Goals Are How We Measure Our Personal Success
As a society and part of American culture, we place on ourselves goals to achieve. We make these goals to further ourselves or a project we are pursuing. In the world of personal health, the "buzzwords" of today are "new years resolutions", "diet and lose weight", "get fit", "eat healthy" "go back to the gym", the list goes on. We all know for ourselves that we should "eat healthy", get exercise, sleep eight hours a night, eat breakfast, don't skip meals, but looking into the broader picture-what does this actually mean?
People who achieve their goals with their health are the ones who are the most dedicated and the ones who have the patience to wait for months or years (some even wait decades!!). Long-term gratification is a major key in creating the version of "success" that you are seeking to achieve your own life.
Are you the kind of person to lose your patience at a red light?
How well do you tolerate waiting a week for a package to arrive? Or do you pay extra to receive the package sooner?
Does cutting ice cream out of your diet for an extended period of time sound like it could be filled with purpose or does it sound like a form of torture?
If we see stress as being our ability to handle changes, we may be able to push through trials more easily than just avoiding stress altogether.
Think about this for a moment, ice cream is one of the more popular dessert items that Americans eat and for the most part we all agree that it is an "unhealthy" food item.
When a person is on a "diet" and they stop eating ice cream, for whatever the purpose of the diet is, chances are the person will crave the ice cream and want to eat it. Motivation and an understanding of long-term gratification would drive a person to avoid the ice cream or find a suitable healthier replacement. A person addicted to short-term or instant gratification would simply give themselves the ice cream and whatever else their heart desires, completely sabotaging their personal goal that they had set for themselves. "I will do better tomorrow" "I won't do it again" "its just one cheat" are all excuses that people like to tell themselves for why it is "ok" that they break their goal.
Mindset can be everything, the person who has a strong understanding of long-term gratification sees that there is a figurative "light" at the end of the tunnel. They thrive on knowing that their short term struggles (in this case, ice cream deprivation) will mean that they achieve their goal of losing weight/better gut health/ eating less sugar-whatever it may be. They see that the first ones to fail are the ones who never tried, and the second ones to fail are the ones that quit. Things that cause us "pain" such as avoiding junk food, working out at the gym, putting the computer down and going to bed early, are all relative. When we crave instant gratification, we deprive ourselves of long-term satisfaction. The most decorated Olympian of the modern era, Michael Phelps, winner of 28 Olympic medals would be seen as successful by most average Americans (wouldn't you agree??). He himself spoke in this interview about how he struggled with severe depression and loss of motivation, even after he had won Olympic medals. The average person would look at him and ask, "but why?", we as a society look up to celebrities and royals as role models-people who do not have "average" problems. The simple truth is that this is not the case at all. A human is a human is a human, whether they are in a wheelchair, basinet, or on the Olympic Podium-we all struggle with motivation, diet, energy, patience, and stresses.
When we personally take stress one piece at a time, piece by piece, and allow ourselves to be grateful for our successes that we have achieved already we can open our selves up to what we intend to achieve next. Instead of looking at a challenge a mountain, look at it as a daily opportunity to receive change. If we remind ourselves daily, that our healthy lifestyle choice that we are making that day-whether it be diet, exercise, stress relief etc., will pay off not today but tomorrow it becomes much easier to achieve our goal. Setting a big "new years resolution" or other goals can be daunting, oftentimes people pick goals that they know they will quit so that in the end they do not have to change their lifestyle. People like consistency and change is a break inconsistency, even good change such as losing weight, gaining muscle, taking alone time to destress before bed can be hard for someone to achieve because it requires a change.
The person who makes the biggest positive impact on their life is the one who is willing to work through the "stress" of making a new lifestyle and creating a new routine. Anyone can do it, according to Wim Hof-the man who climbed Everest wearing only shorts- learning to control your own mindset is what leads one to create their own success.
Success is created through hard work and dedication, it is not an inborn trait that some people can never have.
What goals are you looking to achieve?
-Aaron from the Quantum Team
Here at Quantum Alternative Health,
we strive for helping people with their health challenges. It is our goal for you to leave our office happier than when you first walked in.
*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration(FDA). These products are not meant to diagnose, treat or cure any disease or medical condition.
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