Health is Wealth. While I strategically stride along with my coaching clients, the thought sometimes occurs to me as to how I approached my own change.
I can’t say whether I was dragging my feet in a way that would make a snail look as though it was reaching Formula 1 speeds, or I was making great strides in moving forward. Those first weeks, I was focusing, working hard and smart in following the guiding footsteps of my coach, but not yet seeing results.
Recollecting those moments led me to affirm that my change was based on drilling five pillars into my life.
We all want to see results overnight.
We want to show the world, through our social media channels, that tangible results have (re)surfaced. Or happily stand in front of our wardrobe with clothes one size smaller. Unfortunately, this is not how it works. The moment we pivot to those “yes, yes, yes!” moments take patience, perseverance and a bit more patience.
The accumulation of factors such as changing eating habits, hunger cues, good sleep, movement, and casting aside those thoughts that the arrival of a glistening six-pack equals the same time of pregnancy, are part of a sustainable, long-term strategy. Yes, we still believe it takes approximately nine months before we can show off those abs through sit-ups and doing crunches ‘round the clock. Nutrition takes a bit of a detour.
It makes sense, right?
What you have achieved in x-amount of time, you do want to keep in the long run. Yo-yo-ing back and forth in terms of weight gain, loss and gain is fairly demotivating.
And the funny thing with results is that we can hardly compare them with anyone else. After all, weight-loss journeys are typically solo acts. And, since we all are individuals, some gallop through the motions in a couple of weeks, others just plod through their routines, with bouts of temptation to hitchhike back to old habits.
When I look back on my interior and visible exterior transformation (many have said this to me, so better make use of it), there have been five major things that helped me ascend to that better “me”. I define a better “me” by comparing the old Niels with the new one.
I want to connect my interior and exterior breakthroughs with the metaphor of an iceberg.
The saying goes; “we only see the tip of the iceberg” and actually this is as true as the truth can be.
Why?
Because the majority of all the hard work does not come from eating the right food, drinking enough water and adding enough protein to reach a weight loss goal. It’s the inner works that make all the magic happen, the part of the iceberg that floats below the surface.
Let me describe the five pillars of what constitutes my proverbial iceberg, the route to change.
Mindset
Buried deep down in the murky waters, this is the foundation of it all. It is the part that will never see the light of day (bye-bye, daily Vitamin D requirement), but it carries the tonnes of ice stacked above its head. Setting your goal is one thing; the task of getting to climb to the top of the iceberg and seeing the vastness of a new way of living is a task-orientated ascent of Armageddon proportions.
Once the climb starts, it is about overcoming those pitfalls, setbacks and hurdles. And these are only achievable if you know why you’re on this upwards path.
Environment
Breathing underwater without proper equipment turns the climb up the slopes of the iceberg into a nearly impossible feat. Thus, adding tools to make the upwards journey more inviting is one of the next steps. Change is hard when your surroundings remain unchanged or do not give you that helping hand or, worse still, do not collaborate.
Overcoming this comes with making compromises or sacrifices, or looking for scuba gear to breathe more easily. A change in my social, physical and online environment was one of the five pillars to get that aiding stimulus.
Habits
A mad dash to the highest point of the iceberg does not lead to the desired results. Worn out quickly, not enjoying the view en route, tripping up along the way and tumbling back into the proverbial rabbit hole, and failing to realise that small steps often lead to better results, and habitual changes are essentials. Without realising I was habitually eating according to the arms on a clock, regardless of whether I had an appetite, was one of the many habits that needed a complete renovation.
We often do not see what habits we have when searching for a better version; we think we can solve change by ourselves. It is those blind spots that hindered me from sustainably moving forward. I have never marked it as a sign of weakness to be guided along this path by a coach. It has been the decisive game-changer, and it still is after so many months of fine-tuning my habits.
Knowledge
What we do know about good nutrition, proper sleep, controlled movement and stress management is by far less than what we don’t know. We believe we know because we have entered an era where all questions are answered on the internet and we can rely, blindfolded, on following those we admire, who have the perfect sales pitch, or think that our years wandering on Planet Earth gives us enough tools. I assumed that making logical choices would turn the wheel of fortune in my favour. Wrong again.
Knowledge comes from making guided decisions consistently for a pre-defined period of time. Outcome-based decision-making follows, assuring that the timeframe spent before “seeing is believing” matches your desired timeframe and personal preferences. You can read what you want, but it does not always deliver the solidified science of what you are pursuing. It is gaining true knowledge when things turn out for the best (or worst). Either adjust your course or move along on the same slippery slope when some thumbs-up are appropriate.
How do we know what the desired timeframe is before conclusions are drawn? Ask a coach! Because he/she is the one who has studied the iceberg, perhaps scaled it a few times him/herself, knows the trenches of rekindled desire, and can suggest other paths that lead to the top of this frozen behemoth we call change.
Willpower
For me, this is what made the journey so exhilarating, having that icy summit in my crosshairs while knowing what I had left behind and never wanting to go back into those dark, icy waters.
A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins With a Single Step. Lao Tzu
I firmly believe and live by that quote from Lao Tzu. This first step, and the ones that follow, are my rocket engines, my motivators, my mantra of not quitting. Clarity of what I wanted and what I could almost taste at the back of my throat kept me going. From 5am wake-up calls to making decisions that turned parts of my life around 720 degrees was all why I did it.
It may sound to some of you as if I have turned into a softy, a fluffy bunny rabbit, and something like a person “dancing around dandelions in a meadow on Birkenstocks”, but trust me, I haven’t. I changed my perception of who I wanted to become in the past, redefined my “why” (even before taking that first step, this is your credo), and kicked arse every single day. Quitting was never on my agenda. I chose this because I recognised it was needed. The benefits outweigh the infinite factors of what I had to let go of.
That iceberg is still there.
I just chose to tackle much bigger and more rugged ones.
And I will never stop.