You did it! You rocked the Core 4 program! And you may be thinking, So, what’s next?
That’s up to you. The whole point of the Core 4 framework is to give you a fun structure for trying out lots of new tools and techniques to improve your health and happiness. I don’t recommend doing it over and over forever like a continuous loop. Eventually you’ve got to go live your life and do the best you can with what you’ve got at any given time. Plus, life is guaranteed to change, so what works for you now may not work for you in six months, a year, or ten years. In other words, stay adaptable and commit to growth if you want to take up more space and get stronger.
You’ve tested a slew of powerful tools and added them to your health toolbox, and you can pull them out as you need to. One of the most effective is your Personal Pillar Plan. Use it as a guide, coming back to it and adjusting when necessary. That will help you break from drifting aimlessly or avoiding areas where you know you could improve.
Another helpful tool is the Health Tracker you filled out in the “Get Ready” chapter before the Core 4 program began. Revisit that questionnaire now. Then return and answer the following questions:
Consider your Day 1 answers and compare them to how you answered today, on Day 31. What has improved?
Did anything not improve? If so, what, and why do you think that is?
Make some general conclusions about how your health has changed in the last 30 days. How have you strengthened your Core 4?
DOING THE CORE 4 PROGRAM AGAIN
When you feel discomfort, I don’t want you to run back to the program. Instead, I want you to open your metaphorical toolbox and apply one of the tools you’ve learned from this book to your life. You may have learned things in the Core 4 that aren’t really relevant to you at this point. But having access to them may help you down the road.
You will continue to change. As soon as you get comfortable, life may throw you for a loop. The point isn’t to start another 30-day program to “get control” but rather to dip back into the tools when you need them. Maybe you’re feeling overwhelmed at the idea of relocating or taking a new job or even starting a new relationship, and you think, Hey, there was a challenge about fear. I’m going to go back and read through that day again.
The point is progress, not perfection. You’ve got this framework to help you navigate your way, along with your intuition. You won’t be roaming around the internet collecting conflicting information and getting overwhelmed with next steps. You can choose how to make the strategies and the Core 4 pillars work for your life and what matters to you.
As I said in the introduction, this program is designed to give you both boundaries and freedom—a framework, if you will. No longer are you at the edge of a deep, dark forest with no navigational tools and no path. You’re prepared! What do I hope for you? To grow and expand beyond the experience of this book the way Gina, age forty-six, has, as she explained a year after doing the Core 4 program:
There are no hard-set “rules” you have to follow or you’re going to be a failure. This program is a gentle teacher helping people figure out their own path to overall health (mind, body, and spirit). And it’s a windy, curvy path that each person has to take on their own. What’s important to one person won’t be as important to another . . .
I also like that this is a lifelong process, so we have access to it forever. I’m continually working on different aspects, or I’ll go back and redo a lesson. I’ve mainly focused on the mindset and energy pillars for the past year, but that has helped me heal enough that I’m now ready to revisit the strength and food pillars. If I’d tried to focus on those in the beginning, I really believe I wouldn’t have kept with the program. It would have been too much like a “diet.” I appreciate Steph’s outlook and “tough love” when needed. It’s always grounded in reality, and it’s helped many people regain their own inner power.
Finding that kind of power is what can launch you into the life you’ve dreamed of living. Michelle, age twenty-six, started Core 4 with a focus on changing her body:
I had been aimlessly going to the gym with the mindset of “I just want to lose weight” and would frequently hit up the elliptical and treadmill and sometimes used the weight lifting machines. I had no clue what I was doing, and I was there for all the wrong reasons. I wanted to learn about how to properly strengthen my body, how to properly do various exercises, and still I wanted to “tone” and lose weight. Additionally, I was interested in curbing my bad eating habits, which included overindulging, snacking excessively, and eating foods that were making me feel bad.
Her results far exceeded her initial hopes and goals.
Not to be overdramatic, but I gained the world with this challenge. I went in wanting to focus on eating nourishing foods and strengthening my body but ended up almost exclusively focusing on recharging my energy and mastering my mindset. Before this challenge I didn’t think those two pillars were my problem, but through this challenge I learned that they were my biggest problems to achieving a happier, healthier, and harder-to-kill me. This challenge challenged me to really consider how I was talking to myself, how I was presenting myself to the world, how tired I was, and how ready I was to give myself what I deserved. This challenge gave me more confidence in myself and it gave me strength to make some tough decisions.
I learned how to properly recharge, which seriously made the biggest difference in my day-to-day life. This challenge helped me to focus on areas that are traditionally left out of health and fitness programs, which in turn helped me to gain strength, make better eating decisions, and develop good habits. Additionally, by addressing the Recharge Your Energy and Empower Your Mind pillars I was able to make life-changing decisions that, one year later, have landed me in my dream job and exactly where I want to be in life right now.
To live your best life—most goals boil down to this, right? When you reconnect with your inner power and listen to your inner voice, you’ll be able to get there. And if you feel discouraged, remember that it’s normal to experience progress and then setbacks, progress and setbacks. You’re not going to rocket off into the future without any stumbles. Part of the learning process is making mistakes—getting stuck and having to figure your way out of it. It’s when you push through a sticking point that you get to a new level of understanding.
If you slip back into your old habits, now you have self-awareness. You have tools you didn’t have before. You know how to create new routines. Now you can look at it not as a failure but as a minor setback. You will use that setback as a platform for going forward. It’s a speed bump—it may slow you, but it won’t stop you.
You’ve learned to listen to your inner voice. You’ve tapped into your own power—power that you may have forgotten you had, but you’ve embraced it now. You’re not the same person you were before you started the Core 4 program. Now get out there and live your biggest, boldest, fiercest life.