Something I have been reminding myself of lately is to just keep moving forward.  It’s so easy to stall in our doubts, our fears, uncertainties, confusion, etc and it’s generally just a waste of our time.  It’s something we distract ourselves with.

It’s sort of like we’re driving down the highway going somewhere exciting and we get off to get gasoline, and then just get lost and distracted.  We forget to get back in the car and get back on the road and keep moving forward.

We go into thought and deliberation rather than action.  Of course we have to think things through, but most of us do it excessively.  We wonder, we fret, we get lost in fantasies about “what if”, we hope things will get better and we get afraid that they won’t.

And sometimes what is necessary is to just take the car and get back on the highway.  Don’t get lost in some small town at a random exit.  Don’t get distracted thumbing through the magazines at the truck stop.  Get back in the car and get moving.

Most of us don’t because we’re afraid we’ll go in the wrong direction, make the wrong choice.   Or we’re afraid it won’t work out – we’re afraid we might not make it to the destination so we hesitate to even try.  We want some sort of guarantee that it will work in our favor.

Again, the point of this is to just keep moving forward.  Ask yourself, “what is the next step I can take right now?”  The next, single small step?  That’s it.  That’s all you have to figure out.  What is the next single, small step you can take moving forward?

It may not feel comfortable or entirely “right” – in fact often that’s a given.  But here’s the other thing we often forget: you can handle anything that comes at you.  it may not be easy, but you will be able to handle it.  If you have to change course, you will change course.  If you keep moving forward you will figure it out.

Remember Frodo from Lord of the Rings?  He was scared sh$%less most of the time, but he just kept moving forward and he fulfilled his deeper purpose.  So think of the deeper purpose in your life that is calling your forward.  Whether it’s to be masterful in the work you do, to provide an amazing life for your children, to find your mate and have a really fulfilling relationship, or to be connected to your “higher power” in a deep meaningful way, find that deeper purpose and tie it around your neck as a reminder like Frodo did with the ring.

And then keep moving forward.

Consider this: the real reason you’re not losing weight is because it isn’t your priority yet.  You can think about it all you want.  You want read all the books you want, join all the online forums you want, but at the end of the day, the only reason you aren’t living comfortably and happily at your ideal weight is because it is not your priority.

You don’t lose weight because the chocolate mousse that was served at your sister’s dinner party over the weekend was more important to you than losing weight.

Eating the great pizza, chips, dips and Margaritas your neighbors served while you were watching the World Series together was more important than to you than losing weight.

You don’t lose the weight because nibbling on all the cookies and candy in the office kitchen is more important to you than losing the weight.

This is a matter of priorities.  It’s about DECIDING that to carry this extra weight is no longer an option in your life.  (The suffix of the word decide – CIDE – means to kill off.  Think suicide, homicide, etc.)  When you truly decide, you are deciding that carrying the extra weight is no longer tolerable.  It’s no longer an option.  That’s when your priorities shift.

But until that happens, be very honest with yourself about where your priorities lie.  Our actions always have more meaning that our thoughts, words and intentions.  It’s important to be grounded in the reality of our choices.  That may not always be pleasant, but until we really fess up to our priorities, there is little we can do to change them.

Like I said, this is part of a longer article I’m working on, just not there with it yet.  I’d like to be posting here more, but unfortunately, as much as I would like this to be one of my priorities, clearly it isn’t.  My actions always speak louder than my words or intentions.

Picking up where I left off…

So you want to be asking yourself: “How well am I making that choice?” Because the quality of that choice defines who you are becoming.  

Example 1:

You’re driving down the road on your way to work.  You’re running about 10 minutes late.  Your boss doesn’t make a big deal out of it, but it still makes you a bit uncomfortable because it seems to be happening more often of late because your son is slow getting himself together in the morning.  All of a sudden, somebody comes and cuts you off…didn’t even have the nerve to use their turn signal.

Do you:

A)    Yell “F#$% YOU!” at the top of your lungs, and roll down the window and show him what an elegant, well-groomed middle finger you have?
B)    Keep your mouth shut, but ruminate on how the drivers in your town are certainly the worst in the state (if not the region), that people are inherently stupid, and then head straight to the kitchen at work to get a coffee and a couple donuts that Sheila in accounting brought in (there’s ALWAYS something there to nibble on)?
C)    Take a deep breath, slow down a little bit, roll your eyes (it was a pretty clueless move by the other guy after all), and then become more mindful about how you’re driving?  Life is precious, and you need to stay awake and alert sometimes.  You reflect on the good things in your life for the rest of your drive

Example 2:

Your husband comes in the house grouchy after a bad day (boss is a jerk, traffic sucked, didn’t close the account he’s been working on for a month) and starts complaining about the laundry not being folded in the living room and dinner not even started yet.

Do you:

A)    Go into defense/anger, lash out and retaliate?
B)    Say nothing, but inwardly become very angry, and head to the refrigerator for a glass of wine or big piece of Belgian chocolate?
C)    Take a deep breath, relax your body, recognize that his anger is about him and not about you.  Maybe you politely disengage so he can get his act together, or maybe you patiently listen to him and help him work through the events of the day?

You get the idea. The choices you make now give birth to the habits with which you live your life. How you react to things now shapes who you’re becoming (later, tomorrow, 10 years from now, maybe in the next life if you believe in that).

Action Step:

At least 3 times today, catch yourself when you’re being unconscious, just going through the motions, and acting out of habit and pattern.  If you have to set an alarm on your computer, your phone or your watch (if you’re a geek like me who still wears a watch with an alarm on it) then do so.  Either way, make sure you “catch yourself” 3 times today.

When you do, ask yourself, “is the person I am being right now the same as the person I want to become”?

If the answer is yes, then awesome!  If the answer is no, then ask yourself, “what shift do I have to make right now so I am being the person I want to become?”

• Maybe you need to take a deep breath, and stop focusing on snarky remark your girlfriend made to you yesterday.  Put your attention on something positive and worthy of your attention.
• Maybe you need to adjust your posture to shift into a more calm, controlled, positive state.
• Maybe you need to let the tension out of your jaw or stomach and start focusing on how much you enjoy your kids rather than how much your co-workers talk about negative gossip over lunch.

Get in the habit of catching yourself when you’re being unconscious or when you’re plain off track and in a funky mood. Recognize that the choice you’re making right now is shaping the choice you’ll make later, tomorrow, and in a year.

Think about how this applies to your eating habits and your diet.  How are your food choices affecting who you are becoming?  How are they shaping your body (literally!)?

Just recognizing that you have a choice is the first step to making a better choice.  It helps you become mindful of what you’re doing, and it creates the window through which you can start to shape who you really want to become.

Think about this question for a second.  It’s possibly one of the most powerful questions you’ll even consider- and as you’ll see in part 2 of the post tomorrow, it has a lot to do with your success in losing the weight you want- and keeping it off.

Really asking this question deeply, and reflecting on it causes you to consider what you really want in life because here is a fact:

You are becoming something.  You can’t help this.  It’s a fact.

The past is gone…and all we have is the unfolding of present moments.  So this is a very good place to put your attention.

The decisions you make right now directly shape:

• How you think…
• What habits you oblige…
• What food choices you make…
• How you relate to yourself, your body and others…
• How you handle stress…
• How you react to and talk to your children…

All these decisions shape who you are becoming.  These choices create the causes and conditions for what happens next.

So the question becomes:

Since you’re becoming something (the energy and thinking and behavior that is you is unfolding into something), will you become that thing by design or by default?

I know that comes off pretty wordy, but I recommend you read it again so it sinks in.

Put another way, will you become that thing by habit or by choice?

You have a choice right now, on a moment-to-moment basis about what the quality of your life is going to be.

So you want to be asking yourself: “How well am I making that choice?”

Because the quality of that choice defines who you are becoming.

In part 2 of this post, I’m going to unpack this by going into some specific examples of how this fits into our lives, and how it also affects our waistline.

The thing is, it doesn’t really matter how much you want it or need it.  Those things don’t make the difference.  You can want it for years and be at the same starting point.

What ultimately makes the difference is “readiness”.

What do I mean by readiness?  To me, readiness is:

• The decision that this time will be different.
• The willingness to experience some discomfort to get to your goal.
• Acknowledging that what you’ve always done has gotten you where you are now.
• To confront your emotional habits that want to pull you back to your heavy weight.
• The commitment to be the person you really want to be.
• Chopping wood and carrying water- everyday.
• The willingness to do whatever it takes.
• To decide that being overweight is no longer an option (notice that the suffix of ‘decide’ is ‘cide’ or “to kill off”- when you decide, you are killing off other options).
• The willingness to work with your cravings and realizing that they too will pass.
• That you’ll push through the resistance to build new habits…even if it isn’t always fun.
• The willingness to become a different person of sorts.

What do you come up with?  Email me: joshua@joshuawayne.com or comment below and let me know what Readiness means to you.

- Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

Just came across this late at night shortly before bed, and thought it was worth sharing.  Sakyong Mipham is the son of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, one of the first high Tibetan lamas to teach in the United States in the late 60’s.  He passed away in 1987.  I have been reading “The Essential Chogyam Trungpa” on and off for a couple years- it’s great, though I think a basic understanding of some Buddhist fundamentals make it much more accessible.

I’ve had the very good fortune of recently coming into contact with the most coherent and succinct description of Buddhist fundamentals I’ve ever seen in the 20 years of paying attention to it.

I plan on doing some posts in the not so distant future about the basics of Buddhism- particularly from the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism as I have been learning it from my dear friend and Buddhist monk Erik Jung and his teacher who I’ve met on just one occasion His Eminence Dzogchen Khenpo Chogya Rinpoche.

This explanation of positive and negative thinking, how it works, and how it creates the moment to moment sense of happiness or unhappiness that we experience is both profound and entirely practical.

More coming on this soon.

“Some people sleep until morning. Others know they have to bring the morning.”
Shlomo Carlebach

Love that.  Has me out the door and running in zero seconds flat.

I’m getting ready to enter the online video revolution in the next week or so, and plan on uploading gads of stuff here.

Also, in my “wee break”, got a lot of clarifying about how I want to structure my blog in terms of content…a lot of good stuff to come!

I have a bunch of new stuff planned:

• expanding on the Motivational Tips series
• launching an e-book on Ending Emotional Eating with my friends over at PEERtrainer.com
• a battery of cool videos on ending emotional eating, finding your center, being the calm in the middle of the storm, deep breathing, smiling, being at your best
• and other charming ideas to create a life of substance and happiness.

So enjoy these dog days of summer, and check back here in early September…or just sign up for my RSS feed (over on the right there) and you’ll be the first to know.  It’s good to be in the know…y’know?

Cheers,

Joshua

So now I want to focus on how you effectively apply this valuable little nugget of information.

In the simplest of terms, your motivational strategy tells you how you have to think about your weight loss goals in order to consistently take action.

Let me repeat that in a slightly different way: in order to consistently take positive, forward-moving action to lose weight, you need to think about it in the right language and with the right pictures in your mind.

What To Do If You’re More Motivated Towards Pleasure

If you’re Motivated Towards Pleasure, then really spend some time thinking about what you want in rich and colorful detail. Find pictures (of yourself or from a magazine) that inspire you and make a vision board (this can be as simple as a few pictures in your journal or a complex mural on your bedroom wall- whatever works best for you).

What To Do If You’re Motivated Away From Pain

What I have found is that most people who are struggling with their weight are more motivated away from pain when it comes to their health.

(Side note: I’m not going into this much here, but it is possible to be have a different strategy in different areas of your life; for example ‘away from’ with your weight and ‘towards’ with your career.  Obviously here we’re just focusing on the weight issue.)

As a result, you need a slightly more sophisticated motivational strategy because somebody trying to inspire you by how great you will feel when you lose 30 pounds is going to fall on deaf ears.

However, thinking about how you’re going to feel 5 years from now if you don’t make a change is likely to make your ears perk up.

They key is to go in your mind to the place where the consequences lie  so you don’t have to go there in reality.

Here is an example:

I was once having a conversation with an EXTREME ‘away from’ friend who was saying he wanted to lose weight.  I think we were having the conversation after he had just polished off a double cheeseburger and fries, if that tells you anything about his level of readiness.  The idea of dieting or changing his lifestyle habits didn’t inspire or make any sense to him- there was simply no urge to act.  Exercise and changing his diet only seemed like a burden and there was no excitement or inspiration to regain the level of fitness of his earlier years.

I asked him how he felt about the idea of getting even heavier than he was.  I had him imagine looking at himself in the mirror 100 pounds overweight rather than just the 40 he was at now.  I had him imagine how he would feel…what his energy level would be like…how it would feel to bend over to try to tie his shoes.

This started to catch his attention and he said that he could see himself becoming more motivated if he thought about it in that way.  Because he is an EXTREME ‘away from’ I really laid it on.  I had him imagine becoming so obese via his current lifestyle habits that he experienced major health complications.  He would be bed ridden and his wife would have to tend to him full time and swab his bed sores with cotton balls and peroxide.  Then he’d likely die a slow, painful death with his internal organs finally giving up.  I had him think about his wife re-marrying and what it would be like to have another man raising his children and so on.

Strange as it sounds, the heavier I heaped the miserable imagery on him the more he felt a sense of relief and inspiration!  The more extreme and severe I became with my suggestions, the more internally aligned he was to actually begin taking action.  This is a classic ‘away from’ response style.

So what you need to do if you’re an Away From is consistently get yourself to think about the consequences that lay in wait if you don’t make a change. Like I did with my friend, you may at times need to be extreme and project far into the future.

When you’re struggling to find the motivation, ask yourself, “what is my life going to be like if I keep on this way?”

So figure out your innate motivational strategy when it comes to weight loss, construct a strategy that is going to work for you- in your own “motivational language”.