Change is hard, but it doesn’t have to be impossible. Learn the secrets to making change happen in this podcast episode. Discover the five ways to guarantee success, including self-discipline, consistency, and pleasure. Find out how to think abundantly and live confidently to achieve your goals to guarantee health success.
Change is hard. Even good change can feel impossible. But on some level, don’t we all want to change? The question is how? How do you do the things you know you should?
Spoiler alert: Willpower or good intentions won’t create change. They’re needed but not essential.
The essentials to change, and the only way you’ll do it, is by making change safe and pleasurable. The two metrics we often disregard for a metric of change that looks like deprivation, starvation, and restriction. The path of change I thought was required to make it happen.
I had spent the better part of six years beating my body into submission while believing subconsciously that my self-hate would force me to be healthy. In reality, hate and health do not go together because hate and change conflict. They work against each other, leaving you running for your old patterns, the ones you desperately want to change.
But that doesn’t make change impossible. It just makes the way we’ve been trying to change impossible.
Inside this podcast, I share the secrets of change that guarantee success. Plus, I challenge you to engage with something hard. Because your body craves hard things. It was made for hard things. But only when you balance that with pleasure and desire. Learn the secrets inside.
5 Ways to Guarantee Success
Success is somewhat arbitrary. What success is to you is personal, meaning you have to define it for yourself. But how you define it changes your rate of success. Be careful not to base success on a destination but on a series of actions. The outcome may not always be your control or practical, but your action always is.
Instead of basing success on a goal weight, base it on consistency in moving your body or based on the food you eat. Base it on the action, the only thing you can control. When you do this, you understand success is not about arriving, but it’s how you live. It’s the millions of little choices you make daily to act in a healthy direction.
Of course, that’s all easier said than done. But if you understand the requirements for change, change happens. If not, you’ll circulate in the old loops that kept you stuck. Here are five to guarantee success.
01: Create Self-discipline
We are quick to talk about what we want to change or how ‘we’re going to change,’ but we fail to put action behind it. Talking about change doesn’t make you change. Change requires you to do something different, meaning it will take self-discipline.
The problem is that the word ‘discipline’ has taken on a definition based on restriction, deprivation, and starvation. It’s become a denial of self, often leading to self-sabotage and failure to act. But only because we have a faulty definition of what self-discipline means.
Self-discipline is not a denial of self but a gift of freedom to yourself. Its intended use is to help you stay on the path you know you want to go, allowing you to act based on how you want to feel, not how you currently feel. Self-discipline is a sense of freedom and should be viewed as the motivation to keep moving forward.
Use self-discipline to keep you on the path you want to go. On the mornings you’d rather sleep in than get up and move, use self-discipline to remind you moving always makes you feel better than 30 minutes of extra (not to mention interrupted) sleep.
02: Live Confident
I’m not talking about artificial confidence that leaves you so consumed by yourself. But confidence that keeps you grounded in who you are and what you have to offer. That you are valuable, you are worth it, and you have a purpose. Confidence allows you to live at home in your body and within yourself while bettering the world around you.
The kind of confidence that doesn’t come from thinking less of yourself or thinking more of yourself but thinking about yourself less because you know who you are. That confidence is the kind of confidence that helps you stay grounded and make forward progress.
Reminder, you don’t have to like yourself to love yourself. You can be content with who you are while still desiring to change.
03: Stay Consistent
Most people are good at starting. We can use willpower until the hurdles and the resistance to the change becomes greater than the energy we have to maintain it. This leaves us stuck starting but failing to stick with it. But the only way to see results, to make progress is to stay consistent.
You must understand the power of safety and pleasure in creating change. People don’t do things they hate. If you hate the change you are trying to make, you’ll fail 100% of the time. Instead, lean on the power of micro pleasures or small rewards. Whatever you are trying to change and create consistency, you must also experience value. You must find some happiness in it. If you don’t, you won’t stick with it.
04: Think Abundantly
It’s easy to get lost fighting the ‘one-way street.’ The belief that there is only one way to get healthy or think more positively when there are million and one. Most things people want to achieve are born out of scarcity – not having enough or not looking a certain way. It’s a fear mentality.
But fear is not a motivating factor. At least not in producing the healthy change people are looking for. Fear may change you but in a restricted, deprived kind of way. One that leaves you running to other unhealthy patterns that focus on keeping you alive, not helping you thrive.
Instead of living in the scarcity mindset, think more abundantly. Live in the growth mindset rather than the fixed one that allows you to think creatively, get curious, and recognize failure as a tool for growth, not something that prevents you from achieving your goals.
There are a million ways to change successfully, but it will only work if you have the right perspective. Think differently about what you’re trying to achieve and the path to get there. You might be surprised at how easy the change becomes.
05: Do something
The only way to change is to do something. You can talk about it all day long, but until you put action into your words, nothing changes. Ironically, you were made to do hard things. Your body craves it. Of course, only within balance.
Hard things build resiliency, helping you withstand all things in life with more strength. The key to success is to push yourself while also creating a trust that in the pushing, you’ll pull back and support the hard work your body is doing.
As a friendly reminder, pushing yourself is not the same as ‘beating your body into submission.’ Pushing yourself does not mean restriction, deprivation, or starvation but rather doing hard things while nourishing and resting on the backside.
What your body classifies as hard or challenging will be different than mine. In either case, I challenge you to commit to something hard, show up for yourself and prove that you are capable. And in the hard things, you can find great success.
30-Day Nourish Challenge To Jumpstart Success
I’ve put together a Nourish 30 Challenge (similar and yet more nourishing than Hard 75). The idea is for you to engage in daily activities that fill your mind, body, and soul in a positive yet challenging way. Fill in each of the five categories and live disciplined to complete them, knowing how amazing you’ll feel at the end of 30 days!
If 30 consecutive days feel unrealistic, achieve 30 as consistently as possible. Set the goal of achieving five consistent days during the workweek and not worrying about the weekends. That means you could finish 30 days in just six weeks!
Sign up for the challenge above and share your progress with me!
Learn More Secrets to Success
- The Secret To More Self-Discipline Is Not What You Think
- 5 Habits That Will Change Your Health
- Why You Can’t Change: The Backwards Law + How To Overcome It
- Book: Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder
