In 2014, my husband J was in the beginning stages of his real estate career, which turned out to be very beneficial for me in my weight loss journey. Real estate is a straight commission job, and it requires you to deal with a lot of rejection. In order to succeed, you must cultivate and maintain a positive mental attitude and continually stay motivated. J’s broker was kind enough to give him lots of self-development material, including audio recordings of motivational talks, and stacks of books to read. As fate would have it, one of those books was Og Mandino’s The Greatest Salesman In The World.
In 2015, I set a goal of reading 52 books in a year (which I achieved). I chose to read Og Mandino’s book in January of that year because it was short and I was intimidated by my goal. Plus, my husband was a salesman and I wanted to be supportive and read what he was reading. I never imagined that the book would be useful to me. At the time I was a work at home mom, doing freelance software testing, and homeschooling my three kids (ages 8, 5, and 2.) As far as weight loss goes, I was almost a year past my “I’ve had enough moment,” but I was still trying to figure out how to lose weight permanently. I hadn’t taken much consistent action. I had recently heard of intermittent fasting, but I hadn’t really tried it. I also hadn’t yet weighed myself.
I read this book once, and I remember enjoying it at the time. J read it several times, and memorized parts of it. The day I finished reading it, I moved on to the next book on my list. Over time, the book faded from my memory. Recently we settled back down into a house after RVing for the past 2 years, and I came across this book again. J’s selling cars now, and he’d copied a passage from the book into the notepad he carries around. The book was sitting on our table and I decided to read through it again, to see if I could glean anything else. I was floored as I re-read it. I realized that many of the ideas in the book were things I unconsciously applied to myself as I went through the weight loss journey. It was like the seeds of those ideas were sown in my mind, and they grew as I went along, even though I was unaware of it at the time.
This time as I read the book I wrote down the passages that stood out to me. These were the things I remember striking me back in 2015, and which eventually helped me lose weight and keep it off. The book itself is a short, quick read, and I highly recommend it, even if you never plan to sell a thing in your life. Below are the quotes that impacted me the most and how it applied to my weight loss journey.
“Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.” (p. 26)
When I was struggling to lose weight, my mindset needed improvement. I kept thinking that it was impossible to lose the weight, or that even if I by some miracle lost it, it was inevitable that I’d regain it. I decided to start studying failure. I learned that weight loss and maintenance was no accident. The ultimate cause of failure was quitting. I decided to use my innate stubbornness as an asset: I would be too determined to quit.
“Today I begin a new life. Today I shed my old skin which hath too long suffered the bruises of failure and the wounds of mediocrity.” (p. 51)
I knew deep down I could do better than being sedentary and obese. I had to shed that skin, and I had to start taking steps that day. I focused on creating a whole new life, and shedding my old skin.
“Failure will no longer be my payment for struggle.” (p. 52)
I was sick and tired of always struggling with my weight. I was dead set on breaking my old patterns of strict diet → weight loss → go back to eating the food I like → stop weighing → gain weight → finally weigh → strict diet… Instead, I decided to succeed, which again, went back to being determined to never ever quit.
“…I must practice the art of patience, for nature acts never in haste. To create the olive, king of all trees, a hundred years is required. An onion plant is old in nine weeks. I have lived as an onion plant. It has not pleased me.” (p. 53)
When it came to my weight, I was living like an onion plant. Always rushing, rushing, rushing. I wanted the weight off in days, possibly weeks. The idea of months and years was foreign to me at first. But learning to be patient and take my time was crucial in getting the weight off in a sustainable way, and keeping it off.
“Nature has already supplied me with knowledge and instinct.” (p. 54)
In 2015, I started shifting my thinking from listening to various weight loss “experts” to listening to my own body and paying attention to my own results. The more I did this, the more success I had.
“I will form good habits and become their slave.” (p. 54)
The book points out that we’re all slaves of habit. It seems to be one of nature’s laws. So, the key is to get into good habits and be their slave. I did this with my walking habit, and my intermittent fasting habit. I also eventually applied this to other parts of my life, like journaling, creating videos and podcasts, and good communication habits with my husband and kids.
“I will greet this day with love in my heart.” (p. 58) “And most of all I will love myself.” (p. 61)
I started focusing on being grateful for everything. For the chance to wake up. For my house. For my kids. For the dirty dishes in the sink. And most of all, I started working on loving myself. It has been a constant refrain in my head for years now. I say it in my head multiple times a day. I’m getting my steps because I love myself. I eat what I love because I love myself. I’m going to let myself sit down and rest because I love myself. I’m practicing intermittent fasting because I love myself. I’m weighing myself because I love myself. I am grateful for my body. It does amazing work each and every day and I’m so thankful that I have it.
“I am a lion and I refuse to talk, to walk, to sleep with the sheep. I will hear not those who weep and complain, for their disease is contagious. Let them join the sheep. The slaughterhouse of failure is not my destiny.” (p. 64)
I realized that my mindset was negatively affected by a few blogs I was reading, which made weight loss seem complicated and weight regain inevitable. I stopped reading those blogs. I stopped hanging out in the comments section of articles, because I found I was generally looking for confirmation that failure was inevitable. I stopped mentioning weight loss at all to everyone I was around, especially those people who struggled with their weight. I knew that the subject always brought up complaining and the general belief that you can’t really lose weight and keep it off (or that you must be miserable in order to successfully lose weight). I protected my mind. I only read success stories. If I ran across stories of failure, I dug into the root causes of the person’s failure, as opposed to using it as evidence that weight loss was a hopeless endeavor.
“Henceforth, I will consider each day’s effort as but one blow of my blade against a mighty oak. The first blow may not cause a tremor in the wood, nor the second, nor the third. Each blow of itself may be trifling and seem of no consequence. Yet from the childish swipes the oak will eventually tumble. So it will be with my efforts today.” (p. 64-65)
The amount of weight I needed to lose to get down to a healthy weight was my oak tree. A pound seems insignificant. A walk seems of no consequence. But as those things get added together and compounded over time, eventually that oak falls. I started to look at my weight loss journey as a long term thing, though it took me until January 2016 until I truly understood this.
“I am a unique creature of nature.” (p. 69)
I realized it really didn’t matter what worked for other people. No one else has my body, my nature, my personality. I focused on what would work for me based on my unique knowledge of myself.
“I will live this day as if it is my last.” (p. 73)
One thing I realized was that if today was my last day on earth, I could find the strength to behave better. I would be more patient. I would laugh easier. I’d make more of an effort to make sure my kids and my husband knew that I loved them. I would forgive easier. It finally clicked that I had that power in me all along, so I started trying my best to practice it. To this day I try to live each day like it is my last. I don’t always do a great job of it, but my life has improved as a direct result.
“I will avoid with fury the killers of time.” (p. 75)
I realized that even though it seemed like I didn’t have enough time to accomplish the things I wanted to accomplish, I still had time to be on Pinterest, Facebook, and various other time vacuums. I began to avoid them. (Side note: 2 months ago I got Facebook and Instagram out of my life completely and I’ve discovered oodles of time.) I started to see that often I had been ignoring the people and relationships around me in favor of scrolling through my feeds, looking at other people’s lives. Less social media led to more life satisfaction.
“Today I will be master of my emotions.” (p. 78) “Weak is he who permits his thoughts to control his actions. Strong is he who forces his actions to control his thoughts.” (p. 81)
Reading books like Unbroken helped me realize that I was much stronger than I thought I was. I understood, when reading that book, that if I was in a starvation type situation, I would suddenly be able to control myself around food. If all my family had was a handful of rice to survive on, I could make myself eat less, so that we could all survive. When I understood that, I further understood that somewhere inside me I had the power to eat less. I just had to find it, and practice it. When I read this passage about controlling my emotions, I realized that I had more control than I first thought. I determined to act myself into a new way of thinking, as Zig Ziglar and so many other motivational speakers advised. The way this looked in my weight loss journey was: go to the gym whether you feel like it or not. And later, go for a walk whether you feel like it or not. Weigh yourself in the morning, whether you feel like it or not. Practice intermittent fasting whether you feel like it or not. And sure enough, as I did these things, my good feeling would follow the action. But trying to do it the reverse way rarely yielded results.
“This too shall pass.” (p. 84)
This phrase helped me to get through the rough patches like plateaus, slow weight loss, and times when I made mistakes in general. On the other hand, it kept me humble when things were easy, like when the scale was moving down quickly. It’s another phrase I repeat in my head often to this day.
“I will pray for guidance.” (p. 100)
I prayed during my “I’ve had enough moment,” and it helped. Unfortunately, I have this bad habit of forgetting to pray when I need help. I think sometimes I avoided praying about my weight loss because I knew that meant I needed to really mean it, that I really needed to commit, and I just wasn’t ready. In my experience, God will help if you ask.
Sometimes the right book finds you at just the right time, and The Greatest Salesman in the World was one of those books for me. It found me at a time when I was ready to learn these lessons and start to apply them to my life. And by the way, many people find this book makes them a better salesman. My husband was definitely helped by it.