Goal setting and actually writing down those goals are an integral part of achieving something. Now it’s time to walk the path.
After setting your goal, the next step is just that – to take the next step. Begin your journey by beginning action! While it seems easy to begin your action steps, it often proves tough to continue over time. Zig Ziglar once said, “Motivation doesn’t last. Neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily.” This is so true!
What you must have to continue down the path to your goals is to find your WHY.
When I was 460 pounds, I desperately needed my WHY to begin what seemed like an endless journey to a healthy weight. My WHY was revealed to me on evening at home! I was sitting on the couch watching television. My daughter, Mary Claire, came in and said, “Daddy, I want to be just like you!” I was so proud! Then she dropped the bomb – “I want a belly just like yours.”
I was mortified! I had a 69.5-inch stomach! How could I continue being this kind of role model to my 7-year old daughter and 9-year old son? I am the leader in my house, and I was leading my family down the wrong path! Well, that was the day my WHY was born! And on the Biggest Loser when I felt like quitting (which was a thousand times a day!), I thought of Mary, David and Darci! I wasn’t going to lead them in the wrong direction any longer! All I had to do was picture Mary’s freckled-face at 7 years old saying those words to me again and I would begin to work out even harder!
Another example is Danny Boyle, an outdoorsman whose arm became trapped by a boulder while climbing. He was trapped for 127 hours! He finally found the courage to take his cheap multi-tool and amputate his own arm. Most people would simply die there, but Danny saw a vision on his 5th day of being trapped. A small boy said, “Daddy, can we play now?” A vision of his unborn son became his WHY; he amputated his own arm to realize his vision of having a family. His experience was made into a movie and has inspired many to get through their circumstances.
Viktor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning, was a Nazi concentration camp survivor. During his stay in the camp, he had a vision – a vision of himself standing in front of a crowded auditorium and speaking on his camp experience. From that point on, his goal was to get through each day so he could realize his vision and help the world understand the human condition when all has been taken away. He survived and has helped millions with his experiences.
What is your WHY? Have you even thought about it? Whether it’s a person, a cause, or something else, you must find your WHY and post it everywhere to remind yourself to LOSE YOUR QUIT and realize your dreams! Remember what Jillian Michaels said to me one day – “If you find your WHY, you can tolerate any how.”
I went to get my oil changed the other day. As I sat in the waiting room I saw another car pull in. A very overweight man got out and seemed to struggle as he made his way inside to sit next to me. I said, “I’m 2000 miles overdue for this oil change!” He answered, “I never wait. That is what makes cars wear out. It’s not the driving; it’s not maintaining it that causes serious problems.” What a true statement!
Then I asked him, “When are you going to start maintaining you?”
He looked shocked, so I thought I had better tell him who I am. He had never watched the Biggest Loser, so I pulled up my before picture on my phone. He gasped. “That’s you? Oh my! How long ago was that?” After telling him that less than 5 years ago I was 460 pounds, a tear formed in his eye. I told him he could make the choice to begin his change today. It won’t happen overnight, but if he doesn’t give up and if he will lose his quit, he will get there, too.
Moments like that make me realize how lucky I am to be alive, and especially to have been given the opportunity of The Biggest Loser. But it starts with maintaining your health day by day; and the great thing is that no matter where you are – with your weight, your debt, your marriage, or your career – you can begin today and actually repair most, if not all, of the damage done! I thank God that I quit smoking in 1996, paid off my gambling debts between 2004 and 2008, and lost 239 pounds in 6.5 months during 2009! If you didn’t know my story you might think I’d always been healthy! In fact, that is what he told me – “I never would have thought you used to be 460 pounds.”
And this is what I told him: “Your car is replaceable. You are not replaceable. Please make a change and give yourself the same care you give your car. You are too important to break down!”
Have you ever wondered how life got so complicated? When I was young, things seemed easier. All I had to do was worry about getting my homework done, getting to football practice on time, and the girl I was dating at the time. (Alright, so the girl was a little complicated!) Have you ever thought, “Boy, life was so much simpler then, but now it’s so doggone complicated!” Well, I agree.
I speak worldwide about achieving goals, success, and living your dreams – not because I know about everything, but I do know a lot about those three things. During my season of The Biggest Loser, I lost more percentage of body weight than any other contestant in the history of NBC’s Biggest Loser. And I owe much of it to simplifying my plan.
On the Biggest Loser ranch, life once again became simple. I woke up and began my day which consisted of 3 things: keep my diet on track, get the work or the exercise in, and stay on the Biggest Loser Ranch. While I was there I had no phone calls, bills, television, internet, email, and other daily distractions we all have to deal with. My focus was completely on those three things: Diet, exercise, and staying there.
It’s funny in life how we tend to make things more complicated than we need to. The way to stay there was to lose enough weight to keep me above the yellow line. When my teammates created an alliance & threatened to vote me off, I had to get immunity. If I did that, they couldn’t vote me off. Losing the weight was the key and doing the work was the most important part, so I kept my head down and worked harder than ever! Steps 1 & 2 were that simple.
But oh the diet! So many people ask me, “What did you eat on the ranch? What was the diet like?” I’m not going to go into details here, but I will tell you it was simple. I knew what foods to eat, what foods not to eat, how to prepare them and how much to eat! But the thing that made me so successful was keeping it simple. A healthy diet doesn’t have to be complicated. It just has to work. In fact, I ate many of the same foods prepared slightly different while I was on the show! I knew that EASY does it! Complicated is just that: complicated!
Whatever you do, look for the simple way to do it. Sometimes too many details just get in the way of what we really want – success.
We’ve all got dreams, life goals, and things we want to make happen. So what’s the first step? Projection.
When you watch a movie, there’s a machine that takes a digital file and PROJECTS it onto a screen so the movie goers can see it. Without the projection, it’s just a file – something that is there, but it’s not being realized, or even perceived!
Your dreams, goals, and aspirations are there. They are real. They just need to be realized. And the first thing you need to do is to PROJECT it for you and others to see!
In Proverbs 18:21 it says, “The tongue can bring death or life; those who love to talk will reap the consequences.” (NLT) This is so true! Your tongue is a PROJECTOR of your dreams and goals. What you project out of your mouth has the propensity to come alive! If you continually say, “I can’t,” that is what you will bring to life – both in your head AND in your heart. Speaking life over your dreams and goals is the first step to making your dreams come alive – and it begins by convincing yourself it is possible.
I just wrote a new praise and worship song about this! I am speaking God’s truth about my problems – that what He says about them is bigger than the problem itself. And when I sing this song, the solution seems to rise up in my heart and mind, and the problem seems to fade into the background! It has happened so many times in my life – with my marriage, my finances, my weight, my music, and my addictions.
In Genesis chapter 1, “God SAID” is there 9 times. It is CREATION. We were created in God’s image, which means unlike any other being on earth, we are creators.
Each time God created something, he said, “Let…” Look at the definition of let: to cause to; make: to let one know the truth.
Let your dreams come true. Begin by projecting them into life by speaking them into existence. Write them down, speak them out; create them in your life. When you begin to believe they are possible, you’ll see progress towards your dreams. That begins by you projecting the story (your dreams & goals) with your projector (your mouth/pen) onto the screen (your mind; your ears; other’s ears; your journal; and most importantly, your heart) so life can be brought to them.
I read somewhere the following statement: “What we think is what we believe. What we believe is what we speak. What we speak is what we create (reality).” So begin to speak life, and choose to let death go.
I’ll end this the same way Darci and I ended our book “Losing Big.” This is what you should project with your mouth when it comes to your dreams: “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.” (Deuteronomy 30:19 NIV)
A few weeks ago my 12 year old son played in a soccer tournament. It was 105˚ outside and most of the parents had all their chairs huddled in the shade of a large tree. The temperature in the shade was almost 20˚ lower than in the sun, so obviously this tree created some prime real estate. When the occasional light breeze blew through it felt like someone turned on the AC. Some parents who camped out beyond the reach of the tree’s branches still enjoyed shade, but the had to move often as the sun rose into the sky. My wife and I were among the sun’s first victims and we were forced to move toward the huddled masses nearer to the tree’s base to avoid getting sunburned in short order. As My wife and I were the first to get left out of the shade and had to move. As we shuffled our chairs toward the others, a few questions popped into my mind… Am I going to be in the way of someone else who’s trying to watch the games? Are they going to think I am a wimp for moving?
Although I can be the crazy, out-of-the-box, make-it-happen guy, I still get self-conscious at times. But courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is the willingness to move in spite of your fear.
How often do circumstances like the shade moving cause trouble for us, but we refuse to move because of what others might think?
When this happens to you, what is your normal response?
I was just talking to an old friend of mine. He is severely overweight and, in fact, was one of the people I asked to try out with me for The Biggest Loser season 7. He found one excuse after another why he couldn’t do it. But in today’s conversation, he asked me to help him and a friend with a music project. I told him possibly I could do something in the future, but right now I’m working on too many projects. There is just no time right now.
We then started talking briefly about John Lennon’s song ‘Beautiful Boy,’ that says “Life is what happens when you are busy making plans.” He stated that he left his college to become a truck driver and now, 12 years later, he’s still on a truck with no college degree and hundreds of pounds heavier than when he started. Boy, do I know that story! I kept telling myself, “I’ll start Monday” or “My new year’s resolution will be to get healthy” or “Next year when I’m out of debt, I’ll join a gym and lose this weight!” Well, 15 years went by, and I was heavier each year until I was almost 460 pounds! I made plans and promises, and life happened.
Well, I then told him it was not too late…it is NEVER too late! I said, “I was 430 pounds when I left for The Biggest Loser, and I finished at 191 pounds in just under 7 months. In 7 months I righted the wrongs I had been doing to myself all those years. Not by regretting never starting, but by starting now!” I now realize that you CANNOT do anything about what you have done in the past, but you CAN do something about what you do from this point forward.
I couldn’t control the last 15 years of my life anymore. I had the fruits of all those lost dreams and unmade decisions, but I COULD begin right now and start to right the ship. If a ship could make a hairpin turn, the Titanic would have never happened. The fact is, first you turn the wheel, and then the ship starts to turn slowly. It takes time, and consistency, but if you keep that wheel turned, the ship will eventually turn a 180 degree turn and move in the direction you want it to.
I can only hope that he heard me. What I mean is that “Those who have ears to hear, let them hear” means is that some are not ready or open to hear what is being said. Best case scenario? –That a month from now I find out that he has turned the wheel and has lost some weight, begun the process of getting off that truck that he doesn’t want to be on, and gets himself back into his life. We will see, but one can only hope.
If you are reading this and need to make that change…whether it be stopping a habit, starting a good habit, making that “shift” you need to make, or whatever the case…that you will grip the wheel RIGHT NOW, and start to right the ship. Just turn it and trust the process. Lose your quit and the ship will turn, but the decision is up to you. Yes or no, it is up to you. I promise you though, once the decision is truly ‘YES,’ anything is possible…and I mean ANYTHING! www.loseyourquit.com
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