You Are Who Think You Are and You Become Who You Think You Can Become

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I talk a lot about the importance of defining yourself and then redefining yourself. When I say define yourself what I really mean is that you should become more aware of how you already define yourself. I had a very interesting chat with a client yesterday who said Im a couch potato a sitter, really. I sit around a lot. I remember when I used to consider myself a couch potato. I believe that part of the reason that I sat around a lot was because my body was taking orders from my subconscious mind. My core beliefs (Im a couch potato) made it really difficult to imagine a world beyond the couch. Without that image, my default position was sitting. Now, I am a walker, a kayaker and a rock climber. Those are the things that define me. That is why I never forget to take the stairs and why I have some business meetings while walking through central park.

One thing I have learned is that the most important beliefs you hold about yourself are your beliefs about your abilities. When it comes to weight loss success, what are your true beliefs about your ability to change your life? If your beliefs are telling you that you cant, you will be needlessly stuck. You can unlock amazing potential to lose weight if you simply erase the word cant from your thinking. I can trace the beginnings of my successful long-term weight loss directly back to the single belief that it was possible.

Removing cant from your vocabulary isnt enough. It needs to be removed entirely from your beliefs about your ability to reach your weight-loss goal. Doubting possibility leaves nothing except for impossibility. The problem is that this doubt hides. Doubts about your ability to achieve your goal, whether you are aware of it or not, act as a constant false reminder that you are powerless to lose weight. As a result, you are powerless to lose weight.

Try this Think Better- Awareness Tool

Write down the number of pounds you feel that you need to lose. Then, take a moment to ask yourself, Do I truly believe that I can lose the weight I want and keep it off? Dont just ask the question superficially. Dig deep into your thoughts. Of what do you really believe you are capable? Then write your answer in the betterness planner.

As you survey your beliefs about losing weight, be on the look out for thoughts that place your ability to lose weight outside of your control. While certain aspects of your life are out of your control, many people underestimate what they can control. Phrases like I cant, It runs in my family, My wife feeds me too much, and Im addicted to food will be disempowering to you and counteract your efforts.

When your subconscious mind is weighed down by the false beliefs of impossibility, it will constantly whisper, Whats the use? whenever things get tough. Lets face it, nobody likes to be wrong and that goes double for your subconscious mind. If you are convinced that you were born to be fat, your mind will look at every setback as an I-told-you-so moment. This process is tough enough without that kind of baggage.

I believe that you can, and will be able to, lose weight but my belief is not going to cut it. In the conclusion of this chapter, I intend to help you see things my way. In order to do that, I need you to be open to the possibility that you are capable of more than you currently think you are.

The best way to get started is to match your expectations with your beliefs about your expectations. If raising beliefs proves overwhelming right now, then you must work to adjust your expectations so they are comfortable. If you dont believe you can lose all the weight you want, find a goal you can truly believe in—even if it is a small one. This process will work if you are constantly shooting for targets you know you can hit. It is imperative, however, that once you hit those targets you raise your beliefs. At a top weight of over 400 pounds, I had over 200 pounds to lose and I honestly did not believe I could do it. Every time I focused on the goal of losing all the weight I needed to lose, I lost momentum—but not pounds. I attribute my success to the constant matched escalation of beliefs to goals. Years of little successes followed up with raised expectations leading to more little success proved to my brain that I had been selling myself short about my abilities—not just with weight loss, but also with everything. My success at losing weight helped me to restructure my entire way of thinking about all of my limitations.

Ten years ago, my palms used to sweat whenever I had to write a letter. I couldnt type, my grammar was awful, and I was a crappy speller. I was convinced that I was just not a writer. Tackling a seemingly impossible goal like weight loss gave me proof that, with focus and effort, I can do anything, even write a book. What I now believe is that if any other human being has done it (whatever it is) so can I and so can you.

In the past, I had limited my weight loss success with low expectations. Even when I lost weight, my mind convinced me that I was born to be fat and fat is where I always seemed to end up.

Success is one form of proof that always elevates belief. If you start by modifying your goals to match your beliefs, you will reach those goals. When you use that success to raise your beliefs about your abilities, you will be free to set much higher goals. When belief is elevated, previously impossible goals become quite attainable. As you repeat the process, success breeds more success. Every success you have today will set the stage for you to make a better tomorrow. It wont take too many tomorrows to prove the validity of this concept.

I would like you to start looking within your own life for the proof you need to believe you are capable of incredible change. Chances are that proof is not that far off. All you need to do is take a look at some accomplishment from your past that of which you are proud. Remember that client that was a couch potato? In that same conversation, I asked her if she drank a lot of high calorie drinks and she said, Oh no, Im a water / unsweetened tea person. She actually said it that way. Here was evidence of a truly healthy self-definition and, as I was about to learn, it gets even better. She then said that she used to be a soda person. She admitted that she had kicked a very serious soda habit a few years ago and that she was very proud of the accomplishment. As well she should! What this shows is that she is capable of major life change and that, when completed, it feels pretty darned good! Not only that, it demonstrates how powerful these statements of definition can be. She would not even think of having soda now – she does not crave it because she wrote it out of her subconscious. She would no sooner have a soda than rob a bank. Seriously, she thinks herself an honest person that drinks only water and tea. So it is a given that she neither drinks soda nor robs banks, steals candy from babies and so on.

Change is inevitable, growth is optional. —Walt Disney

If you have trouble seeing yourself as a fit and healthy person, consider how adaptable humans are. As a species, we pulled ourselves out of caves and built empires. Thats not bad for a loose band of naked apes. Remember, if another human has done it (whatever it is), so can you. Take, for instance, the amazing nearly 450-pound weight-loss story of the former Ringling Brothers fat lady Dolly Dimples. After a near fatal heart attack in 1949, she dropped from 555 pounds to 112 pounds. Although she lost her circus job, later she authored a diet book, made it into The Guinness Book of Records for weight loss, and lived to the ripe old age of 81.

Even if you dont believe that you are world record material, consider how many ordinary people achieve their weight loss goals. The National Weight Control Registry is a list of almost 5,000 such people, whose weight losses have ranging from 30 to 300 pounds. The list was started as a research project in 1994 and it is full of ordinary people like you who were able to lose weight and have been successfully keeping it off for as many as 66 years and counting.

*Try This Think Better Awareness Tool *

Find someone in whom you can see that your incredible success is possible. Maybe you dont know anyone on the National Weight Control Registry and maybe you just cant identify with a woman that achieved world-record weight loss 50 years ago. Find someone with whom you can identify, who has accomplished what you want to accomplish. Write this individuals name or paste his picture in your betterness planner. Refer to him as proof that it can be done. No matter who your role model is, the role model is just an ordinary person like you. In reality, there are very few remarkable people in the world. The world, however, is full of ordinary people who have done remarkable things. When you find this role model, dont try to do exactly what he did, rather look upon his accomplishment as proof of your capability. You need to find your own path.

Sometimes, when you are looking for proof that you are changeable, you are your own best role model. When you think about it, you have been radically changing since the day you were born. Take a moment to think back about the life you led when you were a teenager, when you were in your twenties, thirties, and so on. As you review the list of beliefs, perceptions, behaviors, and preferences that defined you during each stage of your life, you will see that you are not who you used to be.

I am certainly not the same person as I was in high school, college, before I was married or before my wife and I had children. The passage of time and the events of my life have changed me, and I have also changed myself.

Life changes everyone. So the person you are today is not the person you will be tomorrow. Whether the you of the future is better or worse than the you of today remains to be seen, and remains for you to decide.

If the evolution of your own life is not proof enough that you have untapped potential, look at what science has to show. In the past, certain human attributes like personality, hand dominance, and the tendency to be fat were thought to be established early in life—essentially unchangeable. Now, technologies are emerging that allow us to see how the brain is continually developing. Advanced science has proved that when the brain focuses on new thoughts and radical ideas it exercises the gray matter causing it to grow like a muscle lifting weights.

Scientists call this phenomenon neuroplasticity. Their new understanding of brain building is blowing the lid off our old ideas about how many new tricks our old dog brains can learn. The research shows that even when significant parts of the brain are irreversibly damaged, people can use their thoughts to literally transform and grow the remainder of their brain to fill the gaps. This concept of the brains expandability by mental effort is now being used to help train people who were previously thought to be beyond help. With mental focus, hard work and belief in possibility, stroke victims are re-connecting their damaged brain with their muscles, Alzheimers patients are improving their memory, under-achieving children are becoming more competent in school, and, yes, people with life-long weight problems are re-inventing themselves toward a better life.

Doc Russ The BetternessCoach is not only a Doctor of Physical Therapy but has lost over 230 pounds and maintained it!

He has combined his weight loss experience with his life-long passion for food, nutrition, exercise and human motivation into a small step, life change program he calls Betterness®.

As the world’s first Betterness® Coach, Doc Russ helps people achieve their goals by giving them permission to stop straining for perfection and start striving toward being better. He uses the 4 tenets of Betterness (Awareness, Accountability, Action and Adaptation) to help people become – and STAY – a little better every day.

If you want more Betterness® in your life, catch Russ online at www.betternessinstitute.org, where you find a selection of his writings and sign up for his free weekly newsletter.

Doc Russ is also available for private coaching (either in his office or over the phone), lectures and events.

Dr. Russ LHommeDieu, DPT, Betterness® Coach

The Betterness®Institute

Hamptons / North Fork 631.772.9212

Manhattan 212.365.4438

Toll Free: 888.4DocRuss (888)436.2787

Fax: 631.614.4291

www.betternessinstitute.org

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Website: www.betternessinstitute.org

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