When it comes to losing weight and making lifestyle changes that you want to sustain it is extremely beneficial to prime yourself for the journey ahead, but most weight loss programmes require you to prime your metabolism, whereas with Harmonia it involves priming your mind by creating a goal statement. This is because being able to describe your goals in written form is proven to give you the best chance of goal success.
Writing a goal statement at the beginning of your journey will help you to clarify exactly what you want to achieve in your weight loss journey, plan how you will achieve it and keep you motivated and focused as it helps guide your daily actions towards goal achievement.
ALL THAT RAS-
Writing down your goals activates your brain’s reticular activating system (RAS) because it essentially “programs” your subconscious mind to prioritise information related to those goals, making you more aware of opportunities and resources that can help you achieve them, effectively filtering out irrelevant stimuli and focusing your attention on what aligns with desired outcome.
This process engages both the logical and creative parts of your brain, enhancing focus and accountability, and allowing you to regularly revisit and reaffirm your intentions.
Creating a goal statement is the first step in you turning a dream into a reality. When you define your goals, you give yourself a destination to reach. This ensures you narrow your focus and don’t get distracted or fall out of alignment of your goal. And if for some reason you do, it can realign you and refocus your attention again.
** Learn more about Ras in ‘COACHING’.
RECOMMENDATION-
BEFORE WRITING YOUR GOAL STATEMENT I WOULD RECOMMEND A ROUND OF ‘HEART FOCUSED BREATHING’ TO PLACE YOU IN THE OPTIMAL MENTAL STATE TO WRITE THIS.
What does a goal statement look like-
There’s actually no right or wrong answer to this because your goal is personal to you, therefore will be unique to only you.
What you want to achieve, how you plan to achieve it and what you will do to stay focused all depend on the type of person that you are and the way that you process things.
What I do recommend though is that you create your statement using the following template-
For the first question you are required to dig deep.
Stating “my goal is to lose weight” just isn’t sufficient enough response for this, you will need to give a more detailed response, for example-
What do you want to achieve on a physical level?
What do you want to achieve on a mental level?
Losing weight always helps with confidence, self-esteem and emotional freedom so if you were to lose weight would it inspire you to do other things in your life?
Would it give you the confidence to join a new group, apply for a new job or travel? if so you must include all of these things in your goal intentions as they are all connected.
In the above question you answered what your goal is, but how would achieving that goal change your life?
What benefits would you experience, and how much would it change your life?
I want you to really think about this in great detail and write as many things that come to your mind as possible.
Attaching emotions to your goal intentions is a sure-fire way to enhance your levels of success.
Not only does it help you to recognise the value of them, but it also helps you to feel connected which stimulates that wonderful RAS again which strengthens your focus and determination.
Not only is this science backed from extensive evidence, but it is something I personally used for my own journey.
I had been through many diet-cycles and failed attempts prior to becoming an expert in the weight loss field, and with each of those failed attempts I had always declared that I was going to lose weight, and that was the full extent of my priming process. This always led to inconsistency, distractions and falling out of alignment, more often than not without even realising it was happening.
I would subconsciously fall into old habits or patterns and before I knew it I was back to square one.
Once I learnt to attach emotions to my goal though my mind responded differently. Yes I would still get distracted sometimes (good old ADHD lol), but my brain would start to realign itself without any conscious effort which was due to the fact that I now had a stronger connection to my goal than ever before, because of the emotions that I had attached to it
Setting a goal is one thing, achieving that goal is quite another, and it is important to mentally prime yourself for the things that are going to need to be done now to achieve that goal.
Setting yourself non-negotiable actions is a useful tool for this process, but it is important that they are realistic, because whilst it is important that you believe in your capabilities to succeed, it is also important to not allocate actions that are not sustainable, because whatever you do to achieve your weight loss goal you must be able to continue to do long-term to sustain the losses. And if any actions or steps that you take are extreme in nature can never be sustained and set you up to fail as well as knock your self-esteem.
A perfect example of this is the goals that I once set myself as a goal in another failed attempt to lose weight. I set myself a goal to go for a run at 5am every day and only have two meal replacement shakes a day and one diet micro meal.
Both of these actions were highly unrealistic for sustainability. Firstly the 5am run was impractical because I hated running and dreaded doing it. And a 5am start was unrealistic as I had a baby so would be up through the night doing feeds so would be exhausted each morning. It not only didn’t fit into my lifestyle, but hating running meant it could never be a consistent habit. So of course I only managed for a short time before I gave up.
The same with the diet shakes. Not only did I still have a lot of unresolved emotional attachments to food, but I found no enjoyment in the shakes and it wasn’t long before my cravings and lack of self-control led to binging on junk food.
The steps that you set out to take MUST be realistic, manageable and timely in order for you to remain consistent.
Sometimes the key is to start small. Small consistent changes over time lead to big changes.
It is highly unrealistic to expect to never face obstacles on this journey, and whilst I’m not suggesting you should be negative and defeatist about this, it can be helpful to prepare for them in order to overcome them.
For this question you should look back at your previous attempts and consider what obstacles did you face before?
What reoccurring issues/patterns can you identify, as well as thought habits that can be contradictory.
Do you have loved ones around you that make you doubt yourself? Do you get in your own head, talk negatively to yourself and then self-sabotage? Do you struggle with consistency, maybe due to poor planning?
Once you are able to identify these areas you can work on eliminating them by using the practices, tools and coaching within this system.
And that completes your goal statement.
Not only does writing this statement prime you for success, but it can be a valuable tool to realign your motivation and drive if you find yourself struggling or losing faith in yourself. You can revisit your statement and read through it to refresh your memory and reactivate your RAS.
You may even find that you want to add to your goals, elaborate on them or change your son of the intentions set to better suit you, and that is entirely fine.
** I do recommend you read your goals statement on a regular basis to help keep your driving force strong.