How To Get What You Want (By Giving Up What You Love Temporarily)

Do you know why many people never get what they want? It’s because they don’t know what they want! I can’t remember who said that, but it stuck with me ever since. Are you willing to give up what you love to get what you want? At least, temporarily…

On Saturday, I started something called The Whole Life Challenge. It’s the brainchild of a few guys in LA and the idea is that it instills in you great habits that really make your life better in every way. There are 7 habits to it including nutrition, exercise, hydration, mobility, sleep, lifestyle and daily reflection. It’s made fun by the gamification experience and team aspect. The nutrition aspect involves the paleo lifestyle and you can choose how strict you go depending on the level you choose (there are 3 different levels – beginner, lifestyle and performance). Paleo involves eating as nature intended and according to how our ancestors would eat – meat, fish, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds. It’s actually one of the diets I recommend in my book, The Vitality Secret. This is truly clean eating and involves no processed food, very limited sugar, dairy or grains – at least wheat (that’s a biggie for many).

This may at first appear to be restrictive. It’s actually how I eat 80-90% of the time. The only difference with my normal diet is that I do love my red wine and the occasional treat. During the Whole Life Challenge I don’t drink alcohol for 8 weeks. (I did it in September and saw an improvement in my blood work – something we should all be getting measured regularly to monitor our health.) It’s a personal restriction to get what I want in the bigger picture of things – which I’ll come onto in a minute. I no longer care about bread and pasta as I’ve lived without them for many years for the most part, since learning how inflammatory wheat is, or at least, can be, for many. (Inflammation is behind many illnesses we grow to accept as part of life and when it becomes chronic, it leads to just about every chronic disease that exists – and faster ageing.) I’ll have the occasional wheat snack but very very seldom.

For many, this is highly restrictive – at first. Since learning that milk is designed for baby cows to grow fast (who knew? Where were the clues?) I’ve removed that from my diet too – it’s inflammatory. The paleo diet is highly effective at reversing many inflammatory conditions including eczema, asthma, psoriasis, Crohn’s Disease, IBS, arthritis and more.

The mechanics, therefore, are fairly straight forward. Many advocate a purely plant-based diet is the way forward. I’m not totally against that. However, I am a believer that since most vegetarians and vegans tend to be deficient in the micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) found in meat, fish and eggs, we are designed to eat meat and fish. I personally find it quite a challenge to eat only plants – particularly without grains. I mean, what would you eat? We can’t eat soy as that’s full of phytoestrogens (plant-derived oestrogens) that can cause your oestrogen levels to rise (not good if you’re a man or woman), and your testosterone levels to plummet, so what else would one eat??

Back to the title of this email. Let’s say you trust everything that I’m saying in terms of nutrition – all other pillars of The Whole Life Challenge are fairly easy to implement and awesome habits to adopt ongoing. But will you do it? That is the big question. I created an entire program to help you reverse inflammation that followed my book, The Vitality Secret. Those who commit, get extraordinary results.

What does it take to commit?

I believe it all comes down to your ‘why‘ for doing it and getting absolutely crystal clear on your outcome, putting pen to paper and spending a solid hour doing this. This is an great exercise to integrate this and tune it into your innate needs and desires. It’s amazing what shows up. The pen to paper part is important.

I also believe it means loving yourself. This may sound corny, but unless you love yourself, you don’t have self-care. When you love yourself, you do whatever it takes to be in peak physical health it means you’ll get educated about what it means to be in peak physical health. It means understanding what leads to disease and how to avoid it, watching every food documentary on Netflix, reading up on books on nutrition….watching The Truth About Cancer series in its entirety. It means turning off pointless soaps and TV programs and allocating an hour or two a week to find out. It’s a perceived sacrifice in the short term, to get what you want in the long-term. I say perceived, as actually, when you get into learning about this stuff, it’s really interesting.

I believe switching off the news and all the BS that is fed to us in the mainstream is also key. The mainstream has been SO WRONG about so many things. Guess what led to the obesity and diabetes epidemic we’re experiencing today in stupendous proportions. The low fat craze!! All the fat was replaced with sugar and people started feasting on “low calorie” carbohydrates. Magic show. Don’t get me started on cholesterol and statins or the USDA foot plate or recommended foods for diabetics. There is a massive difference between what is conventionally healthy and what is actually healthy.

I believe also it means accepting full responsibility for your health because no one else knows your body like you do. Sadly, we’ve been conditioned to give away our innate power to heal our bodies to people who are not qualified to heal our own bodies. The mechanics of self-healing are actually straight forward. The psychology of doing so is the challenging part as it means rewiring years of conditioning, perhaps decades of conditioning. So much of what we are led to believe is healthy, is quite the opposite.

Are you will to give up what you love in the short term to get what you ultimately want? If you’re not, do this exercise and attach so much pleasure to the outcome of your ultimate goal, and attach so much pain to not taking action, and you’ll be surprised at what you can achieve. And how easy the process becomes. It’s only perceived pain. The reality is actually ultimate vitality and energy and physical performance which massively impacts your life in every conceivable way.

Want to get your mojo back? Want peak health? Sign up to my inflammation solution program and see how powerful it can be for you…