143. Upgrading Your Model Of the World

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 143, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today upgrading your model of the world. One nice thing about human beings is that no two of us are alike. And not just in how we look or where we live, but in how we each see the world.

We each have our own unique model of the world, based on our own past experiences, our beliefs, our values, and our individual upbringings. And your model, the world can either keep you stuck and frustrated, or help you to achieve everything that you want for yourself. So in this episode, I’m going to be taking a good look at how your unique model of the world can be harmful or helpful, and why you might want to consider upgrading your model of the world.

But first, a lot of people ask me about coaching and what it looks like. And it may not look the way you think that it does. So for me, from my perspective, coaching is not me creating a list of rules and then handing that list of rules to every single person that I work with.

Coaching is a relationship, it’s you and I working closely together to look at your goals, to look at your lifestyle, to look at the way that you want to achieve things in your life. And then putting together a plan that is unique to you. Just like we all have a unique model of the world, we each want to approach getting healthy, getting fit, getting stronger, losing weight, we all need to approach this in a slightly different way.

So I don’t have a cookie cutter program that just is the same for everybody that I work with. We’re all individuals and I want to celebrate that really. So with the way that I do coaching, which is different from a lot of other coaches. It is a unique relationship, it’s you and I working closely together to set goals for you to create a plan for you.

And then to help you stick to that plan. It’s really a collaboration, you have some say, in how we structure things, you have some agency here. Okay, this isn’t just me telling you what to do, there’s a little bit of me telling you what to do, but you have to be on board with what we’re doing. Because if you’re not, you’re not going to stick with it. Nobody wants to do something that they don’t want to do. Right.

So what I try to create with my coaching program is a collaborative approach where you get to have some say in how we structure things, okay? The main objective here is to create a plan and then help you stick to that plan. And if you want some help creating a plan, if you want some help sticking to that plan, coaching might be a great fit for you. To learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply to get started.

I would love to have you in my unique weight loss coaching program for runners, the Running Lean coaching project where the project is you just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply fill out a quick application, we’ll jump on a zoom call, see if there’s a good fit for you. Cool.

All right, let’s talk about upgrading your model of the world. So like I was saying at the top of the episode here, we humans are all very different. We each have our own ways of seeing things in the world. And this isn’t just about, you know, our upbringings. This isn’t just about our past experiences, there’s so many different factors that make up how we see the world. So we will see things differently based upon our past experiences and our upbringing and our cultures and where we grew up.

But also you got to look at the things that you have believed for your whole life, your belief systems, you got to look at your values. You have to look at the things that are important to you. All of these things paint a different picture of what reality looks like for you. So when I talk about how we all have our unique model of the world, really what I’m saying here is we each have our own view of reality.

And if you want to extrapolate this out a step further, you could say that, that reality is what you think it is. That there isn’t one reality that is the same for everyone. It’s kind of mind blowing, if you think about that, right. But it’s pretty true, because we each have a different way of interpreting what’s happening around us. And we each have a different way of approaching the circumstances in our life. That means we each have our own version of what’s real and what’s not.

So all these factors are our belief systems, the way we have thought our whole lives, the people around us, our schooling, our experiences, all make up our unique model of the world. And this is important, because your model of the world can affect you. in many different ways. It can affect how you get through life, it can affect how you get through relationships, it can affect how you achieve big things in your life or not.

And when I talk about making big changes in your life, let’s say you want to, you want to lose some weight. Let’s say you want to become a faster runner, these things take time, and they take effort, they take getting uncomfortable. And if your model of the world says, Hey, every time you try to do something like this, every time you’ve ever set out to lose weight you fail, losing weight is too hard. Losing weight is something you’ll never be able to do.

If you have believed that your whole life, then guess what your reality is, you will not be able to lose weight, your model of the world is your reality. And if your model of the world is keeping you stuck where you are, and affecting you negatively, and keeping you from taking action or keeping you from moving in the direction of your goals or what you really want for yourself, then you have to consider maybe changing that.

Now, if your model of the world is positive, and it is, is one of like determination, and if your model of the world is one of hey, I can achieve anything that I set my mind to, then guess what that becomes your reality. You might want to let go of your current model of the world if it is not serving you. Just because you believe this is the way things are. And you’ve always believed this is the way things are does not mean you have to hold on to that. I know it’s kind of a crazy concept, right?

What I’m talking about here is releasing your grip on reality, releasing your grip on your version of reality. And this is not something most people ever consider is even in the realm of possibilities. Most people are so ingrained and so dug into their own model of the world, they cannot see any other way of doing things.

They cannot see themselves ever becoming more than they are. They cannot see themselves ever achieving anything more than what they’ve already achieved in their life. And it keeps them from ever pushing themselves. It keeps them from ever taking any kind of action that would improve their health, their fitness, their relationships, their business, their careers. They are so stuck in where they are and who they are, they cannot see that there’s more available to them.

So what I’m asking you to do is release your grip on what you believe to be true. Release your grip on your own version of reality. Release your grip on your own model of the world. And this takes some work. This is not really a simple process or an easy process. It takes some work and some time but it starts with you challenging your beliefs and challenging the way that you see things.

And the way that you believe things are about yourself, about others, about society, about the world around you. But you don’t have to believe everything you think just because you think something just because you’ve believed something your whole life doesn’t mean you have to continue to believe that you can choose to believe something else instead.

For years and years, I believed that I could not quit drinking, for example, I believed that I was always going to drink alcohol. I mean, I drank alcohol every day for 25 years, or something like that – a long, long time. And I could not imagine going one day without drinking alcohol. I mean, I did it every now and then. But it was not fun. And it was hard. And I was thinking like, this is just, this is just who I am.

And then at one point in my life, I decided I wasn’t gonna do that anymore. I wasn’t gonna drink anymore. That was a huge mindset shift for me to go from being somebody who believed, firmly believed that drinking was just part of who I was. And it was always going to be that way to being a non drinker. What? I know, it’s crazy. That is completely the opposite of everything I believed about my model of the world at that point.

Everything I did, had alcohol involved, somehow, oh, we’re gonna go out to dinner gotta go somewhere where they serve alcohol, oh, we’re gonna go to this sporting event. No, I’m going to be drinking a lot. Oh, it’s, you know, I got to take the kids to, you know, football practice, well, better, you know, make sure I get some beers on the way home or whatever it was.

Oh, it’s Tuesday, well better stock up on alcohol. You know, it was always part of everything that I did. Not having alcohol was a wild concept for me. That broke my model of the world, I was like, does not compute. I had to release my grip on my version of reality, in order to make that shift for myself. And I had to do the same thing.

A few years back, when I made this big shift from being a, a plant based person, somebody who did not eat meat, I hadn’t eaten meat for 15 years, and I made a big shift, I decided that that was no longer what I believed to be the best thing for myself. My model of the world for the previous 15 years was, you know, meat is bad for you, you shouldn’t eat meat, it’s much healthier to not eat meat. And I was dug in with that belief about myself. And for me, it was the way I believed and the way I was eating. And there’s a lot more to this than just meat.

But you know, I was eating a lot of sugar, a lot of carbohydrates and things like that. But I had gained a lot of weight and I was feeling very unhealthy. And I decided to go back to more of an ancestral way of eating, which included eating meat, again, extremely different, extremely difficult to make this decision to start eating meat again, and change my diet. I’m really glad I did that though. I’ve gotten way healthier, I feel much better. I’ve changed my diet in a lot of ways. But this is just one way.

Okay, I’m not saying you know, eating meat is better than being vegetarian or vegan or anything like that. I’m not going to get into that discussion here. I’m just saying for me, this was a good choice for me to make for my body and my health and my fitness and I feel better now. But this was a big shift for me.

So my model of the world that I was holding on too tightly, even though I was gaining weight and gaining weight and gained like 40 pounds. My clothes didn’t fit anymore. I looked terrible. I hated the way I looked in the mirror. I was not letting go of that model of reality, that model of the world. But when I did when I made that shift when I made that change, it changed everything for me. I had to release my grip on reality, my version of reality, in order for me to become the person that I am today.

This doesn’t mean I’m done either, like I have other versions of myself that I want to become, we are always a work in progress, at least we always should be. And though those versions of myself that I see in the future that I am working towards, are different than who I am today, are different than who I’ve been up to this point. And those versions of me require me to release my grip on reality again, in other ways. And this is an ongoing process, and it’s okay, it’s okay that we do this.

But you have to challenge what you believe. You have to challenge the way you’ve been doing things, if you want to become more, you have to challenge your experiences in the past, because listening to your past does not determine your future. Just because you’ve always done something a certain way does not mean it has to continue.

Just because you’ve always had the same results from everything you’ve tried in the past does not mean you’re going to continue to get those same results, your past does not determine your future. Stop looking to the past and saying well see, this is why I can’t get where I want to in life because of what happened, you know, back in the day, stop doing that.

Release that idea, let go of those old ideas. Just because you’ve done something for decades, doesn’t mean you can’t change it, we can always change. And this idea of upgrading your model of the world of making these changes, letting go of the things that aren’t serving you anymore. Choosing new values, choosing new things you want to believe about yourself and the world around you. This is such a difficult process to go through.

This is uncomfortable, because it goes against everything that you believe to be true to this point. Right? It challenges everything you think you know, everything you currently hold to be true. Everything you’ve believed, maybe your whole life. But what I want you to do is I want you to decide, first of all, decide who it is that you want to become. And then you got to start working towards becoming that version of yourself. Okay?

And then look at what version of reality you’re holding on to right now. And is that version of reality that you’re holding on to helping you to become that future version of yourself? Or is it keeping you stuck where you are. The art of becoming more requires you to let go of who you think you are today. The art of becoming more requires you to release your grip on your current model of the world. That’s it, it really does.

You got to you know, you got to do more if you want to become more. And your work this week, is to look at different areas of your life. Look at your past experiences. Look at the things you think you believe. Look at the things that you think you know, look at the things you think you’re capable of. And challenge all of it, challenge all of it.

Your work is to challenge reality, your work is to challenge your current model of the world. And make some changes and upgrade that. If you want to become more, you ‘ve got to do more. If you want to become more, you’ve got to release your grip on your current model of the world and make some changes and start moving toward that direction of becoming more. Okay. That is your work this week. I hope you will do this. It is so worth it. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.