This is a short personal-story transcript of John Assaraf describing his decision to lose weight before his 50th birthday. He explains the goal-setting process he used—writing a specific target (release 25 pounds), visualizing the outcome, creating and executing a plan (diet change, personal trainer, daily visualization/affirmations)—and reflects on overcoming procrastination and excuses to achieve the goal.
Chapters
Hey, friends. I hope you're having an amazing day. Now, I want to share a little personal story with you that I think will help you in your life right now. About four months ago, I was in Australia teaching a few seminars there, and I happened to be with my nephew, and we went for a walk on the beach, and we took some pictures. We had some people take some pictures of us. And then when he sent me the pictures, I looked at myself and I said, oh, my God, where did all this extra weight come from? Now, you might think I'm a little bit crazy talking to you about my weight, but I had this image of myself, of being this lean, healthy, mature man. Now I'm turning 50 this month. And so I've been really reflecting on all the areas of my life that I'm happy with, the areas that I want to change, and the areas that I really want to get better at. And so when I looked at this picture, I didn't feel. Feel good about how I looked, even though I thought I was looking okay. And I also made another decision that for my 50th birthday, I was going to get myself into some better shape, specifically release 20 pounds off of my body. And so what did I do? I did the same thing for releasing weight as I've done for earning more money or for having a great relationship with my wife or. Or for any goal that I wanted to achieve. I started by writing down exactly and specifically what my ideal weight would be by my 50th birthday and I needed to lose, or as I prefer to call it, release £25. I then started to visualize myself at my new weight. But I don't just believe in visualizing, and I don't believe in just writing a goal down. I also believe in creating a plan. And my plan was really simple. I was going to cut out some of the foods that I was really loving, like frozen yogurt every day and some other things that I really enjoyed eating. And I decided I was going to release those out of my life. Sugar, specifically, was something that was a craving for me every single day. And so about 120 days ago, I made that decision. And over the last 90 days, 60 days, 30 days, I started to execute on a plan of what to do every day. So I hired a personal trainer to come to my home four days a week. I added an extra couple workouts a week, changed my diet, visualized exactly what my ideal weight would be like, how I would feel, what that would mean to me, what would mean to my family. Who was coming in for my 50th birthday when they saw me, how they go, wow, you'll look great. So I started to really get into the emotion of associating all of the different facets of my life that feeling and looking great would be a part of and I can share with you. I did release the 25 pounds. Now my key for the next five, six months is to maintain the ideal weight that I have right now. And so I'm using the exact same process of daily visualization, daily affirmations, and more importantly, execution of a different plan that I wasn't doing before. A couple things were happening to me before. Number one, which was the biggest one was I was procrastinating. I knew this for the last two, three years, but I keep putting it off and putting it off and putting it off. If that sounds familiar, then you're not alone. Just know that. And I just had enough of putting it off. That was number one. So my suggestion for you, stop procrastinating. Make a decision of what you want, get emotionally attached to that and do it. That's number one. Number two, I recognize that I too was suffering from that inflammation disease. I call it a mental inflammation disease called excusitis. And I was making up all kinds of excuses and I caught myself doing it. Now I think I'm one of the best in the world at helping people break the their beliefs and their habits that are holding them back. And so I had to use what I teach on myself. The reason I want to share this with you is just to let you know that we all have the same types of challenges. We all procrastinate, we all have excuses, we all put things off until tomorrow or next week, or in my case, a couple of years having this one kind of goal. And when it was time to be serious and when it was time for me to be committed, I had to throw the excuses out of the window. I had to throw procrastination out the window and I had to make a decision and cut off any other option. That's what it takes to achieve your goals. I hope you've enjoyed this. God bless you all, and thanks for supporting me all through the years.
