69. 5 Ways You Sabotage Your Own Success

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 69 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray and today I’m talking about five ways you sabotage your own success. Honestly, there are probably more than five ways you sabotage your own success. But in this special edition of the Running Lean podcast, I’m talking about the big ones.

So I coach a lot of runners on nutrition, weight loss, overall health, and fitness. And I see the same self-sabotaging behavior over and over again. Why do you do these things to yourself? Why can’t you ever seem to make any significant progress towards your goals? Why do you always seem to sabotage your own success?

So I mentioned that this is a special edition of the podcast because this episode is actually a recording of a live coaching session that I did recently over in the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook. So each Sunday, I go live in the Facebook group, and I do a little coaching and a little training, maybe dole out a little tough love.

And this particular session that I did last week received a lot of really positive feedback. So I thought it would be fun to share it with you here on the podcast. Speaking of the Facebook group, come and join us if you haven’t done so already. This is a group of runners that all share similar health and fitness goals.

It’s a great place to feel supported, encouraged, inspired, motivated, you can ask questions and get answers. And it’s just a fun group of people. We have a lot of fun over there. So just go to Facebook and search for Running Lean community. And click join us.

Here’s another five-star review of the Running Lean podcast. This one came from Karen recently and she says, “Top notch. Each week when I listen to Patrick’s podcast, I feel like he is directly talking to me. He is full of knowledge and truly has a passion for his field and his followers. His messages motivate me to sign up for my first half marathon and give up sugar and begin food journaling.”

That’s a lot of awesome stuff, Karen. Awesome, awesome, awesome. You won’t be disappointed. Thank you so much, Karen. And I would love it. If you would submit a five-star review of the podcast, wherever you listen to your podcast, whether it’s Apple podcast, Spotify, Google Play, whatever it is, wherever you can leave a review, I would love it means a lot to me if you did that. So thank you. Thank you very much for doing that.

And you know, I know I talk a lot about all this diet, nutrition, weight loss, even self-sabotage, talk about all this stuff. And it can seem it can be awesome and super helpful. But also it can feel a little overwhelming. And you probably want to know like, how do I just how do I get started? How do I make all this work for me? Well, I got you covered as a one-on-one coach.

This is what I do, I can help you make sense of all this. I can help you apply these principles to your own life. Listen, we’re all so different. We all have different metabolisms. We all have different body types, different genetics, different goals, and different likes and dislikes. And there’s just not one approach that works perfectly for everyone. It would be awesome.

If there was it would make my job a lot easier, but there’s not okay, there’s not one way. So the way my coaching works is we work together you and me to work up a metabolic profile for you. We clearly define your health and fitness goals. Then we put together a plan that is specifically tailored for you specifically designed to help you reach your particular goals.

I work with people who want to lose 30 pounds and run their first marathon. And they know they can’t do it carrying around all that extra weight. I work with people who want to lose 60, 80, or 100 pounds and can’t even run anymore. They just want to get back to running. They have to fix their diet first.

I work with some people who are already lean, and they want to get stronger and more powerful and maybe qualify for Boston or run their first ultra-marathon. And they understand the hugely important role that nutrition plays in their performance. So whatever your weight loss goals or running goals, I’m here to help you get there to learn more and apply for coaching, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply.

Okay, so like I said earlier, this is a recording of a recent Facebook Live I did over in the face Running Lean community on Facebook. So I’m just going to play this episode right now. I think you’re gonna love it. I got a lot of great feedback on this. So I hope you enjoy it. Here we go.

Hey, there Facebook friends. Hey there Running Lean community on Facebook. How’s everybody doing this fine Sunday afternoon? I hope you’re all enjoying the weather. I hope you’re getting some good weather wherever you are. Here in Cincinnati, it is a beautiful day. I have been going pretty hard with the running lately. And so I decided to take a day off today.

Usually, I don’t run on Sundays anyway. But I took a long walk today and listened to some cool podcasts. And I was just walking through the park and the sun was shining. And I just took my time and went all over the place ended up being about three miles or so. And man, just gorgeous outside. So if you haven’t been outside yet, get out there it is. Amazing.

So here’s what we’re doing, today is Sunday. And that means we’re gonna do a little coaching today, I got a little bold, tough love for you guys today. Okay. Because here’s what I want to talk about. We tend to sabotage our own success in multiple ways. There are many, many, many ways that we sabotage our own success.

And I’ve talked about a few of these things before, or I’ve talked about other ways that we sabotage ourselves. But I came up with these five because I’ve been seeing some trends recently with people and I’m like, you know what, I’m going to talk about this, I’m going to kind of point out these five things that we all do, I’ve done them. And but these five things are like they’re sabotaging what we want for ourselves. They’re thwarting our progress, and we need to make some changes, okay.

So what I’m going to do here is talk about these five things today, and hopefully, through the process, give you some insights and some tips to maybe not do these things, and some things to do instead. For the new people, I want to make sure that you guys are subscribed to the podcast. So definitely do that.

Even if you’re not new if you just haven’t subscribed to the podcast, what’s the matter with you? Get on that. It’s good. It’s good stuff. And here’s an ask for you guys today. I would love it if you could leave a review of the podcast. So I don’t know what platforms allow reviews other than Apple podcasts.

So if you’re an Apple podcast user, and you scroll down to the podcast, and you just tap the five stars, because you know five stars is that’s what you want to do right there. Right? And just leave a quick review. Letting other people know how much you love the podcast would mean a lot to me.

You know, I put a lot of work into this stuff that I do for you guys here. And occasionally I’m gonna ask you for things like, Hey, if you could leave a review, that would be amazing. And I’ll take you like two minutes. And it would really mean a lot to me. Okay. So Apple podcasts, leave a review, that would be awesome.

Also, if you haven’t done it already, there’s a free training that I created at the top of this group, it’s called How to Become A Lean Running Machine. Definitely check that out. It lays the foundation for the stuff that I teach here in this in this group and on the podcast, too. Okay. I also want you to participate in this group.

So if you’re one of these people that that comes and kind of lurks around, you’re just kind of like seeing what everybody’s doing and maybe get a little bit of inspiration and things like that. That’s awesome. But I would encourage you to participate to share a post, tell us a little something about yourself. What are you working on? What are you trying to accomplish? How can we help you?

Tell us something good, maybe you had a win this week, share that with us, we would love to hear about stuff like that or a struggle. And we can help you with that too. And encourage other people, post on other people’s comments on other people’s posts, you know, and engage with the group okay.

And then the last thing we’ll talk about before we get into today’s topic is that people have been asking how to directly work with me like I get messages on Instagram messenger and Facebook Messenger asking what do I do? If you want to work with me directly and have me as your coach this is probably the most effective way to get the results that you want with your health and fitness to make big changes and make them last to quit. Get a new mindset so that you can do this thing. Stick to your diet, you know, run a marathon, whatever it is you want for yourself.

I’ll help you, I’d love to help you, this is what I do. So all you got to do is go to runningleancoaching.com and then click on the link at the very top that says, work with me. And then you’ll have to apply and we’ll get on a Zoom call, and we’ll talk about it and see what your goals are, and see if this is actually a good fit for you.

But I would love to work with you this is what I do. This is what I’m good at. What I’m really good at is helping people figure out their nutrition dialed in their nutrition to support their weight loss to support their overall health and fitness and to support their running. And there are a lot of weight loss coaches out there, but they don’t have this focus on runners.

You know, I think they just think that runners are like good to go like, Oh, they run so they’re fine. Hey, we’re not fine. We need help, too. So that’s what I’m here for. Okay, just go to runningleancoaching.com and then click on work with me. I’d be glad to have a conversation with you and see if this is a good fit for you. It’s not a good fit for everybody. I totally acknowledge that. But for those that want the help. It’s pretty awesome.

So here’s my question for you guys as everybody’s jumping on. Hi, Amy. Hi, Joy. Hi, Candace. Hi, Laura. Hello, everybody. It’s so good to see you guys on here. I love this so much. It’s so fun. One of the reasons I created this Facebook group is because I wanted to be able to communicate with you guys.

You know, and the podcast is such a one-way thing I just talked him to a microphone and then you listen to it. But this is like we get to ask questions, and I get to hear from you and I get to engage with you. So this is really fun. I love this. And here’s my question for you today. All you people that are listening live right now, I want you to answer this question for me because I really want to know, what’s one way you sabotage yourself?

Like what is one thing you do that always sabotages your own success? How do you screw it up for yourself? What is it that you do that sabotages your success? Answer that question in the comments. And I’m going to get to those in a minute. Because I want to, I do want to answer those questions.

And I want to hear what you guys have to say about this. Because I want to actually address some of the things that you talk about here. And maybe what you have to share isn’t one of the five things that I’m gonna be talking about. So I would love to hear what you guys got. Okay, so what’s one way you sabotage your own success?

And this could be anything, it could be with work-related stuff with health and fitness with, you know, trying to stick to a diet, lose weight, trying to stick to a workout schedule, whatever it is, okay? Let me know. Alright, so while you guys are thinking about that, I’m going to dive into the topic here. Okay.

So the reason I’m talking about this like I mentioned at the top of this live is that I’ve been seeing some trends from people lately, I have a lot of conversations with people every single day. And whether they’re my clients or potential clients, or friends, whatever, I talk about this stuff every single day, and this is what I do.

And I hear people and I keep hearing the same things come up. And I ask people this question all the time. Like, why can’t you get x results on your own? How come you can’t seem to make this work for yourself? And I love asking people this question because it really gives me an insight into what people need really, what do they need help with the most?

Okay, so, when I ask that question, like, why can’t you make this work? Like what’s the reason why you haven’t been successful with you know, losing weight in the past? And it really uncovers what’s going on with people. And when I ask this question a lot, I start to see some trends. And I’ve noticed these five things.

So number one, the number one reason but not the number one reason but the first one I’m going to talk about is these are in no particular order. Okay. But the first reason that people seem to sabotage themselves is that they are not living up to their true potential you are capable of so much more.

I know it, other people know it. Other people can probably see it other people have probably told you that before have you ever been told you have so much potential? And you’re like yeah, whatever. That was always me. I always heard that from bosses and teachers and stuff like that. Early on in my life like you have so much potential but you’re not living up to your potential, you’re giving it your all, but you’re not tapping into that potential.

And we sort of carry this through our whole lives, you know, sometimes we get set up early on, and we think that you’re that we’re not capable of much like we can only do so much, we can only make so much money, we can only be so lean, we can only run so far. And I want to call BS on all of that, right here now.

Because like David Goggins talks about this 40% rule, you know, we’re living in about 40% of our potential, we’re living up to about 40% of our potential, most of us about 40%. I don’t know about you, but 40% is below average, and not even mediocre like it’s below mediocre if you ask me.

So the fact that most people in this world are only tapping into about 40% of what they’re capable of, sort of blows my mind a little bit. And I’m here to tell you, that you are capable of so much more than you give yourself credit for. And you’re, you’re hanging back, and you’re waiting for something to happen.

And you’re not going for this thing that you really want for yourself. I can’t tell you how many times I talk to people and I say, what do you really want for yourself, like, who do you want to become? And we have these emotional conversations where they tell me, you know, I’ve been heavy all my life, and I’ve struggled with my weight for so long. And I just want to be this, this lean, fit runner and I can see myself as this, you know, super healthy eater, and that’s what I want to be I want to work out all the time, I want to.

And then and then I say like, okay, now, what are you doing to get there? Nothing. Right? They want more for themselves, but they’re not doing anything about it. They’re only tapping into that 40%. They’re living in about 40%, 60% of the time, they’re like sitting on the couch, eating cookies, thinking about being healthy, and running is not going to work for you. Okay. 40% is not good enough. Not for me, not for you. Not for any of us. Okay?

Now, I’m not saying we got to live up to 100%. Like, we’re capable of so much more than we can even fathom. Yeah, but you know what it gets scary. Right? It’s scary when you start tapping into that untapped potential. What about 60%? What about 70%? What if you aim for just like 10% better?

What could you accomplish? If you could tap into just 10% more of your own tapped potential? Think about that. This is powerful. Right? I am always striving for more I say this all the time, like my goal in life. My goal in life is not to be happy. My goal is to become more. My goal in life is not to, you know, make a million dollars or you know, be this like zen you know, person with no worries or anything like that.

I want to become more and becoming more means that we get uncomfortable means we deal with unhappiness, sometimes we deal with all these human emotions, right? And, and I’m okay with that. I’m okay with doing what it takes to become more. Okay, so for me, I’m always moving in the direction of more. So I don’t know what percentage I’m tapping into. But it’s more than 40% at this point in my life. Right? And it requires you to like, dig down deep sometimes. And get there but you can do it. Okay.

So, the first thing I want to say to you is you’ve got to want to become more. You have to want that for yourself. Okay, I want that for you. You need to want it for you. Right, so 40% It’s not good enough, right? Let’s go for more. Okay, that’s number one. That’s number one. I’m just looking to see if there’s anything I want to talk about here. Huh?

Amy says, thinking that if I go off my plan with one thing then I may as well have a free pass to eat whatever I want for the rest of the day. Yep. Laura says I tell myself I’m just gonna have a bite of my kid’s snack and then I say eff it. I’m just going to finish the bag now. Yep.

Marla says rewarding myself with a treat after each workout. Yep. Debbie says doubting my abilities. Yes. Right there. Right there, Debbie is the 40% talking, okay? You’re doubting your abilities, you’re doubting your capability to give more to become more. Okay, so these are great you guys.

And this whole idea of like rewarding ourselves, like, I’m going to eat really healthy. And then, you know, once I do that for a couple of weeks straight, I’m gonna reward myself with a really crappy meal of a bunch of sugar. Does this make any sense? No, it doesn’t make any sense. Okay?

It’s like saying to the alcoholic, hey, you haven’t drank for like three months, you know what you should do? Reward yourself and get good and drunk? Not a good idea. Okay. Okay, so number one is not living up to your true potential, 40%. We need more.

Number two is procrastination. I’ll do it later. We say this all the time. This is one thing that I hear from people. And it drives me crazy. Because again, I say like who is it that you want to become? All I want to become is this healthy person, I want to become this fit person. I want to lose this weight. I want to get started. I’m like, so ready to do this. Okay.

All right, let’s do it. Let’s do some coaching. Like, you know, it costs a little bit of money. You know, let’s do it. Let’s sign you up. Let’s get started. You know, let’s, oh, you know what? I’m, I’ll do it later. I don’t really have the money right now. I don’t really have the time right now. You know or I’ve got something going on. I’ve got this project at work, I need to finish first, you know, or, or my daughter’s getting married. Here.

Like, I mean, there are a million excuses, we can come up with why we need to put something off until later. Later, later, later. I’m going to do it later. We just keep saying that to ourselves, though. You never get anywhere, you never do anything later. You might as well just say never. Okay, later is the killer of more hopes and dreams.

Because you’re delaying something, you know, you feel good about something right now you feel motivated, you want to take action today. And then you say, you know what, though, maybe later I’ll do it. And I’ll think about it. And then you end up just never doing anything, you never take action. And then you just feel bad about yourself.

I see this a lot. I see people that you know, want to work with me or they want to get healthy, they want to lose weight, they want to run a marathon. And then, you know, we talk about that. And we talk about what it’s going to look like to do that. And a lot of times they’re just not ready. I get that.

But you know what, when do you get ready? When are you going to have the time, when you’re going to be ready, when it all one or all the stars gonna align so that there’s nothing else going on where everything’s just gonna work out perfectly? It’s not gonna happen, I promise you, it’s never ever, ever going to happen.

And you know, this idea of like, not having enough money, either. I get that and to invest in something like, like a coach to help you. It’s a little bit of money. It’s not a huge amount, but it’s a little bit of money. And a lot of people say I don’t have the money. When I have some extra money, I’m going to do this for sure.

When do you have extra money? Do you guys ever have extra money? I don’t. I never have extra money. I wish I did. That would be amazing, but I never do. I wish I had extra money. I guarantee though, if your car needed, like new tires, or if your dishwasher broke, and you needed a new one you could come up with, you know, $1200 bucks today to do that. Right?

Because that’s important to you and like, you know, you’ve got to have transportation or you got to have a dishwasher. Actually, you don’t have to have a dishwasher. I have a dishwasher. You can see it right back there. I haven’t used it in a year, because it’s just me. What am I gonna do put one dish in there and turn it on? No, by the time I fill it up. I don’t have any dishes to use. So I just wash them as I go.

Anyhow, you can get along just fine without a dishwasher, but I guarantee you, you could find the time the money whatever you need to do for things that you deem important to you. What about your health? Isn’t that important to you? You? What about losing that 50 pounds? Isn’t that important to you?

What about getting to become that person you ultimately want to become? Isn’t that important to you? I say yes, it is. Let me give you an example of something that I just did recently because this was one of these things where I was procrastinating on this, okay.

I haven’t taken a vacation. I haven’t taken any time off from work in like a year and a half like I have not stopped. I have not been out of Cincinnati, in a year and a half. Okay. And I know a lot of us are in the same boat, especially since the lockdown, but I’ve been itching to get out of here and take a trip. I love going to the beach.

So I have been thinking about this beach trip. And I was like, ah, when I have more money when I have the time when this happens when that happens. And I finally found myself, you know, procrastinating and saying later and using all these things to delay this thing that I really wanted for myself.

And so today, this morning, I was like, screw it. I’m just gonna take this trip got on Airbnb or VRBO, whatever it was booked to place, got my plane tickets. I’m good to go. It’s all good. I’m going over Memorial Day weekend, I’m going to have a good time going on a little vacation. And I feel so good about it because I stopped saying later. Right?

So if you want something and it’s important to you, you’ve gotta take action on it. Okay, there’s no better time than right now. I promise you. Delay is a killer delay that will kill you. Okay, so stop procrastinating.

Okay, so number three is a good one. I’ve talked a lot about this topic. And number three, the third reason why we sabotage our own success is because we quit when things get uncomfortable. Have you ever quit because something got uncomfortable? I have. I tried so hard to lose weight so many times. And as soon as it got uncomfortable, or I had to do something I didn’t want to do you know, or give up certain foods I didn’t want to give up. I gotta tell you, I just quit. I was like, screw this. If I can’t eat, you know, ice cream, and pizza and tacos all the time? Is it worth it? What is life, if I can’t eat donuts whenever I want to.

Because it’s uncomfortable to make big changes like this, okay. I know people that are training for ultra marathons and training for marathons. And they’re willing to get uncomfortable. Because they know in order to succeed with this thing they want to do you know, if you want to run a 50k or 100 miles.

I’ve got this one friend who’s training for the grand canyon from rim to rim to rim. So you go down and up the other side and then back down and back up again. Right. I don’t know something like 43 miles total, but the elevation gain is crazy. And like you got to do this in one day, you know, got to do it before it gets dark out. And that’s a hell of an ultra to prepare for. You know, do you think he’s getting uncomfortable training for this thing? Absolutely.

He’s running up. He keeps finding more hills around him and he just keeps running up. Okay, today I did six hills or a seven or eight or nine or ten whatever it is, and he keeps increasing the number of hills he’s running. I think it’s awesome and sounds terrible. But he’s like willing to get uncomfortable, right?

Because here’s the thing you guys, all this stuff that you want that you don’t have already is outside your comfort zone. Everything that you want for yourself, but don’t have yet is going to require you to get uncomfortable to get it. Discomfort is the currency for success. Discomfort is the cost. It’s what you have to pay in order to to be successful. In order to accomplish whatever big thing you want to accomplish.

Discomfort is the price you pay. It’s non-negotiable. You have to get uncomfortable. If it was comfortable and easy. You already have it. Anything you want. This person you want to become this person you see yourself as this thin, lean, strong runner, this powerful runner who’s lost all the weight and feels amazing about herself. That’s going require you to get uncomfortable to get there.

Are you willing to do that? Most people say yes. But most people, when it starts to really get uncomfortable quit. Most people can’t handle it once they get out there. And when I tell people things are gonna get uncomfortable, they say I’m all in, Patrick. Like yeah, let’s do it. I’m ready to get uncomfortable.

And then things start to get uncomfortable. And they’re like, well, well, well, well, that this is not what I signed up for. I’m like, hey, remember, I said it was gonna get uncomfortable. This is what we’re talking about. It is literally uncomfortable. Right? We don’t like it. We don’t like to be uncomfortable.

But you guys, whatever it is you want it’s going to require you to go through some period of discomfort to get it. Okay. Losing weight is not an easy thing to do. For most people, the way I do it with people, there’s a short discomfort period, there’s a short, uncomfortable period. But it’s pretty short, though. I promise you. But then I have this philosophy with my clients, and I want losing weight to be enjoyable and relatively effortless. And fun. Yes, fun.

We don’t have to suffer through our weight loss journey. We don’t have to suffer our way to good health. It doesn’t have to be that way. It can be fun. It can be enjoyable. Is there some discomfort? Yes. Do we also work on making it enjoyable and fun? Yes, we do. Okay, but you have to be willing to endure the discomfort and not quit. Most people can’t do that though.

And I get it. It’s hard. It’s hard to do. It’s hard to do on your own. I acknowledge that. This is one of the main reasons I come on here and talk to you guys is one of the main reasons I have this podcast. This is the main reason that I do my one-on-one coaching with people is because when it gets uncomfortable, most people quit.

When things aren’t working, when they face challenges, when maybe their weight loss stalls or their running sucks for a period of time. Most people just quit. They’re like, I can’t do it. It’s too hard. But when you got me there, in your cheering squad, I’m your little cheering squad. But I’m also there to kick in the butt a little bit and keep you moving with love. Right?

There’s a little, a little tough love going on. And kind of like what I’m doing out here today. You know, just a little bit of tough love. Right? Okay, so let’s recap where we are. So far, five ways we sabotage our success number one, not living up to your true potential, 40% – it’s not good enough. Number two, procrastination later, is the killer of hopes and dreams. Three, we quit because it gets uncomfortable.

Number four, you don’t honor the commitments you make to yourself. This is a big one, you guys, if you say you’re going to do something, do it. If you say I’m not eating cookies today, don’t eat cookies today. Because here’s what happens. Every time you say I’m not going to eat cookies today, and then you eat the cookies anyway; you train your brain that you can just do whatever the f you want.

Anytime you feel like you have this urge to eat some cookies, you’re training your brain that you’re just gonna reward that urge with some cookies. And you’re gonna get really good at that. Right, you get good at what you practice, right? When you don’t honor the commitments you make to yourself. You just get good at not honoring commitments, you get good at giving in. You get good at caving under the pressure. Okay. This will definitely sabotage your success.

One of the big, big, big things you have to do if you’re going to take on something big, like losing too much weight training for some big event, whatever it is, like you have to got to have a plan, right? You got to have a plan. And then you have to commit to the plan. And then you have to follow through with the commitment.

That’s the important part is the following through with the commitment. Anybody can have a plan. Anybody can put it on their calendar. Anybody can write it down on a piece of paper. Do you do it? Because if you don’t, you’re just going to fail. You’re going to continue to fail after time and time and time again. And you’re going to train yourself that it’s okay to do that. This is not good enough, in my opinion. You have to honor the commitments you make to yourself when you do when you say I’m not eating cookies today, and then, you know, there comes a point in the day where you’re like, I would really love some cookies, but not going to do it.

When you interrupt that pattern, when you don’t eat the cookies, even though you want them, oh, that’s cool, because now you’re training your brain that you don’t reward it. When it wants something like that. Then you’re training your brain, hey, I honor commitments I make to myself, this is beautiful when you can do this good.

You guys, when you practice doing this over and over and over again. And it takes a lot of practice. But when you get good at this, you build trust in yourself. You build resilience, you build confidence. And you build this relationship with yourself that like you can do any frickin thing that you want to. Okay?

Because when you give in all the time, you’re just telling yourself, you’re like that 40% rule, right? You’re just like giving in. I can’t do it. I’m not good enough. I can only give about 40% 60% of the time, I’m just gonna say screw it. No, no, no, no, you got to honor those commitments you make to yourself. Okay, when you do you build so much confidence and trust in yourself. And it’s like, that’s where you become this total badass, right?

Because, you know, you can show up and you can get through anything, you go out to dinner with friends. And they’re all like eating bread, or dessert, or whatever it is, you can be like, I’m good. I don’t need any of that stuff. I don’t eat that anymore. And they’re gonna be like, whoa, what is up with you? What’s gotten into you? And you’re gonna be like, I’m good over here.

You know, I’m just gonna eat this big ol’ steak. Alright, so we’re either building ourselves up and building up resilience and building up confidence in ourselves, or we’re like tearing ourselves down. We’re like letting ourselves down every day, we got to stop doing that. Okay?

Honor the commitments you make to yourself. It’s great that you make commitments to yourself, honor those commitments, okay? Train yourself that you can do this over and over again, right? Practice doing that, okay.

And then the last way that we sabotage our own success. And this one, this is a big one. And this is a very, this is a tough one. But here’s what we do we compare ourselves to others, we have to stop doing that. We have to stop comparing ourselves to others. There’s a lot of pressure out there to look a certain way, be a certain way. Especially in the health and fitness industry, health and fitness world.

You know, if you scroll through Instagram, you’re gonna see, you know, dudes with just rockhard, six-pack abs and giant arms and, you know, super lean, thin women. And whatever it is, you know, lots of big butts, you know, this is what Instagram looks like when I scroll through my feed or whatever. And it’s really easy to compare ourselves to others and look and say, oh, that person looks better than me. Or that person can run faster than me, or that person is thinner than me. Or that person was able to lose the weight easily, and so hard for me.

We can get really down on ourselves when we compare ourselves to other people. Here’s the thing we don’t really know what’s going on with anybody else. I think some of these posts that people put on Instagram, then look at me, and they, they’ll be like, eight weeks difference. And it’ll be like this big, you know, very overweight person, and then this completely rockhard person over here, you know.

They lost all the weight and I’m just like, I don’t know about that. You know, I’ve worked with a lot of people we help people lose a lot of weight and I’ve never seen anything quite like that. So anyway, I think there’s some of that is a little BS but here’s the thing.

We have this like ideal out there that we’re trying to all aspire to. And we’ve just got to stop doing that. All right, because you the way you are right now in this moment, I’m going to tell you something, you better listen to me right now. You are amazing. You’re beautiful. I love you and you are just capable of so much. I love you exactly the way that you are because you are freaking amazing and unique. And you have so much to offer. That’s what I believe about you.

You need to believe that about you too and stop comparing yourself to somebody else. I’ve done it. I look at all these other people you know, I’m working on getting like a little more built-up or whatever but I have little arms still. You know I’m not a big giant burly dude. I’m working on it though. Right?

But I don’t compare myself to other people. I know that I’m amazing just the way that I am right now. And I have so much to offer in this world. And I’m not afraid to come here in front of you guys and be vulnerable with you and share this stuff with you. Because I think it’s important.

You know, I’m not comparing myself to what other people are doing. There are other people that do stuff like what I do that, that have these great big podcasts with millions of followers, and they have, you know, they’re coaching people and whatever, I don’t really care, I’m doing things my own way.

I don’t walk around looking at what other people are doing, I try not to, when I’m scrolling through Instagram or Facebook, I’m looking for funny stuff. Usually, I’m looking for funny memes. And I just want to like, get out of my head for a minute and just laugh about something.

I might scroll through the news and just see like, you know if there’s an asteroid coming or anything like that, but for the most part, I don’t, I don’t read the news. It’s too depressing. It’s very negative, I don’t want to get caught up and all that stuff. And I don’t want to get caught up comparing myself to other people. I just want to be here in my own skin, and be comfortable with who I am here today.

Okay, and I want to encourage you to do the same thing. It is totally okay to love yourself exactly as you are right here now. And it is totally okay to love yourself exactly as you are and want to better yourself want to become healthier, want to lose some weight, want to run further run faster like you couldn’t want more for yourself.

But you got to love yourself through that process. You can’t hate yourself thin, you have to love yourself just as you are. Stop comparing yourself to other people, you don’t know what’s going on with them. Also, just keep that in mind. A lot of times we see these people, and we think there have these amazing lives, and they might be miserable inside, you know, you never know what people are going through. Okay.

So when we say we’re not as fast as other people are, we’re not as thin as other people, or we’re not as beautiful as other people. Or we’re not as far along in our weight loss journey as other people. That doesn’t do us any good at all. There’s no point in doing any of that stuff. Okay, so stop doing that. This is my final suggestion for you guys today.

And because it’s serious, like we can really thwart our progress when we keep comparing ourselves, I should be here and I’m not, you know, I should lose two pounds a week, every single week, or I’m a piece of crap. No, you’re not. And no, it’s not supposed to work that way. It’s all over the board as far as how much you’re going to lose or whatever. Don’t compare yourself. Stop doing that. Okay?

So those are five things, you’re not living up to your true potential. Procrastination, we keep saying later. Don’t say later. Do it now. Whatever you want to do start today start now telling you, you’re gonna feel so much better about yourself. If you just take action today. We quit because it gets uncomfortable. We don’t honor the commitments we make to ourselves, we make the commandments, but we don’t honor them. And we compare ourselves to others. Those are the five things, the five biggest ways that we sabotage ourselves.

Okay, so I hope you guys got something out of this today. I’m going to just scroll through a few of these comments really quickly you guys, okay. Lots of good comments, you guys. Let’s see.

Debbie says I’ve been very disciplined for over three years, and I’ve lost 95 pounds. What? That’s amazing, Debbie, so proud of you. Recently, I’ve allowed myself to cave off makes me feel like such a failure. Yeah. Why are you allowing yourself to cave? That’s a question you want to ask yourself? Why are you thinking it’s okay to cave?

And we get into this mindset of like, oh, you know, weight loss is this thing you do and then once you get there, you just do whatever you want. No, it doesn’t work that way. What I do with my clients is I train them well, I help to train them to eat healthy for the rest of their life. All right, it’s a big change that we make. And it’s something that we need to do forever.

Okay, it’s not a short-term thing. It’s like, how can we make this sustainable for the rest of our lives and it’s a little different for everybody. There’s not like one formula that works for every person. But what I do has helped them get to the point where, when they’re done working with me, they know what they need to just stay doing that for the rest of their life. It’s not a short-term thing, it’s not a destination you’re trying to get to, you know, you lost 95 pounds. Debbie, that is so amazing.

Sometimes the harder part is like to keep it off, right? Because you don’t have this mindset of like, I’m trying to lose anymore. And so you can kind of thwart yourself by getting into this mindset of like, I can do whatever I want. I can cave. Okay? Can you though?

Maybe you’re the kind of person that like, shouldn’t cave because whatever that means for you means that you’re gonna start gaining weight again. I know that’s the case for me. If I go back to doing what I was doing before, I’m gonna start gaining weight again. I’m gonna get fat again. I don’t want to be that person anymore. So I’m okay with just doing this. I’ve made this a lifestyle change right.

Baelor says I lost 80 pounds when the pandemic started just by not eating fast food. Okay, that is amazing. That is amazing. Good job. Yeah. Total lifestyle change there. Ballerina mark. Candice was talking about negative self-talk. And yeah, this is something we do. Yeah. Good stuff, you guys. Really good stuff.

And I’m glad you guys are here for this today. I’ll go through and look through if there are any more comments and answer them in the comments myself, okay. But I hope you got something out of this today. And again, if you wouldn’t mind, I would love it. If you could find the Running Lean podcast on Apple Podcasts and leave a review. It means so much to me, just as a way of saying thank you, that would be awesome and amazing. Okay.

So these five things I talked about today, I want to encourage you to stop doing them. Okay? Just like we got to like, shift our mindset, okay. And we got to like, notice that we’re doing these things. That’s just the first step just notice that you do these things, you’ll start to see them, you’ll start to see yourself doing these things.

That is such an amazing first step awareness is so amazing. Once you see that you’re procrastinating, or you see that you’re, you quit because things get uncomfortable or you’re not honoring those commitments to yourself or you’re not living up to your full potential. Are you find yourself comparing yourself to others. When you see yourself doing this, just acknowledge that oh, that’s me comparing myself to somebody else. Oh, this is me not tapping into my full potential. Just be aware. That’s the first step. Right. Cool. Awesome, you guys. Great hanging out with you today.

I’ll drop in the comments and answer other questions. But hope you all have an amazing rest of your day. Get out there and enjoy the beautiful sunshine. If it’s sunny where you are hope it is. Love you. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.

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