Highlights of the Podcast:
- The Successful Physical Transformation Indicator
- Having a sense of entitlement versus a sense of gratitude
- You can’t have anger and gratitude at the same time
- What you focus on expands
- List down 3 to 5 things that you’re grateful for each day
- Stay off the gap by remembering and looking back at what you have achieved
- Accept responsibility for your slipups, learn from them, and then get back on track
- Don’t blame others for your slipups, but don’t beat yourself up about them either
- Go past the “this is where I stop” point
Mark: Hello and welcome to another new episode of the TheDVCC.com podcast. I’m Mark Gray, sitting next to Stephen. I hope you’re well. It is really murky in the UK at the moment. Certainly in Milton Keynes, it’s pretty murky at the moment. But it has been lovely for the last few days and it makes a difference. I mean, about this time last week it was snowing? Pretty much, I think. It was very cold too.
Stephen: The last couple of weeks. So yes, it wasn’t long.
Mark: It wasn’t long. So, I hope you’re enjoying the new weather. And like I say, if you listen to this in December, I hope it’s nice and snowy for you. So, what are we going to be talking about today, Stephen?
Stephen: Well, we’re going to be talking over a graphic – something I did very recently, and it’s called the “Successful Physical Transformation Indicator.” So basically, it’s a graphic with the traits that someone has to, in our experience, from what we’ve witnessed and from seeing a lot of transformations and things, the traits someone has to have to make a physical change to their body and/or the opposite to that. What someone that doesn’t make a change to their body tends to have. What are the unsuccessful traits that someone has.
Mark: So Stephen, he’s made this graphic, had it made and we’ll put it on the blog, actually. It will be on the TheDVCC.com site. But also, it’s on Facebook, Twitter or whatever, but we’ll share it around. So we’re going to be talking about the different points on it, but do share this graphic around and do check it out. If you just listen to this on iTunes, because obviously you can subscribe for free on iTunes, go to the blog, TheDVCC.com, and check it out because I think you’ll get a lot of good info from it and it will be good to cement the ideas that we’re going to talk about today.
Stephen: I’m really thinking about actually getting it put into a big poster.
Mark: Oh, okay.
Stephen: I think that would be pretty cool if we had big posters of them. So I just think it’s good to have reminders. I got this idea actually from – it was a similar sort of thing, but it wasn’t to do with physical transformations at all. It was to do – I can’t remember what it was to do with, but it was just the idea of what traits you have to have and the foremost laid out. Anyway, let’s start off. I thought what we’re going to do is just we’re going to go through four. So we’re just going to potluck. Mark is going to choose one of his favorites that stands out because we’re looking at the graphic right now and we’re just going to talk about them in a little bit.
Mark: So if I go on what is an unsuccessful – this is the trait of an unsuccessful physical transformer. So somebody who doesn’t transform their body to how they want. And that is they have a sense of entitlement. Obviously, on the flipside of that, for someone that does achieve – and these are the people that do achieve great physical transformations – is they have a sense of gratitude. So, basically you’ll notice and you’ll meet people in life that kind of – and you do see a lot on TV, I think pretty much. If you look at Jeremy Kyle, you’ll see a lot of people on there. And a lot of people you’ll probably meet in general have a sense that they are entitled to something.
And I do think that they say it certainly with society, it’s becoming more and more like that. That we, as a society, believe that we are entitled to something. Be that we’re entitled to a job, we’re entitled to a house, we’re entitled to a car or whatever it is. We’re entitled for food to be on the table. That we are entitled to it, therefore, we should get it whether we deserve it or whether we work for it or whether we’ve applied ourselves for it or not. Now that’s the same with weight loss. People who are unsuccessful feel that they are entitled to change their shape without perhaps changing their mindset or what they do.
Stephen: What they do and what they eat. And I think that’s not necessarily the fault of the person. I think, as you say, what is kind of in the media, what we see on TV, a lot of that is kind of geared towards that sort of thing. So when you look at – we always talk about diets and things. When they’re throwing around massive numbers of weight loss in very little time with – I’ve just seen the recent Weight Watchers new adverts and they feature – there’s that guy who’s a chef. And then there is also – I forget her name. I’m not particularly good with famous people. But basically, they’re just talking about how they haven’t changed their food at all and they’ve lost all this weight. And that, to me, kind of does smack a little bit of an entitlement attitude because realistically, if you’re doing the same thing you were doing, but you’re losing weight, there’s something wrong. What I’m trying to say is what you were doing before that caused you to put on weight is obviously not the thing you should be doing to help you lose weight, at least not healthily.
Mark: Do what you’ve always done, get what you’ve always got, basically.
Stephen: Yes. Definitely. There’s the definition of insanity, which is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. And analyze yourself when we talk about this. Do you have an entitlement attitude? Because on the flipside of this is people that – and these are pretty much the hundreds of people that are part of the DVCCs in Milton Keynes and Bedford. They have a sense of gratitude, a gratitude for things that have happened to them in their life. So, their health, the ability to actually be able to exercise. I think people kind of – and actually, we’re recording this literally the day after the Boston Marathon, which was obviously shocking.
And I guess it’s relevant to talk about, seeing as it was a marathon and it’s a fitness event, but obviously a lot of people have put a lot of effort, a lot of time, a lot of sweat – blood, sweat and tears – into being able to actually just run the event, to then obviously have that kind of destroyed by that. It just kind of brings things to where having a sense of gratitude to be able to actually do to keep fit and to stay fit is not something you should take for granted. So having a sense of gratitude I think is key. That’s kind of what I’m talking about.
Mark: Yes. So basically, like you say, if you’re grateful for your life, what you’ve achieved, what you’re doing, what you’re doing currently, good things happen to you. It’s – what do you say? You can’t have gratitude…
Stephen: You can’t have gratitude in your body and anger. They’re two conflicting emotions that you can’t actually sustain in your body.
Mark: Exactly. You just stole my thunder. So, if you are grateful, you can’t be angry. But, if you’re not grateful, then you can be angry. So that’s a simple way to think of it. Like anger is not a nice emotion to put out, but also to feel. It’s not nice when you feel anger. So, if you’re grateful, then you can’t be angry. That is the way to think of it. So you should be grateful for your life. And then, the more you’re grateful for something, the more it will happen to you.
Stephen: And grateful for what you have. And I think no one’s saying that you don’t try and achieve more. You’re going to try and lose weight, you’re going to try and get fitter, you’re trying to get healthier. But, the point being is that there’s a very big different attitude to kind of having gratitude for what you have and what you’ve achieved so far or what you have at the moment rather than resentfulness and anger.
Mark: And this comes also back to the fact that what you focus on expands. So that’s not cookie and it does. So if you focus on not having any money, it just expands. You will not have any money. So if you keep focusing on the negatives, then you’re going to get more negatives. Whereas if you focus on the good things in your life, the things that you’re grateful for, that you have gratitude for, you’ll get more and more of them.
Stephen: So what would be two techniques? I can think of two different ways you can go about kind of trying to get more gratitude into your life.
Mark: Well, Stephen, because you can think of two, why don’t you impart your knowledge?
Stephen: Well, I just got actually shown this. So in the past, what I’ve done is write down 5 things I’m grateful for, every day, every night. So this is a habit you can get into. I did it for 21 days. And then actually, I find that I do get moments where you’re just thinking you’re actually really grateful for what you have. But there’s actually a new app I’ve just found out. It’s called “Gratitude 365.” It basically allows you every day to list down things that you are grateful for. And then it will store them there and it’s really interesting. So I found just the other day one of my little notebooks that I’ve kind of finished up using and saw all my grateful logs in the back and it’s really interesting and really quite nice to look back and see the things that I was grateful for, and still I’m grateful for when you look back at them now. But yes, that’s a really good way of doing it.
So listing down every day the 3 to 5 things that you’re grateful for that you have in your life. So it might be your children, it might be your husband, it might be you’re grateful for your health, it might be whatever it may be. It can change or it can stay very similar. But, just doing that every day really does – particularly towards the end of the day – it really kind of finishes your day off on a high.
Mark: And there’s going to be people listening to this. You might be one of them that will say, “Oh, I’ve got nothing in my life to be grateful for. I’ve got nothing.” And that’s…
Stephen: Incorrect.
Mark: Pollocks because no matter how terrible someone’s life is, there’s always little things that you can be grateful for. And if you focus on those, your life will be a lot, lot nicer. So, I’m constantly having to – even with family members and with people close to me – I’m always having to – because we do this obviously with family and friends or whatever. We discuss it with them and get them to do it. And I’m having to educate them on the fact that actually, you have done things that you should be grateful for or things that have happened to you that you should be grateful for today. And then to kind of just – it’s easy to become clouded with negativities, so you just have to try and pull yourself away from it and focus on what you are grateful for.
Stephen: So literally, the next time that you’re in real anger, you’re in a really negative mood, literally, you just want to spend 5 minutes. Note down 5 things that you’re grateful for that you have in your life, and that’s a real big difference. So when Mark talks about having a sense of entitlement or having a sense of gratitude, those two are conflicting emotions. And if you’re thinking, well, actually, yes, maybe I do have a little bit of the entitlement attitude, then that’s not helpful towards achieving your transformation, staying physically fit, becoming physically fit and losing weight. So really think about what you can do. So we’re giving you a quick way you can do it, is to increase the gratitude that you have in your life.
Mark: Exactly.
Stephen: So do that for the next 21 days.
Mark: Good! The next one.
Stephen: So the next one I want to talk about would probably be I think a lot is remembering where they came from. And we’re again, we’re very lucky with the people that we have in the DVCCs in Bedford and Milton Keynes, but we have people that remember where they come from because there’s a big difference. If you lose weight, you lost three stone, but then you’ve completely forgotten how that was to be three stones heavier, then as through changes, you become a very different person, but it’s very important and it actually knocks your confidence if you’ve forgotten where you’ve come from because you’re always striving to get further forward, to lose more weight or I could lose another stone even though I’ve lost three, and people forget that they’ve lost three stone and they’ve done awesomely well and it kind of comes down to a confidence thing and being in that gap that we speak about, always constantly looking forward at what you haven’t achieved rather than looking back at what you have achieved. So, I think the successful transformers are the ones that remember and look back at what they have achieved. So they stay off the gap by looking back at what they’ve done and how they’ve progressed rather than looking at what they haven’t done yet and kind of beating themselves up about what they haven’t yet achieved. So if you want to be a successful transformer or physically fit and healthy – and this kind of radiates into all aspects of life, that you want to be looking back at what you’ve achieved. So what you’ve done, how well you’ve done or what you’ve done so far. I think that’s quite a strong way of kind of maintaining your momentum forward.
Mark: Yes. Very good points. Like we said, check this out on the graphic because it will only help to cement these points. Anything you want to add, Steve?
Stephen: No. I think we can move to the next one. It’s your turn now.
Mark: Let’s have a look which kept my – hmm… Okay. Perhaps this kind of goes hand-in-hand with my first point – accepts responsibility for their slipups. Now, you will always slip up. Okay? You’re never going to be perfect. Nobody is. Literally, nobody is perfect, apart from they used to call one rugby guy – John Eales, was it?
Stephen: Yes.
Mark: He used to play for Australia. They used to call him “nobody” because nobody’s perfect [Laughs]. So it’s a great little nickname they had for him. But, you’re not going to be perfect. You’re going to slip up, and the key point is that if you do, you take responsibility and you put it right or you fix it or you get straight back on track. Now, this comes down to anything, I kind of figure. Health transformations, business or whatever, is you always want to take responsibility. And Stephen and I, we’ve always been – actually, no. We weren’t always like that because obviously when we were younger, I think we did just blame each other and try and get out of trouble by blaming each other. But now, everything that happens to me, and to Steve, I believe we’re exactly the same, we know we’ve made. So if something negative happens to us, we’ve created it and we’ll accept that we’ve created it, and then we’ll do things so that it won’t happen again. But likewise, if positive things happen, then we’ve created that too.
So the same with transformations, is that you need to accept responsibility for your slipups. So, if you make a mistake, you eat bad food, you have a bad weekend, you have a bad week, you have a bad month, whatever it is, that’s your responsibility, you accept it, you move on from it. Okay? You don’t blame others, you don’t blame the fact that it was a full moon, you don’t blame the fact that it’s Christmas, Easter or whatever it is. You make decisions and you accept that they are your decisions. Okay? And then if you do that, you’ll find it a lot easier to make your transformation, and it’s not about blaming yourself so you can self-flagellate or anything, but it is about…
Stephen: Excuse me?
Mark: That’s where you whip your back. Check out the book. What was the book? What was the book?
Stephen: It’s The Mystery of the Monk, wasn’t it?
Mark: Oh yes. What was that book? If someone could comment in the box below.
Stephen: I thought it was a film.
Mark: It was a film, but I know it was based on a book. It was with – oh God! The guy with the shaved – he was in Philadelphia as well. Anyway, it was based from that. But anyway, it’s not about beating yourself up about it, but it’s about accepting that it was your responsibility.
Stephen: And learning from it.
Mark: Learning from it, moving on from it and getting back to good ways. Alright?
Stephen: Yes.
Mark: Whereas, non-successful transformation people, they blame others.
Stephen: Right. And I think that’s key because it’s very important that it’s how you react to something that is the key. So if you’re too busy blaming and looking for someone else to blame, you’re not going to react positively to something and you’re not going to learn from that thing because you don’t think you have anything to learn because it wasn’t your fault. But, for example, to put this into weight loss terms, if I’ve gone to London for the day and failed to take any food with me, I’ve got really hungry because my blood sugar’s dropped and the only thing I can really want to eat at that time is a cake, I go and have that cake because I’m really hungry. Then sure, I’ve had a slipup. Yes, it was my fault. You can either look at it, “Oh, I ate that cake because I was really hungry.” And a lot of people will say, “Oh, it’s because I went to London.”
Mark: It’s like they’re blaming London.
Stephen: Exactly. However, the thing to get from that experience is, right. So yes, I slipped up. That’s done with. I can’t change that now. What did I learn? Right. I learned that I cannot be hungry and stop myself from eating sugary foods because – this would be me speaking. I wouldn’t be able to do that because my willpower is not – well, it’s obviously not strong enough to do that. But, equally, I know what to do. So what do I do in the future? I know I need to pack some food to take with me to keep my blood sugar up so that I’m not going to crash like that and want to have sugary foods. So, the difference between doing that or saying, “Oh, it was because I went to London. There was nothing to eat, and so I had to eat cake.” As if, like Mark says, it’s London’s fault, or the train’s fault. I don’t know. The East London Rail, maybe it’s their fault.
But, there’s a big difference between looking at things in those two different ways. And people that make the transformations, because the transformations – physical fitness change, weight loss and things like that – are generally longer term, they don’t just happen in two weeks unlike whatever Weight Watchers or the Cambridge Diet tell you. So it’s the people that treat those slipups – because everyone has them. I have them and you have them. Everyone has them. It’s the people that treat them with the fact that they caused it, but what can they learn from it so that it doesn’t happen again.
Mark: Exactly.
Stephen: Alrighty.
Mark: So then it’s my turn.
Stephen: The final one, isn’t it?
Mark: Right. I love this one. I was quite happy when I thought about this one. It was actually in a conversation with Sandy who’s personal training in Milton Keynes, and she mentioned, “Oh, I’m really happy because this is where I normally stop.” And so, what I’ve written down here, and it’s on the bottom left, is go past the “this is where I normally stop” point because I think a lot of people have a – particularly if they’ve done diets, they’ve done different things and they’ve kind of flipped and changed and never actually achieved physically what they want to achieve is because they have a “this is where I stop” point. This mindset, subconsciously or consciously, they have a time where they think, “Right. That’s where I stop.” That’s where I stop doing what I’m doing that’s either getting results or not, but basically, that’s where I stop. And the ones that carry on and achieve what they want to achieve, the ones that don’t stop at this is where I stop point…
Stephen: And then, the this is where I stop point tends to be where things get a little bit tougher.
Mark: Yes. Now that’s a really good point. And actually, we’re kind of proud about that as well because it’s good to be able to change people’s mindsets or whatever because she is so much happier now that she’s losing weight and continuously. Actually, she said to me as well the other day that she’s flipped her mindset to it’s about her long term health and being at the weight she wants to be and being healthy and confident her whole life, and not just that I’m going to stop after whatever, four weeks or my stop point.
Stephen: And I always wonder, when you stop, what’s going to happen in the future? Do you think you get fitter and healthier? As you get older, does it not become important? It kind of vexes me a little bit because for me, from now, knowing what I know particularly with health challenges and stuff that happen in families, staying fit and healthy is literally the most important thing.
Mark: Yes. Literally. And that’s why it’s so pleasing when someone – like Sandy said, she’s flipped her mindset because if that’s you listening to the call and you’re in that same or similar initial mindset like Sandy was – I mean, she could comment on this blog post, actually, how much happier and how she won’t have to drop – she’s not going to have to restart and do another four weeks to get back to where she was starting where she wanted to be because realistically, if she had stopped, then obviously, she’s going to want to get fit and healthy again in the future. So getting past that I normally stop point is super important. And that is one of the crux of transformations, is they get past that point. Whereas obviously, people who don’t achieve transformations, they stop at their this is where I stop point. Okay? So, to achieve a physical transformation, an amazing transformation, and keep that transformation so that that is you, the new you, you need to go past the this is where I normally stop point.
Stephen: Just take a moment to think, do I have a this is where I stop point? Literally, think about your past, what you’ve done in the past and things like that, and think, do I have that point? And it might actually not be conscious, but really, really think about it hard because you shouldn’t have a this is where I stop. I mean, this is where I stop being healthier, fitter and getting to better shape. That should never be. I mean, one of my year goals – so I like to do goal setting. One of my year goals is to be fitter this time next year and healthier than I am today. And I will achieve that because I know how important, I really feel it’s important. And if I had a this is where I stop point, then I would never achieve it. Because I don’t have one, I think I want to carry on at getting better and better physically for the rest of my life, and I think that should be the case for everyone.
Particularly now, everyone’s living longer, but everyone’s actually living sicker and less healthily. So just because everyone’s living longer, we’re actually living worse, in a worse position. So, you should not have a this is where I stop point, and if you do, just try to think about why you have it, and then think about little techniques and things you can be doing to make sure that that actually doesn’t derail you and stop you.
Mark: I think this is great to be able to carry on and talk about this next time because there are so many more points on that graphic that you made that will really help people. So do comment below. Please let us know your thoughts. We’re getting more and more feedback and I love it. So share as well. Share this blog around because this graphic, which our little graphic is going to be in it, will really help people because basically, you know what you need to be to achieve a great transformation. You want to go past your stop point, you want to have a sense of gratitude, all these different things, and we’ll carry on talking about it next time. If you are they, you will achieve an amazing transformation and will be happy for the rest of your life effectively in terms of your physical…
Stephen: It’s that powerful. I feel it’s that powerful, I think. And these are all not just necessarily related to fitness but – obviously, we have done them with that in mind, but I think you can see how powerful they are for just everyday life as well.
Mark: Exactly. Alright. Until next week. Goodbye!
Stephen: Bye-bye now.
