Everything in Moderation

Who among us has not heard this phrase?

We figure if we do everything ‘almost’ right - if we eat well most of the time, exercise a few times a week - then we can ‘indulge’ every once in a while, and we feel justified and happy doing so. I myself have lived by this credo for the most part over the past few years.

Just this past week, however, two people have asked me if I lost weight. After my immediate thought of ‘Why, was I looking chubby before?…’ I started wondering why they asked; I was unaware of having lost any weight. In thinking back, I do remember making a few decisions differently over the last couple of weeks than I have in the past, and to this I must attribute any physical change.

I have been studying and thinking about the concept of consistency lately, and along with my goals which have been top of my mind, I must assume this awareness has made a difference in my actions. One of the goals I state over and over in my mind is that I am active every day. Just that repetition has caused me to get up and do something, when prior to this I would have skipped a day, although I still would have been active almost every day. Can it be this simple?…

I happen to be listening to a set of Brian tracy tapes in my car at the moment. When I go to eat something lately, I can hear Brian Tracy’s words in my mind; ‘Every decision you make is either taking you towards your goals, or away from them’…so there have been a few times lately where I decided on salad instead of pasta, or fruit instead of ice cream, even though I feel confident that I eat a really healthy diet most of the time.

Can these few small changes - the difference between consistency and moderation - really make the difference?

For someone who is very mindful of choices and feels they are usually good ones, I find this really surprising, although perhaps I shouldn’t. It makes perfect sense, and brings to life for me a saying I once heard about the difference between super-successful people - in athletics, finance, whatever - and normal people not being the huge gap everyone thinks it is. The difference is actually very small, and if we could only see that, we might be motivated to just tighten everything up a little and reap the rewards we say we want so badly. Well, I can tell you from the frontlines - it’s true! Such tiny little differences in decision-making DO make a fundamental difference in outcome, and they started before the moment, with a prior decision, that XYZ is what I want and who I am.

This article was written by and posted in its’ original form by Shauna Arthurs at the Breathing Prosperity blog.