host posted on January 10, 2008 12:30
Article by Kyle Drew
While I love the “clean slate” of a new year, I’ve grown weary of “New Year’s Resolutions." The word “resolution” should almost be re-defined to mean, “Something you decide to do at the beginning of each year that you never actually do.”
I think that people set New Year’s resolutions the way they sometimes go through a cafeteria line. They see so many things they’d like to have that their eyes become larger than their abilities to pull it off!
This year, let’s all try doing it differently.
Let’s start with Doug’s Phase 1 Diet. Have you ever tried following his diet, and then stop completely when you cheat? We all have! But instead of beating yourself up this year over the breadstick you had at an office luncheon, forget about it and stick to the diet for the rest of the day. In other words, instead of resolving never to cheat on the diet this year (unrealistic), resolve to press on whenever you find that you’ve messed up (realistic).
Obviously, this isn’t a license to go out and eat cake every day. But it is a way to stay consistent. I’ve found that consistency is more important than perfection. Perfection doesn’t last, after all, but consistency does!
I was visiting with a bodybuilder - Mr. Arkansas - over the holiday season last year, and I asked him if it’s more important to train “perfectly” for six months or “imperfectly” for a year. He knew exactly what I was asking him, and his eyes lit up when he said, “Kyle, I love it when I compete against guys who are perfectionists because I know I can beat them. They stress out if they sneak in a piece of chocolate or something, and their minds stay focused on their failures. I just keep doing what I’ve always done, only focusing on what’s ahead of me, and I don’t beat myself up when I mess up. So, the answer is that it’s better to train ‘imperfectly’ for the long haul than ‘perfectly’ for the short term.”
Every elite athlete I’ve ever met has this attitude. I read that Tiger Woods watches all of his golf tournaments over and over again. But he actually has someone edit out all of his bad shots so that he only sees the good shots he made. His coaches watch the bad shots and works with him on improving, but Tiger himself only focuses on what he did right – over and over and over again.
How about your supplements? As someone who loves supplements, I just don’t have a problem remembering to take them every day. To me, it’s the easiest of all health strategies because it involves nothing more than…. swallowing! Yet SO many people tell me that they or their spouse's biggest challenge is simply remembering to take their supplements.
You may have heard me talk about my mom on Know the Cause. She had a stroke a few years ago and had the clear signs of something all of her sisters developed – Alzheimer’s disease. When this happened, I took over her diet and supplement regimen. For her supplements, my wife and I spent every Sunday night filling my mom’s supplements into little packets. She had breakfast, lunch, and dinner packets. All she had to do is take them with her meals. It was so easy, and this 80+-year-old woman with the first signs of a memory disorder almost never missed a single packet.
Here’s the point: Stack the deck in your favor this year. Plan to succeed, but when you fail, press on. Don’t strive for perfection, strive for consistency. And plan your strategies in such a way that “forgetting” or “neglecting” just will not happen.
If you’ve ever made a resolution, but didn’t stick with it, hopefully these simple tips can help you stay on track. Don’t keep doing the things you did when you failed. (Hmmmm, I seem to remember that someone I know, a hero of mine, said something once…..”If you always do what you’ve always done…” You know the rest. This year, let’s act on it!)