Too Much On Her Plate | Emotional Eating Solutions | Help With Overeating » Stress

Mind Clutter and Overeating

Melissa McCreery — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:12:31 +0000

Mind clutter—a mind overflowing with thoughts, worries, projects, to-do lists, feeling and ideas—leads to a lot of problems. Mind clutter contributes to overload, stress, procrastination, lack of focus, burnout, clutter outside your mind, and emotional eating and overeating.

Overeating, or reaching for food when you aren’t really hungry, is a common response to feeling overloaded, ineffective, or short of time. And that’s how too much mind clutter can leave you feeling.

It’s easy to become caught in a vicious cycle (I call it the hamster wheel), when your mind is on overload. It can be tempting to resort to stress eating, or to overeat because you feel too overwhelmed to really take care of yourself. Overeating adds to any feelings of being out of control (and now having one more thing to deal with). You have so much in your head that you feel like you don’t have time or the mental space to do more than react, and you soon overeat again. Maybe this time you aren’t craving comfort, but you want an energy boost, or a reward, or a distraction.

The point is, the cycle of mind clutter contributing to emotional eating contributing to mind clutter continues, and you stay stuck. Plus, it feels awful.

My suggestion? When you focus on tools to stop overeating, don’t ignore the mind clutter. Taking control of the overwhelm can create a profound shift in both your emotional eating and your life.

Here are some tips to get started.

Don’t rely on your memory. It doesn’t matter how well it works. The point is, it takes a lot of energy and creates stress when you store too many details, events, and things to do in your brain and expect yourself to be able to track them. Like a computer screen constantly being “refreshed,” you are continually going through the act of sorting through what you need to remember, prioritizing, and making decisions. That’s a lot of work. Write everything down. Designate one place (one notebook, app on your phone, or file on your computer) and do a brain dump of everything you are thinking about or worrying about daily. Now you don’t have to remember it anymore.

See the mental space you just created?

Create a punch list. This is not a comprehensive list of everything that you want to accomplish in the next six months. This is the list of 1—3 priority action items you are giving your attention today or this hour or for the next fifteen minutes. Choose a time frame that works for you and honor that important task or experience with your full attention.

Give your brain downtime. Too much clutter creates anxiety and tension. It does not encourage restfulness and relaxation. But a periodic “reboot” is exactly what you need to get off the hamster wheel. Give yourself at least 7 ½ hours of sleep and aim to spend at least ten minutes a day simply “being” and tuning in to the world around you.

Giving your mind practice at being calm instead of spinning at top speed is a good thing.

Addressing mind clutter creates a shift from being caught on the hamster wheel to being proactive and in charge. That’s where overload begins to dissolve, and peace with food and all the good stuff that comes with it, really begins.

Take good care,

Three Easy Ways Busy Women Can Create Calm in a Hectic Life

Melissa McCreery — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:09:50 +0000

If you are you a busy woman, a business owner, or mom with too much on your plate, here are three easy ways to start moving from stress and overload to ease, abundance, and success.

Set the tone. Your busy brain finds and collects the information that it’s looking for. If you want to spend your day focused on stress and overload, begin by worrying about what you haven’t done. Want more ease and calm? Set an attitude focused on accomplishment and positivity. List three things you are grateful for before you even get out of bed and review three things that you WILL accomplish today. Put on music that inspires and create and live in positive energy.
Don’t ignore the food and don’t deprive yourself. Ease and calm require consistent fuel. Eat something for breakfast that has protein in it. This will tide you over much better than a bagel or a bowl of cereal or the nothing that you usually feed yourself. Give yourself a short deadline (two minutes is plenty) and decide NOW what you will have for lunch and dinner if you don’t already have a plan. Unmade decisions create stress. Hunger and low blood sugar lead to bad decisions and (often) overeating.
Slow down. Rushing, even when you are busy, rarely makes anyone more productive. Focus does. Hold on to your vision of ease and calm and your three priority tasks. Do one thing at a time. In a world of mutitasking and Twitter, giving your whole self over to a task can be grounding and even meditative. Really. Ask yourself throughout the day where you want to place your energy in this moment. Close down the other windows on your computer, let your phone go to voice mail, and let the other tasks wait until it is their turn. Enjoy the job you dive into, the feeling of undivided attention, the conversation you have while being fully present, and the lunch you get to savor.

This is the only life you are going to live today. Be in it.

How do you release stress and create calm and ease in your busy life? Share your thoughts and ideas by leaving a comment.

Take good care,

Moving Forward with Success and Less Stress (and Looking Back)

Melissa McCreery — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 15:04:57 +0000

Happy New Year!

I’m back in the office today after taking two weeks off to spend time with family, enjoy the holidays, unwind, and relax. My mind is full of new ideas and I am so excited about the possibilities that 2012 holds for all of us.

I have a message to deliver. You are capable of more than you think. And it gets even better. Odds are, you are capable of accomplishing amazing goals with less stress, and more ease than you currently see possible. If you are overwhelmed, overloaded, or overeating it’s very likely that you can untangle some stuff, have less stress, do less, and create better results. Not by working harder, but by taking simple, do-able steps that make sense for your life.

I’d love to help you keep a focus on this kind of focus in 2012. This year, I’ll be in more frequent touch, with bite-sized tips and information to help you break free of the three Os (overload, overwhelm, and overeating) and create more ease, joy, and success.

January is a month when there is a lot of momentum and emphasis on moving AHEAD, starting new things, and setting intentions, goals, and resolutions for the year ahead. I hope that as you do this, you also spend some time reflecting on the twelve months that have just passed. Here is what I know. We underestimate what can happen in twelve months when we look ahead, and when we look back, we often forget much of what we have done.

For some of you, it’s much easier to see what you didn’t accomplish in 2011 than what you did.

Please don’t stop there.

As you dive into this New Year, I want to encourage you to do some reflecting.

Make a list about 2011. Include everything you can think of that you accomplished, everything significant, life or lifestyle changing that happened, and anything that you survived or overcame. Take note of where you spent your time and energy. Write it all down. You might be surprised.

Don’t stop yet.

Go back through your calendar from 2011 and remind yourself where you were and what you were doing eight, nine, and twelve months ago. Get a clear picture of where you were last January. You might be surprised. When I reviewed my year, I find all sorts of growth and changes that had become so routine that I had stopped noticing them. New habits, new ways of eating, heck—I moved my office in 2011 and radically changed my work schedule. It works so well, I almost forgot to add it to my list of accomplishments!

Last January, I had a vague goal of “someday” running the New York City marathon. In February, I had the unexpected opportunity to work with world-class coaches who encouraged me to set a clear plan for doing so. In May, I ran a half marathon I’d never thought of running with the goal of finishing with a time that qualified me to run in New York City (this was a time goal I had never thought possible for myself). Running that time was amazing. And in November, I accomplished another huge goal. I hit the streets of New York City and ran in a race I’d dreamed of running for years. I never dreamed all that would happen back in January, 2011. But it did.

Don’t forget the positive changes that you’ve maintained over the past year. Sometimes it takes great effort to keep things the same. Have you kept weight off, maintained a fantastic relationship, stuck with your yoga practice or your commitment to me-time? These accomplishments count and they count big.

I’m betting some things have changed or you did some things you forgot about in 2011. If you are like me, you may have accomplished major goals that weren’t even on your radar twelve months ago.

My point is this—don’t sell yourself short. Knowing what you are capable of and knowing what you have done and have endured or survived can be a major source of power and confidence as you step into your bold new year.

I will never encourage you to live in the past, but I want you to take from it what can propel you in the directions that you want to go.

What did you almost take for granted about 2011? What unexpected fantastic new living may await you in 2012?

Take good care,

Overeating and Stressed? Jumpstart Your Success BEFORE the New Year

Melissa McCreery — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 09:05:07 +0000

Maybe you haven’t lost the weight you committed to lose this year. The days are shorter and you aren’t exercising the way you planned. Or perhaps holiday overeating is well underway and you’ve decided it’s hopeless—for now anyway. Are you one of the many women who is now ending her sentences with the phrase “in January” or “after New Year’s”?

“I’m going back to the gym . . . in January.”
“I’m going to get back to (fill in your favorite weight loss plan here) . . . in January.”
“After New Year’s, I’m going to get serious about my eating/stress/_______.”
“I know I’m an emotional eater and I’m going to get some help with that . . . in January.”

Yes, it’s the holiday season, and for many of you it’s busy or challenging in its own way. And in spite of what you may be thinking, it’s exactly NOT the time to give up on yourself or to put yourself on hold. In fact, you have three weeks of your year remaining. This is time when you can have an impact, nurture some new habits, and prevent yourself from having to dig yourself out of a hole come January 1st. And guess what? It’s possible to do all this without adding to stress and overwhelm.

How to jumpstart your success before the New Year

You doubt me don’t you? The truth is, the holiday season may not be the time to overhaul your life or your habits, but it’s a fine time to start building the kind of incremental change that can work wonders—because this is exactly the kind of change that tends to last. Instead of throwing your priorities to the wind or declaring that there is “no time for me,” this is a time when you can start to build your sense of effectiveness in small but powerful ways.

Your December Jumpstart has two steps

Pick the area of your life that you’d like to focus on. Eating? Managing stress? Physical activity? Self-care? Now think small and think do-able. What’s one small consistent step that you can and will commit to over the next three weeks? This should be something that you want to start or some fragile habit that you want to commit to nourishing and maintaining. If you feel doubtful about your ability to take this step, you aren’t thinking small enough.

Warning: Thinking small is a real challenge for many of you because you are high-achievers. You are likely to devalue small steps and automatically double them. Don’t do this. It won’t work for a jump start.

Examples of a small step:
Taking your vitamins every day.
Drinking eight glasses of water a day.
Taking a ten minute walk at lunch.
Spending five minutes every morning writing in your journal.
Asking for help with something once a day.

Choose the small step that you will commit to and simply start moving forward.

Another warning: You may be tempted to choose many small steps. Again, one small step may not seem like “enough.” The truth is, huge change is built on the backs of small consistent steps, AND taking on too many things at once can lead to a breakdown in all of them. If you are tempted, you can choose two or three small steps, but no more.

Step Two: Commit to me-time.

If you aren’t already doing this, this may be one of the most valuable steps you ever take. And if you start doing this now, you are going to be well on your way to a powerhouse of a new habit by January 1.

Here are the rules of the Jumpstart: commit to taking ten minutes a day connecting with yourself. That’s it. Ten minutes listening to you. It might be ten minutes of quiet meditation, ten minutes of journaling, yoga, or stretching. Maybe you’ll do it on a ten minute walk or while drinking your morning coffee.

Don’t over complicate this, and don’t underestimate its power. These ten minutes will help you stay clear on your priorities, your feelings and your needs. They can help you identify what is going well in your life, what’s stressing you out, and how you want to respond. These ten minutes have helped many women before you with everything from emotional eating, relationship stress, procrastination, overload, overcommitment, and a general lack of mojo.

Yes, you can throw in the towel, call it a year, and check back in with yourself on January 1st. But what might you accomplish if you start really learning the art of do-able self-care today?

Take good care,

Photo Credit

Ten Things to do INSTEAD of Stress Eating

Melissa McCreery — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 12:07:17 +0000

Stress eating is one of the most common types of emotional eating and stress is one of the biggest causes of overeating and weight gain—especially for busy women. Knowing that you want to eat healthier or stick with reasonable portions is one thing. Figuring out how NOT to overeat when you’re overloaded, overwhelmed, and just-plain-stressed-out is another. “White knuckling it” only goes so far (that’s when you hold on tight and try to rely on pure willpower). When you are trying not to stress eat, you’re eventually going to need something to do instead of turning to food.

Eventually you’ll craft your own list. In the meantime, here are ten things to do instead of stress eating:

· Blow off steam. If stress is pressure, you don’t want to be the pressure cooker (with mounting tension building up inside). Acknowledge your stress and find a way to let some of it out. Yell or play loud music in your car; run, walk or dance; knead some bread dough or shred some papers. Scribble on paper or vent.

· Phone a friend. Psychologists call it social support and it can work wonders. Whether you want someone to advise, distract, make you laugh, or just listen, connecting with someone who knows you and whom you trust can make a huge difference. If you don’t have time to talk now, make a date to talk in the future.

· Change your scenery. Remove yourself from the situation—even if only temporarily. Leave the room or the office. Sit in a different chair. Get a new mental and physical perspective. If you have stress eating rituals (like visiting the vending machine at a certain time on certain days), shake things up a bit—take a different route and avoid the familiar (and habit-filled) routine if you can.

· Relax and stretch. Stress builds up in our body and then creates more stress and discomfort. If you can’t change your life (or the next hour), you can still be kind to yourself and stretch out your neck or your back. Try to create comfort in your body in ways that don’t involve eating.

· Escape (even for 30 seconds) Sometimes stress and overload lead to the belief that you can’t “afford” to stop and that you just need to keep working harder and harder. Don’t buy into this. It’s a recipe for stress eating. Give yourself permission to take a break—even if it’s just a minute or two. If you can’t go for a walk, go to the bathroom. Google images of tropical beaches and put one up where you can see it, take a minute to get a glass of water or brew yourself a cup of tea.

· Journal. This is an excellent way to untangle your feelings, check in with yourself, and decompress. Try writing for ten minutes before you sit down to eat. You are less likely to overeat when you have taken the time to understand what’s driving your hunger and to think about what you might do instead.

· Rant. Give yourself permission to throw reason, logic, and good manners out the window. Go to a place where you can express yourself privately (cars are good for this) and let loose. Get mad, be frustrated, stop being reasonable. Have a tantrum if you want or a good cleansing cry. Put words to your feelings instead of trying to bury them with food.

· Sleep. Stress is exhausting and sleep will work more wonders than working late into the night. If you’ve been sleep deprived, getting at least 7 ½ hours of sleep a night will also decrease your appetite and your cravings. You’ll be more productive and better able to focus. Successful women guard their sleep!

· Make a list. Start creating more effectiveness instead of stress eating. Identify your top three priorities or action items for the day and identify one lovely or kind thing you will do just for you. If you’re making the list later in the day, start with the one lovely thing. Hint: it might just be one of the things on this list you are reading now.

· Breathe. You can’t physically grow more stressed and more relaxed at the same time. When you start relaxing—even if it’s just a tad—you reverse the cycle of growing more and more stressed or anxious. Here’s a powerful tip. Set a timer on your computer or phone to go off once an hour. When your timer goes off, stop what you are doing for 60 seconds and just breathe. Focus on your breath for just sixty seconds or put your hand over your heart and breath and focus on your heartbeat. Super-short centering breaks like this can help you break vicious cycles and be more mindful and relaxed.

The key to ending emotional eating and making peace with food is to identify the tools that work for you. Play with these ten strategies and start collecting your own. I’d love for you to leave a comment and share what works for you.

Take good care,

What Prevents YOU from Thriving and What Cost Are You Paying?

Melissa McCreery — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 23:41:43 +0000

What holds you back?

A busy life?
Too much stress?
Inner doubt?
Frustration with yourself?
Feeling like you aren’t enough, don’t have enough focus, or need to lose ten pounds first?

If you aren’t bringing your A-game, living your best life, and channeling your Inner Champion to be your-very-best-and-brightest-version-of-you, then you probably have a story you tell yourself about what holds you back.

What if it was different? What if your Inner Champion—that part of you that believes in you and knows what you are truly capable of—what if She were running your life?

What would be different?

How would YOU be different?

What would it feel like to wake up in the mornings and move forward with your days?

I’ve relaunched my popular THRIVE Formula™ 4 Weeks to Unleashing Your Inner Champion program to help you stop struggling, stop chasing your endless to-do list, and start THRIVING and getting where you want to go.

Less stress
A healthier lifestyle
A lower number on the scale
More professional satisfaction and success
Happier relationships

Past participants have used the THRIVE Formula™ to get focused on these issues and more and have loved the experience of THRIVING.

“Thank you for showing me that there is another way. I wish I would have found you 10 years ago.” THRIVE 2010 Participant

You can see what other participants have to say about the THRIVE Formula.™

You can participate in the THRIVE Formula and unleash your Inner Champion at any time. It’s designed to work on your schedule. But here’s the thing. When you purchase the THRIVE Formula by tomorrow—Tuesday, October 11, you also get some incredible bonuses. You get my $49 Success Soundtrack™ (learn how to add more ease, flow, me-time and success in just ten minutes a day) AND, if you act in the next 24 hours, you’ll get one 45 minute individual strategy session with me. We’ll get on the phone or Skype to help you get clear on what’s been holding you back and your best plan of action for getting beyond the blocks and unleashing your Inner Champion once and for all.

Remember, you can sign up for THRIVE any time, but the free strategy session with me disappears tomorrow. Go here to reserve your spot:

Take good care,

Four Simple Shifts You Can Make to Make Me-time and Self-care Happen

Melissa McCreery — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 10:24:17 +0000

You know that vibrant health, a winning attitude, and the weight you dream of would be easier to achieve if you took better care of yourself. You’ve lived the reality of getting too busy and watching your good intentions, your workout plans, and your resolve to lower your stress slip off your radar.

Self-care and me-time just sound like things that should be easy don’t they?

But anyone who has lived the life of a high-achieving busy woman managing a career, relationships, a business, or all of the above knows the truth. Quality self-care (which is not a pint of premium ice cream eaten in front of the TV) doesn’t just happen. Creating time and space for yourself—that me-time and focus that you crave—is both a skill and an art.

Here are some dos and don’ts for creating me-time routines and self-care habits that last:

Seize the moment, the day, the opportunity. Don’t believe that the first step to taking better care of yourself is getting everything else organized before you focus on you.

This may sound obvious, but I can’t tell you how many smart, motivated women have sabotaged their efforts to be happier and healthier with the belief that first they must: clean out their closet, clear off their desk, design a better workout area, or organize their family photos. Really. We don’t earn the right to take good care of ourselves and the perfect opportunity or alignment of the solar system is not likely to occur. Seize the moment. It’s now. And you don’t have to start with something you know you can’t achieve. Start your self-care campaign by doing something do-able and lovely for yourself in the next fifteen minutes. Cancel something awful, make a cup of tea, stand up and stretch out your back. See, it doesn’t always have to be hard.

Own the clock. Stop telling yourself you “don’t have time” and start owning the time that you have.

Time is the great equalizer—we all have the same number of hours in the day and we choose where we invest our minutes and hours. When you don’t spend your time on you, you are choosing to spend it elsewhere. Clean up your language and stop blaming others for using your time. You’ll find this makes it easier to start being deliberate about how you spend it. “I’m choosing not to take a walk but instead to spend my time on _____.” “I’ve decided to spend this half hour clearing my head and thinking about how I can be more effective tomorrow.” “I’ve decided to spend two hours zoning out in front of the TV.”

Where are you investing your time? Is it working?

Are you investing your time so it pays off and creates more energy, momentum, or zest, or are you trying to squeeze every second of productivity out of it, creating a situation where you are always battling the clock? If you are always just barely keeping your head above water, you aren’t ever going to create the reservoir of energy and the momentum you need to really shine and excel.

Move your time to the top of the to-do list.

Don’t save self-care and me-time until the end of the day when you’re too worn out to really put it to any use. Self-care is an investment that pays back dividends. Starting the day by giving to yourself will create a positive domino effect that will make lots of other things work better. Women who take excellent care of themselves notice the reverberations in their relationships with others. It shows up in our mood and even our posture. When we feel good and well taken care of we are more willing to step forward and take on challenges. Our creativity flows, our focus is better and we tend to be more connected to who we are. Quality self-care primes us to be more of our best.

Make it as easy as possible.

In a busy life, everything we say yes to probably is the result of something else that we didn’t do. For many of us, it’s a challenge to keep a positive cycle going. When you find ways of caring for yourself that you love and that bring positive benefits, don’t set yourself up to stop doing them. Use your inner organizer to create a system or routine so that you aren’t constantly having to decide to take good care of yourself. Examples of this are signing up for a yoga class so you know when and how you’ll fit it in every week, creating a standing date to catch up with your dear friend so you aren’t always booking a month out, or deciding that Saturday morning is when you plan your menus for the week. When you book a massage, book your next one before you leave. Start discovering the strategies and tools that work for you and help you keep the self-care and me-time flowing.

Take good care,

I’ve designed two programs to help busy women put themselves on their priority lists. Get started with my Put Yourself First 7 Day Blast-off. Go deep, attack your roadblocks and develop a blueprint for success with the THRIVE Formula™ 4 Weeks to Unleashing Your Inner Champion Kit..

Stop Worrying About Self-care

Melissa McCreery — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 09:05:18 +0000

How can I fit myself in? How can I make time for me? How do I decide what to do when it ALL seems important? “How do I stop snacking when it’s the only treat I get?”

These questions rotate through my email inbox on an almost daily basis. These are concerns that plague many of you and the issue of whether you can find or make time for yourself or whether it’s “okay” to put yourself first (or even put yourself on your to-do list at all) occupies a lot of mental space.

The key to making it all work?

Stop asking the questions.

That’s right—stop worrying about self-care or asking if your day “will permit” you to take care of yourself. Just do it.

There are some things in life we just do. We do them because we have to or because we have simply accepted that they are a part of the daily requirements of living. Unless you are the parent of a non-sleeping newborn, you probably don’t ask yourself routinely how you can find time to go to the bathroom or brush your teeth and you don't worry about how you will find the time to go to work. You just do these things. Because they are necessary.

You likely don’t agonize about whether you should say “no” to something in order to have time to fill the gas tank in your car because you know that without gas, the car isn’t going to take you anywhere you need to go. You need fuel to operate and you act accordingly. You get the gas.

It’s not a stretch to apply the same logic to your own wellbeing. Really, it isn’t.

But amazingly, many busy, otherwise intelligent women are trying to operate their lives without fuel. And they find themselves overwhelmed, overtired, overeating, and out of mojo.

It’s not working and it’s time to make some major adjustments.

Start by stopping the questions about “can I?” and replacing them with the statements “I need to” and “I know it’s essential that.”

As in, “I need to allow myself time to eat a healthy lunch” and “I know it’s essential that I take time for a walk today because it helps me feel better and less stressed.” “I need to take a break so I’ll be able to refocus on this project and so I don't resort to nervous eating this afternoon.”

Put yourself on the priority list, not off to the side where you list the extra things that you hope to have time for.

Putting yourself first and taking a stand on your own behalf is a declaration, not a question. It isn’t always easy, but the payoff is huge.

Take good care,

PS: Would you like some structure to help you put yourself first without feeling guilty? Check out my Put Yourself First 7 Day Blast-off for a simple, do-able way to stop worrying about and start doing self-care.

Overeating, Overwhelmed, or Stuck? Declare Your Independence!

Melissa McCreery — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 18:39:19 +0000

In the United States, we’re heading into a long holiday weekend. We’re celebrating the 4^th of July, and among other things, the level of freedom and independence we enjoy. These are two big and very powerful values. While we’re celebrating our independence as a nation, I think it’s a great time to take a look at these ideals on a very personal level.

One thing I notice is that too many of us don’t exercise the freedom and independence that we have. Too many women feel stuck in “shoulds” and “have tos” and “I can’t.”

I know too many women who feel:

· Trapped by their busy schedules and commitments
· Overloaded by responsibilities and the professional success that they’ve created
· Unclear on how to get from where they are now to where they REALLY want to be.

In short, too many women aren’t feeling free and independent and on a path to flourishing and thriving even though they could be.

My challenge to you:

Wherever you live, take a few moments this week to appreciate the freedoms that are available to you. Consider your own life and ask yourself the following question:

Where or how are you feeling trapped or tangled up or stuck?

· With food or weight?
· Feeling like you never have any time or energy just for you?
· Feeling like you can’t find the motivation you need to make an impact?
· Feeling unsupported or lacking accountability for the things that really mean something to you?

Where do you need to take a stand and declare your freedom and independence?

Start with the declaration and make it today. Here are some examples:

· “I declare that I’m going to do what it takes to make peace with food and stop struggling with overeating.”
· “I declare I’m going to start owning my time and scheduling my priorities.”
· “I declare I’m going to seek out help with_________.”

Be free and take charge. Stop looking backwards. Drop the self-blame and start taking steps (no matter how small they need to be) towards your destination.

Take very good care,

PS: Want the step-by-step program, blueprint and strategies to really get thriving? I walk you through the process of getting on track and in action in my self-guided THRIVE Formula™ 4 Weeks to Unleashing Your Inner Champion program. Don’t forget that the BIG bonuses and discount code for this program end in just a few days!! (Use the code SUMMER40 to save $40).

Plan for Success: The Question to Ask if You Want to Thrive

Melissa McCreery — Wed, 25 May 2011 06:09:25 +0000

Thriving means moving forward in the direction that you want to go, making necessary adjustments as you go along, being effective, and enjoying the ride. Thriving requires taking charge of your mind, your body, and your lifestyle so that they work for you.

Thriving means that you are set up for success—not for struggles that get you nowhere, diets that don’t work, or plans to overhaul your life that are too complicated to keep up with.

Whether your mission is to break free from emotional eating, drop those last ten pounds (or the first fifty), declutter your home, destress, or start exercising, there is one critical question that you don’t want to skip if your goal is to thrive.

The question I want you to ask is this: Where is this plan most likely to be challenged or fall apart?

Of course you need to have a plan, but many people err by charging off and implementing their plan fueled on motivation and determination alone. If you do this, you’re likely to go gangbusters for the first days or weeks (the honeymoon phase), only to find yourself faltering, losing “will power” and starting to feel exhausted and less motivated as time goes on.

These are all indications that you have a plan that you are trying to work instead of having a plan that works for you.

So, take the time to create your best plan, either alone or with whatever resources you are using to support and guide you. Then, before you dive in, ask yourself the question. Where is this plan most likely to be challenged or fall apart?

Are you likely to fall behind because you are chronically short on time?

Are you likely to oversleep and miss your planned workout?

Will summer vacation throw things off kilter?

Do your healthy eating plans go south because your coworker loves to bake?

This is a time when it is critical to take off the rose colored glasses and be honest with yourself.

My challenge to you:

Take a look at your current goals or plans and examine them carefully for weak spots. All plans have them. Pick one place that you can make your approach stronger and start implementing it today.

Take good care,