102. Choosing Your Struggle

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 102 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m talking about choosing your struggle. Have you ever found yourself struggling with something and thought, why am I choosing this? Why am I choosing to struggle with this? Probably not.

If you’re like most people, then you’ve probably never considered the fact that you are actually choosing your struggles, all of them. Whatever it is that you’re struggling with right now – your weight, your workouts, how you feel about yourself, feeling stuck – these are all choices that you are making.

So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to explain what all this means, what it means to be choosing your struggle, and I’m going to offer up some insights for you to start making better choices in your life.

But first, if you liked this podcast, please come check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook. This is a group that goes hand in hand with this podcast. Right now we’re in the middle of our running through the holidays challenge. The challenge is to run every day between Thanksgiving day.

And New Year’s Day is a tough time of the year for a lot of people. And running and getting outside and getting some exercise in every single day is a great way to get through the holidays, to help eliminate stress, to feel good about yourself to get the endorphins going the adrenaline going, and to make it through the holidays without losing your mind.

So if you’re interested in joining us, it’s never too late, come and join in the fun, just search for Running Lean community on Facebook. And then if you’re interested in doing more if you’re interested in getting more out of this and going deeper, you know listening to the podcast is great.

But if you want more if you really want to apply all of the stuff that I teach here on the podcast, if you want help applying that to your own life, to make the changes that you want to become the person, the badass person that you want to become, then you got two ways that you can work with me and get more number one is the Running Lean coaching group.

And all month long for this month in December, we’re talking about building mental toughness. Last month, our topic was ending self-sabotage. So each month, I try to pick a topic that’s relevant that will help you to move in the direction of your goals. Right?

So mental toughness, is what’s required to get you through the tough times. And this time of the year, there’s a lot of tough times for a lot of people, okay, things will always get tough. So we need mental toughness to get through all of this, okay. Whether you’re trying to lose weight, run a marathon, or just develop the habits that you need to be able to stick with your food and exercise plans – it all requires mental toughness.

Okay, so join the Running Lean coaching group. And you’ll learn all about how to build mental toughness, you need to get through just about anything in life. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join, and you can join us anytime.

Also, I am a coach. And where I excel is in one on one coaching. And if you’re looking for a little personalized help with all this stuff, if you want some help applying all these principles, and getting some experts, one on one guidance, support, encouragement, accountability, maybe some tough love every now and then, then you need to apply for coaching with me.

Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply. And you and I will have a conversation and we’ll see if coaching is a good fit for you. Cool, awesome.

So let’s get into this topic of choosing your struggle. And I think this is something that most people don’t realize that they’re making choices around what it is that they’re struggling with. And for you, I want you at the end of this podcast, I want you to be really thinking about the things that you are struggling with and how you can make better choices around your struggles.

Okay, so that’s just the mindset I want you to be in throughout this podcast. So if there’s something you’re struggling with in your life right now, think about it. Bring it to the forefront of your mind and think about that as I go through this. So that you can be thinking about how maybe you can make some changes to your perceptions of what you’re struggling with, cool.

So if you’re like most people, then you probably think that the goal for your life is to have a struggle-free life, that you think that at some point in the future, you will no longer have any struggles, everything’s just going to be rainbows and unicorns, and sunshine. And this is just not the case.

And I definitely used to think this myself, right, I thought that once I got to my ideal weight, once I got to my ideal body composition, once I started to really get clear on what I wanted for myself, once I worked through a lot of my mindset issues, then everything would just be easy for me from here on out.

And I would be struggle free. And I would never have any more challenges or struggles in my life. But that’s not reality. In reality, life is a struggle. You know, I don’t care how many, you know, self-improvement books or personal growth, podcasts you listen to, you are never going to get to a place in your life, where it’s completely struggle-free. It just isn’t going to ever be that way.

Okay, I want you to really understand this first, okay? Every human being on this planet is struggling with something. Life is a struggle, that’s just a fact, we need to stop pretending that it isn’t, we need to stop pretending that at some point, life is just going to be all blissful and joy and challenge free. It just won’t ever get that way. Okay?

Now, this does not mean that you have to struggle with everything all the time. You know, I’ve talked about this before Life is 50/50. Right, you’re going to be happy about half the time and the other half, not so much.

But what I’m saying here is that you will have struggles in your life, every now and then from here on out. So instead of trying to avoid all the struggles, instead of trying to eliminate all the struggles, I want you to start choosing the things you struggle with.

Now, you might be thinking, what, why would I choose to struggle with anything? Right? And I don’t, I’m not choosing this, this is just the way that it is. And this is a concept, I really want you to understand that you’re absolutely choosing whatever it is that you’re struggling with.

So here’s the fact, you can’t accomplish big things without a struggle. When you set out to do something big, there is a struggle involved. There is discomfort involved. growth requires discomfort, you know, you can’t have growth and accomplish big goals without some level of discomfort.

You know, if you want to lose 40 or 50 pounds, then you have to accept the fact that there will be some discomfort and struggle involved with that process. Maybe you’re gonna, you know, eliminate certain foods from your diet that you’re used to eating.

You know, one of the things a lot of people struggle with is quitting sugar, when you stop eating sugar. This is a struggle for a lot of people, or maybe you want to quit drinking. And so, you know, not drinking alcohol, especially this time of the year can be a real struggle. Right?

If you want to qualify for Boston, then you are absolutely going to struggle with that process, the training that is involved to get you to the Boston starting line is intense. You know, for some of us, it’s more intense than others because we got a lot more time to shave off.

I think my Boston qualifying time now that I hit 55 went from, like 330 to 335. And I’m just like, whatever. That’s just not happening now, maybe later, maybe when I’m 70. But qualifying for Boston requires a struggle. It requires a lot of hard work to get you there. Okay.

You know, when I was training for my 100 miler, that was a lot of struggle, the training involved with that distance with you know, getting your body ready to run that distance is intense. You know, I was doing back-to-back long runs on the weekends where I would run maybe 30 miles on Saturday and 20 miles on Sunday. Yeah, that sounds like fun, right?

And then I was running six days a week so I only had one day off and I was building up my mileage. And I think my weekly mileage ended up getting close to like 85 or 90 miles for a week, which is a lot.

You know, I know a lot of people do more than that. But for me, that was a lot. You know, I’m used to my 30, 35, 40 miles a week for marathon training. So that was a big struggle, the training alone, for an event like that is just a total struggle fest, you know, building up the mileage, building up your endurance, that’s a hard thing to do.

And then the race itself, running 100 miles, struggled all through that, you know, so crossing the finish line of that 100 miler, though, all that struggle was worth it. You know, all that struggle of training for something and pushing yourself and becoming more in the process is completely worth it. Right.

The problem is, most people want to accomplish these big things, but they don’t want to struggle. Like they set out to lose weight, but they’re not willing to experience any discomfort, they don’t want any struggles, they don’t want any discomfort, they don’t want any failures, they just want everything to be easy.

And as soon as it gets a little bit hard, or they start struggling, they quit. I don’t want to encourage you to not do that. Accept the fact that there will be struggles with whatever it is you’re trying to do, especially if you’re trying to do something hard, especially if you’re trying to do something you’ve never done before. Just doing something you’ve never done before, is a challenge in itself, because you’ve never done it before.

And you might think well, I don’t know how to do it. Of course, you don’t know how to do it because you’ve never done it before. Of course, you’re going to struggle. But at the first sign of discomfort, if you’re ready to just throw in the towel, and go back to doing whatever you’re doing before, like, that’s not going to work for you.

Alright, the bottom line here is I’m talking about in some way, shape, or form, you will always have struggle in your life, you have to accept this fact. Right? Struggle is inevitable. The good news is, you get to choose your struggle.

So you can choose to struggle with staying where you are being stuck where you are staying small, maybe not feeling good about yourself not having self-esteem, maybe feeling like crap. Or you can choose the struggle that comes with change.

You can choose the struggle of not feeling good right now of not being your healthiest self, of not loving yourself, of not loving your body. You can struggle with having low self-esteem, you can struggle with feeling crappy about yourself.

Or you can choose the struggle that’s involved with changing your diet, or working out at the gym on a regular basis. Or struggling with, you know, heading outside for those long runs, especially when it’s dark and cold outside. Or the struggle of working on your mindset and improving your mindset.

Either way, there’s going to be a struggle involved, right? Which one do you want to choose the struggle of just being where you are and feeling like crap all the time, or the struggle of doing what it takes to change? You might be struggling with something like emotional eating, which is something we all do.

You know, some people call it stress eating, or I’m just bored, some eating, whatever it is, this is all variations of emotional eating, you’re using food as a way of feeling better. And this could be a real struggle for you. You know, you’re using food as a way to not have to feel your feelings that I have to deal with your emotions.

So you can continue to choose to struggle with this you can continue you know, using food as a way of feeling better. And dealing with you know, and not dealing with your emotions and struggling with how you feel all the time.

Or you can choose the struggle of actually dealing with your feelings, dealing with your emotions, feeling your feelings, even when you know you’re even when you don’t want to because you stopped using food as a coping mechanism.

You know, maybe you start dealing with your emotions for the first time in your life. This can feel like a huge struggle fest for a lot of people. Alright, so you can choose the struggle of emotional eating or choose the struggle of dealing with your feelings, like which one of these would you choose? Which are you choosing?

You might be struggling with your relationship you can continue the struggle and hope that things get better and just feel like well, this is just the way it is. Or you can choose the struggle of having real conversations, tough conversations, honest conversations, and communicating openly and plainly with your significant other.

This is not the easier thing to do, I promise you this is, this is hard to do. The struggle involved with communicating with somebody else, and learning how to communicate openly and clearly, and honestly, with another person, you get to choose which struggle you want to endure though.

The struggle of, you know, passive-aggressive behavior, of not saying what you really want to say, of having all these resentments build-up, or the struggle of dealing with what it takes to improve that relationship, the struggle of having those uncomfortable conversations, running might be a struggle for you right now.

You know, maybe you’re, you’re not hitting your PR, you know, and you keep trying, and it’s just a big huge struggle fest for you, right. You know, you can continue to struggle with this and keep falling short of your goals.

Or, you can begin the process of improving your running little by little, doing what it takes to get faster and struggling with that. You can struggle with where you are or struggle with what it takes to change.

Right, there’s always going to be some sort of struggle in the process of improving yourself, of becoming the person that you really, really want to become, it’s a struggle. But you get to choose that if you want, or you can choose to struggle with just, you know, being where you are.

And thinking that this is never gonna work for me. And I could never stick to my diet. And I can’t get out and exercise because of X, Y, and Z. You can struggle with how you feel every single day because you’re stuck where you are.

Or you can choose the struggle that comes with changing who you are. Listen, you get to change who you are, you get to decide for yourself, who it is that you want to become. And you can become the most awesome, healthiest, most badass person that you want to be, you get to choose that for yourself.

The caveat, there is a struggle involved with getting there. I want you to choose that struggle for yourself. You know, struggle with the pain involved with going to the gym and lifting weights. struggle with the mindset it takes to get yourself out of bed at 4:30 in the morning, to get your running in because that’s what’s important to you.

I want you to struggle with you know, dealing with your emotions when you really just feel like eating something or drinking something and you’re not going to do that. Because who you are is not that person that uses food to feel better.

Right now, I’m struggling. I am choosing the struggle that comes with fixing my shoulder. I just had rotator cuff surgery. And I have to tell you it’s terrible. I was going into this feeling very positive. And you know, I have a pretty high tolerance for pain. And I have to tell you, this is pretty dang painful.

And during the day, it’s gotten better like during the day like right now I’m sitting in my chair, I’m at my computer and it feels pretty fine. Like there’s a little bit of achy pain going on there. But it’s not horrible like I can deal with it you know and I’m taking some Tylenol and stuff like that, it’s fine.

But at night trying to sleep is horrible. It’s incredibly uncomfortable. I can sleep for a couple of hours at a time but I keep waking up with intense pain for whatever reason you know, I’ve got myself propped up in bed and everybody says that you got to be like kind of sleeping sitting up to allow your shoulder to just kind of sit in its natural position.

But for whatever reason, it just starts to be incredibly painful and it wakes me up several times throughout the night. And this is uncomfortable. This is a struggle. This is what I am struggling with right now.

But I have to tell myself, and I keep reminding myself that I am choosing this struggle, I’m choosing to struggle with this right now, rather than the struggle of constantly being in pain for the rest of my life with no end in sight. I tore three different, you know, I have three different tears on my rotator cuff. And I have to get those things fixed because they there was not going to get better on their own.

I gave it a year, I gave it like 14 months actually, of this pain, like hoping it will get better. And it’s only gotten worse. So I can continue, I could have continued to just struggle with this. But I made a decision that I was going to choose a different kind of struggle, I’m going to choose to struggle with the pain that I’m dealing with right now with the discomfort with all of it.

Because I know, eventually, this will get better. I know eventually that I am going to be back to normal, and I’ll get stronger than ever. You know, I decided that this was the struggle I was going to deal with because it’s, you know, it’s short term.

Rather than going through the rest of my life feeling like I can’t do the things I want to do. The kind of pain I was in with the shoulder prior to surgery was like I could not do yoga the way I wanted to. I could not lift weights the way I wanted to. Running started to become very problematic.

So I made a decision, I made a choice that I was going to get this thing fixed. And it’s a struggle. I’m going to tell you, I’m going to be honest with you right now. It’s a struggle. But I’ve chosen this, this is what I’ve I’ve chosen for myself, okay.

So whatever it is that you are struggling with right now. I want you to understand something. Number one struggling is inevitable, you will always be struggling with something. And that’s okay. Right life’s 50/50.

It’s okay if you’re struggling with something, but you get to choose what you’re struggling with. And I want you to stop choosing the struggle of staying stuck and feeling small and staying comfortable and staying complacent and wishing you were more.

I don’t want you to struggle with that anymore. I want you to choose the struggle of becoming more. I want you to choose the struggle that it takes to become that badass version of yourself that you know is lurking inside you.

That’s what I want for you. That’s what I’ve chosen for myself and that’s what I want for you. Good deal. Alright, love you all. Keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

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