8. Stick With Your TIME Schedule

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8. Stick With Your TIME Schedule

1. Choose a change that is easy to accomplish in 30 days. Remember, none of these habits that have been draining your health-wealth portfolio happened overnight. You tried them, even liked them, and you have a history of repeating the action. You now must learn a new action, and new actions can be scary. So, choose one that provides the most chance for success, and one that provides the least chance for you to say, “This is too hard to do.”
2. By the same token, don't make the change too easy. An example would be: I will lose 2 pounds this month. A two-pound change can happen in 2 days…not a life-changing process. This target will not really give you the feeling of accomplishment or the motivation to know that you have made a real change. After all, your target should be achievable but challenging.
3. “Want” and “Try” are negative words. Each of these words implies that there is an acceptable level of failure. “Want” says that there are forces beyond your control that may rob you of success; “try” says that, no matter how we work, we can still lose. Neither is true. Look at this another way: every day there are forces beyond your control that could get in your way: a car goes through a red light and slows you down; or you crash; or the new project causes you to stay late at work, and you can't get to the gym. These are simply situations to be overcome, not reasons to quit or fail. You've been overcoming situations all of your life (that's how you got up every time you fell down, and eventually you learned to walk). Drop the “want” and the “try” and use “will.”
4. Create a win. When you are first beginning a new or improved health action, set yourself up to succeed. Again, an example: when learning to run a race, you didn't start at a marathon. You started with what some call “mail box training”: run from one mailbox to the next, walk for 3 boxes, run the next one, etc. When that was easy, you ran 2 mailboxes, then one block, then 3 blocks…until you ran a mile. THEN you tried 1.5 miles, then 2 miles, until you worked your way up. Each milestone gave you confidence to move on and you developed the determination to NOT QUIT. So, create achievable challenges, not losing propositions.

   

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