Success is a messy, continuous journey. As a recovering perfectionist with a wicked feedback loop from hell, you can see how this concept would create a problem for me.

Success comes through recognizing bad habits

Every Monday, my family always seems to be starting the ‘first day of the rest of our lives.’ We’re sick of feeling like crap all the time. We’re getting healthy (with a side of skinny :lol:).

By Thursday afternoon, we’re hangry (you know, when your so hungry you’re angry). Things escalate quickly. For fear of dealing with a safety issue, I talk myself into ordering pizza.

We’ll just restart the “first day of the rest of our lives” on Monday.

Sound familiar? If your family is anything like mine, you’ve also said this a few too many times.

Success comes from ignoring what other people are doing

Most of us have countless friends promoting the next big weight-loss miracle. We blend, cleanse and practically starve ourselves to drop a few pounds and get ‘healthier.’ After all, if it’s working for them it’s got to work for us.

Like our friends, we struggle with the restrictiveness of the diets. After all, who wants to drink your meals? Not me. I prefer to chew, thank you!

So, we fall off the wagon to wallow in some vat of unhealthiness. Since our one-time slip generally falls into a full out binge, we never fully recover. That wagon we’ve hitched ourselves to leaves us behind to wallow in our own self-pity.

Just as there’s always another Monday, there’s always another Dr. Oz approved weight-loss wagon that comes along to pick us up. And, because we’re human we can never fully stay on any wagon. Especially those that don’t allow us to use our God given teeth!

All the while, we’re getting fatter. We’re riddled with chronic diseases. And, we feel worse than we look.

Success is in realistic goal setting

As a recovering perfectionist, I can tell you that your goal should never be perfection. You will let yourself down every time, I certainly did.

We as humans are a work in progress. Most of us are always striving to get better but we’ll never be perfect. Rather, your goal should be to successfully live a healthy lifestyle. Of course, you will need to determine what the term ‘healthy lifestyle’ looks like to you.

Here’s a couple of my goals:

• Walk at least 10K steps per day as measured by my smart watch, with a stretch goal of 16K
• Eat mostly a whole food, plant based diet as measured by the number of times and length of time that I fall “off the wagon.”

Success comes from getting out of your own head