What Color is Your Yardstick?

A friend recently shared with me that he wanted to lose some weight.  Being familiar with the goal-setting principle of fully associating with the end result, he shared his vision of himself 30 pounds lighter, how he saw all the wonderful things he’d be able to do and share, and what it all really meant for him.  I was really happy that he had taken these important steps that most people fail to take.  After congratulating him I asked him something he didn’t expect.

“What color is your yardstick?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your yardstick.  What color is it?”
“I’m not sure that I follow.  I haven’t seen one of those since Catholic school.”

I explained to him that he had done a fantastic job of identifying what he wanted, and that having a clear vision alone wouldn’t instantly make the pounds disappear.  In order to see that he was actually moving towards his goal he needed a measuring device – a “yardstick”.

A yardstick helps you to answer a very important question:  How do I know that I’m making progress towards my goal?

After some thought he said that he’d read a book that had examples of other people’s workout and nutrition plans for losing weight.  Maybe he could use those as his yardstick.  I applauded his resourcefulness, that having role models was a great idea.  Then I repeated the question.

“What color is your yardstick?”
“Umm, white, I guess.  Since the pages in that book are white.”
“That’s a great start!  And as you go forward now you’ll probably want to color it.”

After pondering that for a minute, he understood. ”You mean I have to make it my own.  I can take their example to start with, and then tweak it to my own personal taste.”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself!”
“Yeah, right.  You could have just told me what to do right from the beginning.”
“Where’s the self-discovery in that?  So, do you want to pick up markers or paint?”
“Crayons, thank you very much.”