By Bobby DeMuro
Maybe you’ve heard that a difficult undertaking is “like eating an elephant.” We’ve worked with many different people from many different walks of life, with all kinds of different fitness goals. There is a common sentiment when we begin working together, and it goes like this:
There’s just too much! I need to make sure I am taken care of. I need to eat perfectly. I need to get enough sleep. I need to make sure my work responsibilities are still a priority. I need to spend time with my family. And somehow – in the midst of all that – I have to perform a small miracle to exercise consistently, even when I don’t feel like it. How can I possibly do all that? I don’t have time to sit down and develop this plan. It would take me a solid six weeks of work just to get my mind organized!
When exercise is beginning to feel like an uphill climb…
Does that sound familiar? Can you hear some of yourself in that tirade? You’re not alone. You will probably never find the time to do it all, if all you’re focused on is how to do it. Why? Because your focus is off. It doesn’t matter how many times you release your arrow of good intentions, you’ll never hit the target if you’re not aiming at it. Oh sure, you may get lucky every now and then, and hit the target out of sheer luck. It happens. But you’ll never achieve consistent, predictable results if you don’t take careful aim each time.
You Won’t Hit a Target if You’re Aiming at the Sky
It’s not about how. It’s about what. The problem is not how to eat the elephant. It’s identifying the elephant in the first place. Once you’ve identified the elephant, then you can focus on having a system to prioritize where you’re going to start.
You need a vision of what you will look like when “the elephant has been eaten.” Without the vision, nothing you do will make much of a difference. You may make some small changes, and you may even see some good results of those changes. But without the vision, you will never truly become great. You have to stop focusing on the work, and start focusing on the goals.
Focus on the Results, Not on the Work
What is your vision of your body? What do you want it to be? One of your most important jobs is the development of your vision. That’s it. Your job, your role, is defining what you will look like when your regimen is finished, and putting that plan into place.
Approach that Elephant Strategically
To determine what “bite” you need to take first, you need a strategy. With a defined strategy, you can choose where to start. What is your system for prioritizing? Without that system, you’ll get stuck in reactive mode. You’ll develop whatever system seems most important right at that moment. You’ll deal only with your biggest frustration that minute.
And while you’re putting together a system to deal with that frustration, five more problems will show up, each seemingly more important, more vital to the survival of your regimen than the one you’ve started working on. You need a system to prioritize. You have to pick and choose your battles.
Which center needs the most attention in your body or life this week? Focus there. Spend an hour thinking about all the methods of implementation you will need to correct that specific problem, and write them down. Rate them on a scale of 1-10: which is more important than another? Sort your list by the most important ones, and select just one system to develop right now. Repeat this process regularly, starting each time with the question: “Which center needs the most attention in my health this week?”
Take small bites out of your elephant. Take the right bites. But most importantly, determine what your elephant will look like when you’ve eaten the whole thing this will help keep you focused on the results, not the work.
