Yesterday was the final weigh-in for the DietBet hosted weight loss competition that I was participating in last month. (Yikes!) After meeting my goal in the first two weeks, I kind of stopped thinking about the competition and moved on to focus on other things…until a few days ago. I weighed myself on a scale at a local grocery store…and those numbers were much larger than my goal weight. Then, I came home and weighed myself on my scale and started to panic, because I didn’t know which one was right/consistent with the scale in the DietBet office where I would do the final weigh-in. (My home scale is not digital/it can change based on whether or not the kids have been playing with it.) In any event, I thought that it was highly likely that I would lose the bit. (Hence, the post image….I imagined myself eating a healthy dose of humble pie!) As I rode the subway to the final weigh-in, I thought about the lessons that I learned from participating in this competition. I will definitely be applying them to my life for the rest of this year
1. Be confident, but humble. For those couple of days that I thought that I was going to lose, I was just thinking of how overconfident I was. From the beginning, I just assumed that I would win. Then, when I surpassed the goal at the midway mark, I knew that I would. The reality though is that it was very possible that I would not win. Weight is tricky and fluctuates all of the time…especially with women. It’s good to be confident. (I mean, who plays games with stakes assuming that they will lose? However, there’s a thin line between confidence and arrogance. I was toeing that line. Proverbs 16:18 (“Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” was repeatedly running through my head the last couple of days. Lesson learned.
2. Stay focused on your goal until you accomplish it. When something is important to me, I have a laser-like focus on it. That’s what happened with this game. I was totally focused until I reached my goal at the mid-way mark. However, this wasn’t a two week challenge…it was a month long one! I can’t afford to lose focus until my goals are completely accomplished (to the best of my ability anyway)!
3. Have an accurate scale. This was the biggest lesson learned. I was all nervous and hectic the last couple of days, because I didn’t have the same scale as the DietBet people. I could never be confident regarding whether or not I had met my goal. Weight-wise, that just means that I need to purchase an electronic scale. Life-wise, that means that I need to have specific measurements in place for all of the goals/prayers/hopes/resolutions (whatever you want to call it) that I put out there. (I wrote a post about having SMART goals in relation to blogging over on ShePosts. I need to remember that for every area of my life!)
4. Someone else doesn’t have to lose in order for me to win. Actually, I already believe that. This competition just reinforced this belief. At this point, I think that everyone who was competing in this challenge met their goals. That is amazing! Despite my angst, I met and exceeded (9 pounds lost in a month – woot!) my DietBet goal :-). That was cool. You know what was really cool though? Seeing my friend Amy excited about meeting her goal/losing 10 pounds in a month. We squealed, hugged and she laughed as I jumped up and down. I’m not even joking…I totally thought that I had lost. The great news is that ALL 7 of the bloggers that participated in the DietBet competition won. (That makes me even happier that I met my goal. I would have been so embarrassed if I would have been the only one that didn’t meet her goal!)
February has started off on a great note. I won the DietBet, signed a new contract (that I will tell you about soon) and was asked to speak at a conference on a topic that is very important to me. (I’ll let you know more about the conference later too…after I figure out all of the details.) In any event, I hope that February has been fabulous for you so far too. If you learned any lessons in January, definitely share them with me. I love learning together with you!