There are three steps to achieving any goal:
- Get on the horse
- Stay on the horse,
- Ride the horse to the finish line.
How many times have you said, “I’m going to start dieting tomorrow,” or said I think “I’ll make an appointment with that Doc Mac guy, I mean he has been helping women and men lose weight for 40 years. Yeah, tomorrow I’m going to make that appointment. It’s free; what can I lose.”
Then tomorrow comes, and you go out to breakfast with a friend and order pancakes. You lather them with syrup, which is High Fructose Corn Syrup, another humanmade food that will mess with your hormones, weight, and liver. Then you tell yourself, “I’ll start my diet tomorrow. I promise!”
Then tomorrow comes, and you say, “I need help!” You again think about making that appointment with that Doc Mac guy, but you can’t because the Facebook ad is no longer showing up on your timeline.
Many of the women and men I talk to admit to this procrastination game they play. This game is an actual habit that women develop. The habit comes about because they rarely make themself a priority. They only talk about what they would like to be, what they would like to do, and what they would like to have. but that’s all they do is talk about it.
Very few women and men in their “Third Act” of life pull the trigger to rid themselves of the hormonal symptoms. They say to themselves that they just have to live with it. They drop the gun and raise their arms in the air and surrender. They decide to live their lives with excess weight, lack of sleep, anxiety, depression, and loss of drives.
It comes down to this. Do you want to spend the next thirty years feeling old, sick, and pretending that you don’t feel this way?
If you are ready to get on the horse, then get on the frigging horse. Quit wasting time. In ninety days, 30 to 50 pounds can melt away, and your hormones can be balanced. All you have to do is put your foot in the stirrup and get on the horse.
I believe one of the most important things I teach my clients is not what to do once they fall off the horse, but what they can do to stay on the horse.
I do not kid myself. I know that you’re going to fall off the horse periodically. When that happens, I recall what Paul wrote in the Book of Romans, “For all have sinned.” Yes, we are all sinners.
And yes, I have protocols on what to do the day after you go out and have lasagna and creme brulee.
But what is the technique I use to not fall off the horse? Below, I explain the most powerful methods I teach.
I want you to imagine that God walked up to you and said: “Janet, Joe, will you promise me something?” You would probably faint, but once you recovered and stumbled and stuttered, you would probably say, “Whatever you ask, my Lord.”
I am sure you would do everything in your power to keep that promise. Am I right?
The tool I use to keep my clients on track toward success in any part of their life, be it their weight, health, relationships, or career, is to first:
Make a promise to yourself that you will keep your promises, especially the ones you make to yourself.
Do you make promises to yourself that you do not keep? Let’s say you sign up for my program. I give you a menu to eat, and for the first five days, you do fantastic. And then the weekend comes. You fall off the horse. You didn’t keep the promise that you made to yourself.
Let’s take a look at this from a different perspective. Do you know someone that is always breaking promises? You know that person you plan to have coffee with, you rearrange your schedule, and as you are driving to your favorite coffee house, she calls and says she can’t make it.
Canceling once, you understand, but what about every other time? I have this happen to me quite often. I have several women a week who schedule an appointment with me to talk about their menopausal symptoms. They even confirm and then when I call they don’t answer.
There goes an hour of my time. What bothers me is that I could have been helping some other woman. You would not believe how many women in a day say that they had a family emergency? I think that some of them do, but half of them!
Anyways, Here is an example. I recently had a friend tell my wife that she was on this new fantastic raw food diet? She explained to her how it had changed her life. She said that she would never eat cooked food again. Then two days later, we run into her at a birthday party. She is tearing into an all meat pizza.
When you see this kind of behavior from friends, how does it make you feel? Is there a loss of respect?
What if that person was you? What if you promised to stop smoking. You crush your pack of cigarettes and throw them away. And then one hour later you go to the nearest convenience store and buy another pack of cigarettes. You start smoking again. You break your promise…Again! How much respect would you have for yourself? Do you realize that your subconscious mind is recording all this? It knows that the promises you make to yourself have no substance.
Now let’s look at the opposite situation. What about the friend that always keeps her promises. You know the friend that makes a coffee date with you, and she always shows. No matter what you do, you can’t arrive before her. When this person makes a promise, she’s seriously keeping it.
How does that make you feel about her? R-E-S-P-E-C-T!
If you want to stay on the horse, always make your promises a declaration that something is going to happen. It is a definite declaration.
So, the first step is to get on the horse. The second step is to promise that you’re going to ride that horse. You’re going to hold onto the reins with everything you have. Now you’ve got to finish.
How many times have you started and not finished? The definition of success to me is to finish. To be successful, you must complete the cycle. When you want something badly enough, you will crawl and claw your way to the finish line.
When you are just pretending to want something, you will find an excuse not to finish. Yes, highlight that!
If you have a habit of giving up on your diet the first weekend, guess what? The first weekend you run into, you will find an excuse to quit. It is your habit to stop there, and your mind knows that, so guess what, you fall off the horse!
I have given you the tool to start, ride, and finish. You have to become a promise keeper.
To be a successful finisher, you have to realize that weekends are where you will fail. You will run into a wall, a wall made of excuses. To set a new standard, you will need to hold tightly onto the reins as you pass through that first weekend. Once you have passed through that weekend, you have raised the bar for yourself. The higher the standard, the higher the bar you have for yourself, the weaker your wall of excuses become.
So what is the next step?
Make a promise to yourself that you will not break promises to yourself or others. What this means is, don’t make a promise lightly. If you make a promise to yourself, you are going to keep it come hell or high water.
I do recommend to make small promises at first. For example, let’s say you have a habit of eating ice cream at night. But you want to lose 30 pounds. You know that to lose 30 pounds, you’re going to have to avoid ice cream. To achieve your weight loss goal, you’ll need to make a promise that tonight, you will not have any ice cream — just one night. If you can get through one night and keep your promise, your respect level for yourself will increase, and the next night will be less of a problem, and then eventually, you break your late-night ice cream habit.
When I was in practice, I had a diet Pepsi addiction. I drank nearly a six-pack a day. Then I read a research paper on the harmful effects of artificial sweeteners. Here I was a weight-loss guru, and I was affecting my weight and health with an addictive habit. I decided to give up on diet Pepsis for one month. I succeeded. Then after one month, I drank a Diet Pepsi, and it tasted terrible. It tasted like chemicals, and its sweetness was overwhelming. I broke my addiction. Now its been over a decade since I have had a Diet Pepsi. Once I broke that addiction, I knew I could beat another and then another.
Now I know that many of you may think that blowing off a promise isn’t that big of a deal. It is! When we take the wrong actions, we end up with the wrong results.
this is probably a good spot for me to remind you of The HOPE Circle of Achievement. “Your Internal chemistry governs your thoughts, your thoughts dictate your feelings, your feelings guide your actions, your actions govern your results, and your results influence your internal chemistry.”
So, don’t make a promise quickly. When you make a promise, take time to think about it. Make sure that your promise is one that you can keep. Be a promise keeper, not a promise sweeper.
When you become a promise keeper, you will move from being, and doing, to having. When you are a promise keeper, you’ll figure out a way to achieve your goal because you always keep your promises. It’s a great feeling being a promise keeper. Every time you keep a promise, your self-esteem and confidence will increase. You will define yourself as someone that gets it done! You will have a higher standard for yourself.
Summary
Start with small promises to build momentum.
Only make promises that you know you will do everything in your power to keep.
Make being a promise keeper part of how you define yourself.
“Write Your Promises In Stone.”
We can coach you on how to lose weight and feel great while you are in your “Third Act” of life. We’ve been doing this for 40 years! We know a thing or two about transformation. And that means you will live a longer high-quality life.
Many of us think they can make this transformation all on our own but the statistics show that we can’t.
If you’re ready to get on the horse and ride it to the finish…
Talk to us! Like Liz did. She went from a size 12 to a 6 on our coaching program! And she not only looks amazing! She feels amazing!
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May God Bless this day with health and vitality…
Doc and Vicky Mac
The “Third Act” Coaches
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