I often hear people lament about how they tried something and it didn't work. My internal, smarty blouse response is, "everything works, it just may not have yielded the results you wanted." Although I usually ask out loud, "what parts didn't work? how do you know it didn't work? or what were the steps you took to make sure what you tried would yield the results you wanted?" and sometimes I get the "deer in the headlights look" and jumbled responses. This often clues me in to the supposition that maybe, just maybe, they didn't really do what they said they did do and it didn't work because they really didn't do it!
Being in the health field, we hear a lot of stories about failed diets or exercise programs that fell short and when we dig a little deeper, what we find underneath the stories aren't very pretty. People fall off the wagon, however, the successful ones get up, dust themselves down and hop right back on the wagon while the others stay fallen. Someone once told me, "I gave up on my diet when I ate the box of cookies. I figured it was a lost cause, I'll never lose this excess weight, f^*k it!" I looked at her and kindly informed her, "babies try their legs at walking an average of 300 times before they master it. If all babies gave up after the first try, we won't be bipeds and we'll all be four legged." She got the messageand asked me what to do next time.
In response to her question, we created a plan for her health goals and set up trackable action items that she can do daily and weekly toward her goals. With her plan for success, we built in "fall off the wagon" items and safe guards and eventually, she fell off less and stuck more with her goals. This also helped us both to look back and chart her progress and it reinforced her determination to succeed.
My question to you is, "Where are you in your health plan?" If you don't have one, start by creating one and then write out the actions you will take to make that plan a success.
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