Shrink Yourself~Instant Gratification

How Long Do I Have to Wait to See Change?
WEDNESDAY, MAY 13, 2009 POSTED BY MICHELLE www.shrinkyourself.com/blog

Diets that promise results in thirty days usually get a lot of attention. They appeal to the part of us that wants instant gratification. We want results and we want them now. The problem with change is that it doesn’t ever happen fast enough for our liking. And we get frustrated and defeated. Real change takes time and therefore a whole lot of patience. If you’re doing everything you can to address your health; eating well, exercising regularly and dealing with your emotional well being how do you keep pressing on even when you’re not getting results as quickly as you’d like? Here are a few suggestions to help you keep on, keeping on.

DON’T COMPARE YOURSELF TO OTHERS

We all change at different rates. And what it takes for each of us to change is unique. There is an expression that says, “compare and despair.” In other words, when you look at your life, body, or rate of change compared to someone else's you could be setting yourself up for disappointment. It’s unavoidable to compare ourselves to other people but we can decide how much focus we want to put on those comparisons.

KEEP YOUR EYE ON YOUR SUCCESSES

You don’t only succeed when you reach your goal weight or have a certain amount of muscle tone. But we can fool ourselves into believing that arriving is the only mark of success. You actually succeed in little ways every day. And the more you see these little successes, the easier it is to stay on the right path. You succeed when you avoid a certain food or eat less than you normally would. You succeed when you walk for an extra five minutes. And when it comes to emotional eating, you succeed every time you face a feeling instead of numbing it with food.

ACCEPTANCE

Finally, acceptance is an important quality to cultivate in this whole process. If you can accept yourself where you’re at, for better or for worse, it’s easier to keep going. You are your own person, with your own path to success. The more you stay with yourself, in the exact place you are, the better it will be.

Even when you’re not seeing change as quickly as you might like, you’re still changing in little ways every day. And those tiny changes, if you stick with them, will create the results you’re looking for in the long run. It’s not about arriving any way, it’s about having each day be governed by awareness, powerful choices and bold actions. When you change what you do, over time who you are changes, too.

If you watch the leaves in Spring on a continuous slow motion camera, you’ll see all the micro adjustments that have to happen for a bud to sprout, and then for that bud to turn into a blossom, and then for that blossom to turn into a leaf. Sometimes, you forget to notice and it seems as though the leaves have emerged overnight. The transformation you’re undergoing might happen in tiny steps too but the results will be equally beautiful.