6 Years Of Massive Transformation - My Motivation Secrets

In Ask Coach Tony, you can put my Operation Melt coaching to the test by asking me questions about how to achieve your goals.

Because a question asked by one is often a question had by many, I am regularly sharing these answers via the Operation Melt blog.

Amuse-Bouche

Before we jump into today's post, I offer you this "dad joke" as a light "amuse-bouche" to entertain your mind before we get serious. Like any other amuse-bouche, you may hate it, but it is worth every penny you paid for it, right?

An anxious, first-time flyer was nervously talking with a flight attendant and he asked, "how often do planes crash?" She looked at him curiously and responded, "umm, just once, I think."

6 Years Of Massive Transformation – My Motivation Secrets

Coach Tony: I have followed you for a few years now, and you seem very dedicated – weekly blogs, social media posts (especially on #Sweaturday), multiple books published and another on the way. You walk a lot, run, race, share pics from the gym and keep setting personal records. I know you also work and live your life. How do you stay so motivated?

In fairness, this question is a combination of many such questions I have received over the years and continue to receive today. I have answered these questions in person and am happy to share a broader answer in this week’s Ask Coach Tony.

Why address this question now? My timing isn’t random but related to an upcoming significant milestone date. As June approaches, I am about to reach the sixth anniversary of my decision to change my life. Six years later, I am still going strong and will use today’s post to share some examples of what I have done and how I have done it.

Six Years Later

As I explain in my book Operation Melt: How I Used Life-Changing Project Management to Lose Over 100 Pounds in Under a Year, in June of 2017, I had my “moment” and made a choice that changed my life. This choice started as a weight loss goal and quickly grew to something much larger. It became a major life transformation.

Over the past six years, I have experienced numerous significant life transformations:

I abandoned my sedentary lifestyle and became a dedicated amateur athlete
I stopped mindlessly eating and drinking and embraced deliberate healthy habits
I established a deeper relationship with my body
I redefined my relationship with my work
I uncovered and leaned into my life purpose

Before getting into the secret of my motivation, I will share a few highlights for each of these areas. Stay with me; this info will be interesting and good background for why my motivation secret is so powerful.

Please note that I am focusing on my efforts and actions, not my results (e.g., weight loss). Why? Because, like you, my actions and efforts are directly within my control, my results are not.

I abandoned my sedentary lifestyle and became a dedicated amateur athlete.

Undoubtedly, my biggest transformation in the past six years pertains to my commitment to exercise. In the 40 years before I decided to change my life, exercise was the furthest thing from my mind. I was living the classic sedentary lifestyle, which was beginning to catch up with me and impacting my health.

Surprisingly, other than the sixty hours or more I was working each week, I have no idea how I spent my days in the “before” time. The past six years have proven those days are long gone!

I would walk 500 miles (32 times over!): In six years, I have walked and run 32.2 million steps. These steps translate to a total distance of more than sixteen thousand miles I have traveled on my feet. Said differently, I have walked about two-thirds of the circumference of the earth!
~~Born~~ Choose to run: Of these tens of thousands of miles I have traveled, about 2500 were running miles. I began running in late 2017 and have participated in more than fifty organized races, including completing 5 half marathons. In all, I have run the equivalent distance of 96 marathons!
I even lift, bro: My commitment to exercise isn’t limited to walking and running; I have also spent lots of time in the gym. Since joining The Fitness Loft in October 2017, I have logged about 200 workouts and more than 100 personal training sessions.
Time to sweat: these walking, running and lifting stats prove I have dedicated serious time to exercise. With a bit of rough math and a healthy dose of assumptions, I estimate that I have invested about 4,700 hours into exercising (just under 200 days).

Six years ago, I semi-mindlessly coasted through my days without the slightest thought about exercise. Since deciding to be different, I have dedicated about 10% of all the hours in my life to moving my body.

I stopped mindlessly eating and drinking and embraced deliberate healthy habits.

Exercise is just one side of the fitness equation, but bodies are built and shrunk in the kitchen. Like many people, my “before” time eating and drinking habits with both unhealthy and completely mindless – I had no idea what I consumed each day. Like anything else in life, trusting your health to autopilot is unhealthy and dangerous.

After six years of work, my eating and drinking autopilot is gone for good.

Of the nearly 2200 days since I started my journey, I have logged everything I ate or drank for almost 2000 days. For the sake of my mental health, I continue to wean myself from logging but occasionally restart it to ensure I am eating enough and not too much based on my level of exercise.

I have also established daily calorie, protein, carbs and sodium goals and re-evaluate them regularly with my team of experts.

I established a deeper relationship with my body.

During the forty years before I started this journey, I had almost no relationship with my body. I knew it was there and was embarrassed by it. This embarrassment was driven by childhood (and adult) bullying and body-shaming, having to shop only at big & tall stores and being concerned with the maximum weight capacities of chairs and such. But I didn’t care for my body, wasn’t aware of my feelings, ignored myself in mirrors and avoided pictures.

Over the past six years, I have started paying closer attention to my body and giving it what it needs. I engage in daily exercises to deepen body my relationship with and positivity toward my body. While this relationship isn’t always a source of positivity and joy, having a relationship at all is a significant change.

I redefined my relationship with my work.

When I started my journey, I lived to work. I worked at least sixty hours per week, and it was all-encompassing. Work was where I had goals, friends and my only real source of personal growth. My work was the majority of my identity and my biggest source of frustration.

I shared a deeper explanation of my changing relationship with work in I Fell Off A Ladder, but suffice it to say work is different now. While important to me, my job is just one small part of my life; I don’t rely on it for my sense of identity and community. I am not climbing a ladder and am not constantly focused on next.

Redefining my relationship with work took a lot of hard work. I had to get laid off and change my mode and model of work. Most importantly, I had to define healthy boundaries and fill portions of my personal bucket with other things.

I uncovered and leaned into my life purpose.

Through this six-year journey, I have learned that a significant portion of my life purpose is to inspire people to start where they are and to build the life of their dreams through their goals. I haven’t finalized that statement by any means, but it is essentially the life purpose I have shaped over the past six years.

Here are a few examples of how I have leaned into this purpose:

My blog: I have written more than 500 blog posts over the past six years and continue to publish them weekly to an increasing audience.
My books: I have written and published 3 books so far and have a fourth book that is written and going through the editing and review process.
Coaching: I have completed multiple life and health coaching certifications, including becoming a Master Life Coach. With these certifications in hand, I have created a coaching practice that has helped many people figure out what they want, build their confidence to take the first step and persevere until they succeed with their goals.
Availability: I continually make myself available and approachable to help people move a little closer to the life of their dreams.

This is where I will end the recap of my transformations during the past six years. But the conversation doesn’t have to stop here. If you have questions, want to know more or are intrigued by any of these items, I am an open book and ready to talk.

Needless to say, I have done a lot of work since that big day six years ago when I decided to lose weight; frankly, weight loss is the smallest part of my story. The best part of the story is that I am not done yet and am still going strong with each of these areas of transformation.

Back to the question at hand… my motivation

Now that I have shared how I have changed over the past six years, I will get back to the original question. With all my change and dedication, how do I stay motivated?

Ready for the surprise? How do I stay so motivated?

I don’t!

There are some days I feel very motivated and jump out of bed, ready to conquer the day. But there are many days that I don’t feel any motivation at all.

Confused? Wondering how I have achieved all this transformation in six years and am still going strong without consistent motivation?

Here’s a secret that few people will tell you: motivation is temporary. Motivation is good, but you can’t rely exclusively on it to get you where you want to go. You don’t have to believe me; here’s a popular quote from a motivational expert, Zig Ziglar.

“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.”

Wait, what?

So, how have I accomplished my transformation if not through motivation? My secret is two words that are far more important than motivation.

Goals and habits.

Here’s what I mean… we can use goals (and the projects we use to achieve them) to build new habits.

Through our upgraded habits, we can achieve daily progress toward our desired new life.

Progress yields more progress (or momentum) which creates transformation.

The momentum created by upgraded habits is a more effective transformation tool than temporary motivation can ever be. It’s similar to the difference between a short energy boost from sugar or an energy drink versus a consistent diet of nourishing foods. It just can’t compare!

Want to use goals to build the habits needed to live the life of your dreams? Just follow my six goal success best practices:

Set SMART goals: have the courage to set goals and make sure they are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based.
Build a plan that works for you: get to know yourself and lean into the things that work with who you are.
Measure progress every day: when you have a measurable goal, you can evaluate your progress each day; this measurement can give you that daily dose of temporary motivation.
Expect and plan for problems: your journey won’t always go as expected. Think ahead about what might go wrong and decide how you will prevent that problem or react when it occurs (this is called risk management).
Don’t go it alone: an old proverb says, “if you want to go fast, go alone… if you want to go far, go together.” You’re in this for the long haul and will need people to help you. These people include accountability partners and a team of experts to help you navigate the unknown.
Enjoy the journey: your destination is important, but you don’t get there overnight. If you work to enjoy and celebrate all the steps along the way, you are less likely to give up before you reach that all-important destination.

These six strategies helped me transform my life, and they can help you too. By leveraging these strategies instead of relying on your motivation, you are far more likely to achieve your goals and build the life you want to live. I am living proof!

Do you need some help with creating goals and applying these strategies? As a Master Life Coach, I am trained and experienced with helping people just like you transform their lives one day at a time. Please visit the Operation Melt coaching page and submit a non-obligation inquiry form. I’d be honored to help you!

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Meet Coach Tony

My name is Coach Tony, and I am a coach, author and project manager on a mission. I am working to build a world where no goal ever dies of loneliness.

I almost allowed one of my biggest life goals to die without ever being attempted for forty years. My goal almost died, not of failure but of loneliness. But, I took a risk and leveraged a simple, logical process that helped me wildly exceed my goal.

I transformed my life, and you can do the same with the help of Operation Melt.

Operation Melt provides engaging, practical content and hands-on coaching to inspire, motivate and equip project managers and other left-brained high-achievers to pursue and accomplish their biggest goals.

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