Posts Tagged being consistent
It’s Not Starting Over, It’s Starting….
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on December 1st, 2010
One of the biggest problems I use to have was saying “Tomorrow I am going to get started again.” I would tell myself this over and over until tomorrow became next week, next week became next month, and next month became next year. I sat year after year spinning my wheels thinking “Tomorrow’s the day.”
One of the problems with doing this is that we start to lose faith in our ability to accomplish things. We begin by thinking about how we are letting others down. We see it in their eyes and in their actions that they just don’t believe the words that are coming out of our mouths. In a way we make it about someone else. “I could do it, but no one thinks I can do it.”
Who cares what others think? It’s not their journey and it’s not their responsibility to be our cheerleader. If you have had a tendancy to always wait till tomorrow, how about taking action today? How about not worrying about what you think EVERYONE else is thinking and act on your own behalf.
The great thing about our life is that each day we choose how we are going to live it, regardless of circumstances. We choose whether or not we are going to exercise and eat healthy or not. We choose to do the best we can with where we are.
I want to encourage everyone to not wait until tomorrow or the new year to get started on making your life the way you want it to be. Instead of starting tomorrow and having that one “last supper” or binge, get going today and see what can happen.
It’s not about starting over, it is about starting to be consistent and focusing in on what’s important.
Remember, it’s not about starting over, it’s about starting and doing the best you can along the way.
An Inspirational Piece… Just For Today
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on October 5th, 2010
I came across this as I was doing some studying. I would like to share it with you today. I have been reading it every morning and it has had an immediate impact on me. Enjoy!
JUST FOR TODAY
Just for today I will be happy. This assumes that what Abraham Lincoln said is true, “most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Happiness is from within; it is not a matter of externals.
Just for today I will try to adjust myself to what is, and not try to adjust everything to my own desires. I will take my family, my business, and my luck as they come and fit myself to them.
Just for today I will take care of my body. I will exercise it, care for it, nourish it, not abuse or neglect it, so that it will be a perfect machine for my bidding.
Just for today I will try to strengthen my mind. I will learn something useful. I will not be a mental loafer. I will read something that requires effort, thought and concentration.
Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways; I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. I will do at least two things I don’t want to do, as William James suggests, just for exercise.
Just for today I will be agreeable. I will look as well as I can, dress as becomingly as possible, talk low, act courteously, be liberal with praise, criticize not at all, nor find fault with anything and not try to regulate nor improve anyone.
Just for today I will try to live through this day only, not to tackle my whole life problem at once. I can do things for twelve hours that would appall me if I had to do them up for a lifetime.
Just for today I will have a program. I will write down what I expect to do every hour. I may not follow it exactly, but I will have it. It will eliminate two pests, hurrying and indecision.
Just for today I will have a quiet half-hour all by myself and relax. In this half-hour sometimes I will think of my God, so as to get a little perspective into my life.
Just for today I wil be unafraid, especially I will not be afraid to be happy, to enjoy what is beautiful, to love, and to believe that those I love, love me.
-Sibyl F. Partridge
Staying Focused….
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on March 4th, 2010
At the beginning of the year I made the commitment to be more consistent. In all areas of life I wanted to be consistent. My blog in particular was one of the things I wanted to keep up on. I have. The thing that I have noticed about being consistent is that while I have been working on it, I have developed a schedule.
I have never been much of a schedule person. I have just gone with the flow and whatever happened happened. It was easy for me not to have a plan and to just decide what I was going to do when I got up on a particular day. Since the beginning of the year I have been putting myself on a schedule. Yesterday, my schedule was interrupted and for the first time, ever maybe, I was thrown off.
My whole day seemed out of whack. Not in a “What am I going to do now?” type way, I just felt like I wasn’t getting everything out of my day that I expected. When I got up this morning I was still a little upset that yesterday didn’t go as planned. On the way to the gym I realized that feeling this way wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
I know I can’t go back and have a re-do of yesterday. I am glad, however, that I am conscious of how much more I could have accomplished. I am excited that I have some emotion over not getting things done like I wanted. It shows growth. It shows me that I value my time and that having a routine isn’t such a bad thing.
Today I got right back on track and my attitude is back on track as well. I know I can’t control everything that happens from day to day but having a schedule or routine can help keep me going in the right direction. This morning I understood that being consistent means having a plan and doing everything you can to execute it regardless of what incidents may arise.
I’m getting use to this consistency thing. The great thing about it is that when you expect consistency you will work hard in all areas of your life to achieve it. There will inevitably be rough days here and there. How respond to those days is the important thing.
See you tomorrow!
Still On Track….
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on February 15th, 2010
I want to thank my readers who asked if I was still on track with my blog and workouts. I am! There was a glitch on my site and my new posts were not appearing on the home page. I believe it is taken care of now. To all of you who sent me messages asking how things were going, thank you. If you hadn’t asked I probably wouldn’t have known anything was wrong. The post are now up so I hope you will go back and read them.
I had an amazing talk with a good friend of mine last week. We were talking about getting and staying on track and he said something that really resonated with me and I think it will be beneficial for all of you as well, regardless of where you are at in your life right now.
I was telling him how in the past I have always felt like things need to be difficult for me in order to feel like I am accomplishing anything. When I was losing weight I felt like it needed to be hard. When it came to finances I felt like even though I have plenty of money I still feel like I should be struggling for some reason. In my speaking career I have felt like there should be times where I don’t have a lot of events booked so that I work harder.
Turns out I can be an idiot. Life doesn’t have to be a struggle. More times than not we make it a struggle so that we have an excuse in case things don’t work out like we plan. If we make losing weight hard we have a reason to give up. “It was just too hard.” “There must be something wrong with my metabolism.” “I don’t know what’s going on with my weight.” We build excuses for ourselves based on not only our own experience but the experiences of others as well.
My friend listened intently and then said this. “I don’t care.” I was a little taken aback. How could he not care after I had just spilled my guts to him. The answer is simple. It doesn’t matter what you’ve always done, what matters is what you are doing now. Things don’t have to be hard just because that’s the way it’s always been.
He then took a sheet a paper and drew a line on it. He pointed to the left side of the line and said that the left side reprresented the past. He didn’t care that I had won The Biggest Loser. He didn’t care that my parents had gotten a divorce or that I didn’t do as well in school as I should have. He didn’t care anything about those things and neither should I. What happened in the past doesn’t have to affect us today. If I am going to be truly successful I need to draw the line and move forward.
I have talked for hours about the importance of not reliving the past. For some reason the first place I go when things get tough is straight to my past experiences. Not the good ones that show I am capable overcoming, but the bad experiences that lead me to think “See, this is what you do all the time. Now you have done it all over again.”
It’s time to draw that line. I have had tough times in the past but I have also had good ones. Times that showed me that I am tough and that I am an overcomer. For all the bad times there were a lot more good ones. The good ones are the ones we need to draw strength from. The bad experiences are like an anchor that is weighing us down. Until we pull that anchor up we can’t move to a better place.
I hope you will join me in drawing that line and striving to not cross back over. Let’s draw from the positive things in our life and stop setting ourselves up for defeat by reliving and speaking the negatives. We have too much life to live to allow ourselves to be weighed down with those negative anchors.
DRAW THE LINE!
See you tomorrow!
Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On…
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on February 9th, 2010
I had a great workout today. I was feeling pretty good until my trainer said it was time to weigh in. That’s when I remembered my out of control Sunday of eating. I was instantly deflated. I got on the scale and it told me the truth. I was up 3 lbs. Not that big of a deal but I was reminded of how a day of gluttony can affect me for days afterward.
At first I was upset. In my mind, being mad at the scale for a while might actually make a difference. It didn’t. The scale is a piece of equipment that doesn’t care about you. It doesn’t care how hard you work or how bad you really want to lose weight. It doesn’t care what TV show you were on or that you are a CEO of a company. It has one job, to tell you the truth.
The truth is, as I said yesterday, I blew it this weekend. Getting mad at the scale and thinking about the food doesn’t change my situation. I’m up, this is where I am and this is where I have to work from. It’s time to move on. I think a lot of people make the same mistake that I do from time to time. I work out hard. I really believe that very few people can keep up with me when I work out.
Unfortunately, working out hard doesn’t give me the ability to eat anything I want. That is where I seem to run into the most problem. I want to be “normal”, work out and then eat whatever I want. As “normal” as I want to be the reality is that I don’t have that luxury. Writing down what I eat and sticking to my calorie range is going to have to me my normal and that is as normal as I am going to get.
The title to this blog is from a song of my favorite artist Jimmy Buffett. In his song he makes the point that once something happens, there isn’t a whole lot we can do about it. He’s right! All we can do is keep breathing and work on from where we are after whatever it is that happened has happened.
I ate too much this weekend and now I am going to move on. I won’t be talking about it anymore after this writing and will do my best to ensure that I don’t do it again.
Is there anything that it’s time for you to move on from? As the song goes; Breathe in, breathe out, MOVE ON! Have a great day and be excited to move forward!
See you tomorrow!
Are You a Do-er or a Gonna Do-er?
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on February 5th, 2010
Yesterday I talked a little about how we can’t change others, only ourselves. I want to talk about how our actions speak louder than words. By changing ourselves we can encourage those around us to make changes without saying a word. I am going to share how I use to be a “gonna do” person instead of a “do” person.
For a lot of years when I was struggling I would tell people about what I was going to do. I was going to lose weight, I was going to quit drinking so much, I was going to go back to school. Let’s just say I was going to do a lot of things.
Nearly every week I was gonna start a diet. I was a lot like people you have seen or maybe even yourself. On Monday I would show up to work with my water and a salad for lunch. On Tuesday I would show up with a salad, a sandwich, and a water. On Wednesday I would have a sandwich and a pop. On Thursday a sandwich, a pop, and a bag of chips. On Friday I was like “Forget it, let’s just go out for lunch. I did pretty good this week.” This pattern would repeat itself pretty regularly.
The other thing I was always gonna do was cut back on the drinking. On Saturdays when I was good and drunk I would tell my friends that “After tonight, I’m done.” They would laugh a little and then say “OK Hoover, whatever you say.” I use to get upset and think to myself “Why don’t they beleive me? They should be encouraging me!” Again, I said this on a regular basis but never got around to actually doing it.
It never dawned on me that the reason people didn’t get excited for me is because they were constantly hearing me say things and never doing anyting. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to see me do things they just knew from my past that I probably wasn’t going to follow through. It wasn’t meaness, it was past experiences.
I don’t think I am much different from a lot of people in wanting praise for the things I want to do and not wanting constructive criticism for the things I say I am going to do and then don’t. We all want to look good in others eyes and not look like a failure. Unfortunately, when we don’t follow through we start to talk about what we are going to do next as though to somehow make up for what we didn’t do.
It’s a vicious cycle and it leads nowhere. We need to start small with the changes and then check them off as we go. More importantly, we need to follow through. It’s easy to set big goals and talk about all of the great things we want to do. It can be difficult to actually do them.
I rarely tell people all of the things I am going to do now. I just do them and let people see the results. One reason is that a lot of the things that I tend to do seem downright insane to others. For example, competing in the Ford Ironman World Championships having never done more than a sprint triathlon before. The other reason is that I have learned that my actions speak louder than my words.
In the words of the great Nike slogan, Just Do It! That being said, when we begin to take action more than likely those around us will too. If you want to encourage someone close to you to lose weight, lose weight yourself first. If you want to get a better job, start looking and preparing yourself. We can’t just sit around and wait for things to happen for us. We have to be do-ers instead of gonna do-ers! Have an awesome weekend and go do something!
See you Monday!
Remember That Post About Being Consistent?
Posted by Matt Hoover in General on January 16th, 2010
It’s 2am. I woke up feeling like I had forgotten to do something. As I lay there for a minute I realized what it was. It was write on my blog.
Here I had talked about being consistent consistently and how in the past I had consistently been consistent for about a week and then let it slip. I had also mentioned how inconsistency was some peoples only form of consistency.
Well, as I am working on being more consistent, I figured the only logical thing to do was haul my butt out of bed and write.
So, here I am at 2am continuing to work at becoming consistent. I hope this counts towards my efforts at doing so.
Good Night!
