Is Your Future Self Calling You?
Did you make a New Year’s Resolution to lose weight?
I hope you’re not a statistic, but research shows that in two months all of those resolutions will be forgotten. I’ve made about 70 New Year’s Resolutions. Most of them were forgotten in two months.
Weight loss is one of the best resolutions we can make. We feel better about ourselves, have more energy, and go through the day with a clear head. Best of all, we live longer.
Losing weight requires more than a New Year’s Resolution though. It requires a compelling vision of our future self that we can imagine with all of our senses and experience how it feels in our imagination.
You need to love your future self more than you love your current self. You need to want your future self more than your current self. You need to love your future self more than cookies, ice cream, pizza, fast food, alcohol, and all of the other things that take your focus off of your future self.
Weight loss begins in your head.
Once you know where you are and where you want to go, you’ve set up a tension between the vision and the reality.
We call this Creative Tension. It’s the same tension that an artist feels while creating their work. They know where they are, and they know where they’re going. They’re comfortable in this space. We can understand how this tension works by imagining a rubber band stretched between our hands.
Our upper hand represents our vision. Our lower hand represents our current reality. There is tension pulling in both directions. Our vision is pulling our reality up, and our reality is pulling our vision down. Which one wins? The strongest one! If our vision is stronger than our current reality, it will be a powerful force pulling us forward toward the life we want to create. If our current reality is stronger, we remain stuck forever, dreaming about a better future but unable to take meaningful action. We live a default life.
The universe will give us whatever we ask of it. Most of us don’t ask nearly enough.
Once you set up that creative tension, you’re constantly reminded that there’s more out there for you. Our challenge is holding the tension and living comfortably in that space between where we are and where we’re going. Tension always wants to resolve itself. Your creative tension will always be working to resolve itself. Too many people resolve that tension by lowering or giving up their vision in exchange for what Thoreau called a “life of quiet desperation.”
Are you running away from something or running toward something?
If your New Year’s Resolution is, “I need to lose weight” or “I’m going to lose weight,” you’re running away from something. Run toward your future self instead of away from your current self.
Aversion is a powerful motivator. Many people who lived through the depression amassed great fortunes because they vowed to never find themselves in poverty again. However, aspiration can be a more powerful motivator. Let me tell you why.
We get what we think about, whether we want it or not.
Think about THAT for a moment. You may recognize that as the core idea from the Law of Attraction. If you have no aspirations, all you have is your current reality. That’s all you can think about. If you don’t like your current reality, and that’s all you think about, you’re reinforcing your “stuckness” in a situation that you don’t really like. You can’t change something by hating it.
We have to maintain the delicate balance of being grateful for what we have and where we are while still moving towards something better.
Take the time to create a compelling vision of the person you want to be. See it, touch it, and most of all feel it emotionally. Want it more than you want anything else. Then, get obsessed with it. Think about it all the time. See it calling you. Hear it calling you. You’ll be surprised how much easier it will be to lose that weight.
#weightlosschallenge