Ritualistic Consistency is they Key For Lasting, Powerful Results.

The other day I stumbled on a video from a woman sharing tips on how she lost a ton of weight.  I'm always curious about people who maintain long-term weight loss because it requires the successful implementation of new habits.  So I watched her video answering questions from her followers about her journey.  

The biggest lesson I got from the video was that, although her excess weight was long gone, she maintained the same habits that lead to her current results. One of her habits was to walk 6 miles a day.  Someone on the live asked how often she took her six-mile walks.  Most people would answer the question by saying 2-3 times a week or whatever.  But instead, she took a minute to think about it and responded by saying that she could only recall two days that she didn't take her 6-mile walk.  

Two days.

She lost nearly 100 pounds, kept it off, and still held on to the habits that created her amazing results.  Her story reminded me of a valuable life lesson.Imagine this....

What if this woman successfully lost all her weight but didn't maintain the 6-mile walking ritual? Chances are that would have regained a portion (if not all) of her weight back.  I say this because most people who lose a bunch of weight will regain much of it.

  It's pretty common.

Perhaps long-term weight loss is so difficult because we no longer maintain the habits that got us there.

I call this concept of maintaining a habit long-term as Ritualistic Consistency.

For her, walking six miles a day was no longer a vehicle for weight loss, it is now a daily ritual. 

Then I thought about my own habits.  

This is I tend to do..... I'll start a new, awesome habit....like decluttering for a few minutes a day.  When I do it for a while (like for a week or two), my home environment starts to look great.  Before long, I let go of that habit and eventually things return to the way they were.  Because decluttering was no longer a consistent ritual, I lost all the progress I made.

Typically, when I develop a new habit, it doesn't take long to start experiencing the benefits.   Once the benefits show up, I feel like I've reached my destination and quickly give up on executing the habits that got me there.

This approach is terribly wrong.  

If I truly want to enjoy the outcome associated with my newly developed habits, I must turn these habits into rituals.  You're probably asking yourself, "what's the difference?"  When I'm trying to form a habit, I'm doing solely for the purpose of experiencing the benefits directly associated with the habit.  For instance, developing the habit of going to the gym to lose weight. 

 But what happens once the weight is gone?

Rituals, on the other hand, are actions that we repeat over and over again for the sake of completing the ritual.  By the time an action becomes a ritual, you've already produced the ideal outcome you're looking for.  Yet you continue to complete the action anyway. You become consistent in executing your ritual. 

With ritualistic consistency, you are essentially ensuring that you never return to back to square one.  I've lost a few pounds in the past by doing things a bit differently for a while before returning back to my old ways.  Old ways lead to old results so the weight eventually came back.   But, when you maintain a ritual long term, you create the possibility to enter "the tipping point."

The tipping point is a magical experience that only happens once you've maintained a certain level of ritualistic consistency.  You've heard of stories where an artist practiced their craft for years before being discovered.  That's when they reached a tipping point.  The tipping point is a NEW LEVEL of results that will only manifest after being consistent for a certain period of time.  How long does it take to reach the tipping point? Who knows...but one expert says that we can achieve the level of mastery after putting in 10,000 hours of practice.  

Today, I encourage you to place some thought into which habits you need to get serious about.  We no longer want to dabble in starting and stopping. We need to decide once and for all to turn our newfouond habits into rituals.

Your tipping point awaits.