In the last topic, you saw the importance of winning, conquering just a single day at a time.

In this topic, we will see how EXACTLY to do that…

And the best part is that this winning the day habit only takes five minutes a day. Five minutes!

Here are the 5 steps to do it:

These 5 steps are the most important part of this whole program.

Don’t be fooled by their simplicity.

If you read the biographies of many of the most successful people on the planet, you’ll notice they do something very similar.

Like we said, it might sound weird and unrelated to health (“visualize my what?”), but here’s our guarantee, as well as our personal and professional promise: do this every day and in a year you won’t even recognize yourself!

Your health, and your life, will be incredible.

It’ll be so off the charts that others won’t recognize you, and you won’t recognize you.

Here’s another important side note: you need to write this down on paper.

Whatever notepad you use, whether it’s a physical one or a digital one, go through this topic, write these things down, and review them each day.

So, let’s get started.

Step 1 Finding your why and writing it down

Take out a large, white sheet of paper.

And then get a great pen.

And then make some tea or a nice coffee, and sit in a spot that gets your creative juices going. And then follow the instructions below and just write. And don’t stop writing until the timer goes off.

At the top of the paper write: “Why do I get up in the morning?” and “Why do I want to be healthy/lose weight?”

Just write.

The first 8-10 items will be terrible.

You’ll say stuff like “To live my life fully” and “To live my passion.”

Those are great, but they won’t get you up in the morning when your life has gone to hell.

You want visceral, emotional things.

You want things that stir up fears, or hopes, or powerful dreams that excite you.

As you keep doing this, better ones will come out like, “Because being unhealthy is the worst thing” or “When I look at myself in the mirror, I hate what I see.”

Here is a health/weight loss example:

I’ve seen how it can tear families apart, how it can make you crumble inside when my own mother is suffering in front of me, and how it can rapidly accumulate medical bills that I can’t afford to pay.

Why: I want to take care of myself so my kids never have to worry about this burden, or deal with the emotional (and financial) pain I have gone through.

Finding or creating a why can be incredibly powerful.

But there’s another reason for coming up with your why. You’re going to look at it, read it, and visualize it each morning, and more than just inspiring you, it’ll remind you of what you committed to, even on the days when you don’t want to keep going.

For now, circle a few that resonate with you, and keep them on a piece of paper. We’ll come back to them soon.

Step 2 Visualize the outcome you want

 A few years ago, I thought “visualizing” was a bunch of cr**.

Read what happened next...

In 1979, an incredible anti-aging study was done.

Have you ever wondered how some people who are sixty seem to be as strong as an ox?

As limber as a gymnast?

As sharp as a young college student?

And then there are some thirty-five year olds that are so sluggish, who appear (and act) twice their age?

So does your thinking have power over your aging, and if so, how much?

Can we control it?

A surprising study was done asking this exact same question.

So now let’s see HOW to do this “visualization stuff”.

It sounds weird, we know.

And we know it sounds unrelated to being healthy, losing weight, or just being happier.

But trust us, there’s a reason why the world’s happiest, healthiest and richest all do something similar.

Here’s how visualizing the outcomes you want dramatically changes your life—no belief required.

First, it clarifies what you want from life. If you don’t know what you want, you won’t get it.

If you say you want to get “healthier,” that doesn’t really mean anything, because you can’t ‘quantify’ healthier.

Maybe healthier means 15kg lighter. Maybe it means feeling light and energetic. Maybe it means sleeping throughout the night.

Maybe it means seeing your blood pressure go down.

When you’re forced to visualize an outcome, you’re forced to think about what you actually want from life and how you can potentially get it.

Think about it, when was the last time you actually sat down and thought…

My health? My sleep? Specifically, what do I want each of these areas of my life to look like?

What about my relationship? What about my daily routine? My work? My income?”

Imagine if you thought about them each day. You would slowly begin to make some small changes without realizing it.

So the first thing is that visualizations force you to think about what you want.

When you think 7 days a week about how you want more energy, you begin to think about how you can possibly get there.

This is a big shift from living the “autopilot lifestyle” where we burn out and complain but don’t spend any time thinking about what needs changing or how we can get the outcome we want.

The second reason this works is a bit more complex.

The more we subconsciously think about something, the more we think about how to make it a reality.

It’s the same phenomenon that happens when you weigh yourself in the morning.

Researchers have actually found that you’ll lose weight without changing your conscious behavior if you weigh yourself daily.

How?

It’s via the same effect. Your subconscious reminds yourself of the new story, “Okay Seema, remember girl, you’re trying to cut down a bit. No more fried snacks during lunch.”

And even though you aren’t actually having that conversation with yourself consciously, your brain is.

So when you go to breakfast or get a quick coffee on the way to work because you’re late, something tells you (or helps you) avoid the biscuits this time around!

You don’t know what it is, or how it works, but it does.

Something changed your behavior without you realizing it, and suddenly you’re losing weight without consciously dieting or doing anything.

That magical something is your subconscious, which is powerfully influenced by stuff like this.

So, step two is to visualize the specific health outcomes you want.

Here are the ACTION STEPS:

1. Be specific. Don’t say, “Get healthier.” Say, “Lose XYZ pounds,” or “Sleep entirely through the night,” or “No longer have knee pain going down stairs.”
2. Visualize the one key action step you’re going to engage in today in order to get yourself closer.
3. Visualize your one action step for today and see yourself walking through it.

Now, this is important: Even though visualizing the outcomes you want in your life dramatically will change your actions in slight, subtle, powerful ways, let’s not beat around the bush, you can’t wish or pray your way to better health.

So the final part of your daily (ideally morning) ritual is quite simple.

Sure you could list five or ten things, but chances are, the more things you list, the fewer things you’ll do.

So all you do is visualize one thing for the day.

Examples:

• Walking ten minutes on your lunch break
• Getting up ten minutes earlier tomorrow so you don’t have to rush
• Meditating five minutes
• Eating one home-cooked meal
• Avoiding sugar one day of the week
• Setting an alarm for 10:50—the time you should get in bed so you aren’t cranky in the morning
• Eating one whole fruit today

That’s it.

No complex to-do lists.

No lists of 15 things you probably won’t do anyway.

And there’s definitely no huge “new year’s game plan” to start exercising 4x a week even though we haven’t anytime in the past!

Step 4 Tracking your key daily habits

(Note: We do not mean calories or what you eat, just daily habits).

So you’ve got your quick morning routine planned, but now you need reminders.

It’d be a lot easier to be successful if you had us sending you a text message every few minutes reminding you to stay focused, but you don’t.

So here’s the next step: every Monday morning, when you sit down at work, you’re going to grab a blank sheet of white paper and write down something like this:

You’re going to write out a calendar for the week, Monday through Friday, and then write down whatever habits you’re cultivating. It only takes thirty seconds. (This is what we saw in the habit builder topic, remember?)

Ideally, stick to just one habit, but don’t go over three.

And all you do is put a check mark for each day. And if you are a working person, make sure to bring this to your work desk since you spend a considerable amount of time there.

Wherever you work or spend most of the time of your week is where this sheet should be.

 Personally, what I do (since I do this every week) is put a copy on my work desk (it’s my Monday 8:45 am ritual) and take a picture of it so I have it in my phone.

As I go through the week, it’s simple: since this is right at my work desk, I just casually glance at it throughout the day. It serves as my reminder, that I either do the habit or I don’t.

And if I do, I put a check mark. If you don’t, I don’t put anything.

All we’re doing is helping yourself ingrain this idea we call “winning the day.” And to do that, you need constant awareness of what you’re working on each day.

Step 5 Do the weekly check-in

The final step happens each Sunday morning for just five minutes.

All you do is take out another piece of paper, write down “weekly review” and simply tally up how many times you practiced those habits.

If you did what you said you would, great! Write down what worked.

If you didn’t, that’s fine too, but you need to write down why.

You have to get specific, like:

– I didn’t make breakfast at home because I was too tired and rushed in the morning.

– I struggled with sugar because I kept having my afternoon cravings around 2:00 PM, because I was bored at work.

– I said I would take my ten-minute walk, but I didn’t because I waited until after work each day and I was just tired and wanted to relax.

Finally, write down what habits need to happen this week in order to succeed.

Write down what new habits you need to cultivate to win the day.

Here are some examples:

– In order to actually make breakfast at home, I have to set an alarm ten minutes earlier; otherwise, I’m too tired and rushed in the morning.

– In order to avoid that afternoon sugar binge, I need to make sure to schedule my lunch around that time instead.

– In order to actually take my ten-minute walk, I have to either do it before work or do it on my lunch break, because otherwise, I’m too tired.

This is extremely important.

And most importantly, next week that new tiny habit becomes the next week’s game plan.

The weekly review is one of the most important aspects of this.

Don’t be fooled by the apparent simplicity of it all.

Many times when we get frustrated by our lack of progress, or fall into that autopilot thinking, we get stuck because we don’t reflect on what is and is not working.

“Arre yaar, I just messed up that entire week’s progress because of that party on Friday,” we say.

But we don’t ever reflect on what went wrong.

So rather than trying to tackle the behavioral reason, we end up just looking for the new fad, diet or plan.

But it was never about the plan. Remember, it’s about us.

It’s fine to complain and be frustrated. But it’s not fine for us to complain and be frustrated without making changes.

The weekly review (which only takes a few minutes) is so valuable because it provides insight into what’s not working and why.

So if we said our daily habit was to walk ten minutes a day, and we didn’t do it a single time this week, we sit down and ask, “Okay, why not?”

Why didn’t it happen?

“Well, I always saved it for after work, and after work I’m always tired.”

Okay, good. That’s feedback.
That’s insight into why it didn’t work. So what new habit do we need to cultivate to make sure that it happens this week?

Maybe this week I need to do it in the morning before work. Or maybe this week I need to do it during the first ten minutes of my lunch break.

Or maybe I need a better system for walking immediately once I get home.

The old way:
“Man, I never seem to get myself to go for that walk I said I would.”

The new way:
“Okay. It didn’t work last week because I waited until after work.
Here’s a new habit I can try next week: I’ll walk around for ten minutes during the first ten minutes of my lunch break, so I know I’ll do it while I have energy.”

Then, this habit gets written down on your weekly review and put on the sheet for the next week.

It makes sense, right? And all it takes is FIVE minutes!

Very, VERY few people ever do this… that’s also why very few people actually lose weight!

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Recapping what we discovered…

DO THIS EVERY MORNING: 
1. Review your “why.” (1 minute)

2. Visualize the outcomes you want—in the present. (1 minute)

3. Visualize the one step you’re taking today to get to where you want to be. (1 minute)

4. Track your daily habit(s) with a simple check mark at work and at home.

DO THIS, ONCE A WEEK

5. Do the 5-minute weekly review on Sunday.

Total time every day: 5 minutes.

And… done!

The bottom line is that nothing is more effective than daily accountability—a daily practice.

And here’s the best part: The workload for the entire week to do this? Not even ten minutes a day.

Do you think if you spent a few minutes at the beginning of each day to remind yourself, inspire yourself, and visualize the future you want, it’d be a heck of a lot more likely to become a reality?

Don’t you think it might even be… inevitable?