How-To's Aren't Enough

I am a voracious reader and usually have several books I'm reading at the same time, both fiction and non-fiction.  One of the non-fiction books I'm reading right now is "If How-To's Were Enough, We Would All Be Skinny, Rich & Happy" by Brian Klemmer.  This book was recommended to me by a friend, so I bought it used from Amazon.com. 

In the introduction of the book, the author writes, "Today you got up, went through your morning rituals, and embarked on teh tasks of the day.  Whether your mission involved leading a company or caring for a small child, you were called on to make thousands of choices over the course of the day.  Which of these choices cost you the results you truly wanted?"  He explores some of the reasons we make choices that don't support what we really want and discusses how to make different choices that support what we want.

I've read a lot of "how-to" books in my life, books that promised to unlock the secrets to a happy marriage, happy children, financial freedom, cleaner house, more beautiful garden, deeper prayer life, etc.  If you spend any time at a bookstore, you'll see shelves of "self-help" books.  With the plethora of books at our disposal, you'd think we'd all be just about perfect by now :-).

As the title of Brian Klemmer's book hints, ultimately it's about much more than just having the "how-to's" down.  At some point, if we want to move beyond theory and begin to experience what the books promise, we have to actually DO what the books tell us to do.  How-to's are everywhere, but what is clearly in short supply is making the choice to follow through.

Once upon a time, I had an entire shelf of books on how to lose weight.  Just about every time a new book with a new, sure-fire diet was released, I'd pick it up in the hopes that THIS would contain the elusive secret on how to lose weight and get healthy.  I now understand that most of those diets were doomed to fail because they were based on a faulty premise, but the failure I experienced on each and every one of them undoubtedly had more to do with my own lack of will than anything else.

With Take Shape for Life/Medifast, we definitely have the right products, proven over almost 30 years of clinical studies.  We have a lot of wonderful tools and support at our fingertips.  All of the how-to's that we need are there.  But the tools and products and how-to's won't get us where we want to go until we make the choice to actually get where we want to go.  Once the decision is made - really made - it's amazing how useful these tools become. 

We have to decide that we really DO want to reach our goal; we have to make that our primary choice.  When we finally decide, everything else becomes a lot easier.  Even the upcoming holidays become a lot easier if we've decided what we want and then focus on getting there.  If getting to our goal is in the "wouldn't it be nice" category and is more wishful thinking than a clear decision, then we will find ourselves caving in to temptation again and again.  Wishful thinking will never be enough reason to delay the pull of immediate gratification.

Where are you at today?  Are you still putting together your own collection of how-to's, or are you making the choice to put those how-to's into action?  How you answer this question will determine the other choices you make today.  Choose wisely :-)