What's holding you back, isn't what you think it is...
Its not discipline, not your diet, not your coach...
When I first started coaching clients, I was lost to why some people were able to make changes and others struggled.
I was young, 22/23 years old. At that point, I had been studying nutrition for 6-7 years and training for a few more years than that. As any young man in his early 20’s I thought I had the fool-proof system figured out.
Nutrition was taken care of to the exact calories and grams they needed per meal.
Training splits that showcased their strong suits and exposed them to develop their muscular weaknesses.
Some would lose +20lbs in a few weeks while their lifts shot up. For others, the scale wouldn’t budge much at all.
I was lost…
The plans were specific to their needs and everything was aligned as it ‘should’ be… so what gave?
At that time I thought I understood Human Behavior and Motivation well. Hell, I was a Sergeant of Marines before being discharged… understanding your troops’ behavior was a major part of the gig!
So for years I just observed differences between the successful clients and those who consistently struggled to find that change. And to be quite frank it wasn’t until I had my realization on my progress that it started to make sense.
As I started to build and practice mindfulness, I began picking at this question for myself… What caused me to go against my very own plan I knew would work?
Why did I constantly sabotage myself and the efforts I was making by binge eating most nights?
Why wouldn’t I accept the challenge to change?
And to be honest it came down to love and laziness…
Part of following through on the changes you promise yourself is loving yourself enough to stick with the change.
I recently read “The Road Less Travelled” by Scott Peck. Peck was a top-tier psychiatrist back in the day. When discussing the topic of LOVE, he agreed there were many different definitions of love but he felt (as do I) this definition does a great job summarizing what Love is-
“The will to extend oneself for the purpose of nutruting one’s own or another’s spritual growth.”
See the thing is, those who struggle to stick with creating change in their lives seem to have a lack of self-love for themselves. Not being able to love themselves enough to conquer the difficult parts, the challenging parts of change, to nurture themselves enough to grow exponentially.
I hypothesize that this lack of self-love stems from the root of trickery the lower self plays on us which is laziness…
It’s the difficult thing that we must do that creates the change we desire to have.
It’s easy to stay in the routine of binging Netflix and snacks every night…
It’s a difficult thing to break that habit and start a new one like implementing a 30-minute walk beforehand. Because you have to choose not to be lazy and love yourself in a way that deep down you know will truly benefit you.
There are the feelings of “Who cares about me?”, “What the point?”, “I’m not worthy of true change.”
All those are lies we project out so change doesnt get made.
After all, it is easy because you’re used to it, and because it does feel good- you choose to not do what you know will benefit you. Now you still talk negatively about how you look and feel… hating yourself in the process.
Much like motivation, self-love follows taking difficult action. It follows taking difficult action because there has to be trust in yourself to overcome the challenge or change. The more trust you have in your ability and capabilities, the more you will start to honor yourself, and the more you are willing to “extend oneself in the purpose of one’s spiritual growth.”
You have to overcome the desire to choose the lazy choice to be able to achieve the goal you are working towards.
It’s never easy at first to overcome the inertia that has been sustained by your laziness, but once you do it the first time, it gets a little easier each time after that.
I do believe one of the best places to start to figure this all out for yourself is by taking the time to get to know yourself again. Spend 10 minutes in the morning sitting in silence staring out the window… let your thoughts go however they’d like. Maybe even (definitely should) journal about those thoughts.
Not many people in today’s day in age like to write. Simply recording yourself in a video or audio recording spilling out what is on your mind can help create connections in the brain to assist you in developing this understanding.
Some prompts you can use to get the ball rolling here:
When did I first notice my physical health wasn’t great?
What was going on?
What emotions were involved in this?
What are the thoughts I have when I think about working out and eating well?
Is there a fight between multiple voices in my head? What’re they saying?
Why do I give in to one and not the other?
What would happen if I just challenged the thoughts I always listened to?
When I think about my dream life, what does my health look like?
How do I look? How do I feel?
Who is alongside me?
What is the gap between where I am and where I want to go?
How can that gap be closed sooner than later?
This work is simple but will never be easy. One of lives most difficult requirements is to look yourself in the eyes and be truthful about how you feel and think about yourself. Its even more difficult to take action to create that change.
Choose not to be Lazy.
Choose to LOVE yourself today and everyday.
Feel like you need extra guidance on this journey? Lets chat!
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