Jeremy recently posted a great post on habits versus goal setting on Facebook. It inspired me to share my experiences.
Almost 260 days ago, I was lying to myself. I wrote about it here “Poke Poke”.
Long story short, I had to make a change and created competition around it as I’m a pretty competitive person. I asked Jeremy to set me up with a simple spreadsheet that I would fill in each and every day.
This made me accountable for daily stuff that I wanted to measure that will help achieve a bigger end game.
260+ days in, and I feel amazing and have way more energy than I can remember.
I don’t think I felt this good and strong since I was in my twenties.
The biggest thing for me is I feel great and more focused and clearer mentally to run my business and do what I love to do.
I attack life, family and work with more vigor. I couldn’t ask for more.
My goal was to reach 220 lbs by June 24th, I smashed that goal as I reached 220lbs officially by December 24th! Perfect timing so I feasted for the holidays.
I created small habits I MUST execute every day that will affect my desired outcome, I actually got this concept by reading The 4 Disciplines of Execution.
For me I knew if I stopped drinking, lower my intake of processed foods and trained frequently I would lose weight for sure. I also tracked my weight just so I can have feedback of what was going with my body and observe trends in how my body responded with frequency or eating or what I eat the day before or that week.
I looked at my schedule and made sacrifices to make sure I train at 8:30am everyday!
I WILL NOT TAKE ANY AMOUNT OF MONEY FROM A CLIENT TO GIVE UP THAT TIME IN MY SCHEDULE. WHY MY HEALTH IS WORTH MORE THAN ANY AMOUNT OF MONEY ONE CAN GIVE ME. BEING HEALTHY AND ENJOYING THE TIME MY CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN IS WORTH MORE THAN ANY AMOUNT ON MONEY ONE CAN GIVE ME.
This became fun! A game that I was subconsciously playing with myself and I won. So now I changed the goal and the daily habits must correlate to your goal.
I’ve realized in this process, that having a goal without executing daily or weekly habits is a waste of time, it’s futile.
Hey let’s be clear, it was not a bed of roses and I did not sail through this process of changing my habits daily. It was tough, f***ing tough!
I love food, I drank to release stress and It was hard to let go, I missed training days for almost two weeks in the process because I fell out of my rhythm and found bullshit excuses.
I didn’t fill out my daily scorecard everyday and would find myself having to remember what I did for 3 or 4 days to get the metrics up to date.
But you know what, the fact that I always came back to my daily scorecard and saw that I was failing right in front of me got me going again.
Changing small daily habits is a powerful and tool and I recommend you give it a try. It doesn’t have to correlate to fitness it can be anything.
Culture + Habits = ResuIts
You can either create a spreadsheet, or use the five-minute journal for a deeper reflection.
And if you or someone you know need a little help with a place that has the environment to get results, we welcome anyone that would fit our culture.
About the Author: Clance Laylor
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