5 Easy Steps to Perfection

By , SparkPeople Blogger

Five easy steps to perfection. if I could really do that and teach you how to do that, then we would live in a perfect world wouldn’t we?  If perfection is rarely if ever attainable, why do we berate ourselves so much when we make a “mistake” in our healthy lifestyle journey?
As we rush toward the end of the year and start thinking about our goals for 2012, I’d like to talk to you about reframing your expectations so that you are liberated to make it the best year ever.  Let’s consider some of the world’s top athletes for a moment, and how they think in order to be successful.

I read and interesting article in preparation for this blog.  The author talked about winning tennis players and their mental attitude to focus on striving for success or avoiding failure.  The players who retrain their brain to focus on success are in the end more successful than the players who focus on avoiding failure. They aren’t thinking about the point they just lost, but focus on the play that they are in at the moment and how they can win that one. Their focus is on executing the steps for the one point they are involved with.

I had the good fortune of attending one of the Texas Rangers winning games that helped qualify them for the World Series this year.  One of the star players in the series playoffs for the Rangers was their catcher, Mike Napoli.  If you check his batting average you’ll see that it is .328.  What that means is for every 10 times he goes to bat he is going to be out at least six of them. If you consider getting on base success, then he is going to fail over half of the time.  Now if we were equating that to how we think about our eating, would we give up after we struck out at one meal, or missed one workout?  Do you think that he would be a great player if he stopped playing in any game where he struck out?  His attitude is obviously to get back in there and try, try again.  He has to focus on that one pitch that is barreling at him at over 90 mph.  In that moment, he can’t think about that earlier out, or anything else.  His complete and total focus has to be on executing this one swing.

My point in all of this is that we too have to quit trying to avoid.  Quit focusing on the failures.  Quit dragging the weight of past failures into our day.  One of the things that continues to help me maintain my weight loss is to realize that there will be no year going forward where I can be perfect every day, every meal, every workout, every everything.  Making mistakes happens.  It is how I deal with them that will impact my success in my journey.  I need to learn from them, grow from them, and move on from them.  Criticizing myself, focusing on the failure, or listening to others criticize me won’t help anything. 

Remember – a goal without a plan is just a wish.  Set your goal, work your plan, and celebrate each success along the way.  It makes the journey so much more fun.

So do you focus on not failing, or on being successful?  Are you setting up SMART goals for 2012 and allowing yourself space to learn, grow, and move on from mistakes?  Can you share one of your big goals for 2012?  Will you work on retraining your thoughts to focus on the next success?