“One kg a week?” she gasped. “Are you kidding me? That’ll take…” she paused. I could almost see the numbers reeling across her deep dark eyes. “Almost 4 months to lose what i have to lose. I can’t wait that long to look better. I need to lose weight now - a LOT of weight!”
That’s my client. Let’s call her Yvette.
“Well, you could lose it quickly - go on a crash diet, restrict your water intake and all, but if you don’t change your lifestyle, you will probably gain it all back in no time. It’s not sustainable and it rarely works.” I counter.
My proposal for her:
1. A 30-minute brisk walk everyday.
2. A 30% cut in sugary drinks and junk food.
3. A daily five-minute phone call to an accountability partner (someone who helps Yvette keep her commitment).
4. Ten minutes of journaling.
As my conversation with Yvette went on, I could see her face brighten as she began warming up to the idea of baby steps - simple life changes that could add up to surprising results. Then her face fell. A seed of doubt had been planted.
“Losing just one or two kg per week would be so little that i would just blow it off.. it’s so discouraging!”
Yvette was missing something: She wanted to lose 15kg. 15kg is nothing more than a sum of a lot of ‘one kilograms’. No successful person lost fifteen kg without losing one first. And I told her that.
“Focus on the little steps that add up each day, not about whether or not you have lost 15kg. Don’t measure how you are doing by the goal, but by whether you are doing the good, simple and small things. If you take those little steps, I believe you will end the endless cycle of losing and re-gaining weight.”
When we find ourselves seemingly running in circles, one mediocrity after another, perhaps we should ask ourselves if the rut we are in is a result of wanting everything, and on finding the journey hard, settling for nothing.
It was an uphill battle, but Yvette began to value her efforts one tiny bit at a time, and we did it in the end.
Setting foot on the long road, a baby step at a time instead of getting lost down the enticing shortcuts that line the path could actually get you there faster.
Wanting it all and wanting it now causes us to miss getting it at all.
There is a reason God makes us all as helpless babes, who learn to crawl before we learn to run. But we don’t have to run the road ahead. We just need to take a step today, and walk into the world our heart desires.
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