Installing the Betterness® OS

Most people do not get what they want because they do not know what they want. They may think they know, but what they actually have is a vague idea at best — and a vague idea is not a clear destination.

Successful people succeed because they invest the time and energy to create a clear destination in their minds. People usually get what they focus on, and when they focus on exactly what they want, they usually get it.

So what do you want? Do you really want to lose weight, or do you want to be successful with weight loss? Does success arrive at the moment you hit your goal weight? Every pound is a hard-earned achievement — but to be truly successful, you probably want to keep it off.

Dr. Russ lost 85 pounds as a teenager and gained it all back and more. In college he lost 125 pounds and gained it all back and more. Two more significant rounds followed. By 35 he had more than 30 years of experience losing weight — and still weighed over 400 pounds.

That looks like failure at weight loss. It was not. He was incredibly effective at losing weight. He had simply never aimed at keeping it off.

In 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Dr. Stephen Covey observed that highly effective people "begin with the end in mind." Their success comes in part from knowing exactly what they want to achieve. Dr. Russ set out to achieve weight loss, and that is exactly what he got. He never achieved weight maintenance, because that was never the focus.

Focusing only on weight loss is like having the GPS in your car set to the ditch right next to your real destination. Almost every step of the trip is correct. The final destination is all wrong. If you never adjust the GPS, you will always end up stuck in the ditch.

This is why so many people are able to lose weight and so few can keep it off. Before anything else changes, the destination has to change.