How to Not F*CK Up Your Fitness
This is the last piece on our 3-part series on motivation and goal setting. Part ONE is about how to create a goal that fits in your life and actually gets you what you really want. Part TWO is how to actually achieve it. If you skipped those first guides, go back and check them out! Now we're on to some real talk here. Accomplishing anything, good or bad, is going to take some serious hard work and determination. Remember finals week in college? That kind of tough. You're going to have to make sacrifices and it's not all going to be fun. But you will sure AF learn a lot about the kind of woman you are.
And if you're a real person, you're going to fuck up at some point.
Why? Because being a real person means being imperfect. Hell, setting a goal that's really, really, REALLY tough shows you how completely NOT perfect you are, and that's a beautiful lesson in itself.
Look at our children. They are like sponges. They pick up every single thing we say (#whoops) and they learn faster then they will in college. Their ability to learn is what we consider a success at their young age. I'm sure you've already noticed how within this impactful time, they fail extremely frequently. (Which is that fine line of heartbreaking and absolutely hilarious.) As parents, we celebrate their failures. We kiss their boo boos, promote the small life-lessons, and encourage them to move on.
In order to succeed, we have to do the same with ourselves.
I say that we are all prone to failure because I’m also a person. Who works with lots of different people on a daily basis. Who fails regularly. If I met someone who was actually perfect I would use them as an example... but I can't. That person doesn't exist. Or at least, I've never met them, and I really don't want to hang out with them.
It truly saddens me when a client who I absolutely adore comes into training and just shits on themselves for the entire hour because they had a small failure. Either they cheated on their diet, or they didn't get their run in, or they still don't fit into their goal pants. (These aren't lazy women, either, and I used to do this all of the time.)
Being a mom means you’re sharing your life, values, and goals with a few other people. There will be days that are out of your control, and that is part of the game.
So in order to succeed, we first have to admit that failure is a normal thing that goes hand-in-hand with success. We have to get accustomed to kissing our own boo-boos, doing a little digging into why it happened, and brainstorming what we can do to prevent setbacks from reoccurring.
(This is also why I LOVE the 80/20 principal when it comes to diet, exercise, and sleep.) IF we can anticipate our failures we can prevent them from happening. Or at least we spare us the time we often ruminate with negative self-talk and spend that hour refocusing on our priorities.
I don't want you to get frustrated with setbacks and failures. I want you to embrace them as part of the journey.
Yes, of course this is much harder than it sounds. It's one thing to tell yourself you won't get pissed when you've overslept a workout, it's another to actually wake up and feel like a complete asshat after you've scheduled a sitter. This takes time. There's no faster route to misery than beating yourself up over something you can't erase.
Here is an exercise I'd love for you to do to prepare for failure:
1. Write down the last big goal you accomplished.
Learning a new skill, participating in a race/ bake fair/ etc... doesn't have to apply to fitness at all. Think of the last time you pushed yourself to get something done!
2. Write down ANY mistakes you made along the way.
Did you miss a practice? Flub a recipe? Run out of time? Cheat on a diet? Be honest!!
3. Think about how you still did it.
Did you try a new method? Manage your time differently? Make it up somewhere else?
4 Write out any areas in your new plan where you think you might be prone to any slip-ups.
If you foresee any bumps in the path, you don't have to avoid them completely. Just identify where they might be!
5. Create a plan of action you can take... just in case. What do you do if your babysitter bails? Or if you get sick? Or if your kids require more time than you anticipate? Have a couple of options written down so you already have options!
It's time for us to STOP allowing excuses and accept that failure is a part of success. I want you to go out there and fail as hard as you can. Fail so immensely that you must learn your lesson and brush yourself off. Just remember that failure is not your destiny, it's a part of the path.
I'm here to help you, so please leave me a comment or contact me directly anytime!
