Do you find yourself low on energy, uninspired, and unmotivated? Afraid the best years of your life have passed you by? In this article, Dean Graziosi reminds us that changing our lives doesn’t take fancy self-improvement training programs.
Feeling your best doesn’t happen overnight. It happens one small positive change at a time. Whether your goal is related to your health, fitness level, personal relationships, or business, sometimes all you need is an extra burst of energy to push you into action.
Let go of the idea that change has to be a sudden, drastic transformation and use Dean Graziosi’s simple tips to feel your best in any decade of your life.
Choose Three Benefits
The first step to feeling your best at any stage of life is deciding what your best feels like to you. Imagine it’s one year from today, and you’ve just experienced the best year of your life in terms of your health, energy, and fitness level.
What would that look like for you? What changes and improvements would you like to see in your life? Choose three benefits that would make you feel alive. Maybe you want to start a new business, be able to walk two miles without stopping, and go on two date nights a month with your partner.
Get purposeful about pinpointing what you want your life to look like and the benefits you’d like to achieve. Only then can you start putting a plan into action to achieve them.
Write It Down
Once you have the three benefits in your mind, it’s time to take it one step further. Write the three benefits down. Dean Graziosi recommends getting a journal to record your goals. Writing things down is a powerful exercise, and the more you put it to paper, the more real and tangible it becomes.
Let’s say your goal for the next year is to have more energy than you’ve ever had. More energy is beneficial in many ways, and its impact can be felt in your business, your health and fitness, and your relationships. Be specific about the benefits you want that goal to help you achieve. What will your life look like? How will it feel? Who else will that benefit affect?
That last question is an important one. The choices you make don’t only affect you. Think about how your friends and family and co-workers will be affected when you feel your best.
Block Negative Voices
Once you’ve decided what benefits you want in your life over the next year, don’t be surprised if suddenly everyone else around you has an opinion on it. People love to share their experiences. They may mean well, but that doesn’t mean their advice should be taken seriously every time.
“Let me just tell you something,” said Dean Graziosi. “I remember people saying to me when I was in my thirties, ‘Oh, you’re in your thirties! Enjoy your thirties because when you hit your forties, just everything changes. You don’t feel good and your knees hurt.’”
Graziosi found the exact opposite is true for him. He’s experiencing high energy, and he feels good. Of course, the moment he entered his forties, the message changed, and people began warning him about how everything changes in your fifties.
“Don’t listen to anyone,” advised Dean Graziosi. “Don’t even let your subconscious say ‘Well we are 40 … Well we are 50 … Well we are 70.’ My dad’s 84, and he was in my gym yesterday killing it. He’s 84 years old and his energy and staying youthful is his number one priority. And that guy, he is just my example. Eighty-four years old and the guy can still run, jump, leap. I mean, if you met my dad, you would think he was 60, max.”
And it’s not just good genes. Graziosi’s father has 11 siblings, only one of which is still alive today. They had the same genes, the same DNA, but most of his siblings didn’t take care of themselves, and they experienced a different result.
Don’t let anyone tell you what you can and can’t do or who you are or are not. Action is stronger than opinions. Take action in the right direction and do what will get you the results you want.
Get Honest With Yourself
Honesty can sometimes be the best motivation for change, and you can start by getting honest with yourself. It’s time to get real and look truth in the face. What will happen if you don’t achieve your goals?
You listed three benefits you want to see in your life in the next year. Now I want you to do the opposite. What are three inevitable results of you NOT working towards feeling your best? A year from now or 20 years from now, what will happen if you don’t take action to improve your health, vitality, and energy? Be honest.
It’s easy to ignore things and push them off to another day. But then a day turns into a week, a week turns into a month, and a month turns into a year. The cumulative effect of inaction for a day may be small, but the cumulative effect of inaction for a year … that can be big!
As important as it is to focus on the benefits you want, it’s just as important to be aware and conscious of what will happen if you don’t find a way to focus on the outcome you want. Grab your journal again and record what could happen if you don’t go for your goals. Maybe your business will never get started. Maybe your relationships will have gotten stale. Maybe you’ll have gained five pounds.
The truth is, changing nothing doesn’t necessarily mean nothing changes. Read that one again, because it’s good. Taking small, positive steps can result in big progress over time. Inactivity often results in diminishing returns where your health, business, and relationships are worse off than when you started.
For example, let’s say that today instead of taking the stairs, you take the elevator. It’s not that big of a deal, right? But if you start taking the elevator instead of the stairs day after day, you’re going to start to notice the effect, and you won’t like it. You won’t stay exactly the same as the first day you decide not to take the stairs. Your physical fitness level will decline.
Maybe that’s not that serious, but a declining fitness level can have a compounding effect. Your blood pressure goes up. Your cholesterol level rises. You put on extra weight, causing more strain on your heart and vital organs. One day it’s skipping the stairs, but years from now, it could be diabetes – or worse.
Draw a Line in the Sand
“We can talk about this until we’re blue in the face, but let’s just get real today,” said Dean Graziosi. “Let’s not sugarcoat it. Let’s just get real. If you don’t make shifts, what’s inevitably going to happen? Let’s just say it like it is, right? If we don’t make shifts, it will affect the quality of your life.”
Even if it’s not your health at risk, this is still the one life you have, and it’s time to live it to the best of your ability. You may not be risking diabetes or dementia or heart disease, but even letting something like a lack of energy and vitality keep you from taking your current business, health, or relationships to the next level has an impact on your life.
A year from now, will you be exactly where you are right now? How would that feel? Why not just decide today? You have a choice. Choose to take action. Draw the line in the sand today.
Take Small, Doable Action
The three benefits you choose don’t have to be huge, earth-shattering goals. Start small if that seems more manageable. What would you like to move closer to in the next 12 months? Greater confidence? Higher productivity? Better mental clarity? Those are great goals, and they’re all achievable through making one better choice at a time.
Beware of things like fad diets and fad exercise programs. You’re not looking for a fad, you’re looking for something that will help you create a better future. It doesn’t have to be an all or nothing about-face either. Just choose balance and make one better choice at a time, one after another. Here are a couple of the most basic, everyone-can-do-this steps to getting started:
Move More
If you want to have more energy and improve your physical fitness, commit to moving more. Start by walking during your lunch hour, always taking the stairs, or hiking on the weekends instead of bingeing Netflix.
You don’t have to go out and start training for a marathon today. Don’t have to work out two hours a day right off the bat. That’s a sure way to burn out and give up fast. Just start by committing to moving more, then do it.
Eat Better
It seems like a no-brainer, but another way to improve your health is to eat better. We all know too much sugar is bad for us and more leafy green or multicolored vegetables are good for us. It’s so simple it almost hurts. Eat more healthy foods and fewer unhealthy foods.
You don’t have to get sucked into complicated diet plans where you’re counting calories or macros and record every bite in an app. We have to stop making change and progress so hard to achieve. Find small action steps that match your lifestyle that are easy to create a routine around.
Remember Your Why
but it’s worth it. Staying in momentum, continuing to take step after step, day after day, is challenging too. To stay motivated, make sure you keep your “WHY” in front of you at all times.
What’s your “WHY”? Your why is the reason (or reasons) you’re taking action in the first place. Maybe you want to get in tip-top condition so you can play with your kids more or be around for a longer retirement with your partner. Maybe it’s the freedom having your own business can provide. Maybe it’s so you can run a marathon before you’re 40. Whatever those motivating factors are, write them down and keep them where they’re always in front of you. When you’re tempted to think it doesn’t matter, your “WHY” will remind you that it does.
More with Dean Graziosi
Listen to the entire episode on “How to Feel Your Best in Any Decade of Your Life” now on The Dean Graziosi Show in the iTunes store, or on PodBean, Spotify, or Stitcher. For more inspirational stories and messages like this, check out Dean’s website at deangraziosi.com or watch his videos on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/c/deangraziosi.
