Do you ever feel like some days you are 100% committed to your goals? The fire is burning so red hot under your butt that nothing is going to stop you! You say to yourself “I am going to crush it today!” And then an hour passes or the next day, it’s like that fire just got rained on and your motivation disappeared like you never even had it? You find yourself sitting on the couch, contemplating whether or not to get up and before you know it you have talked yourself out of what you need to do and instead you decided that it would just be easier to accept the situation. Well, this is a very common mindset that people go through. Some it’s more often than others and can happen from moment to moment. For others, it can be a little less often. But, it is common.
How or why does this happen? For several reasons?
- Comparing yourself to others
- Not tracking progress
- Not having a plan
- Or not having a strong intrinsic motivator (your why) to pull you towards your goal
- Not knowing your values
- The story to tell yourself (self-worth, self-belief, self-sabotage, etc.)
- Not defining your goals
- Not having something to hold you accountable
- Staying in the grey matter. The brain does not do well with indecisiveness. You haven’t decided 100% to do something.
- Giving into excuses or hurdles, focusing on the problem and not the solution
- Accepting complacency
- Simply, just not caring enough about your goals
The list can go on and on. But we think you get the point.
Social media and TV has a lot of positives but on the other hand, it can leave us feeling defeated when we start comparing ourselves to others and seeing how far we need to go to get to where we want to be. Feeling like the road is too long and the goal perhaps unattainable. Instead of taking small steps and things that require less energy, we focus on how much effort, time, etc., it’s going to take to get to the end result.
Enter the negative self-talk, self-doubt, and self-sabotage. That inner voice saying “what is the point, I have a huge mounting to climb” or worry what others are saying and thinking about you. You start making up stories in your head of what people are saying: “here they go again; on another health kick!”. Those types of assumptions of what people are thinking and saying feeds into your self believe system and talk you right out of your goals. Your momentum is gone and left completely uninspired and no drive!
For some people, they walk into a gym or start a nutrition plan feeling already defeated before even starting.
Feeling lost. Hopeless, perhaps. No goal, no purpose and uninspired! As we said in our last blog (5 Reason Why You Are Not Losing Weight) most people are like leaves in the wind in the gym. Doing a little bit of this and little bit of that. It is kind of like starting up a boat, letting the engine run and letting the boat go! The boat has no aim no real direction of where it is going. You will probably find the boat smashed up on the rocks somewhere.
If you are reading this, there is hope. We have to sit down in a quiet place with a pen and paper and ask ourselves what do you really want? What is my goal with my body. Or anything we want in life? Saying I want to lose weight is not enough. Saying I want to be toned is not enough. You have to be very clear and concise. Your why has to move you and inspire you to take action but more importantly to keep going when the going gets tough. Not just physically, but with life hiccups when everything doesn’t go according to plan, and let’s not forget mentally and emotionally. That negative self-talk, comparing yourself to others, etc. That too needs to be in check.
Let’s look at the two statements below.
Both of these statements are written down like we said you should do.
Statement 1: I want to lose weight and feel good.
Statement 2: I want to lose 50lbs so I finally have the energy to play with my kids at the park. So I can do more and feel confident about myself.
Tell us, which one holds more weight and which one is more clear and concise?
Something you should think about is maybe it is time to go on a social media diet? Maybe it is time to switch off the TV? This will help with trying to compare yourself to others and focus on what makes you happy, what inspires you, what is going to put you into life prep for what you really want?
Make a commitment to try it for 30 days. Begin to journal your thoughts and ideas daily. Make a goal to do 10,000 steps every day and lastly write ten things you are grateful for every day. Lastly, find a mentor that will keep accountable when times get tough. The mentor will guide you through the process so you just don’t give up. Remember to always think of this when your mind starts to talk you out of achieving your goals, to always focus on what you want and do not focus on what you do not want. There is a big difference between the two. And to have a driving force so strong, so powerful, so intrinsically reinforcing, that when you think about your why, it immediately shifts your energy into the positive.
And that is worth thinking about.
Troy & Jasmine
P.S. Need help with your health and fitness goals? Drop us a line @ [email protected].
