It’s Not Your Fault You Haven’t Followed Through. You Don’t Suck (Part 1).
How many times after talking to a friend who just ran her fourth marathon or watching a particularly inspiring commercial (anyone else’s heart strings get tugged by Nike’s Find Your Greatness promo?) have you stood up and decided that ‘today is the day!’? Today you are going to get back into that lifting routine, finally train for a 5k, or use your quickly expiring yoga pass you bought in January. You tell yourself that you are going to be GREAT.
Days 1 and 2 fly by easily and man, does it feel good to sweat. Day 3 you’re feeling a bit sore now and this whole fitness thing is getting a little old, and somewhere in between Day 5 and 17 you’re back on your couch binge-watching Game of Thrones with a pint of ice cream in hand. ‘Eh, screw it,’ you tell yourself, ‘I don’t need to conform to society’s standards, and I am way too busy for this.’ But after a few days, weeks, or months of cycling through getting pumped, trying hard, and failing harder, the conversation in your head changes. ‘Man, I just suck. WTF is wrong with me? Whatever, I don’t even like running.’
The reality of the situation is that this is just further evidence that you’re not good, smart, or talented enough. You don’t try hard enough and you are going to continue to fail. It’s not like you haven’t tried this before.
Or maybe not.
What if maybe, just maybe you are an unbelievably perfect human just the way you are, ice cream pint and all. You don’t suck. Your failure has nothing to do with your worth or ability.
Instead, it has everything to do with not having a few key foundational pieces in place before you set your goal. Yep, that’s it. Three little pieces to take care of to ensure you feel great, break the self-deprecating cycle, and crush your goals.
What are these three pieces? I’m so glad you asked. This post will dive into the first, and the next post will cover two and three.
YOUR GREAT WHY
What is your motivation for changing? Do you want your jeans to fit better, feel less stressed, or just feel better about yourself? Maybe it’s just something you feel you should do, after all everyone talks about how good it is for you.
If you stop here I guarantee you, you are setting yourself up for failure.
Is looking good in jeans or doing it because you’re supposed to going to get you out of bed at 5am when your covers are warm and snuggly and it’s still dark out? When you’re stressed and burnt out is it going to make yoga instead of happy hour an easy choice?No, of course it’s not.
Comfy beds and happy hour with friends will always win. UNLESS, we get really deep into our ‘Great Why,’ aka how this change fits into our vision of our best life.
How does the change you’re wanting to make align with what you want more than anything else in the world? Here is an example from a recent discussion I had with a client. “Mike” was talking about going back to school, something he’d been thinking about for awhile but hadn’t really pursued.
J: What makes going back to school important to you?
M: Well it would make my mom happy, and most people my age have already graduated…
J: What makes going back to school important now.
M: I feel like now is the time to invest in my future.
J: So that what?
M: So that my future is financially stable, full of travel and adventure and quality time with family and friends, unlike my parents. I don’t want to struggle forever.
J: So your ‘why’ right now isn’t just about making your mom happy and doing what everyone else does. This is about creating a life of financial freedom, abundance, adventure, love, and joy.
Now that’s a ‘why’ that’ll get you out of bed in the morning. That’s a why you can come back to again and again when you just don’t feel like you can keep going.
We all deserve extraordinary lives of health and happiness. So let’s start designing them! Before you set your goals and run out to buy new gym shoes, check in with your ‘why.’ See if digging in with a few of these questions gets you anywhere.
What change are you thinking of making?
What’s important about changing that now?
And what does that give you? So that?
What will your life look like when you have that?
It doesn’t matter if you want to start running, meditating, spending more time with friends, going to yoga, or investing in your career, getting clear on your why can bring about massive clarity and follow through – all before you even set your goal.
Try it out and let me know how it works for you (seriously, I want to hear from you, comment below)!
Stay cool you perfect humans,
Julia