As one of my mentors once said, "your results go in the direction of your intention, especially if you track them." I am a tracker. I love knowing what is going on with all I am doing. When I first started with personal and professional development, one of the first few things I learned was about the importance of tracking for success.
I bring up the importance of tracking many times in a day during my conversations with others. I have some people buck against the idea and even tell me it's too much work. And I get it. After all we have on our plates daily, the last thing some want to do is take account of their day at the end of the day. However, what I have learned, from personal experience and observing others is, the successful ones are chronic trackers. When you track, you know what you are doing and it is easy to adjust the actions, directions, thoughts and anything else you want to track. You easily recognize how to achieve your goals.
I believe to achieve and sustain lasting health and well being, tracking is important. So important that many of our clients get the choice of daily or weekly tracking journals with after action reviews included. Okay, the former military side of me reared her head with the after action review. It worked while I was on active duty and it still works. How else are we to know how to use the lessons learned to our advantage if we don't review our actions, hmm?
One of our clients adamantly refused to use the tracking journal we provided her. After a few months, she came in with a complaint, "I don't know what I'm doing wrong? I am doing everything yet I'm stuck!" After we moved past the pity party (yes we do that as well as success parties), we reminded her we would have been able to pin point where things went awry if she had used the tracking journal. Since she did not, there was no way for us to know if she truly followed her plan of actions or thought she did. It turns out, she was thinking she did everything, because after 3 months of tracking, she saw her patterns and where she would dove tail off track. With that revelation, we were able to change certain cues in her habits and keep her on track.
Because we work with many people with sensitivities, tracking is important. For those who aren't experiencing food sensitivities, we still want them to track because we can glean gems from the sheets. And some people tell us about "ah ha's" they weren't aware of until they began tracking.
If you are venturing into tracking your health plan and actions for the first time, it may seem too much. My recommendation is to start slow. Track one thing for 30 days, then add another thing. When you get in the habit, you'll soon be tracking many things and you'll quickly discover the benefits of tracking.