In the previous post I talked about moving beyond motivation because some days you will not feel that motivated. External factors can also influence your motivation for example, if you go running outside and it is raining, it is easy to look out the window and decide, maybe not today. One thing that can really help here is to put things in the diary. A good way to do this is to sit down on, say, Sunday night and decide which days you're going to go to the gym. Maybe it is Tuesday and Friday. Then you put that in the diary.

This helps you in a number of ways. At a very simple level, because it is in the diary, you are more likely to do it. This works in part because you have decoupled the decision from the event, and by that I mean you have decided on Sunday to exercise, but the event is on Tuesday. By putting it in the diary, mentally you have accepted that you will do it; if on Tuesday your motivation is not so high, you are still more likely to do it. Not to do it is actually a fresh decision; doing it is therefore the default mode. Instead of actively deciding to do it, you have to actively decide not to! Also, you have only had to make one decision to exercise twice rather than having to make two (one on Tuesday, one on Friday). This reduces the risk of deciding to take the easy option.

Second, once you put it in the diary, it safeguards the time. New meeting or events are slotted in around your existing commitment (the gym) so it is less likely to be edged out your schedule. If an event does end up clashing with your gym time and that event simply has to take priority, the gym is easily rescheduled to another available time. No longer will you have the excuse that you can't find the time because the gym is incorporated in your time management framework.

Finally, the entry (of the gym) in the diary flags to you that your gym event ranks equally with other events in your life.

And if you really want to make this work for you, once you have decided to go to the gym on say Tuesdays and Fridays, put it in your diary as a recurring entry for the next 12 months. Then you have made one decision for 104 work out sessions. That is a major step forward in moving you toward achieving your goal.   

We've all had that feeling, the feeling of being motivated. Maybe you came out of the cinema punching the air having just watched Rocky (younger readers, ask your parents), or maybe each year after watching Wimbledon you pick up a tennis racket and vow to stick with it this time round.

If you're lucky, it lasts for a couple of weeks. And then it wears off, you don't feel motivated and Rocky becomes just a film you watched at the cinema a few weeks back. This is how it works for everyone more or less, because motivation is a feeling, like being happy and like being sad. Feelings come and go, you simply cannot stay motivated all the time. How then can you continue to pursue your goal even when you don't feel motivated to do so?

While I have already discussed that you should 'connect with your why,' the other key strategy here is to make what you're doing a habit.

Think about cleaning your teeth. You do it (probably), and you probably do it in the same way at the same time every day. You probably can't remember when you first started cleaning your teeth, and you rarely if ever miss doing so. But think about this also: do you enjoy cleaning your teeth? You might never have asked yourself that question before. You're probably indifferent about it. Do you have to feel motivated to clean your teeth? No, you simply do it, almost on autopilot.

And that's the answer. To push ahead and do what you need to do when trying to achieve your goal, create what you have to do as a habit. In fact, what you are trying to change is most likely a bad habit, so think that you're not trying to give something up, rather, you're trying to replace a bad habit with a good habit.

That might sound easier said than done, but again, there are all sorts of tips and tricks that can help here. We will discuss some of those in future articles, but for now, keeping it short, we note that psychologists point to the three 'R's: Reminder, Routine, Reward.

R1, Reminder: In brushing your teeth, the reminder is the morning trip to the bathroom that most people need to take to use the other porcelain basin, but now you're in the bathroom, it's a big old reminder of what else you need to do while there. 

R2, Routine: In this example, clearly here, it is the very act of brushing your teeth.

R3, Reward: This is truly excellent in brushing your teeth because the real reward of course of the long term health for your teeth by preventing tooth decay. But the short term reward is minty fresh breath which feels good to you and is always appreciated by others. The reward is instant. Toothpaste doesn't need to be mint flavoured, but toothpaste companies aren't dumb.

In the following articles, we'll look at other aspects which can help you in developing good habits. But next time you feel motivated, realise, it wont last. Instead, think how you can harness that motivation to set up the basis for creating a habit. When your motivation goes, your habit will still be there.

​Author's note: I am a professional life and executive coach with a special interest in success and goal achievement. I work with individuals and groups to help them achieve their goals. I also undertake events and public speaking engagements. If you are interested in how I can help you or your organisation achieve your/its goals, without obligation, please get in touch via email (david at thecriticalcouple dot com) or via the contact tab on this website.

So, you've resolved to do something, perhaps give up smoking, perhaps go to the gym, or maybe a new diet. Having made that decision, next, ask yourself one question: on a scale of 1-10, how confident/committed am I to do what I have decided?

Hopefully a 10, but maybe a nine or an eight. The reason to ask this question is that if you score your commitment and confidence in doing what you have decided to do as less than an eight, the chances are you will not ultimately achieve your goal. Other things are more important and minor setbacks will likely derail your purpose.

But let's say you rated your confidence/commitment as a six, should you just give up? No, of course not. Ask yourself, what do I have to do to raise that six to an eight? Maybe you decide to get fit and decided to work out three times a week but rate your confidence in achieving that goal as only a six. Would cutting that down to just twice a week be more manageable and take it to an eight? Rather than three sessions in the gym, might you be more excited by a variation, mixing some cycling, running or tennis with gym work? 

If going cold turkey on cigarettes is unappealing, could you progressively scale back, maybe each Monday cutting two cigarettes a day from the amount you smoke?

What takes you from a five, six or seven to an eight, nine or ten? So when you've decided on that goal, rate how confident/committed you are in achieving it and adjust your plan accordingly if you are not at least an eight. This can also provide a positive boost to morale because you set yourself up for success, not failure from the first instance.  

​Author's note: I am a professional life and executive coach with a special interest in success and goal achievement. I work with individuals and groups to help them achieve their goals. I also undertake events and public speaking engagements. If you are interested in how I can help you or your organisation achieve your/its goals, without obligation, please get in touch via email (david at thecriticalcouple dot com) or via the contact tab on this website.

In my previous post, Connect with your WHY, I suggested that when people have a goal in mind, like quitting smoking or losing weight, the reality is that this goal is in fact a means to an end, not the end itself. The person who says they want to stop smoking always has a more fundamental reason behind giving up smoking, such as health, family or money. This is what I mean by the 'why' and this is what we should all connect with to have the best chance of success. 

Clearly however, the WHY alone is not enough, and in the example above, the person who wants to give up smoking has already identified another part of the chain of success - the WHAT. Consider the example of someone who wants to lose weight; again, they will most likely succeed if they identify the real goal here: is it overall health, to look better to attract sexual partners or perhaps an important event coming up where they need to fit into their favourite outfit that they've modestly outgrown? Having identified the WHY, the WHAT might be a diet, or it might be exercise (or both). 

We can now see that starting with the WHAT is premature, in that diet or exercise or both might best serve your WHY and deliver a result, afterall, that's what we care about, the result. The WHY naturally asks WHAT do I have to do to achieve the goal?

And then beyond the WHAT is the HOW. Having decided (in the example above) that your WHY is overall health, and your WHAT is to go on a diet, the final question is HOW? Do you see your GP for advice, simply eat less than you currently do, join Weight-Watchers or go full on low calorie or alternatively low-carb? or something else? That's the final part of the puzzle. 

Before you set out to achieve your goal then, you have fundamentally established WHY you are doing it, WHAT you have to do to achieve it and HOW you will go about it. While your tactics might evolve along the way, grasping the WHY, WHAT and HOW before you start gives you a full toolbox to help you achieve your goal and therefore the best possible chance of success.   

I believe that you can significantly improve your chances of succeeding at anything if you 'connect with your why,' that is, understand why you have decided to do it in the first place. It sounds obvious, and yet, as we will see, we often confuse what we are doing with why we are doing it. We confuse the goal with the means to the goal.

In my previous post I encouraged you to decide to move towards achieving your goal rather than leave it as a preference, which is what a statement like, 'I'd like to lose weight,' is, a preference. So having made the decision (I have decided to lose weight...), it is time to reflect on exactly why you have chosen to do it.

Typically, a smoker might say, I want to quit smoking. But the reality is, most smokers enjoy smoking. For the past couple of years, I have sought to drink less (alcohol) but the reality is, I actually want to drink more, every day if possible, I adore the stuff. We square the circle by noting that the smoker (possibly) doesn't want to stop smoking (because they enjoy the act of smoking a cigarette), rather, what they do want is the benefits of not smoking. In other words, the smoker might want some or all of the following:
- not to die of lung cancer,
- to save money,
- to be able to play with his/her children in the park without getting out of breath,
- to live long enough to see his/her grandchildren get married.

There are likely to be other motivations also. And this is what I mean by 'connect with your why.' The statement then changes from 'I want to quit smoking' to 'I don't want to die of lung cancer.' Then, as you go through the process of quitting smoking and find it difficult, or are tempted to go back to smoking, connect with your why to keep you on track.

I personally have lost weight and got fit after more than a decade of over-eating while living a sedentary lifestyle, yet I enjoy eating and was a fairly happy fat-man. But I seriously don't want diabetes. Diabetes is my WHY. When, during winter, the Beast from the East struck and I was sitting in my nicely heated home, and when it was minus two degrees outside and when I decided I really didn't want to go for a 5k run, I simply asked myself one question: would you prefer diabetes? If I was willing to endure diabetes, and all its consequences, then by all means I'd say to myself, stay on the couch, have a chocolate bar and don't go for that run. But if diabetes isn't my preference, then my inner voice told me to get my ass off the couch and go for that run, no excuses. I did.

If I had simply understood my behaviour in terms of, 'I want to get fit,' how easy it is to waver, or defer what needs to be done, because it is too cold, too hot or raining. When put in terms of not wanting to get diabetes, my 'why', you realise that diabetes doesn't care about what the weather was, and as we used to announce as 10 year olds playing hide and seek, 'coming, ready or not.' Every good behaviour is a small victory in my fight.

Connect with your why. If you can stack 'whys,' that's even better. So it maybe that your principal reason for quitting smoking is that you don't want to get lung cancer, but knowing too that you will save money, plus you can run for the bus, and maybe your palette improves so you enjoy food more, these can all be valid, secondary 'whys'. Achieving any goal is hard, so what you are trying to do is tilt the odds in your favour. To do so, you need one rock solid 'why' to really start you on the path to change, but the more secondary 'whys' you have, the better, as this will increase the perceived reward for changing your behaviour. 

I think these really could be the four most important words in achieving your goal: connect with your why.
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We've all said it, some variety of...
 - I want to lose weight
 - I want to get fit
 - I want to quit smoking
 - I want to drink less
 - I want to learn a new skill etc etc etc

And then what happens? More often than not, well, nothing. Life carries on and you don't lose the weight, you don't get fit and you don't quit smoking. And the 'I want to...' idea continues to live with you, giving you guilt but never a result. What can you do about this?

You need to change the message your brain is sending. 'I want to ...' is a preference; I want to win the lottery. How about switching out this preference for a decision? So instead of saying 'I want to lose weight,' you think and say, 'I have decided to lose weight.' 'I have decided to get fit,' 'I have decided to quit smoking.' Just words? No.

These are not just word plays, because importantly, whereas a preference remains just that, a preference, a decision is followed by action. Accordingly, when you decide you are going to do something, you must also decide on the action. 'I have decided to get fit... the action I will take to get fit is to join a gym tomorrow.' 'I have decided to quit smoking... the action I'm going to take is to buy some nicotine patches from the chemist on the way home and start wearing them from tonight.'

A decision compels you to an action, a preference does not. The very definition of 'decide' is to 'bring to resolution' and to 'decide between choices.' Preference is simply a 'greater liking for one alternative over another.'  

So the next time you think, 'I would like to lose weight,' or 'I want to lose weight,' stop. Realise this is a preference and ask yourself if you are serious about losing weight etc. And if you are serious, take a real step, make a decision. 'I have decided to... and the action I am going to take to make that happen is...'. Oh, and the action always starts now, not next week and not next month. 

Deciding to do something is the first step towards achieving that goal. So be brave, and make that decision today.
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​Author's note: I am a professional life and executive coach with a special interest in success and goal achievement. I work with individuals and groups to help them achieve their goals. I also undertake events and public speaking engagements. If you are interested in how I can help you or your organisation achieve your/its goals, without obligation, please get in touch via email (david at thecriticalcouple dot com) or via the contact tab on this website.

At a fundamental level, why bother to have goals? For years, in key areas of my life I didn't bother with goals, enjoying life in the moment seemed enough. Getting older, with everything that brings, helps make you more aware (mostly through aches and pains), yet many people still resist having goals. Doing the right thing can be hard, and tiresome. Having a goal risks failure of course and nobody wants to feel that.

But, here's the rub, if you don't have goals, you fail by default. Without goals, there's no plan and therefore no strategy guiding your actions. Even if you want things, you'll be disconnected from the right way to get them if they are complex in nature. Life becomes simply what happens to you. Depending on luck for what you desire is not a strategy.

If nothing else, we all move forward in time, but what happens tomorrow is not yet determined, except getting older, you'll definitely get older (but even that doesn't have to completely suck). Life is diverse and many outcomes are possible. And this is key to the whole idea: not every outcome is of equal value. For everyone, some outcome are more desirable than others. At a basic level, being healthier is more desirable than being ill. Most would say having money is more desirable than being poor. Most would similarly agree that having friends is better than being lonely. 

So if you have preferences for health, wealth and friends, but no goals, then in not seeking to meaningfully steer the outcome to the specific outcome you want (which is what a goal is), the chances are, you will likely end up with an outcome you don't want. What's more, a sub-optimal outcome is highly probable since there are usually many more undesirable outcomes than there are desirable ones.

The good news is, it is never too late to decide that you don't want to leave tomorrow to fate, but instead, you want to steer reality towards your preferred outcome. Time to set some goals. Even if it is just one goal, even if it is a very small goal, something is always better than nothing. That will be a key theme of this well-being stream, something is always better than nothing. And when you achieve your goal, and reality seems to accommodate you, when you seem to win instead of lose, then it is time to set a bigger, more ambitious goal. Goals are a major contributor to life success, if you don't have any currently, maybe it's time.
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Yes, quite. This might seem odd on a food blog, very odd in fact, I hear you on that. So what's this all about? Let me explain, and let's start with a definition.

Well-being: the state of being comfortable, healthy, or happy

I remember some years back meeting up with another food blogger who felt conflicted. They were trying to stick to a diet and run a food blog at the same time. We, the CC, looked at each other and we both had the same thought, 'good luck with that.' Food writing and 'staying trim' rarely go hand in hand. Sure enough, over the years we did the blog, I (Mr CC) put on weight; unsurprisingly, quite a lot. And when we stopped blogging, we carried on eating, we simply didn't write about it. I continued to put on weight.

Just under two years ago, as an avid reader of current affairs, I also noticed another trend: articles in newspapers describing the onset of a 'diabetes epidemic' and the likelihood that it would bankrupt the NHS. The rise in diabetes also seemed linked to the nation sliding into obesity. Given where I stood, it would be easy to gloss over these articles, I enjoyed life right? But I wanted to carry on enjoying life, free of limbs being amputated, and sometimes you have to face the brutal facts. I took an online NHS diabetes risk assessment and did not like what I saw (but quite frankly, was not surprised). I committed to change my ways.
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Fortunately, the time in my life when I chose to do this coincided with me becoming an executive/life coach and I applied the scientifically proven methods that I was using in my coaching with clients to help me succeed in my weight loss goal. Within six months, my BMI had fallen below 25, with the NHS definition of 'healthy weight' being a BMI between 18.5 and 25. Sure, BMI is not perfect, one size fits all blah, blah. But it does fit about 95% of people, so if you think BMI is fake news, have a clear idea why. In any case, it's a convenient and easy benchmark and the one that I adopted. ​

My challenge (to myself) therefore is this: can I run a food blog and maintain my BMI in the NHS prescribed 'healthy weight' zone?

But more than that, I recognise that anyone who reads food blogs likes eating. I am guessing therefore that many readers would like to achieve that balance, enjoying food but keeping the pounds off and wonder if it possible. Through a series of blog posts, I will share my thoughts as well as the techniques that I used to achieve my goal to help you likewise achieve yours. This is not a diet plan, hell, this is a food blog. These are tips to help take better control of life and its consequences.

Those who know me can testify to the full extent of the change that I have achieved, and if you want to change (any aspect of your life), you can too.

Accordingly, as well as food, it applies to so much more: drinking, smoking, exercise, sleeping, work, not work, life. Not much I say is original, but there again, not much your GP does is particularly original either, rather, follow a formula to get a result. It may not be original but it is well researched and much of it likely new to many. 

Einstein said the definition of madness was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. This is an invitation to change. If this is not your thing, or you think this is too preachy or sanctimonious, simply don't click this tab. But if you are struggling in any way in achieving your goals, this might just be what tips the odds back in your favour. Embrace the change, enjoy the results. It worked for me.   
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Author's note: I am a professional life and executive coach with a special interest in success and goal achievement. I work with individuals and groups to help them achieve their goals. I also undertake events and public speaking engagements. If you are interested in how I can help you or your organisation achieve your/its goals, without obligation, please get in touch via email (david at thecriticalcouple dot com) or via the contact tab on this website.