I have read hundreds of examples recently where people have taken a 90 day challenge to enhance the bodily fitness and I love it! What great way to get in bodily shape than partner with a society of like-minded individuals? However, with all the focus on a bodily challenge, aren't people missing out on two other key aspects of fitness - the mental and spiritual sides?
If people are going to challenge themselves anyway, why not initiate a 90 day total mental fitness challenge? Work on all three areas of life by enhancing one's physical, mental, and spiritual sides. For example, just as flabby muscles must be worked out in order to tone and strengthen, so too does flabby thinking. In fact, if anything, flabby mental can have more disastrous effects in a person's life than flabby muscles. Therefore, if a person is investing power for 90 days anyway, then make it a total transformation, not just a bodily one.
A person's understanding life changes when he begins to feed on a steady diet of obvious books, audios, and association with others who do the same. Indeed, I know of no other performance than can convert a person's life as fast as changing his associations. Birds of a feather, in other words, do flock together. My good friend, the late Charlie "Tremendous" Jones, used to say, "Five years from now you will be pretty much the same as you are today except for two things: the books you read and the people you get close to" It was eighteen years when I first heard Charlie's words and took his advice. It changed everything.
Fitness experts say that 85% of bodily fitness is in allowable dieting. I believe the same principle holds true for mental and spiritual dieting as well. Tell me the understanding diet a person routinely feeds his mental and spiritual sides and I can fairly accurately predict his five year future. Success is that predictable; however, it isn't that easy.
Why not? Because the right habits, although easy to do, are also easy not to do. Left to themselves, most people will choose the path of least resistance, which means continuing in their bad habits rather than changing. The good news, however, is that through associating with others in a 90 day challenge, a person can leverage the society to help drive his personal change. In essence, society is the unlikeness between good intentions and good results. Many will give up on themselves, but fewer are willing to give up on others who are counting on them.
Fortunately, it only takes three steps for a person to convert everything:
1. Organize a allowable diet for the food and thoughts entering his body and mind.
2. Make commitments to himself and others to succeed the new diet for 90 days.
3. Enunciate association with others who have committed to do the same thing.
There it is. A method for success in any area of life. It's been said that a person changes when the pain of staying the same or the joy of changing becomes big enough. Eighteen years ago, I took Charlie "Tremendous" Jones up on his mental fitness challenge and it has made all the unlikeness for me. I share this with the readers to encourage them in the three step process for real change. Are you ready to take the mental fitness challenge?