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Consistency: Your Route to Success or Failure
Dare to succeed in your diet
goals and learn that as you enjoy your own weight-loss success
story, that you’re also creating successful beliefs that will
benefit you beyond your waistline. If you have only succeeded in
failing your diet goals in spite of the promises and trendy weight-loss
tips offered by the Atkins and South Beach methods, it’s time
to evaluate your attitude toward the challenge. Overcome your failure
complex and self-sabotage by developing the positive consistency
you need to succeed.
A review of success and failure
reveals startling culprits; one of them is consistency—a leading
cause of failure in business and other areas of life is consistency.
You may think you want to succeed but another part of you believes
more consistently in failure—a form of self-sabotage. If you
want change, you have to apply the same principles that pertain
to that goal—consistently. If you want your blood cholesterol
levels to maintain their same high levels, keep eating cheeseburgers
or something equally as deadly. In this manner, you will have demonstrated
a consistency for success at raising your cholesterol levels. You
can’t begin with a positive goal, apply successful principles
to achieve the goal, then drop your focus and expect positive results.
Consistency is the key to the success, including your success at
failing anything you attempt to accomplish. Let’s take a look
at what you want to change and relate it to this idea.
You’re overweight and you
want to change. You pick a diet out of the plethora available: South
Beach, Atkins, etc., and for four days you do well, then suddenly
you change lanes—you convince yourself one Milk Dud won’t
hurt and wind up eating a whole box. Now you view the diet as ruined,
and you feel like you might as well eat what you want for the rest
of that day and start the diet fresh the next. The next day isn’t
any better than the first and each day that follows you feel worse
about yourself. You succumb to various defeating attitudes: it’s
too hard to lose the weight... your gene pool is working against
you losing weight... you’ll have to starve to lose the weight...
you have no will power... you are worthless. You give up entirely,
filled with self-loathing and wait for the next surge of weight-loss
promises to hit the market.
Okay. Your diet didn’t succeed,
but you had several things working against you. Can you see what
they were? Obviously, a consistent focus on dietary change was absent,
but there was one other thing standing in the way of your success: your
beliefs about success. You consistently applied negative beliefs
about yourself, weight, and dieting, to your dieting regime and
Milk Dud transgression, and with that consistency, your reward was
failure. Take a piece of paper and fold it in half, creasing the
fold to create a sharp edge; now, fold it again and again until
it has numerous folds and creases. Open it fully, and lay it flat
on the table and rub your hand over all of the creases to flatten
it out. Did the creases disappear? No, those creases have become
a part of the texture of the paper; they are now part of the paper’s
personality. Apply this same idea to your beliefs about dieting
(and all other areas of your life that may need an adjustment).
Each crease represents a belief, supportive or self-sabotaging,
that has become so much a part of you, you don’t appear to
be able to rid yourself of the affect it is having in your life.
Here’s a weight-loss tip:
lasting change can occur by converting each negative and sabotaging
belief to one that is supportive of you and your goals. Dieting
is no exception. The very word "diet" has a negative
connotation to most of us. We tend to believe it isn’t going
to be a fun experience. How many people do you know who wake up
in the morning, stretch, and with a smile proclaim to the universe,
"I’m happy and excited to be dieting today"? Probably
not many. But you can turn your diet attempts into a weight-loss
success story. It is possible to choose to view the process differently,
to embrace the idea that you are doing something positive, just
for yourself. It is not only possible, but imperative that you give
yourself a break about your weight, your success and failure with
diets, and change all of the negative body image beliefs and self-talk
to a supportive rather than self-sabotaging script. "I am
happy and excited that I’m eating what is supportive of my
body type." "I accept that there are times when chocolate
mousse appeals to me more than salmon, and I believe if I satisfy
that urge occasionally, and start right back on my healthy eating
routine, no harm is done." "I am a healthy, happy, and
slender human being, and I feel good about my new eating style and
my slender me."
Positive beliefs and self-talk,
applied consistently to any circumstance, will yield positive results.
Dare to succeed. Don’t beat yourself up for an occasional
choice outside of the healthy plan you are pursuing—just jump
back into your healthy and desired eating. Look at your old patterns,
based on useless beliefs you’ve carried around for a lifetime
that no longer serve you. Pack up all the old beliefs and get rid
of them! Replace those beliefs with new, supportive beliefs, while
you shop for the new and smaller clothing you’ll be needing
soon! You are as powerful and successful at everything you desire,
as you believe you are. Make that belief the one you live by! Apply
it consistently and happily, all the way to the positive outcome
you are sure to experience.
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