First published 20 July 2020 on Your Best Year Starts Here with Nigel Risner.
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Nigel opened this one by getting the episode number wrong ("80-something", after a year and a half of doing this) and then announcing that his chocolate bars were still unopened. He'd spent six weeks properly looking after his health. That got me thinking back to the last episode and the stuff you let into your life.
So I dug out an acronym I've used since about 2014, back when I was doing loads with Natural Juice Junkie. AIM. Attitude, intake and movement. I first used it for health. Every January people go on diets and join gyms in droves, and I reckoned we'd see the same after lockdown. Most of the weight loss world works on one or two of those parts, almost never all three, because a customer who keeps coming back is worth more to them.
Nigel then owned up to celebrating his birthday weight loss by eating the very thing that caused the problem. His words were that he got all three right and then buggered the whole thing up. I had my own version. In 2012 I gave up alcohol for a year to raise money for charity, and blogged about it (one of the first blogs I ever kept going). When Big Ben finished at the end of the year, someone put a glass in my hand. I didn't finish it, as I'd decided to drive to the party, but that was how I marked a year without a drink. I don't drink now.
Nigel said that's the gap between a goal and a mission. A goal has an end, so you go looking for a way to celebrate it. A mission keeps going. We got onto his be, do, have idea as well, and the fact that nobody loses weight so they can go to the gym. I said AIM works for a business too, where intake means a lot more than money. Are you moving towards your mission or away from it?
Nigel nicked AIM straight away for his own line, "you can't aim a duck to death", and agreed to credit me. Then I tried to finish on "compared to what?" and used a bar of Dairy Milk as my example. Big mistake. I said it's fine as long as you don't feel rubbish about yourself afterwards, and Nigel now has it on record that Dr Neil Martin says chocolate is good for you. He's telling his doctor.
What stayed with me
- Work on all of AIM, not just the food or the gym. Most diets only touch one or two parts.
- Celebrating a finished goal with the thing you gave up puts you straight back at the start.
- Have a mission that keeps going, as well as goals that end.
- Be the person first. The doing and the having come after that.
- Before asking if something's a good idea, ask "compared to what?"
So your being needs to come first, and your doing and having come second and third.
Nigel Risner
Nobody loses weight so they can go to the gym, you know?
Neil Martin
