The key to losing the diet mentality is to think about failure differently.

This blog is titled “Learning and Growing” but what I am really talking about is failing.

In the diet world, there are many terms to describe failure: falling off the wagon, cheating, or not being “good”.

If you've really gone off the rails, and you've chucked yourself out the window, you most likely have just quit.

I call that going unconscious.

Now, if you're like me, you may have repeatedly made the same mistake 50 times.

When you make the error, you are shocked that once again you ate way too much and had all the miserable side effects.

You make a vow to never do it again!

But, as soon as the next time comes around, you completely forgot how bad it was, and you rinse and repeat.

That was then, and this is now.

I'm going to give you a skill so this madness stops.

You must change how you look at failure so that you can keep moving forward.

Failure is only a thought.

It has nothing to do with your end success.

The truth is you are a human who is living a life full of lessons.

With each failure or lesson, one of two things will happen.

You will continue to make the same mistake haphazardly, or you will learn and evolve.

I like to think of failure as the pathway to your goal, and it let’s you know what didn’t work!

It's data guiding you.

It shows you what not to do so that you achieve a better result.

Look at your failure with curiosity.

When you analyze your mistake with curiosity, you learn, and collect more data on what you won't do next time.

First, let's talk about the diet mentality and how every time something doesn't go perfectly, you chuck yourself out the window and give up.

Have you ever considered why this happens?

It happens by thinking you've failed, cheated, or fallen off the wagon!

These thoughts create emotions such as; shame, worthlessness, hopelessness, sadness, defeat, or depression.

These emotions cause you to give up and stop working towards your goals!

Most stop setting goals because the desire to do it perfectly never works, which creates negative emotions that feel terrible!

Feeling terrible is usually solved by soothing yourself with food.  

By losing the diet mentality, you change the way you think and feel about failure. This allows you to start moving forward.

From now on, I want you to stop using the word failure and start saying, “I'm learning and growing”.

By saying that to yourself, you will begin to open up with curiosity.

Curiosity will have you looking at what didn't work, what you learned and enable you to keep moving towards your goal.

I attached a PDF that will guide you through what didn't work.

It has a set of questions that will change your perspective. When you actually do the worksheet and write out the answers, it instills the lesson in your brain for the next time.

Thinking through this process, but not writing it out will not work.

There is proven science that when you hand write new thoughts and goals the chances of success are way higher!

It is vital you change the way you think about failure because you are a human!

Humans fail! Failure is inevitable!

The opposite of not learning and growing is spinning.

Spinning in is 1) setting a goal expecting perfection, 2) failing because you are a human, 3) giving up, 4) blaming the diet, and 5) when the feeling of “I've fallen off the wagon” passes you start again with a new goal expecting perfection.

This is ridiculous!

Now grab a piece of paper or print the PDF off below and let's learn and grow!