The sweet smell of success.

When we do anything in life, the one thing that drives us to continue and improve is the sweet smell of success. This morning I had feedback from a person that decided that he is motivated enough to start the weight loss journey, and he is starting to show amazing results.

Measuring success.

The way that we get our motivation boosted is to set some measurements in place where we can see the progress and then to work at ways to improve what we need to in order get to that goal.

How success breeds success.

Sometimes we start of with a goal in one area and we only have that one goal in mind but then we see other objectives appearing and we start choosing additional goals where we can improve and once we get on this journey of improvement we soon find out that we become more effective in every aspect of our lives.

A beautiful example is the reader that I have been talking to this morning. He started with an objective to lose weight and began measuring his weight and recording it on a daily basis. In his case he selected cycling as his means to exercise and I suggested that he uses Strava to monitor his progress. After 5 rides and 5 days following my eating instructions, he told me that he is 3,4 kilos down and how motivated he feels. It is important to know that initial weight loss is always faster than later in the program when it settles down to a more relaxed kilo a week, with the odd days when you will sometimes actually show increases. Important here is not to panic but to just carry on because that’s just part of the game where our bodies react to different things. In the end however you will see that the curve keeps going down.

My personal preference after my own experience was to not record the jumps in my weight but to only record the low points because I wanted to keep the graph going down. Initially I did record every day and showed the ups and downs but later I decided that I want to own the lower weight. I made it my new weight and kept on chasing the next lower reading. This kept me motivated and was my way of dealing with it. You can decide if you want to deviate, but personally I got great success from this mentally and it drove me on to success, so this is the method that I personally recommend.

Once this reader started recording his rides on Strava, I could see what he was doing and had the ability to comment on his rides and suggest ways to monitor his progress and also to motivate him. At first he told me that he subjectively feels better going up certain hills. So I suggested that he creates measurable segments where he can look at his performance going up hills on various points on his route and start competing against himself. Although you can compete against others on a massive database, the point here is that you want to measure your improvements against yourself.

So this reader has now identified a second goal area where he can measure his improvement. With his weight he has a target goal. With his riding at this stage he might only want to see that he improves but in time as it becomes easier and he improves rapidly, he will start chasing new riding goals. His success is now expanding into two areas and he will start feeling his ability increasing and his appetite to take on additional challenges will increase. This success will not only show him new physical opportunities, but will spill over into other areas of his life where he will start seeing new challenges and will start setting new goals and his success story will grow into more areas of his life.

My challenge to you.

Start today by setting your first goal and start measuring yourself towards that goal. If you use other activities to achieve that goal, look out for ways of improvement and put a measurement in place. Get another person or a team of people involved in your journey with whom you can share your progress and who will cheer you on and help motivating you. Soon your success will increase and expand and you will become a total success story.

Enjoy the journey.