I recently read a great book by Brian Tracy called Eat That Frog! The book is about prioritizing important tasks in order to get the most important things done in the limited amount of time that we have.
The title comes from an old saying that if you eat a live frog first thing in the morning, you can get on with your day knowing that you have probably done the worst thing that you will have to do that day. It is a metaphor for taking on the most challenging tasks that you are faced with first. Then, everything else seems easy.
With the next 30-Day Life By Design Challenge underway, I have been thinking about how this metaphor applies to all areas of Life By Design.
For every person, there are parts of living Life By Design that are more difficult than others. Maybe you are great at staying on track with eating By Design, but are having trouble developing a good Move By Design routine. Or maybe those five o’clock wake ups and morning Think By Design power hours are a real struggle. Maybe you are getting up regularly to move your body but have not yet started to get your spine and nerve system checked.
If you are completely new to Life By Design, it can be overwhelming to think about doing all of these things.
The purpose of the 30-Day Challenge is to push yourself to be better. No one is perfect. Even the people who have been living By Design for years have slip ups, off tracks, missed work outs and sleep ins. That is life.
Instead of shooting for perfection in all areas, for this challenge, I propose that you think about swallowing your ‘frog’.
My frog is the 5:00 a.m. power hour. I go through a few days of consistently doing it and then a week will go by where I just cannot seem to make it happen. My alarm magically is not loud enough, I betray myself by hitting the snooze button thirty times, there are events in my schedule that run until midnight, and I would rather die than get out of bed after four and a half hours of sleep. Excuses, excuses and very little excellence. This is my frog.
When I do get up at 5:00 a.m. though – man, what a difference! I feel accomplished just getting that out of the way. Followed by a great focused hour of setting my goals for the day. By noon I feel like the most purposeful human being on the planet. Do you know how good it feels to check off all of those little boxes I draw for myself? So good!
So this 30-Day Challenge, I am going to stay on track with eating By Design, I am going to get checked every week and I will do my best to stick to my training schedule. But my main focus, my one big goal is to eat that frog, by getting up at 5:00 a.m. everyday.
What is your frog?
Pick the one thing that you know is hardest for you to do and put all of your energy into mastering that over the thirty days between November 11 and December 11. Write it down. Put it somewhere that you can see it every day to keep you focused.
You can do it!
For more simple By Design recipes why not pick up your copy of the Eat By Design Cookbook. I’ve created it in the form of a 28-day meal plan (plus grocery lists!) so you don’t need to think about what’s for breakfast, lunch or dinner for the next month. Or you can grab the first 7 days FREE by clicking here.