Have you “decided” or just thinking about it?

Episode #938 October 20, 2023

You know I rarely have a guest on – but today I do because of how this particular topic is a building block for creating the life you love.

Whether it’s in quitting your job, getting a new car, moving into your dream house, getting into better health, starting your own business, or becoming a millionaire – it all starts with a decision.

So today I have my friend Alan Thomas on with me.

Alan has a process he calls “Rethink Dieting” – and his approach is right in line with how to achieve success in any area of your life.

As you know, here are 48 Days, we believe that you really can be well on your way to almost anything within 48 days if you really make a decision.

Alan struggled with his own weight for decades. It was when the scale reached 304 lbs that Alan decided to make a change. He made a decision that he would never see the number three on the scale again.

Alan lost 129 lbs in 260 days.

Today, he helps other people who make that same decision. He and his wife Angie used a very unorthodox approach to weight loss. And they get results.

Alan says, “We don’t tell people what to eat or how to exercise because we want them to own the process. We want them to be the creator of the process so they cannot escape it.”

Bigger than anything in the process is to understand why you’re doing it. Decide what your why is, and then the how-to comes into view.

So here are our discussion points for today’s episode: You’re going to hear some stories that are mind-boggling.

Questions about making a decision:

What does it mean to really decide to do something?

The word decide is a pretty critical word. Decide has the same suffix on it (cide) as some other words that we’re pretty used to, like pesticide, herbicide, insecticide, and fungicide. It means something’s gonna come to a close. Something’s going to be cut off.

When you decide that means you are making a determination. You decide to do something powerful in your life. But it usually means you’re going to stop doing something else.

You’re going to decide to start that blog or podcast. You’re going to decide to write a book. You decide to start a business, decide to run a marathon, decide to eat healthier. And, of course, today, we’re going to frame this in terms of deciding to lose weight or get in shape.

Alan says that the biggest piece for most people in weight loss is they don’t have certainty. They’re really hoping a diet works. They’re hoping they can get something done and they’ve abdicated the responsibility to somebody else.

Why do some people mask their feelings of inferiority by being overweight?

Alan and I both have seen that if somebody feels inferior, it’s easy to have a little extra weight kind of protect you. People don’t expect as much of you. They aren’t going to call you up on stage to be a leader.

Alan says that being overweight is a prison that we lock ourselves in.

Having a dream to have a nicer car, move into a bigger house, or double your income, or whatever are big dreams. It takes a lot of fortitude and confidence and belief to to say that you’re going to do those things. And it’s easy to hide beyond your weight to think you can’t accomplish those things.

Why do good people resist being told what to do?

Most people are looking for a magic pill. They don’t really want to make a change. They don’t want to do the work, particularly the mental work.

So instead of telling people what to do, Alan and Angie Thomas at Rethink Dieting help people find their own Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) — the inescapable data.

The key is not in the diet, it’s in making the decision.

Why does success (or failure) in one area of our lives spill over into other areas?

To illustrate this concept, Alan shares a story of a pastor who lost 90 lbs and his success in that area has spilled over to his family, his children, his friends, and even his congregation.

Making a decision for success in one area of your life always a ripple effect in other areas.

Dave Ramsey and I have been friends for 30 years at this point. We’ve seen evidence that if somebody has gone through Dave’s program and they became debt-free or really got in control of their finances, they were great candidates to work with us because we knew they had the ability to make a decision and follow it through. So they’re great candidates to make decisions in their career and make big advancements. It just works like that. There’s that ripple effect.

When somebody loses their job, what’s likely to happen is they immediately have financial stress. They have emotional stress because they’re embarrassed about that. So then on Monday morning, instead of being out there hitting the streets, they’re on the couch watching Seinfeld reruns, and eating potato chips, and they start to compromise physically, financially, emotionally, family, responsibility socially, health-wise. They all start to ripple down together, and the same is true in reverse.

But if you get control of one area of your life like your weight, it’s going to be a whole lot easier to double your income than it was previously.