The Magic Bullet

It's the beginning of a new year and many people (including myself) are reviewing their lives over the past year and asking themselves what will change and improve over this next year.  This is a time for goal reviewing, goal setting and vision planning.  How can we even set goals if we don't have a clear vision.  Vision is a different topic all together.  More on that at a different time.  To whet your appetite until then, you have to see, smell, feel how your life will be.  There must be clarity.  As Brian Tracy puts it, Imagine you have the inborn ability to achieve any goal you could ever set for yourself.  What do you really want to be, to have and to do?  You have to picture it.  Be able to recall it to your mind with a single thought.  Vision Boards help a lot with this....I digress...

In Jeff Olson's Book "The Slight Edge", he reinforces that success in anything we do is a result of small, microscopic steps, compounded over time: day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year and so on.  This concept can be applied to our relationships, our professions, or our fitness -- really anything.  Here is an excerpt applicable to this, the first week of January:

Every single January in every gym in America, hundreds of thousands of people start over in a process that they will soon quit-- only because they haven't set themselves up with the right expectation.  They aren't looking for an incremental progress; they're looking for the results they can feel.  They're looking for a breakthrough.  They never had a chance.

Easy to do, easy not to do ... and in that tiny, seemingly insignificant little choice not to do, so many people needlessly live out lives of quiet desperation....

Our society is sliding rapidly into an ever-increasing economic crisis of poor health.  Endemic adult onset diabetes, heart disease, obesity and a score of other chronic illnesses have steadily fed a monstrously overgrown health care system, tax system and social security system -- there isn't a single 'cause' anywhere in sight.  As I'm writing this (early 2005), several of our most widely used over-the-counter drugs have suddenly been found to make things worse.  And as cancer continues its climb, the drumbeat litany goes on as it has for decades: A cure is just around the corner... we're just around the corner...the latest research says... with your dollars, we'll soon see a breakthrough...

A cure is not just around the corner.  The cure is right here, under our noses and on our plates.

We look for the cure, the breakthrough, the magic pill --the medical-scientific quantum leap miracle our press has dubbed the "magic bullet".  But the solution already exists.  It always did.  Is it magic?  Yes-the same magic that caused the problem: the power of daily actions, compounded over time.  The magic of the Slight Edge.

Plainly put, we have control over ourselves.  We have control over what we put in our mouths.  We have control over what we do and say to our friends, family and others around us.  We have control over what time we wake up and what type of exercise we give to our bodies.  We have control over what put into our minds, either through print, through the TV, through our computer monitors.  We have complete control.

Now this is the first week of January.  Let's set some goals.  Let's write them down and review them daily.  Share your goals with someone that can help you stay on track.  The results we have been 'expecting' for years will only come after we have taken the first action on the first day.  Repeated that action day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year.  Make this year the Best Year of Your Life!

Take action and repeat it, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it......  As Jeff Olson puts it, quite nicely:

You're already doing the actions.  All you need to do is choose to have them serve and empower you -- and keep on choosing.