The Secret to Weight Loss... and Other Personal Power Sucking Myths (Read Time: 4 min.)

Goals... We all have them.  Most of us strive to achieve them.  So why is it that so few of us actually attain them?

This is the question I've been pondering for the last few days.  For years, I've been working on this goal called "getting into the best shape of my life", and of all the goals I've set, this one goal has not been achieved AND held into place... and I kept wondering why.

I've tried different approaches, used all the self-talk in the world I could muster, and administered to myself every coaching strategy I could think of... and still my weight fluctuates, leaving me feeling uncomfortable in my skin and tired of the roller coaster ride called "I want my best body ever!"

So, yesterday, I picked up a book I'd started reading a few months ago called "The Science of Being Well" by Wallace D. Wattles.  I figured, "There must be something in this book that I need to know" as I hadn't been drawn to it for months.

Imagine me, standing in my kitchen, reading a book written in the early 1900s, hoping to get some morsel, some "secret" to weight loss, when I came across this passage:

"If the foregoing be true- and it is indisputably so- it is a self-evident proposition that the natural time, and the healthy time, to eat is when one is hungry; and that it is never a natural or healthy action to eat when one is not hungry.  You see, then, that it is an easy  matter to scientifically settle the question when to eat.  Always eat when you are hungry; and never eat when you are not hungry." 

Alrighty then... Simple, right?  So why was I waiting for some profound truth, some "big" secret that would unlock whatever it is within me that has not gotten this goal accomplished?

I was waiting for an answer outside of myself that doesn't exist when all the answers come from within.  I was holding out for a magic pill when I know, on a logical level, that no such pill exists.  I was believing that someone else's words, thoughts or ideas could trigger in me the level of desire and commitment required to achieve this goal that I haven't been able to trigger in myself.

Essentially, I was giving my power away... 

and didn't even know it.

And here's what I gained from reading that one passage:

1. It really is that simple and it really can be that easy.  Somehow, we don't think it's hard to wake up as ourselves, to open our eyes and see life through our own individual perspective.  Why is it that we think being who we REALLY are is so difficult to achieve?  Guess what?  It's not.
2. All the answers are within.  This bad boy lesson keeps coming back to me.  Whenever I start looking for answers outside myself, I am profoundly sent a reminder that I'm looking in the wrong place.  You've got the answers.  You simply have to trust and follow them.
3. When you make a goal important enough to take center stage, it does.  Yup, it's like that.  When a goal becomes a deep desire to the point where you will lay aside WHATEVER has to be laid aside to achieve the goal, then your focus kicks in, your creativity kicks up, and you stay the course of that goal... UNTIL.
4. There are no shortcuts to the Laws of the Universe.  Yup, no magic pill.  No blue pill or red pill.  No hijacking the process.  It takes what it takes and fighting the truth certainly doesn't change it.  Not only do we have to be good at goal formulation but we have to master goal execution.  Formulating the goal takes creativity and desire.  Executing the goal requires courageous patience and persistence which many of us have not learned to have without immediate gratification.  

So, at the end of the day, I found no secret, no magic pill, and no "AHA" epiphany moment except for this:

I can do what it is I choose to do IF I follow the simple, straight path:

Desire --> Decision --> Determination --> Focus --> --> Action --> Persistence -->  Trust

Yup, simple.  Yup, kinda boring.  Yup, it works.