So excited to introduce straight talking, sass inducing Jennifer Boykin. She is the amazing creator of Life After Tampons where she blasts through any resistance you may have to being awesome and helps you make the changes you want in your life!
You want to Grow? This gal will have you sprouting by the end of this post!
If you’ve ever tried to remake an area of your life and failed miserably, it’s probably because you tried to accomplish too much too soon.
Most of the time, the things we want to change in our lives have occurred because of a series of small “bad” choices that, over time, accumulated into a situation that is no longer acceptable to us.
If you want to lose fifteen pounds, it’s because a couple of hundred times in the past you didn’t say “no” to ice cream and/or you didn’t say “yes” to exercise.
And yet, when we want to lose those fifteen pounds, we want immediate change. We want to drop our excess tonnage FAST.
We want things fast because our culture tells us that that’s what we need to do. Or, we want things fast because we don’t believe we can sustain the long-term change that results in a slower result.
And, we’re probably right.
It’s almost impossible to sustain change if we come at our new goal with the idea that we are being punished, deprived, or severely inconvenienced.
You are much more likely to achieve your goals if you do two things:
1. Reframe your self-talk around the new behavior.
2. Lower your standards.
What? Did she just say “lower my standards?”
Yes, love, that is precisely what I said.
For the past several decades I have been an avid student of change. Currently, I work with women at midlife that are finally ready to take a turn in their own lives.
When we get tripped up, it’s because we don’t understand our own human nature and, in our ignorance, we set goals that do not work in alignment with our own natural tendencies.
Going back to our example goal – to lose 15 pounds – I’m going to suggest something really radical. I’m going to suggest that you consider losing two pounds instead.
Yep. Just two.
I want you to set your magical mind on losing just two pounds. And, the way we are going to do that is that each day, when we wake up, we are going to commit to making just one fewer crappy choice about diet and exercise than we did the day before.
If today, you ate a muffin for breakfast, tomorrow you will eat oatmeal and fruit.
Then, make all the other crappy choices you regularly make. (Important, don’t add any extra crappy choices, just the usual ones you would normally make.)
The next day, you wake up. And you commit AGAIN to making one fewer crappy choice than you did the day before. Only, THIS TIME, you had already eaten the oatmeal for breakfast, so you need to keep that healthy option (or a suitable substitute) in play.
Since you are committing to making just one additional slightly less-crappy choice, today you decide to add ten minutes of activity to your day. So, you take a morning break at the office and walk around the block for ten minutes.
That’s it. You’re free to have a regular crappy day of crappy decisions about your health – though, again, you are not allowed to add any new choices in.
Do you see where we are going here?
Instead of starting out on DAY 1 with an entire rigid diet and exercise plan on board that you can’t possibly sustain, you just make one slightly less crappy decision each day.
Until you lose TWO pounds!
Woo Hoo! You just hit goal.
And guess what, buttercup? Now you commit to losing two additional pounds. Repeat the “less crappy” plan until you get to those two.
Rinse.
Repeat.
Until you get to your fifteen!!
No fuss. No drama. No bitch-slapping yourself into submission. Simply, lovingly make small incremental changes.
Try it. It ABSOLUTELY works. On diet. On exercise. On financial challenges. On relationship challenges.
They all submit, they all yield to the “less crappy plan.”
So, if you want to make changes in your life, Lower Your Standards.
Love, Jen
Jennifer Boykin’s vision is to help women recapture their Mid-Life Mojo. She speaks, teaches, and writes as the Creative Visionary and Chief Rabble-Rouser of the MidLife Reinvention site, Life After Tampons. When you visit, don’t forget to sign up for your eRetreat, Reclaim the Sass. (Or, find the glorious woman with the floral headdress on the home page.) It’s free. Because you’re priceless.
I like this – it seems sustainable. Though I suspect some commitment to change is also required and that would be where I fall down! Especially when there are many areas that I would like to make changes in!
Hi, Karen. Thanks for writing in. You’re absolutely right, by the way. We DO need to make a commitment to change. We’re just making our commitment smaller, gentler, less of a whole scale shift. We go for slow but steady change. Like the Tortoise. Not the Hare. Jen
I really like this! I can do that. And smaller bits, smaller changes is totally what I need. Because I totally do that all or nothing full throttle thing, and it tends not to work at all. One less crappy thing. That’s totally funny and do-able, I will keep this in mind!!
Wow this was amazing to consider… and seems a more do-able way to bring about changes and new results. Expect less… that seems to go against all our culture runs on. But I like it. By expecting less, we might just be gaining more!