Listen, I know it’s not as easy to talk New Years’ resolutions on Jan 23rd as it was on the 1st; US News and World Report tells us that 80% of people quit on their New Years’ hopes by mid-February. But whether you’re looking to lose weight, say no to unhealthy relationships, or leave your self-sabotaging habits in the 2010s—life’s much too short to wait for another January to become the person you want to be.
So don’t quit. Read this.
Today I’m sharing some expert words from author and entrepreneur Elizabeth Benton, who admits to having wasted decades on the wrong ways to tackle her most persistent issues of obesity and over-spending before she finally lost hundreds of pounds, paid off thousands in debt, and helped tens of thousands of others do the same. In her book Chasing Cupcakes, Elizabeth shares a fantastic, no b.s. summary of the classic most ineffective vs. most effective approaches to change and here are the top two most transformative among my clients:
DON’T allow “all or nothing” thinking. Letting yourself do everything wrong today because you think you’ll do everything right tomorrow is like trying to get a car out of snow with alternating hard reverses and hard accelerations; it’s just a way to burn all your energy getting even more stuck in the same place. The truth is, we’re rarely able to do as much to change tomorrow as we vowed to, and—even if we did—striving for “perfection” any day often exhausts us, such that we follow up that intense acceleration with multiple days of regressive behavior. DO value consistency over intensity. Ask yourself: how can I make as many good choices today (starting right now) as possible, without pinning all my hopes on perfection? Focusing on doing it all right, leaves no room for failure, and slipping up with a bad choice or two is inevitable! Focus instead on shortening the amount of time between your bad choice and your next good one. Whittling this time down from days to minutes will change everything about your results.
DON’T rely solely on willpower: Everyone needs a little willpower to get through the most uncomfortable early moments of change, but willpower is finite for everyone and it will run out.DO change your mindsets and stories around your habits. If you tell yourself the story that the change you want to make is painful—for example, that drinking less “sucks” and deprives you of fun—you might as well count the days until you give up on that change. Instead, repeatedly tell yourself the full, honest story about the behaviors you want to change: that the bad choices you say are fun or self-soothing are actually painful, bringing with them anxiety, disappointment, and deprivation of your much larger life goals.
When you try to change your behaviors without changing your mindsets around them, you’re asking for trouble. On the other hand, when you can reexamine and shift your stories around what truly brings you pleasure and pain, you stop needing willpower and organically want to make good choices that realize your goals.
It’s my hope that taking on these tried and true lessons learned by others will save you valuable time getting to your next level! Taking action is hard, but to leave you with one last quote from Chasing Cupcakes, “it won’t be as hard as not changing has been.”
All the best and please reach out to me with how these tips are working for you!
xox,Ellen