Your mindset on your journey toward optimal health is perhaps one of the greatest factors for determining your success. We often see people begin with a focus on what they will lose if they can get healthy. They want to lose weight. They want to lose the negative feelings they have about themselves. And in many ways, they want to leave their old lives behind.
Optimal wellbeing is not about what you lose. Optimal wellbeing is about what you gain.
That can sound trivial at first, but when you put it into practice, an incredible shift in thinking and in the choices you make will take place.
If you are like most of my readers, you have probably tried to lose weight before. You may have found success initially, but as the days passed, you found it harder and harder to continue the diet and exercise plan you were on. Eventually, someone brings cupcakes to work, and the idea of getting the cupcake is suddenly much more powerful than losing another 10 pounds. So, you eat the cupcake and get the immediate reward.
Yes, reaching a healthy weight is often a critical first step for our clients, but the way we approach habits and a healthy mind changes the dynamic. If you are considering pursuing optimal wellbeing or are already on your way, I want you to orient your life around what matters most. When you do this, every healthy choice comes with a reward. You aren’t just losing weight, you are gaining something as well.
For me, I have two missions in my life. I want to create as many memories as possible with my family, and I want to see the world enter a new era of health and medicine, an era driven by the new wave of best practices and thinking that we have seen change the lives of so many clients over the years.
With these ideas firmly fixed in my mind and in my identity, making the healthy choice in any situation is radically different.
A cupcake might taste delicious, but weighed against what I gain by not eating the cupcake—a healthier lifestyle that will help me live longer, which in turn means more time with the people I love—the choice to not eat the cupcake is much easier. I gain so much more on the healthy path, and those rewards are far more meaningful and important to me than a temporary sugar rush.
This is part of the reason why you see the Habits of Health Transformational System go far deeper than what you eat and how much you move. The way we think, the way we see ourselves and the world, shape and influence every decision we make. If you can identify what is truly important in your life and build your life and your choices around those things, you will see much of your life begin to align and organize itself.
For most of the people we work with, family is important. We also see many people use their passion for a social cause to reorient their lives. If they have a heart for working in their church or for working in their community, a healthier lifestyle can enable them to have a greater impact. For some, this can mean a career or job change as they trade-in a long commute for a less stressful job closer to home.
Will you still face challenges on your journey? Of course. But when you have your purpose firmly fixed in your mind, even a stumble becomes an opportunity to be better and to learn how you can unlock more of the rewards that truly matter to you.