness and success coach, I hear a lot of excuses. Busy schedule. Kids. Pressing bills. But it’s all just noise. My response to nearly every excuse: You can do anything you want to do so long as you’re willing to start from where you are right now. To move forward you have to make a decision to be fit, to exercise, to eat to support your goals, and cut off all other options.
Don’t let the excuses that have weakened you, and consoled you, and handicapped you your entire life, stick with you for what’s left of your life. Make a decision right now to get what you want. To deserve to achieve your goal. To earn it.
Redefine yourself, starting with your identity as a fit person.
We’ve all seen The Biggest Loser on TV. The successful people are essentially sequestered for 20 weeks on the ranch. They have cameras watching their every move. They have trainers with them.
But you don’t have that luxury. I don’t have that luxury.
What we have is an exciting Goal and the associated Motive rooted in our emotional core. When you watch the successful participants on The Biggest Loser, toward the end they all learn something valuable about themselves. That new identity, that joy of achievement, that “I’m good enough” revelation, the subsequent inevitable tears… that is what it takes. That revelation is the Motive, discovered through the process and articulated only at the end. And the articulation is their new self-identity. Bam. Life changed.
Your advantage over The Biggest Loser participants is you already know your Motive. Now you just have to make it a part of you, direct your associations, and make it all add up to your new, revised self-identity. It takes some work, but we’re going to do it together, and it’s not as daunting as it may sound.
As an aside, I have my favorite kind of ice cream – mint chocolate cookie – sitting in my freezer at this very moment. But cheat day – my favorite day of the week, it will be yours, too – isn’t until tomorrow. So the ice cream’s yummy goodness is safe for another day. Prior to my insight into the power of a redefined self-identity, it would have required incredible force of will. Now ice cream is a Saturday thing. Funny, maybe, odd even, but this is what it takes to achieve body transformation.
You don’t need to make a healthy choice a thousand times every day. All you need to do is make one decision, which goes hand-in-glove with your newly-sculpted self-identity.That’s why I never talk about making “healthy choices.” First off, I think it sounds incredibly condescending, like a parent to a child. But second, I think it frames your health and fitness as moment-to-moment, as if, at any time, you might make a poor choice and screw up your entire diet, workout program, life, etc. It’s programmed to fail. But isn’t that what every other program you’ve ever read talks about? Healthy choices? Me, too.
I propose that you don’t need to make a healthy choice a thousand times every day. All you need to do is make one decision, which goes hand-in-glove with your newly-sculpted self-identity.
And the rest, as they say, is a piece of cake.
