…are four words that will keep you stuck. Keep you from losing weight. From enjoying food and having the body you want.
“Hope is not a strategy” is famously used in business and politics. I want to bring it to a personal level.
When a client says to me “I hope it works” what she’s saying is she hopes the strategy will work. That she’ll lose weight.
Hoping “it” will work is giving your power to the thing. It. The thing you think will get you results. That is, the plan, program or process.
The truth is, many things will work. Seriously, many. You could go vegan, paleo, do CrossFit®, go to a gym, workout at home, run, swim, do yoga, eat out, not eat out, drink alcohol, or not. Figuring out what will work for you is simple. It requires experimentation, fine-tuning and consistency. Repeat. Multiple times.
Hope does not get the result. You get the result. You following through with the experimenting, the fine-tuning and being consistent. Even when you don’t feel like it. Even when it’s hard and you feel like quitting. That’s where results come. Not from “it.”
“Aren’t you just playing with semantics, Heather?” Of course! Because words matter.
Here’s what I mean. How do you feel when you say “I hope it works”? Do you feel motivated and confident? Or do you feel desperate, maybe anxious? You want to cultivate the feelings that will lead to follow through. Even when part of you doesn’t want to.
One definition of hope is “a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.” Did you catch that last part? A certain thing to happen. As though maybe you’ll be lucky, maybe you won’t. When we hope for something to happen, it indicates a certain passivity. Like we’re at the mercy of something outside ourselves.
What I really want you to know is this: You make it happen. The ability to enjoy food AND have the body you want is completely up to you. You can hope, but it’s got to be backed up with thoughts that generate action. Action that gets the result. The result you want.
You are capable of so much. Believing that will take you much further than hope.