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When desire seems insufficient to achieve a goal, my clients want to know why they don’t always keep doing what is in their best self-interest. Why is it so difficult for some people and not others, to follow through, to finish what one starts?

G: Last week’s column concerned the issue of finding helpers who can assist you to achieve a goal. It also had to do with starting on a new beginning, or renewing one’s commitment to reset the goal.

Many of you are looking at the turn of this new year to energize yourselves. Whether it be for the goals of losing the extra fat in anticipation of the next bathing suit season or meeting up with friends this summer at a high school reunion, change is desired. Bravo for facing the truth that working on reigning in some poor choices and incorporating life-enhancing behaviors are worthwhile endeavors.

Having said that, these alterations to one’s life do not have to be painfully difficult. Truth be told, not making needed changes is what results in the greatest pain and suffering. That makes for a difficult existence. Read that sentence out loud and let its truth deeply resonate.

We only have to look at the obesity epidemic in this country to see what awaits those who are in its grasp. Nearly a quarter of children are living in bodies that hold them down and detached from a life of vitality and professional opportunity. Many of these children will morph into even fatter adults who not only use food to self-medicate their pain, they will rely on recreational drugs.

These over-used substances only compound their plight of low self-esteem, and help to perpetuate a lack of readiness for giving and receiving all of life’s gifts.

The overarching issue concerns how to sustain the commitment and focus, not just the discipline, to achieve a nourishing success that does not come from depleting one’s happiness or ability to be a peacemaker.

No one likes to be around a cranky dieter or dry drunk.

If one just looks at strengthening one’s discipline, by strict rigidity to calorie counting or abstaining from, let’s say alcohol as so many choose to do during Dry January, it may seem at times to be a sacrifice not worth any reward that may await at the finish line.

That feeling often happens because one’s focus is on the outcome rather than on what can be gleaned in the process, hour by hour, day to day.

Failure to stay with any plan of self-improvement or even hold to admirable career goals can often be traced to one’s attitude, whereby emphasis is on the negatives: specific self-criticisms, such as questioning reasoning, or else on one’s ability to sustain one’s commitment. These serve to reinforce doubts not only about one’s will power, but weaken one’s resolve to become accountable for one’s choices.

Becoming a full adult means letting go of the luxury of indulging in infantile thoughts and actions, and supporting any inadequacy in one’s abilities with the intention of seeking wisdom, rather than just

knowledge. Even our limitations, our insufficiencies, provide us with the opportunity to learn how we may be our own worst enemy.

How does that happen? By constricting our ideas of what we may be possible of accomplishing within a lifetime, by denying what we think we may be deserving of becoming through the application of all of the innate abilities and attributes we are born with.

These stifling ideas of what we cannot do, who we cannot be, are no less than human hobbles. Instead of actual leather ankle restraints used to keep horses from wandering off, our finite ideas become essentially an invisible fence for living in a narrow range of being alive and free.

How to unshackle from these limiting beliefs? I have found it most useful to have my attention on seeing what wisdom I can attain during the process involved in pursuing a goal. Rather than on self-sabotage that happens from fixating on just the desired outcome, I lean in to see if I can glean new information that can enhance my wisdom.

This means that trying new approaches with a focus on wisdom can offer one the chance for discovery.

We are not thoroughbreds or greyhounds who are bred and trained to be fixated on blasting their way to the finish line they did not even design. That is a dull existence even for those in the business, as it is repetitive and often frustrating when the outcome is unattainable.

Consider if you got off the track of circular thinking.

What would your life look like if you practiced staying in the “one day at a time”, or even “one hour at a time” approach to life. This change in attitude can spotlight the truth that we are all living in an ongoing, ever-changing process that brings new possibilities with nearly every breath.

Rather than living out a race to the finish line, think about living for living’s sake and what it brings to your wisdom bank account. Within this process of being entirely responsible for your choices are all the moments that won’t just be uselessly slipping by.

Being present with your choices, rather than questioning whether you have the stamina and fortitude to persevere, will reveal some of the false beliefs in your character or capabilities. Those untruths are ultimately what undermines the joy of self-discovery during these self-imposed tests of dieting, or working on correcting behaviors like destructive self-medicating.

Putting off what is in your best self-interest only denies you peace. To grow up requires being conscious of the consequences of one’s actions, before one acts. That’s where wisdom hangs out and its pursuit is the ultimate extreme sport. Training for it starts in this breath.

Email Giselle with your question at [email protected] or send mail: Giselle Massi, P.O. Box 991, Evergreen, CO 80437. For more info and to read previous columns, go to www.gisellemassi.com