Getting Past What Holds You Back with Baby Boomer Weight Loss Expert Scott 'Q' Marcus
Two good friends of mine, Jay Forte and Jeff Appelbaum, are celebrating their anniversary together. They wrote a beautiful tribute to love on their Facebook page. I was so touched and inspired by this life-affirming vision of love that I asked their permission to post it, which they granted to me.
In case you’re not familiar with the 80/20 Rule, it states that “Eighty percent of all results will come from 20% of all the effort.” In other words, if you have ever worked on a committee with 10 people, 80% of the work was done by 2 of the people.
Habits are triggered by events, such as we eat (habit) because we’re stressed (event). To change your habits, you need to change how you handle the event. To change how you handle the event, you need to identify your triggers.
The 80/20 rule tells us that we do not need to identify every single triggering event in our lives. If we identify the 20% of triggers that cause us the most trouble, we’ll fix our habit 80% of the time.
If you’re serious about changing your habits… [Read more…]
Paying for groceries, the clerk asks,
“How are you?”Our expected reply, stated without thought:
“Fine, how are you?”Continuing the script she responds, “Great,” and upon finishing the transaction, adds the obligatory, “Have a nice day.”
Should we opt to spill our guts about the problems we’re having with aging, would she request the other shoppers stand elsewhere while she counseled, consoled, and cajoled us? Survey says: Not a chance. The brief exchange near the cash register is a pre-ordained, almost-required, nicety; it’s just “what we do.”
That just scratches the surface; dig deeper and discover how much of our lives are run by autopilot.
Picture a typical weekday; we either arise with the help of an alarm — that pushes us to consciousness at the exact same moment as every other weekday — or we don’t use one at all. Upon rising, patterns control everything from the order of our morning constitutional to the clothes we choose. We are either “breakfast eaters” — or not. It’s not “I am” one day and “I’m not” the next. The average grocery store stocks over 40,000 items; yet even those of us who opt for breakfast choose from fewer than a handful of items every morning, the same selections we had yesterday and will eat tomorrow.
It’s great to make plans; they are necessary to help you get where you want.Do not, however, make the mistake of expecting that simply because you made a plan, it will go as expected. That’s an exercise in futility.
It’s much smarter to assume that your plan will only go perfectly until you start it. After that, as they say, “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.”
When things get tough, keep your head down and your eyes on the prize. (OK, that’s a mixed metaphor which technically would only make sense if your goal was to look at your shoes – but you get the point.)
Note: We recently launched of a seminar series, “Five Things You Must Know To Make Your Life Better.” As part of that series, one of the things we went over were the “10 Commandments of Changing Habits.” This is one of those “commandments.”
Every Monday, a new motivational memo is posted by Scott “Q” Marcus, Motivational Weight Loss Expert for Baby Boomers and Life Balance and Productivity Expert. Subscribers to 21DayHabitChange.com and Scott’s coaching service get this – and many more benefits – sent to them directly. If you’d like to get these delivered to your email box (and get a free motivational book of quotations downloaded to your computer), follow this link.
