The New Year Cliché!

The power of the mind

For this, I would like to use two women I have encountered in my life as examples of the power of the mind. When each met me, they were smokers. I am a non-smoker. The first of these two women never smoked around me. I only found out she smoked by accident. Immediately she quit cold turkey on her own. The second claimed to be an occasional smoker, but the car ashtray suggested different. This woman quit slowly over a period of months. During both of these relationships neither one picked up another cigarette for years. When the relationships ended both immediately went back to smoking. Neither were pressured or asked to quit smoking, but both did on their own. Though, each used a different method to stop, both went back to smoking in a flash. They also shared a bond in that each one had a health condition where doctors had warned them both to quit. The fact that they did quit, shows the power of mind a person can possess. The fact they resumed smoking shows the lack of faith they possess in themselves even in the face of serious medical consequences.

The broken promises of New Year’s resolutions begin with a lack of faith.

Consider the sports analogy of the concept of a winning mindset:

The good ones always give their best.
The great ones always find a way to do better.

What it says is there are players that give their all in every competition. They are usually defined by having left it all on the field of play whether they win or lose. These players live for that satisfaction game in and game out. The great ones take pride in their game performances, but know they will find a way to improve on it next time, win or lose. Each type of player has a different mindset and level of faith within themselves. The broken promises of New Year’s resolutions result from a loss of faith and a resignation to already having done the best they could at the first sign of a slip.

Success takes different strokes for different folks.

I once worked with a man that had the weirdest approach to reaching in his goal of losing fifty pounds. I was down the hall from the break room when I heard someone call out, “Put the damn cookie down. You’ve got pride, boy.” I walked in looked around the room, but only saw my co-worker, “Joe.” He explained this was his attempt at sticking to his diet. As he left the room, he mumbled while smiling ear to ear, “Damn I did good. I’m gonna do better.” Joe exceeded his fifty-pound goal over a course of the year.

All through the course of that year, we would talk from time to time about his diet. Joe as a kid was a competitor in four sports, track, football, basketball, and baseball. As a sophomore and junior, he competed at the varsity level as a starter in each one. His dad died the summer before his senior year. Joe gave up sports to work two part time jobs to help his mom support the family. He ate fast foods on the run all the time. Joe joked he went from running a 440 event at the track to a 440 at the dinner table to go from one job to another. The birth of his son opened his eyes to his weight problem. His method of dieting came from his boyhood passion of training. Joe trained with the use of his own version of positive self-talk to put himself in the zone. Now, his game was living to see his son graduated college. For the record, Joe lost more that the fifty pounds and plays in a softball league with his two grown sons. I think he won the game.

Failure leads to Success.

Did Joe eat any cookies along the way? Plenty and he will tell you they tasted great. Joe had his slips, but he had his attitude, too. The key for Joe was not to punish himself for the times he slipped. Instead, he looked at how he would do better the next time. The same attitude he used to reach the varsity level in four sports as a sophomore in high school. I asked him how he handled when he ate those errant cookies along the way. Joe explained it was hard because cookies were his worst weakness. Because he did not punish himself, but stayed with the positive, he stayed in the game. Each slip was one cookie less. Again, his result was over fifty pounds of weight loss in a year.

Can you and I do that?

If you don’t have to ask, you can. Work your plan and make it interesting. Failure is not an option it is a lesson. Break your tasks in to smaller chunks and mount the small victories on the march to your large ones. If you do have to ask, find a positive support group. Stay away from skeptics. Create a mindset by asking yourself, am I giving my best, or as good as I am doing can I do it better?