Vixen-to-Vixen:  The blog…The gossip…The Lifestyle!

We live in a country where we have the freedom to make choices in everything we do.  What a blessing.  The problem is that we make many of these unconsciously and sometimes those choices end up preventing us from accomplishing our goals.

This is how it works:  We make a choice.  A choice made repeatedly becomes a habit, whether good or bad. (Repeated Choices=Habit)

For example:  Let’s say that your goal is to lose those last stubborn 10 pounds that’s been sitting on your thighs for months now.  You decide that in order to do this, you’re action plan is to work out at 6:00am every morning during the week.  On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays you’ll attend Amy’s morning mix-up class, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays you’ll go running outside.  You have great intentions because you know that this will help you reach your fitness goals and give you a great start on your day before you head to work.   You tell yourself that this Monday you will start your new fitness regiment.

However, you know this means that you need to get to bed no later than 10pm so you can get the sleep you need to have a productive work week, and enjoy a healthy lifestyle.  Until now, you always got up at 7:30 to start getting ready for work and always went to bed at midnight.  But now you’re on a mission… and you realize that in order to wake up every morning at 5:15am that you’ll need to get to sleep by 10pm.  But, it’s okay because you’re feeling very confident that you can do it.   You write down your new schedule and make the decision to stick with it.

Monday morning: 5:15am the alarm goes off.  You jump out of bed and have a little coffee and a protein shake to give you energy before the workout.  You’re psyched!  You’re on your way to a more energized, thinner you!  You leave the house and go work out.  Awesome! You did it!!  Monday night comes and the girls at work ask you to go out for happy hour and you do.  You don’t get home until 8:00pm because you’re having so much fun.  Life is good.  You get home, you realize that you still need to do some laundry and prepare lunches for the next day.  After that, you make the choice to sit down to watch television with your husband, like you’ve done for years.  It’s midnight now and you start getting ready for bed, when you realize that you’re not going to get the amount of sleep that you normally do… but what the heck, you’ll be fine… it’s just one night.

Tuesday morning: 5:15am the alarm goes off.  It’s tough…but you get up and go on your morning run anyway.   Even though it’s an invigorating run, you are starting to feel the lack of sleep by the middle of your workday.  After work, you get home and go through your normal routine.  Before you know it, you make the choice to sit down and watch TV and it’s midnight again before you go to bed.   You are starting to get a little annoyed with yourself now, because you know it’s going to be harder to get up and workout the next morning.

Wednesday morning: 5:15am the alarm goes off.  This time you make the choice to hit the snooze button.  It goes off again in 9 minutes.  You hit it again.  One more time the alarm goes off.  You struggle to roll out of bed…but you do it.  You’re running late now.  You look in the mirror and see bags under your eyes.  You’re committed to this thing so you have to go.  Amy and the others are expecting to see you there.   You get dressed, brush your teeth…you make the choice to forgo the coffee and protein shake because you’re running late.   You get to the studio about 10 minutes late, tired and cranky and without coffee or breakfast.  You struggle through the workout.  You think to yourself, “Amy must have it out for me today.  She’s making it tougher than usual.  I’m not sure I really like this class”.    You go to work after class and by 3:00pm you feel like you’re going to drop dead.  You get home and go through the normal routine and end up making the choice to plop down on the couch with a big bowl of ice cream to watch a movie with your husband.  It’s been a tough day and you feel like you deserve it.   Midnight rolls around and you go to bed.

Thursday morning: 5:15am the alarm goes off.   You make the choice to forgo the snooze button altogether and turn the alarm off.   You make the choice not to run this morning.  After all, Amy’s not there to push you and the girls from the class aren’t standing outside of your door waiting for you.  So, who’s going to know if you don’t run this morning? “It’s just one day… it won’t kill me” you say to yourself.   You end up sleeping in long past the time the alarm originally went off.   You wake up to realize that you’re late for work!  You jump up; skip the shower because you don’t have time.  You throw on some clothes and run out the door.  You didn’t have time for breakfast so you make the choice to go through the drive thru of the nearest fast food place for a fried chicken biscuit, tater-tots and a large coffee with cream and sugar.  You figure you could use the extra boost that the sugar will give you.  It’s okay… after all, it’s only one day.   You get to work 30 minutes late and your boss gives you the dirty look.   You realize that you can’t keep this up or you might risk losing your job.  You go home, go through your same habitual ritual and end up in bed at midnight.

Friday morning: 5:15am the alarm goes off.   Forget the snooze button.  Forget turning the alarm off.  This time you just make the choice to yank the cord out of the wall.  “That’ll teach that stupid alarm clock!” you mutter under your breath as you smile a sinister smirk.   After all, you have deemed by now that Amy is pure evil and the girls in the class don’t like you anyway.  They just want you to be late for work, get fired and stop going to the gym.  It’s all an evil scheme….

Okay, so you’ve had very little sleep by now and you will tell yourself ANY excuses necessary to keep you from making good choices. Eventually you get up and get ready for work.  You’ve made the decision that even though it’s tough to zip up those pants and they are tight around your thighs that it’s just not worth it.   You give up on the whole damned idea altogether.

Weeks pass and before you know it, those extra 10 pounds have turned into 15.  So you decide that you really do need to lose this weight after all.  It’s only going to get worse if you don’t do something about it.  Remember Amy?  Maybe she wasn’t as evil as you thought.  Perhaps the girls in the gym weren’t scheming against you.  After all, they were there to encourage you and each other.  They had goals too.  Maybe it’s time to do it again.  But this time, you’re going to do it differently.  This time, you decide to become aware of your choices, make good choices repeatedly and change the habits that are keeping you from your goals.

As you can see by this example, the choice to go to bed at midnight was repeated, which ultimately prevented you from creating new, good habits.  We all have choices in life.  With anything in life, it’s important to be aware of the choices that we make.   No matter what your goals may be, whether they are fitness goals, financial goals, or any goals…  make the decision to first become conscious of all your choices.

They say it takes 21 days to develop a habit.   So, it’s time to develop some good habits and finally reach your goals.

Get out a journal and write down your goals.   Then write down all of the bad, repeated choices you have made in the past which have prevented you from reaching those goals.  After that, I want you to write down the good, repeated choices that you must NOW make in order to create the habits that are necessary to attain those goals.  Now, write down your ACTION PLAN to achieve those goals.

THE CHALLENGE:

I challenge you to commit over the next 21 days to follow through with your action plan and create a new habit.   In order to do this, you will need to become conscious of your choices, knowing that each choice you make will impact the creation of your new habit and the attainment of your goal.  It’s your choice.  Make the right one.

Change your choices and you will change the habits.  Change your habits and you will change your results.

Until next time…. Love, Hugs and Pink Lipstick Kisses,

Lynne