My mind was made up.

I was determined.

Resolute.

I wasn’t going to take it anymore.

I was going to sue the drycleaner.

I reached this decision yesterday morning as I was getting dressed and found myself struggling to fasten the pants I had picked up from the cleaners earlier in the week.

They didn’t fit.

And this wasn’t the first time.

I am a patient and forgiving guy but everyone has their limit.

And I had just reached mine.

This was the third time they had shrunk my clothes and I felt I had given them enough chances.

I understand that mistakes happen, but three times? Really?

Enough’s enough.

Time to make’m pay.

Gimalle, my loving and supportive wife, ever the diplomat, had been listening to my tirade when she tactfully asked if I had weighed myself lately.

“Of course not,” I had retorted, bristling at the implication.

Gimalle is, among many other things, awfully insistent and so I had trudged off to the bathroom in search of our well hidden scale while rehearsing the smug grin I planned on wearing after I reported back to her that the problem did, indeed, lie with the drycleaners.

I found the scale buried under the usual pile of stuff people seem to store in their bathrooms, placed it on the floor, stepped on it and immediately realized I also had to sue the manufacturers of this useless piece of junk.

Somehow my broken scale had calculated that my weight had increased substantially since the last time I had stood on it.

I knew this couldn’t be right and told Gimalle we needed to buy a new scale.

Gimalle came into the bathroom with that annoying “I knew it” look on her face, stepped on the scale and announced it to be perfect.

She also mentioned that her weight had not changed by one ounce in the last thirty years.

As if that’s something to be proud of.

It didn’t help when she suggested we go shopping for new pants on the weekend and gleefully pointed out that the need for this was caused by my lifelong commitment to “personal growth.”

Obviously, faced with this volume of overwhelming evidence, I sadly came to the conclusion that I had become more than the man I used to be.

And, if I’m to be honest, I must acknowledge that I did this all by myself.

I have allowed poor habits to creep into my life. Habits that may have provided pleasure in the moment (life cannot offer much greater pleasure than chocolate ice-cream with chocolate sauce) were now the cause of the pain that comes from realizing your pants haven’t shrunk.

And so I have made a decision. A commitment to make a massive change in my life.

My decision is not to lose weight. That isn’t the answer.

As many of us know from personal experience, losing weight is easy. We’ve done it over and over again.

Some of us have even become really good at it.

Kind of like the old “practice makes perfect” axiom.

And we have also become really good at gaining it back.

And then some.

So my decision is this: it is to overhaul my lifestyle with an irrevocable commitment to develop the habits that we all know are necessary for healthy and energized living.

And I will soon be wearing those pants again.

We have often talked about how we only do what’s important to us in the moment, and how importance is determined by whether our actions will bring us pleasure or help us avoid pain and that in order to make changes in our lives we must have a reason for doing the things that will get us there that is bigger, stronger and more compelling than our reasons for not doing what we need to do – our reason for having a salad must be greater that our reason for eating chocolate cake – or we will not meet our commitments.

I spent last night determining what I need to do to get to where I want to be.

I begin today.

I believe I’m not alone in wanting to acquire new habits that will empower me feel better, stronger and healthier. I’m sure some of you have the same desires.

So I invite you to come along on this journey with me. To join me in the exciting adventure of self re-creation.

And if you would like to do so, please send me an email to rael@raelkalley.com and let me know that we are now partners in change.

And, if you live here in Calgary, and are among the first 12 people to contact me, I will invite you to join me for a complimentary full day workshop in which we will work through the powerful process of goal-setting and achievement that is a part of my OnCourse coaching process.

And I will send you a copy of my book “Life Sinks or Soars – the Choice is Yours to read before the workshop.

So send those emails soon.

Operators are standing by.

Till we read again.