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How to feel super successful everyday, even when you fail

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How to feel super successful everyday, even when you fail

When we focus on how to succeed, we generally look to the outcome. If we get the outcome we want (like the scale going down) then #winning. If not, #loser.

It’s an outdated view of success. Binary. Winning is left – largely – to chance.

In truth, your success depends on your willingness and ability to recognize all of the ways that you are winning. 

Please do not gloss over that last sentence. Both willingness and ability are critical to you feeling super successful every day, no matter the outcome you achieve. Let’s break them down:

Willingness means not holding yourself to perfectionist standards. Maybe taking an ugly win. You were going for a 20 lbs weight loss this past quarter. You lost 3. Take the win. Acknowledge what you did to get there. Congratulate yourself that you didn’t gain 3, which was your past trajectory. 

Yes, assess the failure. Learn. Refocus. Retool. And go again. But go into it feeling like Serena Williams who knows she’s a winner, even when she’s lost a tournament.   

Ability is looking for what you might not normally think of as a success. Say you picked up that glazed donut and ate three quarters of it before coming to and thinking “whoa, what happened here?!” and put the remainder in the trash. You might be tempted to feel bad about what you did eat. Instead, take the kudos for stopping when you could have wolfed down the last few bites (do you know how hard that is?!). 

How to feel super successful everyday, even when you fail
Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

Take 47 seconds now and come up with five ways you’re winning today. Like you…

  • Ordered a grande instead of a venti
  • Took a 4-minute walk instead of scrolling to pass the time
  • Responded with grace and understanding to the complaining coworker you’re not fond of 
  • Walked the two flights of stairs to your office, even when the elevator opened right in front of you
  • Stopped halfway through a bag of Cheetos and put the rest away

If you want to know how to succeed it starts here, with recognizing all of the ways you are already winning. When you come from the place of being successful, you prepare yourself for successful outcomes. You are more likely to take the actions necessary to achieve your goals when you feel like a winner. 

Another way to win more…have a Strategy Session with me. Let’s talk. 

Is it what you really want to hear?

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Pizza is healthier than cereal.

Drinking a little alcohol, especially wine, every day is good for you.

You don’t need to exercise to lose weight.

This stuff ticks me off! Each contains a kernel of truth, telling us what we want to hear: essentially, we can eat pizza, drink wine and not exercise while still losing weight and being healthy.

Excerpts from studies are ripped from the whole, combined with a sensational headline and voila. Just what people want to hear, and just more confusion to keep them overweight and wondering why they don’t feel better.

Photo by Fallon Travels on Unsplash

Let’s dive in:

  1. Pizza: Yes, a light cheese, cauliflower crust, veggie pizza will be healthier than Fruit Loops cereal. But that’s not what the headline says, and most people don’t read much beyond that. Focusing the majority of what we eat on vegetables, fruits and whole grains (hint: “whole grain” is not determined by the claim on a box of processed somethings) is the best way we know to improve health (check out the only diet proven to reverse heart disease) and to reach our ideal weight.
  2. Wine: Drinking alcohol does not improve our health. Full disclosure – I drink wine on occasion. I like it. But I don’t pretend it’s providing me any health benefit. And, from years of coaching clients, I’ve seen alcohol have a detrimental effect on both weight and health; when they decrease or stop drinking alcohol…yep, both improve.
  3. Exercise: Sure, diet tends to have the biggest impact on weight loss. After all, it might take you an hour to burn 300 calories but only five minutes to eat that many! The thing is, when you lose weight, you lose muscle as well as fat. Exercise helps preserve some of that muscle (contributing to your metabolism), which aids not only in losing but also maintaining your ideal weight. Even more, the benefits of exercise beyond weight loss make it worthwhile on its own: boost your creativity, improve your sex life…what’s not to like?

What’s aggravating is that weight loss is fairly simple. But it’s not easy because, let’s face it, your habits have been in place for a long time, probably decades. So, hearing that pizza and wine are healthy and exercise isn’t important for weight loss…well, it keeps you stuck, feeling like a failure and ultimately makes weight loss harder.

Okay, rant over.

Weight loss is more about your mindset than anything else. And I’m not talking willpower. It’s easy to control behavior for a short period of time, but it’s not permanent. And regaining the weight feels pretty crappy.

Want to reach and maintain your ideal weight? Let’s chat! Go here to schedule a FREE Breakthrough Strategy Session.

 

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