What result
do you want?
A few years ago I went on a significant weight loss journey. I was the quintessential middle-aged person who had retained the proverbial 10 pounds per decade plus a little extra from giving birth to two children. It’s amazing how subtle weight gain is as we age. Studies show that in adulthood we tend to gain two to three pounds a year. Now that isn’t a significant number. It’s no big deal. Until you realize, that is 10 pounds every 5 years. People tend to make adjustments once they get between that 5 and 10 pound mark, which is why we end up only retaining 10 pounds per decade. The problem is there is such a struggle to keep the second 10 pounds at bay that the first 10 pounds we gained tends to be our new normal. Next thing we know we are 30 plus pounds heavier and it starts to take its toll.
I knew I needed help. What I had been doing wasn’t working. The best I could do was stay even over the course of a year. I would lose some weight, gain it back and do it all over again. At my annual checkup I decided to ask my doctor for some advice. She gave me a huge wake up call. She said, “you still have a choice but you have to make some major lifestyle changes now to reverse the weight gain or you will be spending your retirement years in and out of doctors offices and hospitals with weight related illnesses. You can choose to spend your 401k on the things you enjoy or you can spend it on medical bills.” That was pretty blunt, but it was what I needed to hear. I needed the motivation and permission to invest in myself to get my physical body back into a healthy state that could be sustainable for the rest of my life.
I left the doctors office that day and took action on changing my lifestyle. I joined a program that included weekly accountability along with some education and training. I lost 55 pounds in eight months. It wasn’t that the information I received was so radical; although I did learn some things I didn’t know. The biggest difference for me was the accountability and community. Knowing someone was going to ask me each week how I did with my own commitments was huge. The question then became am I going to be a person of my word and will I be honest with myself and others so I can get the results I want?
Having a community of people who were in various stages of weight loss that I could learn from was also crucial. Seeing how they were working through similar issues and what choices they were making modeled for me in practical ways how I could integrate the information into my life.
Community is a powerful thing. Having a group of like-minded people that are going after similar goals can profoundly impact the results you see in your life. I work with people and organizations all over the world and I have noticed that the ones who are successful in changing to get the results they want are the ones who invest the time and money in the community accountability process.
We all want to be able to pay the money and have the weight magically disappear or attend a training seminar and have all of our business issues solved. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Training doesn’t happen at an event. Training happens in the day in and day out of your organizations development.
What results are you looking for? Is it time to invest in a process rather than an event?