Step 3: Become

It is time to Become the new you.

Personal development programs often promote the concept of visualizing yourself having what you want. If you want happiness, visualize yourself as a happy person. If you want success, visualize yourself as successful. If you want to be a billionaire, visualize yourself as a billionaire.

Because of this, people often confuse visualization with acting or pretending.

• Act like a billionaire even though you can’t pay your rent.
• Pretend you are fit when you are actually overweight and out of shape.

This is a gross oversimplification of the purpose of visualization.

Visualization, when used properly, is an important and necessary tool. It solidifies your WANT and illuminates your path, the HOW.

The How Comes Now

At this step in the process, you should know exactly what you want. You should be taking effective action in your day-to-day life and experiencing success after success. Also, you should be fully aware of the routines and habits that dominate your life.

Now is the time to determine HOW you will start making changes within your life. You do this with visualization and thinking.

The “5 Years from Now You”

People often entertain statements such as:

• If I knew then what I know now.
• If I had to do it all over again I would…
• If I could talk to my younger self.

I know I am guilty of this.

Even though it may seem like an interesting and harmless exercise, it doesn’t come without risk. There is little to be gained by remembering missed opportunities, reliving regretful decisions from the past, or dwelling on these thoughts. The past can not be changed, and any mental energy put into this reactionary thinking is often destructive. It takes your mind away from thinking about what you want.

You can’t change your past, but you can change your future. Instead of dwelling on the past, use your mental energy to visualize your future. Visualize the life you will have two months from now, two years from now. Visualize the “5 Years from Now You.” How will you look? How will you feel? What will you be doing? Make your visualizations as realistic and detailed as possible. Get emotionally involved with your future.

The “5 Years from Now You,” is such an amazing and useful concept. Not only is it a wonderful way to introduce yourself to the new, successful, confident you, it is a standard that you set for yourself that you use to determine HOW you will get what you want.

When I started thinking in this way, everything opened up for me. I stopped dwelling on the past, I stopped comparing myself to other people, and I started comparing myself with what I want. I compare myself to myself. I compare where I am today with where I want to be 5 years from now.

The HOW comes from this comparison.

Imagine talking with the “5 Years from Now You.” It knows you better than anyone or anything else in the world. It also knows that it is impossible to do 5 years worth of work in one or two weeks. More importantly, it knows what you can do today, and every day, to guarantee that 5 years from now you will be where you want to be. The “5 Years from Now You” will reveal to you HOW to get there.

You can determine what you want. You can see yourself improving and getting what you want. You can design your future and build it in your mind. You know that you will be fit and healthy because it has already happened in your mind. The next step is to figure out HOW you are going to do it. Have a conversation with the “5 Years from Now You.”

But What About Diet and Exercise?

The Recipe for Weight Loss Success is not a diet. It is not an exercise routine. I will never tell you what to eat or what exercises you should do. The Recipe is a process that helps you reveal what you WANT, concerning your health and fitness, and HOW you will achieve it.

Even though you can think yourself thin, fit, and healthy, you can’t think yourself thin, fit, and healthy, without taking action within your life. Your thinking reveals the HOW and you must put the HOW into action.

For example, knowing that you WANT to be able to do 25 pull-ups and knowing HOW you can achieve doing 25 pull-ups is an absolute requirement to being able to DO 25 pull-ups. But, until you grab that bar and start pulling yourself up, it will never be a reality.

The same is true with getting thin, fit and healthy. You must change your diet and exercise routines. But HOW?

Be a Leader, not a Follower

Obviously, there is diet and exercise information out there that can and will be helpful. As you research this information, you must be cautious. Remember, external changes are destined to fail. You must evaluate all information in relation to what you want.

Don’t follow a diet or exercise plan blindly. This is an external change. You have to develop your own method. I’m not saying the information is either good or bad. It just is. You need to decide, does this help me get what I want?

Don’t be a follower. Be a leader. Lead yourself to where you want to go.

If you are anything like me, you have tried every diet in the book. You have eaten things you didn’t want to eat, exercised when you didn’t want to exercise and starved and worked yourself into a big, hot mess.

But now, after learning of the Recipe for Weight Loss Success, you realize that it wasn’t the diets that failed. It was your thinking and self-image that prevented you from making a true and permanent change.

 

All of your knowledge and experience is a part of you. You have incorporated it into your life, into who you are. Now you can use that knowledge and determine exactly HOW you are going to change to get what you WANT.

You are responsible for your life. You have always been, but you would abdicate your responsibility to others. Now that you have taken control, you can change your life based upon what you want. And for everything you want, the how to get there must come from you.

You Must Become – You!

When you start thinking of yourself as someone who is thin, fit, and healthy, you will become thin, fit, and healthy.

It will not happen overnight. It will take time. It will take mental and physical effort. But it all starts with thinking, taking effective action and determining how you can get what you want.

• Use your imagination to find out what you really WANT to achieve concerning your weight, fitness, and health.
• Create Statements of Fact that define your WANTS.
• Repeat your Statements of Fact over and over again. Focus on them constantly, continuously.
• When a negative thought enters your mind, squash it immediately by reciting your Statements of Fact.
• Observe your day-to-day life and identify Cycles of Doom.
• Evaluate your existing habits and routines. Are they taking you toward or away from what you WANT?
• Take effective action within your day-to-day life to create a Self-Sustaining Cycle of Success.
• Communicate with the “5 Years from Now You”
• Determine HOW you can achieve what you WANT.

Think and imagine the new you. Imagine all of the things that you can and will do. Imagine what you can and will become. Take effective action in your day-to-day life. Experience success and build upon it. Determine how you will change your life.

This is the third step of the Recipe for Weight Loss Success.