"If you want to achieve more on the outside, then you must become more on the inside." - Darren Hardy
There is a theory that people establish a set point in life and they always tend to drift back to this point regardless of how their circumstances temporarily change. For example, someone might have a very low income and has barely been scrapping by for many years. They have established a set point for their finances. This person then wins the lottery and becomes a millionaire overnight. You would think this person is set for life and is going to live comfortably forever, as well as provide for the next generation after them. However, the stastics show that this person is probably going to burn through that money over the next 5-10 years and then they will be right back in the same financial situation they were at before.
The same goes for weight loss. We often see people that are 50 to 100 pounds overweight, go on a strict diet to lose that 100 pounds and then gain it all back over the next few years. We tend to always resort back to the set point that we have established. That brings up a couple of questions, what causes our set point and how can we change it?
"You attract more into your life exactly what you are." - Jim Rohn
Your set point is created by you and controlled by you. We are the culmination of our day to day decisions and habits. If you have always been poor at maintaing a budget and controlling your spending, then the those habits are not going to change just because you won the lottery and have a random influx of funds. Your lifestyle will temporarily change to reflect the new income but the core habits won't change. The same thing happens with a raise or a higher paying job. You will most likely adjust your lifestyle to fit that new income and still be living paycheck to paycheck. You must change the core habit if you want to change your set point.
The same goes with your weight. People will tend to approach a diet as temporary. They will change their eating habits for a short period of time so that they can lose weight. However, once they have reached that goal they are shooting for, the old habits come back and they start to put on the weight again. Becoming healthier is not about a diet, it is about a lifestyle change. If you don't change the core habits that brought you to your current position, then you will consistenly keep coming back to it.
I recently came accross a concept that was created by Abraham Maslow. He said that we are all faced with thousands of tiny decisions throughout our day. This could be what you eat for breakfast, what you listen to on the radio, whether you floss that day, etc. He said that we need to be intentional about these decisions and it helps to approach them like a scoreboard. You tend to always know which decision is healthier and better for you. When you make that positive decision, you can get a +1. However, when you make the negative decision, you get a -1. You can even keep a tally of this throughout your day and see where your score ends up. Are you consistently getting +1's and stepping forward into growth, or are you consistently getting -1's and stepping backwards into safety. You change your set point by increasing those +1's and decreasing the -1's. It is the tiny decisions that we make throughout our day that add up to who we are as a person.
Success is not something you achieve, it is something you become. You need to ask yourself, who do I need to become to accomplish the goals that I have set for myself.
What are your current set points? Who do you need to become to change those?
Photo by Bettmann Archive
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