How to Conquer Your Greatest Challenge for 2021
By: Alipio De Veyra
Tags: Fasting, New Years Resolutions, Weight Loss, Goal Setting, 2021 Goal

In 2019 I managed to achieve a second chance at a healthy life. I dropped more than 80 pounds (36 kilos.) I also became medication free for chronic conditions of diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol and gout…. all by fasting. This included an Everest-like 40-day stretch of water-only fasting.

How can my fasting experience help you achieve your 2021 goals?

The process of goal setting and staying disciplined is the same for any challenge. In addition to not eating for forty days, I’ve overcome being temporarily homeless while attaining my undergraduate degree, playing sports again after a devastating knee injury and becoming a software engineer by moving to Seattle armed only with a sleeping bag, an unemployment check and a history degree.

Here are my three tips from that process that can be applied to any challenge you are confronting.

Tip #1: Focus on a Daily Goal

Question: How do you eat an entire elephant?

Answer: one bite at a time.

When I was staring at forty days of not eating it was intimidating. It was tough because it required me focusing on not doing something. I made it more palatable by adding a task that called for action. In this case, it was completing a daily one mile walk.

Preparing for Murphy’s Law

It states that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. When you have a long-term project something will inevitably “pop up.” What helped me get through these trying times was looking on these events as tests life was throwing at me to test my resolve.

In other words, these were opportunities to build confidence in yourself by rising to the occasion to overcome the obstacle. By doing so, you’ll find over time that these tests diminish in scariness. What used to look like a mountain becomes a molehill.

Bonus Tip

Chip, a friend from my writing group offers this advice. He’s a veteran of three NaNoWriMos, the annual National Novel Writing Month challenge of writing 50k words in the month of November.

If possible break your daily goal down further into 10-minute bursts. By doing this you’ll get a jolt of adrenaline with each completed segment. This will boost your momentum.

Tip #2: Daily Journal

A constant challenge you’ll face is getting distracted by the latest shiny distraction that happens in our lives. In other words, valuing the urgent over the important. To combat this I keep a daily journal with a unique twist. This was a crucial tool in completing the 40-day fast in 2019.

An important distinction is daily journal writing should not be your only goal for the day. Instead consider it as a warmup exercise gearing you up for the rigors of the day similar to an athlete stretching before a competition.

Benefits

The daily journal serves as a means to keeping multiple tasks and projects in proper priority by providing a 10,000-mile-high perspective. It shows all my projects in order of priority. Within each project is a list of tasks also in order of priority.

Example:

1. Project A

Task 1

Task 2

2. Project B

Task 1

Task 2

This acts as a visual dashboard keeping me focused on what’s important and keeping me from getting distracted by what appears as urgent.

The frequent trap for long projects is getting caught up in time-waster tasks that don’t move you forward toward your goal. For example, dropping down the rabbit hole of research for too long, losing track of time and not meeting your daily writing minimum.

Before the Projects section, I have an Executive Summary (aka my Wailing Wall.) It serves as a place to vent all those negative emotions and thoughts that are distractions. These are mental vampires that keep you from focusing solely on the task at hand, writing.

I learned this mindfulness technique observing a friend from my windsurfing competition days. As a perfectionist, he’d fret about making a mistake. Since that was what my buddy focused on, his mind looked for opportunities for him to screw up. He inevitably make a mistake and obsess about it. He’d waste precious seconds beating himself up instead of refocusing on how to get back into the race.

Daily Journal Twist

During my 40-day fast, I had my daily journal on an online fasting forum which made me accountable to all the forum members. Today, I do my journaling on my personal Facebook account. Entries are limited only to my friends. My fasting experience reinforced my belief that I’m more likely to get something accomplished knowing I’m accountable to someone.

Bonus Tip

In Ninja Writers, my writing school where I’m currently enrolled, there’s a group who are participating in NaNoWriMo. They’ve put up a virtual leaderboard. It’s a place where everyone updates their total word count.

This helps those who are competitive to write more. Surprisingly, those who are not competitive find they also write more.

Tip #3: Motivation in Three Parts

For those days you want to give up.

Part One: The Carrot aka Benefit

This is a positive benefit of achieving a goal. The feeling of accomplishment or relief. A dream that tantalizingly draws you forward.

Part Two: The Stick aka Consequence

This is a negative consequence of failing. The feeling of disappointment or shame of not keeping your commitment to yourself or to others. A cattle prod that reminds you of a scenario you want to flee from.

Part Three: Strong Emotional Component

Having a carrot and stick are NOT enough. Both motivations MUST have strong emotional stakes. If your motivations aren’t anchored in a secure foundation, the second you encounter the emotional winds of adversity, you’ll fold like a cheap tent in a storm.

Carrot and Stick Application

Here’s how I used them during my 40-day fast. My emotional stakes were higher than what’s normally associated with a challenge like completing a NaNoWriMo. However, my example illustrates what challenges can be overcome when you’re pushed and pulled by appropriately powerful emotions.

As the most experienced member on the fasting forum, new members who kept failing at completing their fasts would ask me for advice. They were most interested on how I was able to stay disciplined in fasting for forty straight days.

I’d chuckle and tell them of my carrot and stick. My carrot was looking forward to the day I could dump all of my daily medications. My stick was my Type 2 diabetes worsening to the point of getting hooked up to the dreaded dialysis machine, having my feet amputated — or death.

Having my stick helped to get my ass in gear on days I wanted to give up. I’d have my carrot for those times I suffered from medication side effects. I confess I relied on my stick more. Enduring forty days without food doesn’t seem bad in comparison to the dialysis machine, amputation or death.

Tips Summary

Have daily goal that can give you confidence once you complete it. Have a daily journal with accountability. This helps staying focused on what’s important and not getting distracted by what’s urgent. Have carrot-and-stick motivations grounded in strong emotions. To help you overcome the inevitable emotional storms you’ll encounter.

It’s my hope these tips can be tools that will propel you up and to the peak of any challenge. Good luck.