Five Ways To Achieve Success

So you want to achieve some goals. You wanna get back into working out and feel better, look better, lose a bit of flab and generally perk up a little. Well, its tough!! I have 5 ways that could help you achieve success.

1) Set a time frame

Possibly the most important of the five is setting a time frame. Perhaps you have an important event coming up. A reasonable time frame is anywhere between 3-6 weeks. I’m talking about a small transformation here – not looking at anything too drastic.

2) Create clear goals

If you do not have clear goals, then you will be floundering around, wondering what to do. An example of a clear goal would be somewhat like this: ‘I want to have to wear a belt with that pair of trousers.’ An unclear goal would be somewhat like this: ‘I want to have a little more definition on my arms’. ‘Little more’ could mean anything – there is a vast scale on which it could be placed so it is not particular enough. Your goals must be particular so that you can efficiently gauge if you have attained them or not.

3) Set achievable goals

As well as being clear, your goals must be attainable. For example, if you have a 3 week time frame and say ‘I want to be able to fit into those trousers’ and currently you can barely get it past your hips, then you have no hope of being able to achieve that goal unless you don’t eat a thing. Your goals must be achievable. However, don’t make them too easy. Perhaps try to make goals that are a step on the road to your ideal. Make them achievable so you avoid setting yourself up for failure.

4) Journal your day

This one really works for me. If you keep a running journal on your day – on what you eat and drink, and what you do for exercise, it forces you to think every day and enables you to look back and analyze. Even better, put it up online so people can read it and comment – can help you change for the better.

5) Stick to your plan

A plan is very important. If you have clear, achievable goals in a reasonable time frame, then you must be consistent with your diet and exercise. If you are not consistent and you do not stick to the plan, then you will not see results. If you give up part way through, you will not see results. If you eat something you ought not to, you will not see results. For example: I decided to give up eating sugar – refined sugar – or anything with refined sugar as an ingredient – and during my three week time, I refused to eat anything with sugar. I did my best to avoid it and unless I unwittingly consumed something containing sugar, I successfully refrained. I stuck to my plan. Three weeks is a short time. If you focus hard and stick to your plan, you will see results.

So, if you do these five things, I can’t actually guarantee that you will see success – because I don’t know what exercise you are doing or what food you are consuming. But if those two components are excellent, then you will see success.

However, there are cases when you may not see success at the end of your time frame. What do you do then? Check back next week as I have reasons to celebrate despite apparent failure.

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But what if I fail?

Have you ever wanted to get rid of extra body fat for good? Do you dream of finally getting those six-pack abs by completely changing your lifestyle so that you’re eating healthier and working out on a consistent basis? If you’re anything like me, you’ve set out to accomplish that feat many times over, and yet have never actually never got to where you want to be.

Let’s say the goal is six-pack abs (it could be bigger biceps, or thinner thighs, the goal is up to you). Many people really want abs but so few have them, why? I’ll put the failures into two groups (there are other failure groups but for now we’ll just look at these two);

• Group 1: For many people the reason is because they just don’t have the knowledge on how to do it. They do their best but no matter how hard they try and how disciplined they are, they still fail. If you’re in this group, keep reading Take Fit!

• Group 2: Others do know essentially how it’s done but are scared that if they try and get abs, and then end up failing – they’ll prove to themselves and others that they don’t have what it takes.

If I had to put myself into one of the above groups it would be the second. It’s embarrassing to fail at something especially if it’s to do with your body.

The safe option is to play it safe, workout a little, eat healthy when you can, but don’t try and aim for anything big. Folks, with that attitude nothing ‘big’ will happen. You might see a little improvement at first, but eventually you’ll get into a rut and things will be as per normal.

Failure is a good thing (if we let it be), and it is certainly nothing to fear

…failure is not the opposite of success, so when you fail, the least you should say is ‘I am not successful’. Just because you have failed does not imply that you are a failure. Failing is necessary to enable you work toward your success. But the problem is we take failure to be a hit against us succeeding. We take an example of Thomas Edison the inventor of the light bulb who couldn’t say he failed 1,000 times but said that “the light bulb was an invention of 1,000 steps”

Here is a man who according to common sense failed 1,000 times, but to him those a thousand attempts were a step in line of success. Remember success is not a destination that we want to reach, for we can never get there. Success is a journey and on this journey there are stops of failure and perseverance. Both are on the same road, more like on a continuum.

Source: http://www.takingitglobal.org/express/panorama/article.html?ContentID=19807

Translate this to the fitness sphere, if you fail one time, you simply take a step back and find out what you’ve done right, what you’ve done wrong and then try again. Learn from your mistakes and you’ll get closer and closer to your goal with each time you fail.

There’s no shame in failure unless you don’t try again

It’s time for me to move out of group 2 and into a new group, ‘those who try and keep on trying until they succeed. Very cheesy I know, but it’s the best way to explain it. Over the next 3 months I will be documenting what I eat and how much I exercise online. I’m going to start my journey towards six pack abs (progress pictures and all). If I fail, I fail – so what. I’ll learn from my mistakes and try again. If I succeed, great! I’ll formulate some new fitness goals and attempt to reach them.

NOTE: Look out for daily Twitter updates which will outline what I’m eating and what exercises I’m doing!

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How To Guarantee Your Fitness Success Using The Snowball Effect

What is the Snowball Effect?

This is another technique I borrowed from personal finance (like the Ten Second Rule). If you visit Dave Ramsey’s website you can read about his effective snowball plan to become debt free. Basically instead of trying chip away at all of your debts, you pay only minimum payments and take your smallest debt and devote all of your income to paying that off. Once this has been paid off you no longer have to pay one minimum payment so you can take that little bit extra and use it to attack your second smallest debt. By the time you have reached your largest debt you have a lot more firepower.

Snowball your fitness progress

How does this help with fitness you ask? Well, chances are, there will be a whole raft of things in your life right now that are stopping you from reaching your goals (be it toned legs, six pack, bigger biceps or whatever). What many people will try to do is completely change their lives around and try and fix everything in one hurdle. Unfortunately I have yet to meet someone who has been able to successfully accomplish that on their first try.

You see it just takes so long to see any results that we end up stumbling after a week or too and before we know it we are no better than before we started. By utilizing the Snowball Effect we can achieve moral victories each week which collectively over an extended period of time will add up to the ultimate victory.

The Snowball Effect In Practice

Stop and think for a moment of what would kind of lifestyle you would need to have to achieve your fitness goals. Start eating certain types of foods, stop eating others (you know the ones!), start walking to work, use the stairs instead of the lift, going to the gym 3 times a week and so on. Now instead of doing all these things the first week, just chose one of them. Concentrate on achieving that one goal for the first week, then once you can tick that goal on your list, move on to another goal for the second week. By the end of your first month you will be doing four new things that will all be working towards your fitness goal.

Obviously some things will be a lot harder than others. For instance if one of your goals is to run 40 minutes every day you would be best to start off with running 3 times a week for 15-20 minutes and work up from there. The important thing is to be achieving small successes which will eventually lead to one big success of a body you can be proud of.

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