The Power of One

Generally speaking once we have made a decision to do something, whether to start exercising or change the way we eat, we adopt the “all or nothing” mentality. We go from sitting on the couch eating take out almost every night to exercising 4-5 times per week and restricting what we eat to only 1200 calories a day. Wow, what an extreme change! No wonder it is not sustainable for long periods of time. This is where the Power of One will become your saviour.

I went to a conference not long ago and was listening to the head of Small Business from St George Bank speaking. He introduced me to the concept of the Power of One through his speech, and although he was talking about it in financial and business terms, I immediately thought, “This is going to be a brilliant concept to use in my coaching”.

The best thing someone can do for themselves is make the decision that they need to focus on their health and well-being and make the necessary changes. However, this can be extremely overwhelming for many, especially when there are potentially so many things that need to change. The four most common questions from someone just starting out usually are:

"Where do I begin?"
"What do I need to change?"
"What is most important?"
"How am I going to do it all?"

My recommendation is to pick ONE, that’s right, only one behaviour that you want to change and focus on that. It may be something as small as only having one teaspoon of sugar in your coffee instead of two, it may be having breakfast a couple of days a week instead of skipping breakfast, it may even be just saying no to an after dinner snack. Start with the one thing you are most motivated to change and do this consistently. You will feel very satisfied by changing this behaviour and it will give you confidence to build on the one change into other changes you can make and become the person you can become.

Even though you may think that these changes are small and insignificant, they are actually big steps, because they are those few times that you are changing the behaviour you have recognised needs change. This creates a domino effect, giving you the power to spark a chain reaction of changed habits that builds new behaviours upon changed behaviours that will naturally lead to the next successful changed behaviour. This is something that you need to recognise as a step in the right direction, a step in the direction of reaching you goal.

So the next time you are overwhelmed with all the changes you want to make in your life, take a moment to reflect, break it down and focus on ONE thing that you can change. This is the way that you will make permanent, life-long changes. This is the “Power of ONE!”