This week I was awarded a certificate and I was the first person to ever be given this award.
It’s not just any certificate because it represents the biggest achievement of my life.
Bigger than my uni degree.
Bigger than building a successful business from nothing.
Even bigger than raising two amazing young people (my kids) – and I’m pretty proud of that.
What is the DATSTM Program Habit & Mindset Mastery Certificate
This is an exclusive award for someone who has mastered their habits and mindset.
It’s not just handed out, it has to be earned by doing the deep work and successfully completing all the relevant levels of our DATS Habit & accountability tool.
To complete every level, you have to address the habits that are holding you back and you can not fake it or wing your way through it.
It’s a complete system designed to reveal your blind spots and improve self-awareness.
We reward habit and mindset change not just results because when we master our habits and mindset, the results always take care of themselves.
People don’t have weight problems, confidence problems, health problems, work problems, business problems, parenting problems or relationship problems.
People have personal problems (habits, mindset, beliefs, identities and fears) that reflect throughout their life.
Transformation is not before and after photos.
It isn’t just fitness and exercise or food and nutrition.
Transformation is acquiring lifelong knowledge, systems, tools and skills to help you overcome the personal problems (obstacles) that are preventing you from having the body and life you want.
The Imani Tribe Transformations Habit & Mindset Mastery certification is for members who have acquired the knowledge, systems, tools and skills – Real transformation.
This DATSTM Program Habit & Mindset Mastery Certificate of Achievement represents all the hard work that I have put in over the past 3.5 years with Imani Tribe Transformations, and the reason it’s the biggest achievement of my life is that it has literally changed my life.
And these changes have enabled me to be a better mum and a better business owner.
What is transformation
Transformation isn’t before or after photos, or food and exercise. Anyone can eat better and exercise more and look better in their photos. I know. I’ve done it. Yet nothing inside changed.
Real transformation happens at the deep level. It’s the internal work that no one sees.
The work requires you to look at yourself completely stripped back to who you are.
How you think. What you believe. What you fear. What demons lurk underneath the surface.
Accepting all of that (which can take some time, believe me!) is just the start. The real work involved is confronting all your fears.
You need to do the deep, deep work of unbecoming who you are, in order to return to who you were meant to be, so you can become a new person, and create a new identity for yourself.
Before transformation
Before transformation, I didn’t like who I was. Actually, I didn’t even know who I was.
The truth is I had stopped being ‘me’ and had become a person who let fear control her life.
I was negative, angry and resentful. I compared myself to others all the time. I beat myself up and berated myself because I always fell short of those I compared myself against. I was insecure and frightened of being seen as I was, and became a people pleaser. I couldn’t put myself first, I worried about what other people thought of me, and I wanted – needed – to control everything. I had also spent the past 30+ years dieting so I could feel better about myself.
Over the past few years I have worked hard at overcoming these habits and building new ones. It hasn’t been easy. There have been many tears and I have wanted to give up many times. But I didn’t.
I kept going and putting in the work no matter how hard it was.
What I’ve achieved so far
Since I’ve been with Imani, I have overcome habits I never thought I could.
- I have learned to be kind to myself
- I have stopped comparing myself
- I have stopped caring what others think of me
- I have learned to prioritise myself
- I have dropped the diet mindset
- I have learned to be free around food and not feel guilty for eating anything
- I have stopped dieting and depriving myself
- I have stopped beating myself up for not being perfect
- I have learned to celebrate my achievements
- I have stopped trying to control everything
- I have embraced accountability
- I have learned to dig deep and hear uncomfortable or challenging truths
- I have learned to take action even when I’m afraid
- I have learned the power of consistency over perfection
- I have stopped trying to be perfect
- I have developed a growth mindset
- I have learned to ask for help
- I have cut toxicity out of my life
- I have become more confident
- I have learned that mastering habits is the most important thing you will ever do
- I have learned that habits are more important than what I eat or how I exercise when it comes to weight loss
- I have developed an awareness of my habits that will always try to trip me up and am now a master of my triggers.
None of the above has come easy. It’s been daily work for the past few years. I’ve been fighting my fears, putting in the effort and being consistent, even when I didn’t want
to.
Why I won’t give up
There are still things I’m working on but that’s a post for another day
However, I always said that this journey wouldn’t be a quick-fix like all the diets I have done in the past. Instead of looking for results in 6 – 12 months, I committed to the process fully and wholeheartedly, as if I was undertaking another degree.
And in a sense I was — a degree in life!
Over the past 3.5 years, I have seen dozens of people join Imani and then give up on themselves when they got too uncomfortable.
Instead of facing up to hard truths and putting in the work required for real transformation they quit.
Not only did they quit, they blamed other people for their problems.
Some of them even blamed me.
Instead of having the courage to face their fears and work on themselves, they scurried away and hid in the dark not able to bear what staying in the light would show them about themselves.
But to transform you have to be willing to be in the light. You have to be okay with the light showing you the things you need to work on, in order to become the best version of yourself you can.
I know how scary this process is and understand the desire to run away.
Confronting your fears is the second hardest thing in the world.
The hardest thing is giving into them and living with the consequences.
Which is why I keep going, and why I’ll never quit.
It may take time, and I will fall down many times along the way.
But as long as I don’t quit, I know I’ll never fail.
This certificate might seem like a small, simple thing to those who don’t understand transformation.
But to me it’s my biggest achievement.
Because I know what it took to earn it.
You can learn more about my journey by reading the following blogs:
If I knew then what I know now about diets and weight loss
How your limiting beliefs and identity impacts your weight
