The Awesome Power of Self-Reflection for Successful Weight Loss
If you want to get better at anything in life, you need to evaluate where you stand at the present time.
I don’t mean that literally.
Whether you’re standing on the bus or at a football game has no bearing on this. Unless you’re trying to get better at riding the bus.
But I digress…
Most people follow the same system when it comes to improving an area of their life:
Step 1 — Set a goal
Step 2 — Guess an action to take
Step 3 — Decide whether it worked or not
Step 4 — If it did, great… If it didn’t, give up
Unfortunately it’s not a great system because it’s missing the all important elements of knowledge and self-reflection.
Knowledge is something I’ll talk more about in a future post. Today I’m talking about self-reflection.
Otherwise known as a ‘feedback loop’ (although to me that always sounds like something only bearded sound engineers should be talking about), self-reflection is the ancient technique of careful and considered introspection in order to accurately evaluate the progress (or lack thereof) in ones journey.
That was a really long sentence!
It’s actually really simple to do and yet without this vital element, we’re often left feeling deflated and feeling like a failure.
Example:
Maureen wakes up on New Year’s Day, takes a look in the mirror and decides that she wants to lose weight. She uses the usual system and it plays out like this…
Step 1 — Set a goal
- ‘Lose five pounds by March 2017’
Step 2 — Guess an action to take
- ‘Go for a walk/run every morning and cut out sweets and wine’
Step 3 — Decide whether it worked or not
- ‘After one week, still chubby, painful legs, feeling a bit disappointed, need a glass of wine’
Step 4 — Give up
- ‘I’m just a fatty’
It’s a real shame that most people go through life like this because with just a couple of tweaks, they’d be much better equipped to pursue their goal.
The Self-Reflection System:
Step 1 — Set a goal
Step 2 — Research HOW to make the goal a reality
Step 3 — Choose an action to take based on some research
Step 4 — Evaluate how effective that action was, repeat or change
Step 5 — Repeat steps 2–5
Using this system enables you to take a more detailed look at what you’re doing and the effects it’s having on you and the pursuit of your goal.
Let’s use the same example again (good old Maureen) but with the self-reflection system…
Step 1 — Set a goal
- ‘Lose five pounds by March 2017’
Step 2 — Research HOW to make the goal a reality
- ‘Learned all about the energy balance and calorie deficits’
Step 3 — Choose an action to take based on the research
- ‘Go for a run every morning and cut out 500 calories per day to create a calorie deficit’
Step 4 — Evaluate how effective the action was, repeat or change
- ‘After one week, some pain in legs, feeling a bit disappointed, change course of action to include help from a professional trainer’
Step 5 — Repeat steps 2–5
- ‘Seeing trainer, will evaluate again in a week’
The bottom line here is that not everything will come to us easily or overnight. Things can take time.
In fact anything worth doing, WILL take time.
If you’re not evaluating your progress and making informed decisions, chances are you’ll give up way before you see the results you want.
Self-Reflection in Action:
It’s pretty simple to implement self-reflection. It doesn’t take long and it will turbocharge your results.
Follow this step-by-step plan to kick things off.
1) Grab a notebook and pen or your laptop/tablet gadget type thingy
2) Write down your current goal as a title such as ‘My Awesome Plan to Lose Five Pounds!’
3) Divide the rest of the page into four columns (or add a table if you’re going digital) and label them from left to right…
Time Period… Actions… Effectiveness… Plan
4) Every so often, fill in the details like the example below (I recommend periods of about a week for weight loss because it happens slowly but you can adjust this if you have a different goal)
Remember this can be used for any goal including things like improving self-confidence, increasing your wealth, pushing for a promotion… Anything you’re working towards can be achieved using this simple formula.
I hope this post gave you some value. I’m keen on sharing the principles of personal development with as many people as possible so if you liked reading this, feel free to give it a share using the social media buttons below.
Wishing you Wellness,
Jon @ Absolute Wellness
@AbsoWellness
jon@absolutewellness.co.uk
