The Harsh Truth Of Our Tough Times

By Dan Grant
[Trainer Talk]
What truth do people try to ignore?  Dan Grant gives you a wake up call.
There’s a really interesting feeling sometimes that comes with being a guy who tries to help people create greater lives for themselves.  There’s the one side of me that can go into a talk or a meeting and kind of question what I should be telling them.  Do I tell them what they want to hear and console them about how hard life can be or do I tell them the truth; that their lives aren’t as great as they can be currently and it’s up to them?

It’s a switch in mindset that is necessary to start the process of positive change, but I think we should maybe go a little deeper today and talk about your approach to change in your life.

The Instant Pleasure Problem

If you’re 30 pounds overweight, what is going to happen when you eat that piece of chocolate?  You’re going to get instant pleasure from it.

Now what about eating that chicken salad?  You might like it, but it’s not going to give you instant weight loss, is it?  Herein lies the problem.

When I’m swamped with work and I just want to lie down and watch TV or take a nap, there’s a couple things that cross my mind.  That nap or TV watching seems like such a good idea and will give me some instant pleasure and I mean, that work doesn’t have to get done today.

So it’s really a mind war that’s started between, “should I really get this work done?” or “should I just relax?”  Human nature these days seems to push heavily towards the let’s-wait or start-it-tomorrow way of thinking.  That’s where a lot of our problems start.

We love instant pleasure and aren’t willing to take the time or put the effort into creating greater circumstances for ourselves.  But this is only part of the attitude struggles we face on a daily basis.

It’s Not Hard Or Easy

This is a tough one to get your head around sometimes, but bear with me for a minute.  The fact is that things are not hard or easy.  Things just are.  It’s our personal interpretation that makes things hard or easy.  It’s an attitude.

If you approach going on a diet like it’s the end of the world, you are going in with an "it’s too hard" attitude.  How well do you think you are going to do on that diet with that attitude?

If you approach going on a diet with a positive mindset and are openly willing to make the necessary changes, it’s going to be a lot easier to be successful at it.

There’s a reason some people are successful and others are unsuccessful on the same program.  The people who failed didn’t commit and found things along the way to be too difficult to deal with.

When people call to ask me about my boot camps, they sometimes admit they are out of shape and need to lose quite a bit of weight, but when I tell them the dates and times of my program, it doesn’t work out for them.  This is just another excuse.  They admit they need to work out, but don’t do what’s necessary to make it happen.  That’s an attitude thing, folks.
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