MYST 193 Sharp Spikes

Winning a race and setting a record does not happen by accident. Without the proper preparation, planning and the ability to choose the environment–and reject unhealthy environments–success will not happen. And even then, usually success only occurs after at least one failure.

Roger Bannister set a new record in the one-mile race on May 6, 1954, but only because he failed two years earlier and then he used what he learned to get better.

Racing spike photo via Wikimedia. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

Woman stretching is via Pixabay by Skeeze.

My food log from September 30, 2018

All images from LoseIt are mine, and cannot be used without permission.

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Music composed and performed by Jason Shaw, courtesy of Audionautix.com

Voiceover courtesy of Matt Young. Matt is a professional voiceover artist. If you have any need of voice-over work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. Follow his Facebook page to learn how to better use social media. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a listen.

MYST 172: Someday Might Start Tomorrow

“Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. It comes to us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.”
John Wayne

I know the name of the show suggests that “someday” never comes, and “tomorrow” is not a real day. And yesterday already happened–it cannot be changed. This show is about today.

But, as with almost everything in weight loss and in life, nothing is absolute.

Yesterday plays an important role, as does tomorrow. Let’s talk about yesterday first. Here is an important idea: If your yesterday was excellent and you made progress, you have learned a lesson. You know what works for you. Now you need to repeat it. Maybe not copy your food exactly. You don’t need to eat precisely the same foods, but simply repeat the concept of the meals. But maybe you will want to eat exactly the same food. If it tasted good, and you enjoyed it, and it brought you more success–well the saying goes, “don’t fix what’s not broken.”

However, maybe yesterday threw you a curve ball and you struck out. The scale showed a minor weight gain. But you know that in weight loss, even minor gains can lead to big problems. So use that gain as an indicator that you were given a learning lesson.

 

Photo via Pixabay, by GreekFood-Tamystika

Go back and evaluate your actions. If you look–and you probably won’t need to look hard–you’ll see where you went off-track. Unless yesterday was your first day on your weight loss journey, the “wrong choice” will stand out like a cherry on top of a bowl of vanilla ice cream.

What changes do you need to make? Ah, now that is where I can’t give you exact advice because it all depends on the “wrong choice” that you found. It could be:

  • you simply need to get back to basics.
  • you need to make a total change of plans.
  • you need increase your exercise program
  • you must stop eating your trigger foods
  • you should purge your food kryptonite from your home and office.

I don’t know what you need to do. That is very specific to you, but for every “wrong choice” there is a “new option”.

And more than a “new option” there is also a “new day”. Tomorrow. See, when we have a bad day–bad month?–we always keep one option available. We can make changes tomorrow. A bad day yesterday–or today–may help us have a better day tomorrow. Tomorrow is that new slate. Tomorrow is a field of snow unmarked by any human footprints. Tomorrow allows us to change ourselves into what we see ourselves to be.

So, look at yesterday as a test, and if your score was not a passing grade, use tomorrow to make necessary changes.

The tests in life never end, but also we never stop having the ability to make new choices. And that is where we will find our lasting success.

Next week, I will talk about what has been happening to me, my self-evaluation of my actions, and the changes that I put in place to break my slump. Yes. I was in a slump.

If you are in a slump, come back next week.

Picture via Pixabay, by

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Music composed and performed by Jason Shaw, courtesy of Audionautix.com

Voiceover courtesy of Matt Young. Matt is a professional voiceover artist. If you have any need of voice-over work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. Follow his Facebook page to learn how to better use social media. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a listen!

All images are Creative Common Zero.

MYST 149: Failure

Is it possible to be working toward success and yet failing at the same time? Not only is it possible, you might be doing it right now.

It’s all about the choices you make.

Are your choices trapping you and setting you up to fail?
Are your choices trapping you and setting you up to fail?

Photo via Pixabay by StevePB

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Music composed and performed by Jason Shaw, courtesy of Audionautix.com

Voiceover courtesy of Matt Young. Matt is a professional voiceover artist. If you have any need of voice-over

work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. Follow his Facebook page to learn how to better use social media. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a listen!

All images are Creative Commons Zero.

MYST 134: Resolutions

Do you have a New Year's Resolution?
Do you have a New Year’s Resolution?

Photo via Pixabay by Covi.

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Music composed and performed by Jason Shaw, courtesy of Audionautix.com

Voiceover courtesy of Matt Young. Matt is a professional voiceover artist. If you have any need of voice-over work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. And you can read his really nice, contemplative blog. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a listen!

All images are Creative Commons Zero

MYST 120: Preventing Your Success

Do you have something in your menu that is preventing you from finding success?

Do you use this?
Do you use this?
Is this part of the problem?
Is this part of the problem?

Photos via Pixabay.com by 422737 (sugar) and StevePB (Coca Cola)

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Music composed and performed by Jason Shaw, courtesy of Audionautix.com

Voiceover courtesy of Matt Young. Matt is a professional voiceover artist. If you have any need of voice-over work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. And you can read his really nice, contemplative blog. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a listen.

MYST 107: Triggers

What causes you to make poor choices–or no choices at all? We all have our individual triggers. Knowing yours may be the difference between success and failure. Between weight loss and weight gain.

What triggers your diet disasters/
What triggers your diet disasters?

Photos via Pixabay.com by Brett Hondow.

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Music composed and performed by Jason Shaw, courtesy of Audionautix.com

Voiceover courtesy of Matt Young. Matt is a professional voiceover artist. If you have any need of voice-over work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. And you can read his really nice, contemplative blog. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a listen!

All photos published on Pixabay.com are licensed under Creative Commons Zero

MYST 102: Anxiety and Weight Loss

We all have anxiety, and it can be debilitating. But when you are trying to lose weight, anxiety will actually slow your ability to lose. Wrose than that, it could actually make you gain weight.

Why? Anxiety causes biological responses within your body. Those responses are automatic and uncontrollable. But, I will give you one action that you can take to reverse those same biological responses. It costs nothing. It takes only 1-2 minutes.

Listen and give it a try!

Where is your place of peace and calm?
Where is your place of peace and calm?

Photo via StockSnap.io, by Leeroy.

Articles that I used for this episode:

Block, J. P., He, Y., Zaslavsky, A. M., Ding, L., & Ayanian, J. Z. (2009). Psychosocial Stress and Change in Weight Among US Adults. American Journal of Epidemiology, 170(2), 181–192. http://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwp104

DeWit, L.M., VanStraten, A., Lamers, F., Cuijpers, P., Pennix, P.W. (2015, June 30.) Depressive and anxiety disorders: Associated with losing or gaining weight over 2 years? Psychiatry Research. 227(2-3):230-7. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2015.02.025. Epub 2015 Mar 31

Kalish, N. (2014, June 4). Seven Ways to Beat Stress Fat. Prevention.

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Music composed and performed by Jason Shaw, courtesy of Audionautix.com

Voiceover courtesy of Matt Young. Matt is a professional voiceover artist. If you have any need of voice-over work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. And you can read his really nice, contemplative blog. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a listen!

All photos published on StockSnap.io are licensed under Creative Commons Zero

MYST 97: Wrong Tools, Wrong Results

If you need to hang a picture on a wall, you need to first place a nail in the wall. You can use a frying pan (I know that it has been done) but a hammer will give you better results. Likewise, if you need to tighten a screw, you can use a butter knife or a screwdriver. Both will turn the screw, but one will be more efficient.

There are many ways to accomplish most goals. Not every method will be as effective as others. And sometimes you choose a tool–or method–that should work, but when you use it, you do not achieve the success you expect.

The failure might not be yours. It may be that the tool you chose was the wrong tool.

The Right Tool for the Right Result
The Right Tool for the Right Result

Photo via Unsplash.com, by Gregory Bourolias.

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Music composed and performed by Jason Shaw, courtesy of Audionautix.com

Voiceover courtesy of Matt Young. Matt is a professional voiceover artist. If you have any need of voice-over work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. And you can read his really nice, contemplative blog. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a listen!

All photos published on Unsplash.com are licensed under Creative Commons Zero

MYST 87: What Did I Do Wrong?

Why are some people successful, and they remain so, while others reach their goals, only to slide back into defeat?

Is it avoidable?

This show will talk about what I did wrong in my weight loss journey. This story will be a familiar one for anyone who has had some measure of weight loss success, because it is very common.

Failure is not permanent. But neither is success. Success is a journey that requires constant attention.

You need to keep your hand on the rudder and the sails set properly!
You need to keep your hand on the rudder and the sails set properly!

Photo via Unsplash.com, by Patrick Fore.

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Music composed and performed by Jason Shaw, courtesy of Audionautix.com

Voiceover courtesy of Matt Young. Matt is a professional voiceover artist. If you have any need of voice-over work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. And you can read his really nice, contemplative blog. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a listen!

All photos published on Unsplash are licensed under Creative Commons Zero

MYST 82 Trevitorial: How to Fail Faster and Easier

Six Essential Techniques to Guarantee Failure at Anything You Attempt!

Success? Sure, we all want success. Or at least we think we do. But so many people seem afraid of success that they self-sabotage their plans, which inevitably brings about the failure that so consumed their lives with worry.

If you are going to worry about failing, and think only how bad it will feel to not achieve your goals, I guess we need to make sure that you are able to achieve your absolute and abject failure as quickly and painlessly as possible. That way you will have more time to worry about your next doomed plan.

I’ll steal from David Letterman, counting backward from the least likely to bring catastrophic failure to the one that is sure to end your plans, but unlike Mr. Letterman, I was able to refine my list to the top six essential techniques.

Number 6 Set a Goal which is Too Aggressive or Based on Fantasy

People who embark on a weight loss journey often want to reach their goal as fast as possible, so they vow to eat only 500 calories a day until they lose their 150 pounds. Or they announce “I will only eat foods that begin with the letter X Y or Z.” Or “I will only eat food that is orange.” That will not work. Trying to lose that aggressively will give you rapid losses—for a few days—and then your feelings of starvation will creep up and urge you to “have just one piece of bread” and soon all your previously controlled dietary needs will crash upon you and you will regain everything that you lost, and then a few more pounds. And you will say to yourself: “See? I know it wouldn’t work.”

Maybe you have a physical goal: I will walk the Appalachian Trail, but I will be the first person to walk the entire 2160 miles backwards so that I can become famous! You’ll be famous. In your own mind, because before you get to the first camp shelter you will have fallen, hit your head on a rock and hopefully knocked some sense into you.  Or your Appalachian Trail goal could be a little more realistic: Hike the entire length but setting a new speed record (hiking it in less than 46 ½ days. Is that doable? Maybe. But I’ll explain more in…

Number 5 Skip the Legwork

So you want to hike the AT fast? If you don’t practice, hiking in all conditions, in all terrains, and have huge mental, physical and emotional stamina, you won’t succeed. You will burn out and fail. And you will realize that everyone who said “It can’t be done” was right all along.

Legwork is all the preparation needed for any endeavor. If you want to start a podcast, you should listen to many different shows for examples of what works and what doesn’t. Then find someone to help you learn the secrets. (Meron Bareket was my teacher with his Podcast Starter Kit.) Can you do it on whim, and completely alone. Yes, certainly. And iTunes has hundreds or thousands of shows where the creator made a couple shows and then quit. They worked themselves into failure.

If you want to lose weight, you actually need literal leg work—get off your butt and move! You can count all the calories you want, and eat all the gluten-free, GMO-free, fat-free food you want, but if you are not burning more calories than you eat—because you are moving more than you used to move—you will do nothing but fail at weight loss.

If your goal is to become CEO of your company and you currently work in the mail room, you need a plan on how to move up. It won’t just happen because you carry the mail to someone in a corner office. You can read all the self-help books you can find, you can combine The Secret with Think and Grow Rich and How to Win Friends and Influence People, but if you don’t actually implement any of those strategies, you might as well have simply continued to read your Spiderman comic books. (Maybe a magic spider will bite you and transform you!)

No, without a plan followed by action, you will certainly succeed in finding fast failure. This is very similar to…

Number 4 No Skin in the Game

Part of planning and preparing usually requires a buy-in. A commitment. You may need to take some classes to learn needed skills, which is a commitment of time and effort. And you still have no guarantee of succeeding even if you graduate at the top of your class!

If you want to create podcast, you will need some basic tools and while some are free, some have one time or recurring fees. A website host may want payment for twelve or more months up front. And you still need to build a website. Can you do that on your own? Maybe, if you have the skill to create a good website. But you may need to hire someone to do it for you.

Maybe your goal is to fund your retirement by winning the lottery. You need to buy the ticket first, and you know that almost certainly, you will not win. That money will be gone. Forever.

But you need to have emotional skin in the game, too. You need to be mentally ready for the project, and be prepared for the inevitable assault of negative thinking from friends, relatives, coworkers and yourself. When you make a commitment, you need to tell people about it so that you have some external accountability. And that can be risky and intimidating. I mean, what if you fail? Then that person, or those people, will know that you failed. That will crush you, right?

But you know the old saying “No pain, no gain?” It’s true. Having skin in the game increases your chances of success, but also shows you exactly how much you have to lose when that failure happens.  And when will that failure happen?

Number 3 Never Set a Deadline

This is a really powerful idea. You should give it a try.

Create a goal. Make some plans. But very carefully never commit yourself to a deadline. See, when you do that, you avoid absolute and definitive failure because you can always tell your accountability partners that you are “working on it.” And as long as you are still working on it, there is still a chance—however slim—that you will finish as planned.

Deadlines increase the pressure for you. That pressure can be destructive. We are all trying to have a less complicated life, trying to reduce our stress. Why purposely add self-imposed stress in the form of an artificial deadline? It seems to be counter-productive because we all know that focus and creativity stem from an inner calm, right?

And besides, if the project is based on your idea and goals, it should not matter if you reach your goal in a week or a year or a decade. It is all under your control. When you reach the finish line should not matter. Finishing is more important than meeting an artificial deadline, so why worry about it? It will happen when it happens.

Of course, the much greater likelihood is that without the stress that is induced by a deadline, you will stop working on your project and will never achieve the desired outcome. But that’s okay, with this technique you can still have a crushing defeat and still save face. You are “working on it.” But you could also…

Number 2 Let Someone Else Define Your Success

This is when you let someone—anyone—tell you what success looks like. Maybe you let magazines tell you what success should look like. You compare your body shape to that of the models in those magazines on sale at the grocery store checkouts (because we all know those photos are never photoshopped.) See? Now you know exactly how you must look to be successful in weight loss. Or you can go to your local gym and compare your outrageously absent washboard abs with that guy working on those free weights. You know, that guy who looks like he could bench press your car? Yes. He is showing you what you need to do to be successful.

When you sign up for a marathon, you can research to find the record times posted in the past. You can see who is running in the elite pack. You know that they will set the definition of success. And not only set it, but set it with an objective measurement: time!

If you are starting a blog or podcast, site visits and downloads are the measurement of success. Make sure you know who the leaders in your niche are, and how many people are on their email list and of course, make sure you know their monthly income. Those are objective data points that will help you know when you are successful, because if they can do it, everyone can, right?

When you let other people define your success, you are making it easy to move down the path to failure. So grab those magazines! Look at those models! And get working (but don’t set a deadline).

Or you could…

Number 1 Don’t Even Start

This is by far the easiest technique to guarantee not reaching your life’s goals, and making your dreams into your reality. It is the easiest and most efficient step to take to making your life so much simpler.

Just ignore your dreams. Live the life you have. It is easier. Safer. You will not lose anything. There is no risk. You will not lose face in front of family and friends. You will not miss any deadlines.

If you do not try, you cannot lose! It is the perfect “no lose” situation, and if you really want to make your life simpler and less stressful, just keep everything the way it is. Make “Living the Status Quo Life” your life’s motto.

You can achieve total failure before you even start. Now THAT is being efficient!

There we have it. My six essential techniques that you can immediately use, in every part of your life, to help you maximize the speed of your failure, thus giving you more time to try something else.

 

Of course, if you want to avoid failure, simply do the opposite!

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Some links (but not all) within these show notes may be Affiliate Links, meaning that I may receive a small commission when readers click on them and then purchase something. This does not increase your cost at all, but it does help me cover some of the cost associated with this podcast. Thanks!

Music composed and performed by Jason Shaw, courtesy of Audionautix.com

Voiceover courtesy of Matt Young. Matt is a professional voiceover artist. If you have any need of voiceover work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. And you can read his really nice, contemplative blog. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a listen!