I’ll be turning 40 this month! Yeah Baby! Top of the hill, and a major oh crap what have I done with my life moment! And I think the only thing I’ve learned so far is that life now happens faster today than when I was 20. A few months back, knowing that this milestone was creeping up on me, I set a goal for my fitness and health to be improved.
Along the way I’ve had a few of those moments where I recall how easily things seemed when I was 20. Keeping myself grounded to the fact that, that was 20 years ago. Doing that I’ve been able to curb frustrations and stay focused on getting back into the swing of things physically with those reminders, and allowing myself to say ok you’re not 20 anymore, so give yourself some slack, but not too much.
My milestone goal is to lose 40lbs by the time I turn 40. That’s my first milestone of my ultimate goal. I’m nearing my birthday and am getting really close to my first milestone, I’m down 30 pounds since the first of May when I set my goal. Nearly four weeks to go, some hard work and I know it can be done.
Side note: the terminology we use to “lose weight” gives the connotation that we will miss the weight eventually and want it back. We really should change our language to have a better mental image of the loss of our weight as something more fierce and masculine like shedding pounds, shredding pounds, beating the fat off with a stick, some other adjective than lose, it’s not lost it’s vanquished.
Looking back I’ve surprised myself with the progress that I have made toward my milestone goal. I turned to people and processes that were proven and experienced in helping people like me with aspirations of weight loss and physical fitness. And let them direct me to the best path, but not push me, I was following their direction not trying merely get best practices and implement them alone. Then I have stayed close to their path for me. I’ve joined a gym, and took part in a diet plan that was given. Given myself accountability to own the results each day. I committed myself to follow the plans for exercise and eating. Making allowances for the regression I’ve had, and celebrated the small progressions, I need to make in order to hit my goal. In other words counting smaller milestones along the way to bigger ones.
My experience here that last few months has been 88to trust and rely on others for direction and then following that so I can hit my goals. There are countless parallels I can draw in a lot of areas of life where we lean on others to reach our goals. Just to name a few, filing taxes, buying a home, hiring our first employee, making our first sale. We lean on others all the time.
Accountability is part of it, tracking your goal feeds to a sense of accomplishment. When I measured myself at the beginning of my goal and then remeasured a few months in, I lost several inches. “So what” I thought then my wife said move the tape out to where you started and then look where you are compared to now. Not until I took the measuring tape out to where I started did I see how much had been accomplished. Talk about motivation, seeing the change in something you’ve chosen to change, and seeing the results. Weight loss is easy to see when your vanquishing pounds.
What milestones are you after, what will you do to measure and track for your own accountability. Start where you are and take steps daily, be brave and take steps in directions your not so sure are going to work, and give it some real effort. Measure frequent enough to see how you’re doing. Get someone to make you accountable to your goal and performance. Reach out to others for help and direction. Then just go to work everyday to work toward your milestone. Count the little progresses made as victories and for continued motivation to keep going toward that milestone.
Brandon Jones is a Market Rep for UBIC