Mindset, The Foundation to Excellence
Mindset, The Foundation to Excellence
Mindset is the foundation for achieving personal excellence. Our mindset sets the intention behind every action we take.
Last week I shared my Personal Formula for excellence, Mindset + Emotional Work x Discipline = Success.
This week I am going to deep dive into how shifting my mindset has been the foundation of not only my weight loss success but success in my overall healing journey.
Shifting my mindset involved six powerful actions.
Action #1 - Create a Strong Foundation - Find Your Why
If a building is built upon a faulty foundation it will crumble and fall. Much like a building if we do not create a solid foundation to hold our vision, our efforts with health and fitness will crumble and fall as well.
For much of my life, I built my weight loss efforts on a faulty foundation.
My underlying motivation for weight loss was all about achieving an outcome so that I could get acceptance and avoid rejection. My thinking process was if I lose weight I will be happy.
The intention behind my actions was not tied to a bigger why that was in alignment with my values. It did not light me up inside. In reality, it actually created fear, anxiety, and resentment.
Each time I would take on health and fitness goals they would be centered solely on behavior modification. I attempted to use willpower alone to push myself toward my goals.
The problem with this approach is that we all have a limited supply of willpower. It just can’t last in the long haul.
I was missing one critical ingredient to successful self-change, INSIGHT!
Before I could move forward with weight loss I had to reflect internally and connect to my bigger why.
The previous years of my healing work had shined a light on my why. I began to reflect on what actually moved me:
Creating a sense of harmony and peace within me.
Cultivating self-love through healthy actions.
Being able to do the activities I love like running, biking and hiking.
Being there for my spouse and kids long into their lives; Not putting them through the pain of losing a parent at 25.
As I connected to my why I began to feel the internal resistance towards my health and fitness efforts drop.
Action #2 - Intention - Set Goals and Take Actions that are Alignment With Your Values
Once I aligned the foundation of my fitness efforts to my why I was able to set goals and choose actions from a place of clarity.
The intention behind my actions and the goals I was choosing started to come into alignment with my values.
I view each day as an experiment that informs my next steps, I do not seek perfection, only what works.
I look for gratitude in my health and fitness triumphs and challenges alike.
I maintain separation from my ego and my story through daily embodiment practices of breathwork and meditation.
I push myself to my edge with physical activity every day, no further. I let the fire within come forward and manifest in my physical fitness.
I follow my fasting protocol and only eat within my allotted eating windows. I bring awareness to the emotions and thoughts that come up along the way.
I am compassionate with myself when I slip and fall. I listen to the inner child within. I provide him reassurance and a structure to come back to.
This shifted the energy behind those actions and goals from something negative - fix what’s wrong with me - To something positive, providing deeper meaning and fulfillment.
When the intention behind our actions is focused on achieving an agenda it is not sustainable, it depletes our energy. This is because we are seeking a feeling that we hope to get at some point in the future “someday”. As a result, we are left feeling empty right now in the current moment.
When the intention behind our actions provides meaning and is connected to our values and purpose it becomes sustainable because it creates a feedback loop that reenergizes us. We are continuously cultivating feelings that are in alignment with our why right now in the current moment. As a result, we are left feeling fulfilled.
Action #3 - Shift from Making Decisions to Choices
Is there a difference between a decision and a choice? After all, either way, you make a selection from a subset of options and then move forward.
I’ve come to realize on my healing journey that the difference between making a decision and a choice comes down to how I’m left feeling afterward. It’s all about intention.
Here is the definition I use:
DECISION: A selection made after making various logical considerations.
CHOICE: A selection made after making various logical considerations, exploring them, setting them aside, and then connecting to what feels right.
In other words, a decision comes after using your mind to logically analyze something and pick what you think will work best to attain an outcome or result.
A choice involves looking at all the options, examining and exploring them, then setting them aside and doing what feels in alignment with your truth…
A decision involves eliminating and narrowing options and picking what best serves the desired outcome; It involves an agenda.
A choice is all about what feels right and comes from a place of creation and possibility; It results in freedom.
When you make decisions you experience the “Have-To’s”.
Ie: I have to go to the gym today.
When you make choices you experience the “Get-To’s”.
Ie: I get to go to the gym today.
My experience has shown me that the get-to’s take me a lot further than the have-to’s.
When I shifted to making health and fitness choices instead of decisions the internal resistance to my actions dropped. I actually started to enjoy the process.
I experienced a sense of internal freedom.
Action #4 - Cultivate Rituals not Routines
Just like choices and decisions, rituals and routines are all about intentions.
Routines are something you do to accomplish an agenda, like making your bed every day so that your room is clean. Routines are a means to an end, the only meaning behind them is the agenda itself.
Rituals are similar to routines with a big exception. They are something you do to cultivate a feeling. Rituals are less about the outcome and more about the meaning you put into them.
For example, every night before bed I write myself a love note to remind myself that “I’ve got this and I love myself” so that if I were to wake up in the middle of the night and be tempted to midnight snack I will be reminded of my bigger why.
Nine times out of ten I never have to look at my love note in the middle of the night. That’s because the action of writing the note has already accomplished the meaning I’ve put behind it, it has cultivated self-love.
Action #5 - Acceptance of The Current Moment
If your intention is going to be in alignment with your values and bigger why you have to be willing to take one critical action - accept what is true right now in the current moment.
For example, before I made the shift to accepting where I was at I was rejecting that I weighed 316 pounds. In other words in my mind, I was saying there is something wrong with me because I weigh this much, I must fix this.
This created suffering and resistance within me. It shifted the intention of my actions away from my values and why to fixing what I viewed as wrong with me. The result was the cultivation of negative feelings and an attachment to the outcome.
When we are attached to an outcome, for example, losing weight, we have outsourced our happiness to that result. We are left feeling anxious in the current moment. We suffer.
The key to acceptance is viewing what is true in the current moment as just what is and not adding meaning to it.
To do this we must drop our story and focus only on the facts. This requires objectively looking at the story you are telling yourself about where you are at and seeing it for what it is - a story.
My story was that I did not know how to balance my tendency to be pulled to the extremes of laziness and hyper-controlling fitness efforts. I believed that because of this I was stuck. I also rejected that I was okay as a person because I weighed 316 pounds.
When I dropped this story I accepted that I was fundamentally a good person, even though I weighed 316 pounds and I created the space to objectively look at the facts about my health condition. I became opened-minded and connected to my following value:
I do not have all the answers, nor do I have to figure them out. I am open to feedback.
In this space of acceptance and open-mindedness, I met with an endocrinologist. He confirmed that I had reached the point of being labeled pre-diabetic.
I asked him “what do I do to become healthy”. He recommended two actions.
First, I take a medication called Mounjaro, a Type-II Diabetes medication that lowers A1C and has been shown to aid in weight loss.
Second, I Choose an eating plan in one of the following categories:
Low-carb (Atkins, Keto, South Beach, etc.)
Fasting (preferably alternate day) or
Whole Food (whole 30, paleo, vegan, etc)
He explained that all the plans that tend to be effective in reversing type-2 diabetes/pre-diabetes and obesity fall into one of those three categories. That all the plans in a given category are 80 to 90% the same, with their unique “catch” to sell their book. More importantly, each of those eating plans does two things, reduces insulin and creates a calorie deficit.
His advice was really that simple, in less than five minutes he gave me the answer I had spent my whole life looking for.
I was able to receive it because I was open to feedback. I had accepted where I was for what it was, the facts and not my story.
Action #6 - Choose Your Tools Without Attachment
A trap that I have fallen into many times in my life is looking for the “golden ticket” that is going to save me from all my problems.
Up until my moment of surrender on July 31, 2022 every diet I had ever done was an attempt to fix myself. Each and every time I had gone into it thinking this is the “magic fix”. I became attached to the diet and its intended outcome as what was going to fix me and make me happy.
The truth is Mindset alone is not going to accomplish your health and fitness goals. You will have to take actions that will get you to where you want to go.
The key is how you view those actions.
Are they a fix or are they just the tool you are using?
When I showed up at the endocrinologist's office in September of 2022 I had already shifted my mindset and intention. I wasn’t looking for a fix. In fact, I went in into his office in acceptance of the possibility that he may not be able to offer me anything that would help. I was completely open-minded to any possibility.
When he presented me with my options I was given the opportunity to CHOOSE what I felt would work best for me based on my values and my lifestyle.
I choose to go on the medication he recommended but I didn’t view it as a fix. I choose to view Mounjaro as just another tool in my health and fitness toolbox. I also choose to pick alternate-day fasting as the tool for my eating plan.
Viewing Mounjaro and fasting as my chosen tools opened me up to see what they were really doing for me.
They were quieting the food noise my body was giving me so that I could focus my efforts on the more important thing, the mental and emotional food noise.
Mounjaro and fasting were also doing two other things, managing my insulin and creating a calorie deficit so that I could lose weight in a way that was compatible with my lifestyle.
This is the gift of mindset and acceptance. It opens us up to growth and understanding.
Mindset and acceptance create the space and set the intention for the next component of my formula for personal excellence, surrendering to the emotional work of processing the feelings that come up along the way.
I will close today with a note I shared with my brothers in the Man Talks Alliance the week before I met with my endocrinologist. It was one of the moments I shifted my mindset and intentions from fixing to cultivating self-love.
Learning to Cultivate Self-Love
September 6, 2022
I was asked yesterday "How is your progress with health and fitness going?"
How I deal with what is uncomfortable is at the root of my struggle with my health and fitness.
I have come to recognize the part of me that gets overwhelmed and wants to check out with his phone or distract from uncomfortableness and pain by shoving popcorn in my mouth as one of my protectors from an age when I didn't know how to deal with my mom's alcoholism, so I checked out. I have vivid memories of my childhood (good and bad), with the exception of age six to ten or eleven, when I checked out by eating and watching TV.
For the past ten years, I've dealt with really bad hip pain. It keeps me up at night, and often I don't sleep for more than one or two hours without waking up in pain. When it gets super uncomfortable I tend to midnight snack ~ I know I am doing this to numb out from the uncomfortableness.
Since my hip surgery in June, I have had some improvement with this, but there are still nights when my hips keep me up.
Last night I left the part of me that wants to numb out at three AM with a little note of encouragement… (I've done this before)
When I woke up in the middle of the night and saw the note I remembered my commitment and that my metaphorical car of consciousness was being driven by the part of me that wants to numb out.
My note got me through the night without snacking to numb out; Actually, it wasn't really the note, but the intention behind it that got me through the night.
Today, I realize that this note is not a fix. I can’t just stick that note on the fridge every night and expect to succeed.
It has to be one day at a time. One night at a time. The love behind the note, be it writing one every night or some other ritual, must be cultivated CONSISTENTLY.
I don’t need to be held accountable for not midnight snacking. I need to be held accountable for consistently cultivating the love my inner child needs to make it through the night, for he is still protecting me from the pain long ago...