Attitude...

I realized today that I talk a lot about having your "head in the game", being "in it to win it", having the right attitude to lose weight and change your life.  It occurred to me, however, that if a person has never really experienced this mindset, it might be hard to convey to them.  So let me take it to a very deep and personal level.

For those of you who have children, or nieces or nephews or godchildren that you would throw down your life for in a heartbeat, think about how you love those children.  You love them protectively; fiercely.  You understand the mama-bear analogy; how if anyone tried to get between you and your kids, if anyone tried to do your children any harm, whether you're a 4-foot-tall 90-pound weakling or a 6-foot musclebound amazon, you'd tear them limb from limb and drink their blood for good measure!  You never THINK about having to protect, you never QUESTION this instinct, and when you consider your children, that love and protective feeling, that mental override switch comes on and you are a saber-tooth tiger.  Nothing and no one in the world could get past you to your kids.

That's the mentality I'm talking about.  I'm talking about a confidence, a violence of spirit, a single-mindedness always bent on one aim, one goal, one objective, and the idea of failing at it is ABSOLUTELY INCONSIDERABLE.  You would never, for one moment, allow yourself to think that you couldn't or wouldn't save your children.  Thus you can never, for one moment, allow yourself to think that you could fail in your goals.  Failure Is Not An Option.



When you are "in it to win it" you are not trying to win, YOU ARE GOING TO WIN.  You don't care if there are setbacks, you aren't concerned that there are others out there stronger/faster/better than you.  You have not just a goal, not just an aim, you have a PURPOSE, and YOU ARE GOING TO FULFILL YOUR PURPOSE.  It's a consumption of mind and of spirit.  This is what people mean when they say Failure Is Not An Option.  Take it past your goals, your desires.  Take it past your own personal instinct for self-preservation.  Take it to the level of feeling a threat to your children.  Could you fail?  WOULD you fail?  Never!  NEVER!

When you're feeling the goal is insurmountable; when you're feeling overwhelmed with the challenges, the setbacks, the plateaus, the disappointments; when you can't imagine going five more minutes without diving headfirst into that bag of cookies or chips, think about that mindset.  Think of your goal and your dreams as if they were your children.  Find your inner saber-tooth tiger, remember that feeling of Failure Is Not An Option.  Now choose.  Choose to apply it.  Your body is every bit as worthy of protection as your childrens' bodies are, and even moreso, as the way you live YOUR life will be the way your children learn to live THEIRS, and if YOU are fat and out of shape, THEY will be too!  Failure Is Not An Option, people!  You must protect your young, even from yourself!

So the next time you can't take the hunger pangs (hey-are you eating every 3 hours and avoiding processed food??) or you feel just too damn tired to go work out and you want to put it off until later, remember: you don't think about protecting your childrens' lives, you Just Do It. 

Get your head in the game.  Don't Think, people.  Just Go.