What does weight loss have to do with being a better entrepreneur? For John Sanders, it was the life-changing principles he learned during his 9-month weight loss journey that impacted every other aspect of his life, including how he ran his business.

John learned that there are three life changes he needed to make to lose weight:

1. Consistency
2. Self Confidence
3. Be Present

After implementing these lifestyle changes to his weight loss journey, John found he’d been applying them to the rest of his life as well and doing so made him a better husband, father, and entrepreneur.

Consistency

As John started to lose weight, he noticed that without consistency nothing would happen. “You can’t just say ‘well I’m gonna watch what I eat this week and then for the next three weeks not’.” To lose weight you have to get a routine and stick to the routine every day and “…it’s the same thing with business.”

John started by getting organized. He needed to nail down his vision and a plan for how to attain that vision, but after that, it was all about consistently working and consistently executing the plan.

Self Confidence

When most people think of self-confidence, they’re thinking of feeling good about themselves, and “that’s part of it.” However, John uses a different definition of self-confidence. He says, “self-confidence is just making and keeping promises to yourself.”

That’s it. If you can make a promise to yourself and then fulfill that promise, your self-confidence will grow. The other part of these self-promises is that they must be attainable. You can’t promise to lose 80 pounds up front, it doesn’t work. But promise to start with a 15-minute walk a day? That is doable.

In the business world, it’s as simple as promising to talk to 5 investors a week or create 1 new product design a day. It doesn’t matter what your promises are, once you’ve made and kept them, your self-confidence will increase and so will your productivity.

Be Present

We’ve all had that moment. You’ve had a long day, you come home and you don’t want to do anything. You go to the cupboard, open a bag of chips and finish it before going to bed that night. This is exactly the kind of scenario that John used to face.

“I was just mindlessly going throughout my day, not being present, you know, and that right there, I can tell you, is why I gained so much weight.”

Finding a balance between home and work life is challenging. How do you separate your business from the kids and the kids from the business? For John, it was a matter of changing his mindset. He taught himself to be fully present in every situation–the good and the bad. Because everything passes, “[I] let myself get present, let myself see [the situation] for what it [was], instead of just constantly reacting to it.”

For John, it was a matter of slowing down, accepting the moment, the stress, the anxiety, and letting it move on. By being present he was able to accept things that happened to him a lot easier and once the emotion had moved on he could make a conscious and present decision about how to move forward with his business, family, weight, and more.