CategoriesActionHealth & FitnessThink About ItTimeWeight loss

Weigh Less, With One Simple Step Repeated Each Day

Eat less.

Weight loss, through to better health and fitness, is a series of steps.

Step one is eat less. Once a person has been doing this successfully for a few weeks, they can look into several more advanced steps such as starting to exercise or doing more of it, tracking calories, buying healthier foods and preparing better meals with a better range of nutrients.

Too often people will try to change everything at once. Since these more advanced steps all take up time, require some level of learning and must be integrated into your current lifestyle, it is very difficult to start all of them at one time and do them all on a sustained basis. Usually people haven’t allowed for all the extra time it takes to add these into their life.

Save yourself all that time required to read labels and count calories, read diet, exercise and recipe books or magazines, join groups, get to the gym or exercise more, learn new recipes and shop for new ingredients and foods. Remember, eating less saves you time!

According to media reports, a lack of time is a leading cause of stress and stress eating. So try this simple step that requires no time investment and even saves you time. You even get the results you want – weight loss. You can get toned, improve health and nutrition later in subsequent steps. Remember c.90% of weight loss is reducing your current food intake.

Even if your current diet consisted of eating six chocolate bars and drinking four colas every day, you could lose weight by simply cutting your intake down to four bars and three colas. You would still drop about 1.5 pounds per week. The mathematics support this, as does the science, and eating less worked in my experience years ago when I dropped 20 pounds in 8 weeks, beginning with step one.

Just eat less.

Try it today. Eat one less helping at a meal, drink one less cola, eat half or two thirds of your regular portion at each meal. In a week you’ll be noticing, and enjoying, the difference,

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CategoriesActionProgressThink About It

Start Me Up

The first step often can feel like a giant leap for mankind: Too big. Getting started can be such a challenge. And yet, it is instrumental in getting to the second step and then ultimately success.

There are different ways to get started. You can countdown if you are NASA or Mel Robbins – 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… You can put it in your calendar and block a specific time on an exact date. This is described as the Seven Day Success Cycle in my video “ETRR 13” on the Videos page of this blog site. There are other ways too.

Whichever method you use to get started, remember that your environment should help support you. If you go for a run in the morning, make sure your clothes are out and ready and your shoes are at the door before you go to bed. Any other items you need for the run should also be set out neatly the night before. Set up your environment for absolute success while the intentions are high. Do not wait to see how you feel in the morning, you’ll rarely feel like it.

Once you’ve taken that first step, be sure to celebrate. This is the hardest step so it deserves the most celebrating. Every time you start something new or start on the next step, give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back. Well done.

Now Get Started! With a little momentum you’ll start to feel unstoppable: Like a rolling stone.

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CategoriesActionProgress

Do Your Own Pushups

The optimal way to change something in your life, is to make the effort yourself.

Sure, you can watch Tiger Woods play golf everyday and that might help your golf game a little. But to make, lasting and significant progress, you need to go do it yourself.

Whether this means getting up early to travel through rain or snow to get to the gym and do a challenging workout, put in the work to build your business or put the gruelling extra effort in to progress your career, only you can do it. If your personal trainer, competitor or work colleague put in the hard yards and focus on the results, they will get the benefit, not you.

It’s nice to have supporters and people cheering you on and hoping you get the work in and the results out, but only you can make it happen. No well intentioned effort from your Mom, Dad, spouse, friend, neighbour, etc will make your body, business or career better. You have to grind it out and win those results for you. And you will feel amazing for it!

Go! Do your pushups.

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CategoriesActionReframe your thoughts

Grouping Can Be Misleading

Canadians are, Brits do, Americans like. Africans think, Latinos say, Asians believe.

I can’t change how everyone communicates, but I’m sure global communication would improve if people made more realistic statements about the group of people they were actually talking about.

I saw a tweet about how, “Canadians criticise Trudeau” for buying $4 doughnuts that were locally sourced, and made, in Winnipeg. It was just some Canadians, not all 37 million. The headline wasn’t clear how many Canadians were criticising, but I tend to read these things as “all” rather than say two hundred. There is a big difference.

Perhaps media rules could be implemented so that when referring to a group of people, the headline must indicate proportionality. So the headline could have started with “100’s of Canadians criticise Trudeau”. This headline doesn’t excite or intrigue as much as the other, but then it shouldn’t.

While we’re at it, perhaps media outlets, and all providers of content, should also be required to include phrases like, “in my opinion” or “in this papers view”. And wouldn’t it be fun if there was a little penalty for those that say things like, “it’s a well known fact” – when it is actually an opinion or simply made up.

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CategoriesActionThink About It

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

“As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.”

  – Andrew Carnegie

I love this quote. It is such a useful thought. It is a great way to understand people’s intent, sincerity and desire.

Replace “men” with “people” and it’s even better.

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CategoriesActionThink About It

Horse to Water

“You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him* drink.”

I love this proverb. I simply say “Horse to water” as I don’t think people need to hear the whole thing anymore. People quickly grasp what you are saying. (And it eliminates the whole gender issue that way, so double bonus.)

It’s amazing how many people are swimming in water (i.e. lots of opportunities), but they won’t commit to a drink (i.e. they don’t act on them).

We live in the most amazing period of time in all of history. The most opportunities for the greatest amount of people, with the least friction and fewest obstacles to get in the way.

99% of the obstacles people see are just mirages in their mind. Focus on the opportunities and those mirages will disappear.

I wish you could all see the opportunities before your eyes. Focus more attention on coming up with the Results! Not reasons.

The next time someone gives you a valid piece of advice, or suggestion, think about it. Go for it.

Don’t be that thirsty horse. ?

(*this is the original quote. Sub in “her” if that makes it better for you)

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CategoriesActionProgressReframe your thoughts

The Thrill of Being Early

Can you remember the last time you arrived somewhere early? Relaxed, composed, delighted. Maybe even just a little bit pleased with having pulled it off.

Maybe you were 15 minutes early, ahead of everyone else, and were able to greet everybody as they arrived. Perhaps you enjoyed your new status as the early bird and you even thought this might make a good habit to adopt.

Even if you were bang on time, it’s still such a thrill to arrive by the time you were expected. I know I love that feeling. It feels so very good. So what do you need to do to consistently get that early bird calm and confidence?

There are three critical success factors in arriving early. Do these with every meeting, appointment or event and you’ll get to experience that thrill of already winning, if only because of the time that you arrived.

First, you must realistically work backwards from the 15 minute early mark. So if your appointment is at 10:00, aim to be exactly in the spot you need to, but by 09:45. In doing so, you must recall your average times required to prepare yourself and journey to the destination. This preparation includes what you need to wear or bring, and assessing transport, weather, parking, security on arrival, possibility of meeting people on the way, etc.

Second, you must add in some contingency time on top of the first step. It depends on the distance travelled, but as an example, if it is within an hour, add 15 minutes (for traffic, bad weather or meeting someone you know en route). If your destination is overseas, add one to two days, depending on the importance of the event.

Third, you must know when to stop doing things beforehand and transition into get ready mode. You must not do, “Just one more thing”. Set a timer on your phone if you must to alert you to the transition moment. But, when it is time to transition into get ready and go mode, you must focus on that and not become distracted or engaged in anything else. You have no “spare” time. You have already calculated the time required to be there early and that extra contingency time was for unexpected things, not to borrow from.

If you do these three things, you will be early 95% of the time and get to feel the thrill of being early as your reward. There are so many other benefits from being early though too, such as a calmer mind on the journey, appreciation from others involved in the event and a sense of personal control and mental power.

At one event, to which I had arrived early, the benefit was that I was able to speak to the CEO of one of the world’s largest telecoms companies, for almost 15 minutes, before he had to prepare to address the arriving audience. Definitely worthwhile.

Develop the three-step habit above and you will get the thrill of arriving early, more and more, as your big new habit of arriving early is developed and reinforced, until it is firmly in your programming.

You may find the benefits to be priceless.

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CategoriesActionProgress

Uncomfortable to Unstoppable

Frequently people stop because something is uncomfortable. People will often shy away from a challenge because it is socially uncomfortable (what people might think or say if you tried), physically uncomfortable (a challenging skill or strenuous) or mentally uncomfortable (trying to solve a difficult problem).

If only people remembered that you always have to get through that uncomfortable stage before you can get to the unstoppable stage.

If you can remember, you were usually uncomfortable when you started doing anything for the first time. It could have been putting your hand up in class, or speaking in a meeting (social), learning a new sports skill (physical) or learning your times tables (mental).

The trick to remember is that it always gets better and easier if you put in the effort and accept greater guidance from someone who knows how. Then if you keep trying, practicing and developing, you will start to be quite good at it (witness anyone progressing through times tables or solving a Rubik’s Cube).

Then if you practice even more, you can become unstoppable. What a great feeling that is. To know you are one of the best in a certain endeavour.

That period of being uncomfortable is the way the Universe checks to see who really is interested in progressing further.

To progress from Uncomfortable to Unstoppable, you need Action Not Words.

Go do it!

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CategoriesActionThink About It

How Important Is This?

If I want to gauge how important something is to me or to someone else, I put it through the same filter I have since I was in my teens. This filter I use is the following: Is the person using the care, diligence and urgency that I imagine a heart or brain surgeon would use on the country’s leader or that a Marine or SAS operative would use on a special mission?

These scenarios are life and death. Mistakes can cost lives, including your own, if you were the patient or the operative.

These people will be highly trained, well drilled, and focused on a successful outcome. They will confidently take action to achieve their desired result.

They probably don’t use phrases like, “I kinda feel like I can give it a try and then we will just see what happens.” Certainly words you do not want to hear from your heart surgeon as they are putting you under…

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CategoriesAction

Action Not Words

I read with interest, an article about the 2020 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees. Congratulations to all of them. Hard working and action oriented people. It’s usually the way to success. Grind. Discipline. Focus. Battle.

I was reminded about a band that was inducted last year, which was one of my favourites in my teens: Def Leppard. They had a song on their massively successful breakthrough album, Pyromania, called Action Not Words. I’ve often thought about that phrase. It’s short, clear and exactly what is required to move things forward.

You need more action in your life. More action moving you toward the outcome you are looking for. Results not reasons. Execution not excuses. So if you want to be more successful in anything, remind yourself of this simple phrase: Action Not Words.

Go get it done.

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