Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
Have you ever felt like you just can’t seem to make any progress toward a goal? Have you ever found it difficult to get started eating right or exercising regularly? Have you ever made some …
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Lots of factors go into whether or not you will successfully achieve a goal. How bad you want it, where you are in your life, your physical limitations just to name a few. But one of the most …
Continue Reading about 247. The Mindset Shift Required in Order to Succeed →
One of the big keys to achieving anything significant in your life - losing weight and keeping it off, running a marathon - is confidence. Being confident that you can accomplish something big will …
Continue Reading about 229. How to Have More Confidence Now →
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 229 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, How To Have More Confidence Now. So one of the biggest keys to achieving anything significant in your life, like losing weight and keeping it off, or running your first marathon is confidence.
Being confident that you can accomplish something will make that accomplishment practically inevitable. However, the opposite is also true, a severe lack of confidence will basically make it impossible for you to reach that big goal. So how do you get more confidence?
Well, you know, you are in luck, because that’s what’s on the agenda here today. In this episode, I’m going to explain what confidence is how it might just be the game changer that you’re looking for, and how to have more confidence now.
But first, if you’ve been thinking about improving your health, your fitness, losing some weight, improving your running, and you want some guidance and support to help you get there, I want you to consider coaching, coaching works where other methods don’t, because it’s not about a diet. It’s not about a premade exercise program.
It’s about understanding what works for you as an individual, and then learning how to do it on your own. That’s you learning how to do this on your own at one point, in our coaching relationship, I want you to say Patrick, I don’t need you anymore. That’s then my job is done.
You have to be able to do this stuff on your own. It has to be something that is sustainable for you long term because you know, there is no finish line. Being healthy, losing weight, improving your running, improving your fitness, your health. It’s not a destination you’re trying to get to it is how you live your life from here on out. And I want to teach you how to live your life that way.
Okay, we want this stuff to become easy and effortless for you long term. And I can help you get there. If you want to hit the easy button on all this stuff on your weight loss goals, your running goals, we can work together, just go to my website runningleancoaching.com, click on work with me. And we will work together and I’ll show you how to become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself yet. Cool.
Okay, let’s get into this topic today how to have more confidence now. So confidence is one of those things that can be a real game changer for you. And if you’ve ever set out to do something, maybe that you’ve never done before, you’ve probably lacked confidence at the beginning of that process.
And as you have accomplished things in your life, as you have gotten out of your comfort zone, and you’ve done things you might think well, that’s how you build more confidence. And that’s part of it. You have to understand something though that confidence comes from within. It is something that is created by you. It doesn’t come from anybody else. It doesn’t come from out there nobody bestows confidence upon you, you have to create it.
So confidence, if you look up the definition, it says it’s a feeling of self assurance arising from one’s appreciation of one’s own abilities or qualities, a feeling of self assurance. Confidence is a feeling. And what do we know about feelings? Well, feelings are created by your thoughts. feelings don’t come from out there. Feelings are created by the thoughts that you think.
So if you want to create more of a certain feeling, then you need to think certain thoughts. You need to change your thinking perhaps here’s a little experiment that you can do. You want to start feeling a little bit more confident right now. Just think about a time where you were extremely confident to think about that time a specific point in time in your life, where you are so freaking confident about something.
Go back there right now in your mind. What was the situation you’re at? What were you thinking? What were you doing? What were you seeing what were you hearing? What are you saying, you know, what were you feeling internally, and feel that feeling of confidence.
And you can feel confident right now, when you do this, it’s kind of interesting, right? By the way, you can do the same thing with all kinds of emotions, you want to feel angry, just think about something that pisses you off, you’re gonna feel really angry right now, don’t do that. But this is what we do.
A lot of times, we feel hurt by someone. And we keep replaying that over and over in our minds. And we just continue to feel hurt and hurt and hurt, even though that thing happened years ago, decades ago. So anyway, feelings are created by your thoughts. So you have to start looking at the way you’re thinking about things.
So one thing that I like to say is that if you, if you think that you can do something, then you probably have the confidence that you can do it. If you feel like, or I’m sorry, if you think that you cannot do something, then you’re going to feel like you can’t do it.
So our thoughts will have a big role to play in how we accomplish things. And thoughts create those feelings. So we got to look at the thoughts that are creating the feelings of confidence. So for example, if you have confidence that you can stick to your diet, plan and lose weight, and you think to yourself, here’s the thoughts you thinking, I can do this, I can stick to my plan, I’ve got this, I’ve done hard things before, then you are far more likely to stick to that plan and lose the weight.
On the other hand, if you firmly believe that this is never gonna work for you, because you know what, nothing ever works for me, I’ve tried everything, nothing works. It’s never worked before I always fail, I always fail, I always give up, I always quit. How is your confidence? Zero, it’s, it’s 0.0, you are very likely to give up and quit. And those thoughts that you’re thinking are going to become true for you. Those thoughts that you’re thinking, when you feel really confident and you think this might work for me, I’m going to I think I can do this, those will become true for you as well.
Another good example is if you are somebody who has run some half marathons, right, and you’re thinking about running a full marathon, but you lack so much confidence that you can run a full marathon that you will probably never even sign up for that race, because you just don’t have the confidence that you can do it. You don’t believe in yourself, you don’t believe that you can do it. Zero confidence.
So running a full marathon is probably never going to happen for you. Even though in your mind, you might think that is something I really want for myself at some point. So we need to we need to change our thinking, okay.
Henry Ford, I love this quote one of my favorite quotes ever. He said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.
So what that says to me is that it’s all in your mind. It’s all in your mind, whatever you want to accomplish, we got to look at those thoughts that are creating the feelings. And confidence is one of the keys to helping you achieve anything of importance in your life, anything big especially.
But when it comes to achieving bigger goals, running a full marathon losing weight, losing like 40 pounds, if you want to lose 40 pounds, that’s going to require some work and some time, and you have to keep your head in the game. And you have to have the confidence to get you there.
Running a full marathon is going to require some confidence for you to get there. lacking confidence is going to keep you stuck. It’s going to keep you thinking small. When you don’t have any confidence, you’re not going to venture out of your comfort zone, you’re not going to try to push yourself to do something that’s hard. Because you don’t have the confidence that you can do it.
But when you build the confidence over time, you will see that your comfort zone will begin to grow. You can keep pushing past your comfort zone, you keep taking action even when things get hard. You still take the action that you need to take you show up for yourself in a much different way.
You’re no longer stuck, you’re free. You’re not thinking small, you’re thinking big. So these are all the reasons why we want to work on our confidence. We want to build our confidence.
So some of the ways we do this. Number one, we want to focus on how far we have come. So everything that you’ve already accomplished in your life needs to be on a list somewhere everything hard you have ever done that you maybe didn’t think you could do, but you did. Or you surprised yourself, or something that you’re proud of anything that you’ve accomplished in your life, just put it on a list somewhere.
And every now and then you need to take that list out and read it. Because we want to be focusing on where we have come, we want to focus on how far we have come not on where we are not.
We spend too much time focusing on the gap, the gap between where we are today and where we want to be in the future. And there’s a gap there, I want to lose 40 pounds. So the gap is the 40 pounds, the gap is running a full marathon, I’ve never done that before. And we focus on the gap. And it’s a negative place to focus on because it’s where you are not, you’re not there yet.
And if all your focus is on where you are not, it can feel incredibly frustrating. And it will kind of strip away your confidence. Instead, you want to focus on the gains, not the gap, focus on the gains, what have you done? What have you already accomplished? Write that stuff down, you want to make sure that this is something that you are constantly focusing on.
And then as you accomplish new things celebrate those wins, we celebrate wins in our coaching group all the time, we always want to talk about wins. Because it’s important to give equal airtime to the things that are going well in our lives and the problems.
A lot of times, we just want to focus on the promise, well, here’s what’s not working. Okay, that stuff is fine. But what is working, let’s talk about that as well. It shifts the conversation, I’m telling you, and I see it in people, it shifts their whole posture, their personality shifts a little bit when they start talking about everything that’s going well. So focus on how far you have come this right here.
If you just did this one thing, this would be enough to help you to start building all the confidence that you need. Okay, but we’re going to do more number two is to take aligned action, even when you don’t feel like it. So confidence comes from taking action and getting results. Because when you take aligned action, and you get results, you start to see that ha this might actually work for me.
Oh, I was able to stick to my food plan over the last two weeks. Great. And I lost a pound. That’s interesting. So you’ve taken aligned action, you’re seeing some results. And you’re like, hmm, actually maybe this will work for me. And so you start to feel more confident, because you’re taking action.
Even sometimes when you don’t feel like it, sometimes you don’t feel like sticking your food plan, I get it. Sometimes you don’t feel like going for a run, I get it. But if you stick to the plan, you’re going to get the results when you get the results, you feel more confident that you can keep going and you want to stay in that cycle.
You want to stay in the cycle of small actions, giving you small results, tiny little actions that you’re taking every single day that are gonna give you tiny little results. And those Tyler results deliver a little bit of confidence. Okay, so confidence is something that builds slowly over time. It does not happen all at once.
People think that it’s like flipping a light switch, like all of a sudden, you’re gonna get confident, and you’re going to be able to do everything and it doesn’t work that way. You have to create it. And it takes time you build confidence slowly, over time, like a habit, you know, habits take a long time, some people will say 30 days, some people say 90 days.
You know what? I just was doing a little bit of research on this. And then the experts out there really say that habits take as much time as they take. And it’s different for each person. And it depends on the habit and all these other factors. So there’s no number, but it takes time.
Let’s just all agree to that. Like it takes time to build a good habit. Just like that it takes time to build confidence, right? It’s not a light switch, you’re not just flipping on confidence and like then then you’re good to go.
So it looks like this, it looks like you keep showing up for yourself. You keep taking the action and you start getting little results. And this builds a little bit of confidence with each little win. And we acknowledge those wins. Sometimes they’re pretty small. That’s okay.
Feeling more confident, though, will actually make it easier for you then to take more aligned action. This is how we start to build a ton of confidence. We do it slowly over time, little by little when over when day after day, week after week, month after month. And then eventually you’re gonna get to this place where you just have all the confidence that If you need to achieve anything that you want.
Think about it like this. This is exactly what we do when we’re training for a marathon. So if you’ve only run a half marathon, the farthest you’ve ever run is 13.1 miles, and you start getting into marathon training, you’re probably going to feel pretty confident until you get to mile 14. You know, when you see that number 14 on the calendar, you’re like, oh, my long run is 14 off, I’ve never run that far before, that might feel a little daunting.
But you know, it’s pretty close to 13. So it may not be that bad. And then you do it. And then the next time it’s going to be 15. And then 16, 18, 20 miles, 22 miles. Like that’s where things start to get real for you. You know, how confident are you in week one of your marathon training? My guess is not very confident.
How confident are you by week number 16? After doing all the work, though, so you show up, week after week, you do the work, you do those long runs, you show up even though it’s hard. But you show up for yourself, you keep taking the aligned action, and you start getting the results. You’re hitting all these runs, you’re doing fine.
So how confident are you in week 16? I’m gonna say probably very much confident in week number 16. Right? It’s a game-changer. And listen, you guys with the running, you got this part down, you do. But when it comes to the food, people are like, well, it’s different. It’s not different.
Listen, think about losing 40 pounds as your marathon, okay? You’re not ready. In week number one, like you’re not going to have the confidence you need in week number one of your new food plan, right? You have to show up for yourself daily, stick to the plan, every day, even on the weekends, even on vacation.
Okay, maybe you indulge a little bit on vacation, I’ll give you that. That’s cool. But then you get back on track again. And you start to see the weight dropping, you lose a pound every week or so maybe more, maybe less, whatever. But you’re seeing results, because you’re showing up for yourself and you’re doing the work day after day, week after week, just like you do with your marathon training, it’s no different.
And then by week number 16, or 18, whatever of your new nutrition regimen, you know, you’re like, this is actually totally working for me, I’ve lost 20 pounds already, I’m feeling amazing. Running is better than ever, you’ll eventually get there, you’ll get to that 40 pound weight loss goal, if you don’t quit.
If you keep showing up for yourself, if you keep celebrating the wins. That’s that just take that same approach that we take to marathon training, copy, paste that over here to your food plan, and boom, you’re good to go. That’s how you do it. That’s how you build confidence. Okay.
The last part of this is that we will experience failures in our journey. Whether you’re training for a marathon or trying to lose 40 pounds, I’m telling you right now you’re going to experience some failures along the way.
We have to rethink failure. Because past failures can strip away your confidence that can erode your confidence if you continue to think about them as failures, or if you continue to think about yourself as a failure. Right? So for example, you know, you don’t stick to your food plan. Maybe this goes on for a few days, right? Big shocker.
Listen, everybody does this at some point. Maybe you just had a stressful week of work, whatever you there’s all kinds of excuses you can use. I always tell people that we don’t use those as excuses. But I’m just telling you, this is what people tell me.
Oh, I had a really stressful week of work. And so I couldn’t stick to my food plan. Yeah, you could have stuck to your food plan, but you chose not to because you were stressed out. And that’s how you deal with stress. You use food to deal with stress. Okay, that’s what’s really going on there.
But anyway, end of sidebar. So everybody does this. At some point, you gain a few pounds. This is just normal. It’s part of the process, right? But here’s what happens. A lot of you, you beat yourselves up. You feel like a failure. You say things like, this is never going to work for me.
I always do this. It’s too hard. I can’t do this. You’re thinking these things. You’re believing that this is never going to work for you. That is just a confidence killer right there. Okay, you didn’t fail. You learned what not to do. You learned that doing it this way doesn’t work for me. Stress eating does not work for me. How do I get through that?
You look at your little failures as learning opportunities. If you don’t, you’re never going to improve. You’re never going to get there. You’re never going to lose the weight and be able to keep it off, we have to look at our failures as learning opportunities. What’s the lesson to learn from that situation you’re in?
You have to learn how to persevere. Because listen, you are not a failure. You failed at that one thing that one time. Okay, big deal. Let’s learn our lesson, we get over it and we move on. Eyes forward, we don’t look back, we look forward. Every single success that has ever happened in the history of the world has been built upon a huge pile of failures.
What that says to me is that you cannot succeed without failure, you have to fail, failure is part of the process. And failures are never the end. So many people think, oh, I failed. So that’s the end, I’m going to quit no failures, just one more step on the path of success. It’s like one more rung on the ladder, that eventually leads to the top.
You have to climb all the rungs, you can’t skip any. So there’s going to be more failures ahead, by the way, so buckle up. Okay, so just to recap here, today, confidence, it’s a feeling that’s created by your thoughts, you got to work on your thoughts. We’ve got to stop thinking things like I can’t do this is never gonna work for me, this is too hard. I always stop all that.
Change your thinking, right? Start taking aligned action. Start doing things that are going to move you towards your goals. Aligned action means action that is in alignment with your long term goals. Start taking that action every single day, focus on everything you’ve achieved so far. Make a list of everything you’ve ever accomplished in your life that was hard, and go over that list regularly.
Remember that confidence builds over time. And we have to allow time for this process to take place. It’s not like flipping a light switch. Okay, and then anytime we do experience failure, and you will, you got to reframe that you got to look at it as a learning experience and not the end.
I have failed at so many things. So many times in my life. It’s ridiculous. And I keep showing up and I still fail at stuff. And I keep showing up for myself and I keep learning from those experiences and I keep moving on. Okay, and that is how you build confidence. And that is how you can create more confidence starting right now is just do the things I outlined in this podcast today. Cool. That’s your work this week. You got this. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
Most people spend a great deal of time thinking about the past. They ruminate over things they did that they regret doing. They replay situations over and over and wish they’d handled things …
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 208 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners, and today, remembering your future.
So most people spend a lot of time thinking about their past. They ruminate over things they did that maybe they regret doing. And they replay these situations over and over and over again, wishing that they’d handled things differently in the past, all their focus, all their energy is on past events. And they spend zero time or zero energy thinking about their future.
This is a mistake. Why? Because you can’t change your past. It’s over, it’s done with. But you can 100% change your future. So that’s a much better place to focus your time and your energy. So this episode is all about remembering your future so that you can make that future your reality.
But first, I talk a lot about losing weight, improving your health, improving your fitness, and improving your running here on the podcast. And I know all of this can feel very overwhelming. If you’re looking for a good place to start, where I’ve consolidated everything and given you some steps that you can take right away.
It’s all encapsulated in a free training that I created called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner, Stronger Runner. In this free training, you’ll learn how to fuel your body properly, so that you can lose weight and improve your running.
You’re going to learn the incredibly important role that strength plays in being a lean healthy runner, you’re going to learn to make mindset shifts that actually help you make all of this stuff sustainable, and so much more.
If you’re ready to get leaner and stronger, to run faster and longer, and become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself yet, then you need to check out this free training now. Just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training.
Okay, on to the topic of the day, which is remembering your future. So most people spend all their time focused on past events, and usually not the positive ones. We’re talking about the negative past events, the things you wish you had done differently, the things that you regret the traumas in your life, the things that that you did wrong, the things that you don’t feel good about.
And this can create a lot of stress in your life. And this stress can become chronic stress. And chronic stress means your sleep is disrupted. And chronic stress leads to not being able to lose weight. And chronic stress leads to your workout suffering and your recovery suffering.
And so we spend all this time and energy focused on our past, the things we did wrong, the things that did not go our way, the mistakes we’ve made the people that wronged us. And we do this, and we seem to not be able to get out of this cycle of focusing on the past. A friend of mine explained it to me like this, he said, imagine you have a plastic bag in your pocket. And inside that plastic bag is some dog poop. And every so often you take out the plastic bag and you open it up and you smell it and you’re like, oh god, that’s horrible. That’s horrible. But then you put it back in your pocket. And then a couple days later, you take it out again, and you smell again. Oh my God, that’s terrible.
Why do we do this to ourselves? One of the reasons is, is because as human beings, we’ve evolved to be really efficient problem solvers. And we want to fix the problems that we’re experiencing in our lives, whether they’re happening to us now, or they’ve happened in the past.
And in fact, we spend a lot of time trying to fix our past. Even though it’s over and done with our brains don’t know the difference between past, present and future realities. And this is important, and I’m going to talk about why it’s important in just a minute. But think about this.
You’re trying to fix problems from your past. You rehearse a scenario over and over and over again in your mind. Because your brain is trying to change that outcome. It’s trying to solve the problem. And I know it doesn’t make sense logically. But that’s just the way our brains are wired.
From an evolutionary standpoint. It served us really well. It helped us to learn how to not make the same mistakes twice. So from an evolutionary standpoint, this is great, it’s helped us. But today, we don’t really need to keep focusing on the past, but we do it all the time.
What you’re hoping to get out of all this ruminating on the past is a different outcome. But you can’t get a different outcome, the past is fixed. So one of the first things you need to do is you need to accept the way things played out in the past.
And I talk about this concept called radical acceptance, where you need to be practicing radical acceptance that this is the way things down. This is the way things went down in my life. This is the way things were supposed to go down.
How do you know it was the way they were supposed to go down? Because that’s the way it happened. You know, things were supposed to happen, because that is the way that it actually did happen in the past.
It’s kind of a radical concept. Because most people live in this fantasy world where they think things should be different. They have zero acceptance of the reality of a given situation. This is very convoluted thinking. And it only leads to your own internal turmoil, your own misery.
So you’re focused on these past events, you wish they were different, you think they should be different. And you don’t understand why you’re miserable all the time, you keep taking the plastic bag of poop out of your pocket and smelling it. And then you’re wondering why it smells so terrible all the time. I love that imagery. I don’t know why, but I just love it. It feels really visceral to me like I really get that.
Okay, so instead, what we need to be doing is spending time remembering, not our past, but remembering our future. Now, this is not a hard thing to do, it doesn’t take a lot of time. But it is an extremely powerful tool that you can use if you want to change who you are.
So you’re this version of yourself right now. And if you have any ideas for changing that version of you in the future, then you need to spend some time imagining what that future version of you is going to be like, instead of focusing on your past things that you cannot change, focus on your future, the things that you can change.
And you might be thinking, well, I don’t know, I’m not really going to change that much. But think about your past, like, there’s a version of you from last year, who is vastly different than who you are today, or five years ago, or ten years ago, that’s a completely different person than who you are today.
Would you agree? Yeah, you’re different today than you were in your past than when you’re in your 20s or 30s, or 40s, or 50s, or whatever.
You’re different now compared to who you were in the past, hopefully better. So there’s also a version of you out there in the future, that is vastly different than who you are today. It could be a year in the future. It could be three months in the future, it could be five years, ten years, whatever.
We are constantly evolving and growing and becoming more as human beings, or at least in my opinion, we should be. So what I want you to do is focus on that future version of yourself. What does that future you look like? How’s your health? How’s your fitness? How’s your running? Are you still running?
How’s your mindset? Do you have a growth mindset? Do you have more of a negative mindset? What do you see when you look at yourself in the mirror in that future version of yourself? Think about your relationship with food and with alcohol in the future. What does that look like?
How are you sleeping? How are your stress levels? How do you feel about yourself in the future? So I want to give you some homework assignments. Say I got two homework assignments for you to do here. Step one is to answer these questions. Write out a detailed version of who you want to be in the future. This can be a month from now three months from now, a year from now, five years from now, it doesn’t matter.
And you can do this multiple times in the future. You can keep changing this because we do evolve and grow and we change as we go and our priorities change. So you can always do this later.
But for now, I want you to focus on writing out a detailed version of who you want to be in the future. What does that future version of you look like? Think about yourself from a health and fitness standpoint, mindset, your relationship with food, with alcohol, with other people. How do you feel about yourself?
All those things, write it down, write it down on a piece of paper, write it in a notebook, write it in a journal doesn’t matter, but write it down, take the time to write as much detail as possible, especially those, those ways that you feel about yourself.
Because when you include emotions, in an exercise like this, it makes the exercise even more powerful. Because in order to create that future version of you, you have to be able to feel what it feels like to be that future version of you. Okay, so just write it all down, spend some time on this, don’t skip this step, do it, they won’t take you that long. Okay, that’s step number one.
I said, there are only two steps, the next step is to practice visualizing that future version of yourself. Visualization is a powerful tool that you can use at any time. But most people don’t use it or don’t use it properly. They spend all their time visualizing their past, like I talked about at the beginning here, right?
You’re spending all this time focused on the past the things you cannot change, the regrets, the mistakes, the failures, right, instead of focusing on this amazing, healthy, fit, leaner, stronger, faster future version of you, you get more of what you focus on. So focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want. Don’t keep spending all your time focused on this version of you that you do not want.
Unfortunately, that’s our default. So you have to stop doing that. Gotta break out of that habit and start focusing on the future, you focus on the version of you that you want to become. When you imagine something, and when you imagine something vividly. Your brain and your body don’t know the difference between what’s real and what’s imagined.
Your subconscious mind just believes that whatever you’re envisioning is happening right here. And now it doesn’t know the difference between the real and the imagined. This is why so many elite athletes, and other people in other industries, but elite athletes spend so much time visualizing the outcome of an event, like a race, because it gives them a competitive edge that a lot of other people do not have, because they don’t spend the time visualizing how they want this thing to go.
A lot of elite athletes spend a lot of time thinking about, let’s say, a marathon, and they think about the entire race, they visualize how they prepare how they show up at the start line, they’re pacing the course they spend time, you know, focusing on how they’re going to feel when they crossed the finish line.
And they see that number on the clock, and they feel that exhilaration of finishing, and they hear the crowd and they can taste the salt in their sweat on their lips. And they, you know, they have this visual and visceral experience this emotional experience of of winning a race. And when they imagine it over and over and over again, they spend time every single day imagining this thing, they inevitably will work. Your brain will work towards becoming that version of you, it will work towards that outcome that you’re visualizing.
They did this cool experiment a while back involving students who were basketball players, and they did this experiment with free throws. And there was an Australian psychologist named Alan Richardson. And he was testing this visualization, this mental imagery, and benefiting athletic performance.
So they did this study, they took three groups of students who were basketball players. And the first group practiced basketball free throws for 20 minutes a day, for 20 days. And then they had two other groups. The second and third groups shot free throws on day one. And then on day 20 because they wanted to be able to compare how they did from day one to day 20.
The second group spent 20 minutes every day in the middle there, so they weren’t shooting free throws just on day one and day 20. But in the middle, they spent 20 minutes every day visualizing themselves shooting free throws, just 20 minutes a day visualizing shooting free throws, the third group did nothing in between.
So they just shot free throws on day one and day 20. They compared the three groups at the end of the 20 day experiment. The first group the people who actually physically practiced shooting free throws every single day. They improved their free throws from day one to day 20 by 24%. All right. The third group did not improve at all. They didn’t practice at all, they didn’t do any visualizing in between at all, and they did not improve at all.
The second group who just practiced mental imagery for those 20 days and didn’t practice any actual physical free throws, they improved by 23%, almost exactly the same as the first group at 24%, who was physically actively shooting free throws every single day.
And this is just one example. There are many other examples like this, that show the benefits of visualization on athletic performance, on relationships, on different areas of your life, even your career.
So what I want you to do is practice visualizing that future version of you. It’s a very simple step. But it does require you to spend some time holding that mental and emotional image of your future self, remembering your future over and over and over again, who do you want to become? How do you want to feel?
It doesn’t take a lot of time to do this. And you don’t have to be like, you know, meditating and sitting in the lotus position and chanting or anything like that. You can do this while you’re journaling in the morning, you can do it while you’re showering, you can do it while you’re driving. As long as you keep your eyes open, you can do it while you’re running.
I think this is an awesome way to hold a vision and to get into that meditative state while you’re running. I love being in this state. While I’m running to feel so good. It really doesn’t matter how you do it.
As long as you do it every single day, you need to spend some time every single day holding that vision of your future self. Practice it just like the basketball players practice shooting free throws, practice being that future version of you, and do this every single day.
Now remember, I said you need to write this down, you need to write it down on a piece of paper. The reason is that you should also spend time reading it every day as well. So read it and feel into it every day. So you can just write this out in your journal. And you can look at it every day, just open up your journal and read it every morning. That’s a great way to start your day. And a great way to finish your day, at the end of the night only takes you a few minutes to read through it.
You can write it on a piece of paper and stick it on your computer, your fridge or your mirror. So you see it every single day. I like the idea of writing it out every day. And really, it only takes a couple of minutes to do this, but open up your journal.
And as you start writing your journal for today, just write out you know, here’s my future self. And then just write out how you feel how you want to feel how you want to be how you want to act, what you look like, what you feel like how your health how your fitness is.
And write this every single day. When you write it, you’re you’re doing something very visceral. And you’re cementing this into your subconscious mind. And it’s a really, really powerful way to remind yourself that every day you are on this journey of becoming more. And this doesn’t stop there is no finish line here.
I want to make that very clear here that we are always evolving, we are always growing, we are always becoming more or we should be, and we don’t want to stay stagnant. We don’t want to stay small, we don’t want to stay where we are now, we always want to grow and evolve and become more.
And that process never really stops. It’s a process that continues to evolve. And change and, and blossom as we as we get older as we become more. So we’re going to become that future version of ourselves. And as we are becoming that that will begin to morph and change into that next version. Or we should always be wanting to become more.
So the two steps to this process are number one, know who you want to become. You have to know that and you have to write it down. So you have to be very crystal clear on who that future version of you is. And then number two, spend some time remembering your future.
Remember, visualize that future version of yourself. This is not hard. It doesn’t take a lot of time. It doesn’t take a lot of effort, but it works. And right now is the perfect time to get started with this because it’s the end of the year. We’re about to start a new year. And instead of spending a lot of time and energy reflecting on the past, take that time spend that time and energy focusing on your future and holding that vision for your future self. Okay. Take a little bit of time every day to remember your future. And then every day just do a little bit of work that’s required to get you there.
Take small actions every day that move you a little bit closer to that future version of you and over time all these little tiny steps, they add up to big big changes. Cool that’s all I got for you today, love you all keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon, bye.
One of the toughest things about losing weight and keeping it off for good is developing a healthy relationship with food. I work with runners every day who admittedly have a very unhealthy …
Continue Reading about 202. Unraveling Unhealthy Thought Patterns →
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 202 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners, and today, Unraveling Unhealthy Thought Patterns.
So one of the toughest things about losing weight and keeping it off for good is developing a healthy relationship with it. I work with runners every day who admittedly have a very unhealthy relationship with food, they overeat, they’re constantly making unhealthy choices.
They know what to do, they’re doing something different all the time, and they generally feel very out of control around food.
If this sounds like you, rest assured there’s nothing wrong with you. You’ve just developed some unhealthy thought patterns about food. So one of the most beneficial things you can do for yourself is begin to recognize and then start unraveling those unhealthy thought patterns.
That’s what this episode is all about. So stick around, I think you’ll find some very helpful tips throughout this podcast.
But first, I talk a lot about losing weight and improving your health and your fitness. And I know all the stuff I talked about here can feel a little overwhelming. If you’re looking for a good place to start, I’ve created a free hour-long training called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.
In this training video, you’ll learn how to fuel your body properly to lose weight and improve your running, you’ll learn the incredibly important role that strength plays in being a lean healthy runner.
And you’ll learn how to make changes that are actually sustainable, and a lot more. If you’re ready to get started, get leaner, get stronger, run faster, run longer, and become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself, then check out this free training now go to my website runningleancoaching.com and click on free training and get started. Cool.
All right, let’s talk about this unraveling unhealthy thought patterns. So when it comes to things like losing weight and trying to keep it off for good, there is a big problem out there.
And people talk about that this diet isn’t sustainable, this diet isn’t sustainable. And honestly, any diet can be sustainable, it’s the one that you stick to the one that you can do consistently is going to be the one that works for you.
And it’s going to be the one that is sustainable for you. But a lot of people blame the diet as being wrong, or this one doesn’t work when in reality, it’s all about you. What are you willing to stick to? What are you willing to do consistently?
And so one of the things I work with, with the people that I that I do coaching with is understanding that it’s not about the diet necessarily. Now, of course, there are some things we can do that will help to lose weight. And we want to get you eating whole foods and get you off of the junk food and the processed foods and sugars and seed oils and things like that.
But how do you do this consistently? How do you do this for for life? You know, that’s where the real magic happens when you get to this place where this just becomes pretty automatic for you. And it’s no longer work and it’s no longer effort.
And one thing that stops a lot of people from getting to that place where they’ve developed good healthy eating habits is their own mind. You know, it’s their own thoughts about food, it’s their own thoughts about whether they can sustain this or not, it’s their own thoughts about how they failed in the past and how they’ve tried everything, and nothing ever works for them.
And all these thought patterns are just that they are thoughts in your head. And not necessarily true. They’ve just been things that you’ve been telling yourself for a long time. And so you believe them to be true.
But they are not necessarily the truth. Okay, so we have to understand that the way that each one of us sees the world is a little bit differently.
We see the world based on our own thoughts, feelings, past experiences, and all kinds of other factors. And no two people really see the world the same way. No two people, you know, experience a diet the same way no two people experience food nutrition, and exercise the same way.
So just understand that you are an individual. You have your own thought patterns that you’ve been practicing for decades, decades. And it’s really hard to undo that. It’s really hard to even see that that’s what you’re doing because you just believe all this stuff to be true about how things work.
If you feel out of control around food, you’re gonna see that that’s just an automatic thing for you that when there’s donuts sitting there, you can’t help yourself, you eat the doughnuts.
When in reality, there’s more going on there, you’re not automatic, you’re not a robot, you haven’t been programmed, please sort of programmed yourself in a way to just eat the doughnuts. But there’s a thought and a feeling and an action happening.
And those things happen before you pick up the doughnut and put it in your mouth. There are thoughts and feelings about that donut that are happening in that moment. That happened very fast.
And when I talk about thought patterns, thought patterns, our thoughts and feelings that lead to actions, thoughts, and feelings that drive our actions, those are thought patterns. And you’re really good at doing some thought patterns.
Think about how you tie your shoes in the morning, or in the afternoon or whatever. You don’t even think about it anymore. You’ve developed a thought pattern about how to tie your shoes.
But when you were like four or five years old, and you’re learning how to tie your shoes, you’re in kindergarten, whatever. It took some thought you had to, you know, make the loop and then put it around this, wait, look, no, wait, I did it wrong, that was supposed to go under here.
And it took some thought and some effort and it was hard. And it took a while to do that. Now you can tie your shoes without even thinking about it, you don’t have to think about it, it’s become an automated behavior for you.
Driving a car is the same way. It’s an automated behavior. There are lots of things that we do in our lives that have become automated behaviors. But they weren’t always that way. eating donuts, when you see donuts is not an automated behavior.
I mean, it’s kind of automated, but there’s always something going on, there’s thoughts and feelings that are driving those actions. And we want to start to break this stuff down.
We want to start unraveling the thought patterns that are not serving us the unhealthy ones. The other ones like tying your shoes, who cares, just keep tying your shoes without thinking about it. That’s fine. That’s an automated behavior. You don’t need to break that down and journal about it.
And you know, you know, it’s not causing you any problems most likely, you know, driving a car, you don’t have to really think about that you just do it. So you don’t really need to break it all down. Oh, what am I thinking about backing up in this moment about, you know, parking in this spot, you know, or whatever, like, you don’t have to think about it, just do it.
But there are some thought patterns that are unhealthy, especially when it comes to food. Why is that? Why are there so many unhealthy thought patterns around food? My guess is that it’s just one of those things where we’ve used food.
For years and years and decades, we’ve used food as an emotional management tool, we’ve used food to make ourselves feel better, to soothe ourselves when we’re down to destress us when we feel stressed out to make us feel better when we’re not feeling good.
And you’ve just developed these habits that feel really natural, and really automatic, and, and really out of control. When in reality, you’ve just been practicing thought patterns and actions. And we got to start practicing those things. Okay?
It’s learned behavior that’s going on here. These are things that you have learned. Over time, you’ve taught yourself how to handle stress by using food. You’ve taught yourself that when you see donuts, you eat the doughnuts.
When you see the pizza, you eat the pizza, you haven’t taught yourself that you can have self-control, that when you see the pizza, you don’t have to eat it. That’s no big deal. But that is a thought pattern as well right there.
So let’s break down what we’re talking about here a little bit. So you have some context of what I’m talking about here. So when we talk about thought patterns, I want you to understand there are several layers to this.
The first layer is the circumstance layer or just the stuff that’s going around us in our lives. So everything that’s not you, is just a circumstance in your life. So if you’re you know, sitting at home and you’re in and your kids are running around and your husband is in the kitchen, you know yelling at you about something, that’s all circumstances, you don’t really have control over that stuff.
And maybe a little bit of control over the kids, probably not the husband, but there’s a little bit of control out there, but pretty much know right? Your boss, what your boss says or does or thinks about you what other people do or say or think about you the actions of other people, you have no control over any of that stuff.
All you have control over is your own thoughts, feelings and actions. You don’t have control over anything else in this world. Sorry, I hate to break it to you but that’s reality.
All the circumstances are a lot of our lives are just that they are just circumstances. It’s just the situation we happen to be in at the moment. So if somebody brings in doughnuts to the break room, that’s just a circumstance, it’s not good. It’s not bad. It’s not positive or negative. It’s not healthy or unhealthy. It’s just neutral.
It’s just a circumstance, it’s neutral. You’re making a split decision about what that means to you. In that moment, you’re making a really quick assessment of that situation.
And you’re assigning, whether that’s good or bad, you’re assigning, whether it’s positive or negative, whether it’s healthy or unhealthy. Doughnuts in the break room is a neutral circumstance, it’s not healthy or unhealthy. It’s just what it is, you don’t have to eat those things.
If you don’t eat them, then it’s healthy. If you choose to eat them that might be unhealthy if you do it all the time, the occasional donut is fine. Please understand, donuts, they’re amazing. I love donuts, but I eat them very rarely, I can’t remember the last time I ate a doughnut.
But every now and then eat a doughnut. It’s not a big deal. But we have to get into this place where it’s not an automatic behavior anymore. So anyway, circumstances are the stuff in our lives that we do not have control over and it’s all around us food is going to be around us all the time.
You can’t blame the fact that there’s food there on the reason why you ate it. That’s not why you’re eating the food, you’re eating the food because you have a thought and a feeling about it.
And that is the pattern that I’m talking about here. So the circumstance is how there’s doughnuts in the break room, then you have a thought about it. Oh, I bet those donuts would taste really good right now. I’ve been good all week. And this is my reward.
Or I worked out this morning, I ran five miles, I can do a donut. Like you have all these thoughts about what that donut means, oh, that’s gonna taste so amazing. And then those thoughts cause you to have a feeling. And that feeling is going to be like a craving; that’s a feeling, a craving is a feeling.
So you have this desire, that’s a feeling. You have this desire and this craving to now eat the doughnut. And you think that, that feeling that desire that wanting that craving is just because the doughnuts are there? And it’s no, it’s not just because they’re there, it’s because of your thoughts about the donuts.
I know lots of people who don’t eat donuts who see it on and they’re like, no big deal. Like I can look at donuts and be like, no big deal most of the time. But I understand that if I start to have those thoughts about how amazing that’s going to taste and how it’s gonna make me feel good because it’s a bunch of sugar and, and fried dough.
Oh my gosh, like sugar and fried dough together? Oh, yeah, that’s gonna taste good. That’s gonna light up my dopamine receptors, you know, that’s gonna make me feel amazing, you know, for a short period of time, then I’ll probably feel terrible.
So our thoughts are what’s causing those feelings that desire, the craving, the wanting, those are all feelings. Other feelings we have are our stress, anger, sadness, and anxiety. Those are all feelings as well, their emotions, feelings, and emotions, they’re interchangeable.
So we have circumstances in our life, and we have thoughts about those circumstances, those thoughts cause us to feel certain feelings or emotions. And it’s those emotions and feelings that drive our actions. So then when we feel the desire, we want to eat the donut so that we can enjoy that, you know, and, you know, take part in that feeling.
When we feel sad, we want to eat something that makes us feel better. So that sadness will drive actions, the anger that we have will drive us to take action, you know, maybe lash out at somebody.
Or, you know, like you’re in traffic and somebody cuts you off and you flip them off out the window or something like that. Like, that feeling of anger is what’s driving that action, not what that person did, because that what that person did is a neutral circumstance. They cut you off in traffic, but who cares, big deal.
Some people are like whatever. Other people get all upset and road rage happens. You know, road rage is caused by people’s feelings. Rage is a feeling. Okay? So circumstances are neutral, we have thoughts about them. That’s what creates the feelings that we have inside those feelings drive our actions, and the actions we take will create results in our lives.
Right, you don’t have results in your life if you don’t take action. So the behaviors we engage in will cause us to have some sort of a result the actions that we take on a regular basis will cause long-term results.
So if your goal is to lose weight, and you’ve cut out sugar, and every day you abstain from eating sugar, that action will get you the result of losing weight. For example, if your goal is to lose weight, and you’ve abstained from eating sugar, but you can’t stop yourself from eating sugar every single day, that’s going to cause a different result, you’re going to probably gain weight in that process.
I’m guessing that result is not in alignment with what you want for yourself. Okay, so that would be what I call a misaligned result, you know, so misaligned actions will produce misaligned results, and aligned actions will produce aligned results.
So you want to be taking actions that are in alignment with your long-term goals. Okay. So the results that we’re getting are not due to our circumstances, but they’re due to our thoughts feelings, and actions.
So whether you’re able to walk away from the pizza, or walk away from the doughnuts in the break, room or not, has to do with those thought, feeling action patterns that you’ve been practicing and practicing forever.
You know, one of the best ways to create a habit is to repeatedly do something over and over and over and over again. And we’ve repeatedly done the same things. We’ve had a feeling we get stressed out, and we go to the cabinet, and we look for something crunchy or salty or sugary to eat.
Nobody stress eats, like broccoli out of the fridge or leftover chicken or something like that. I’ve never heard anybody say that. They’re like, oh, I got to stop the snack and like, what are you snacking on? Is it like, hard-boiled eggs? Or chicken? They’re like, oh, no, I’m going for the salty stuff, crunchy stuff. I’m like, yeah, I know, I know what you’re doing.
But if you’re really hungry at that moment, you know, a piece of cheese would satisfy you or, you know, some leftovers from the night before.
Instead, no, we’re going for those things that light up our dopamine centers that make us feel good. And usually, it’s the stuff that’s unhealthy for us, right? So you’ve just developed these coping mechanisms. And the coping mechanisms are just thought patterns.
That’s all they are thoughts, feelings, and actions. So you have to understand that this process happens in a split second, once you’ve developed good habits, kind of like tying your shoe, right, you can tie your shoe very quickly, you don’t have to think about you just do it.
Same thing with food, we’ve developed these thoughts, feelings, and action patterns that happen so fast, that we just do them automatically without even knowing that this process is happening.
So one of the biggest keys to unraveling all this for you now that you understand the pattern is to start to become aware that you’re doing it, that’s all just start to become aware of what you are doing and the and the and the thoughts and feelings that you’re having that precede the actions that you’re taking.
So when you’re about to grab that donut, just pause, and hit the pause button for just a moment. And ask yourself what is the thought and feeling that’s driving me to reach for the doughnut right now.
That little step right there is going to go a long way in helping you to start to change your relationship with food to stop, start to help you change these thought-feeling-action patterns, and start to develop some other patterns, which is I see the donuts, I have a thought about the donuts. They look amazing.
But they taste great. You have a feeling like a desire that happens. And then you take the action of not eating the doughnut. That’s a different thought pattern altogether.
What if the thought was instead, I bet those donuts taste great? But you know what, that is not on my plan today. So I’m not doing the doughnuts, maybe another time.
That’s a thought you could have. What feeling might that thought cause? Oh, it might cause you to feel proud of yourself for sticking to your plan in that moment. And if you’re proud of yourself in that moment, and you and you’ve boosted your confidence a little bit.
That’s another feeling, by the way, pride, confidence, those are all emotions. That’s going to drive a different action, the action is going to be I’m sticking to my plan. I brought my lunch today. I don’t need to eat doughnuts, my body isn’t that stuff.
So you can see that your thought-feeling-action patterns can shift over time and go from being unhealthy, you know, thought patterns to healthy thought patterns. And when you start to break it down and hit that pause button, you can really start to go a long way in developing those new thought patterns and those new behaviors and start to repeat those behaviors over and over and over again and develop those as your new habits.
Okay, now this whole process begins As with that self-awareness of like, here’s what’s going on. The doughnuts are just a neutral thing in my life, they don’t have any control over me. I’m always in control, I have agency.
You know, I’m making decisions on my own here. I love it. I think Tony Robbins said, “The direction of your life is determined by tiny little moments of decision.” Tiny little moments of decision, thousands of them.
It’s not about one big decision, oh, I’m gonna change my diet. It’s not that it’s about those tiny little moments of decision that you make, over and over and over and over and over again, thousands of them.
That’s what makes big change in your life, that can change the whole direction of your life, you can go from being an unhealthy person with an unhealthy relationship with food to somebody who is healthy, fit, feels good about themselves has confidence and has completely changed their relationship with food.
All it requires is lots and lots and lots of repetition of these tiny little moments of decision, hitting that pause button, and becoming aware of the thoughts and feelings that are driving that action that you’re about to take.
Okay, that is your work for this week, is to hit that pause button and start to see what it is that’s driving this behavior. Why am I choosing this decision at this moment?
Really ask yourself that, sometimes it helps to stop and write a few things down. That’s not always the case. It’s not always practical to do that. But if you can stop and write some things down, that’s very helpful.
But if you can’t, you know, maybe just think about it, like what am I thinking and feeling right now in this moment? Is this a behavior that I’ve been practicing for a long time? And how can I make a better decision in this moment, okay, that is step number one.
And when you do that, you’re going to be on your way to becoming a different person. Because once you start practicing these things regularly, and you start changing those thought patterns on a regular basis, and you start doing things differently consistently over time, you can become an entirely different person, for the better, cool.
And as always, if you’re looking for help with any stuff, we can talk about coaching, just go to my website runningleancoaching.com, and click on Work With Me.
You’ll fill out a short little application we’ll get on a zoom, we’ll talk about what coaching might look like for you and we’ll just see if it’s a good fit. Cool. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
Today is a very special episode - number 200 - and I wanted to do something a little different to celebrate this milestone. I’ve had a look over the last 200 episodes and picked out the most …
Continue Reading about 200. Mindset Principles Runners Need to Know →
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 200 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners, and today, Mindset Principles Every Runner Needs To Know.
So today is a very special episode number 200. And I wanted to do something a little different to celebrate this milestone. So I’ve had a look over the last 200 episodes. And I picked out all the most important mindset principles that I feel runners need to know in order for you to crush your running goals and crush those weight loss goals, too.
I’ve featured each of these principles in different parts of podcast episodes over the last few years here. So you can easily go back through the archive and search for each of these principles, you’ll get a deep dive on each one of these so that you can do that anytime.
It’s super fun putting these podcast episodes together for you every week. And my hope is that they’ve helped you to improve your health, your fitness, and your mindset in some way. So here’s to episode number 200. Yay, and to the next 200 to come. And from the bottom of my heart, thank you for listening, I really do love you all.
But first, I know I talk a lot about losing weight and improving your health and your fitness. And I also know that all of this can be a little overwhelming. So if you’re looking for a good place to start, I created a free hour-long training that you can go through it’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.
In this training video, you’ll learn how to properly fuel your body and lose weight and improve your running. You’ll learn about the incredibly important role that strength plays and being a lean healthy runner, you’ll learn how to make changes that are actually sustainable, not just short-term, quick fixes, but actually sustainable, and so much more.
If you’re ready to get leaner and get stronger, if you’re ready to run faster and longer than ever before, if you’re ready to become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself, then you need to check out this free training now just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training.
Okay, so 200. Episode 200. This is kind of hard to believe for me because this has been almost four years of podcasts. If you do a podcast every week, which I have done now for almost four years, that equals about 200 episodes.
And looking through some of the stats, 1.6 million downloads, that’s crazy. And I should add that that is just continuing to grow every single day. So thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to the podcasts and making this something that you listen to every week and that you’re committed to listening to.
I know a lot of people reach out to me and they tell me how much this podcast has improved their health and their fitness. So they’ve taken a lot of the principles that I share here. You know, I talk about diet, I talk about strength training, and I talk about running and I talk about improving your health and your fitness from a variety of different angles.
They apply the principles, and they get some good results. I think that’s really cool. And people reach out to me, I probably get a few messages every week where people are like, hey, you’ve literally changed my life. I’m in much better shape, I lost all this weight, I feel great, my health is improved, my strength is improved, my running is improved, and my whole life is better, just because of the stuff you shared on your podcast.
That’s pretty cool. That is pretty cool. That is what I want to get out of this. I want to help you I want you to apply the principles I share here on the podcast and make improvements in your life.
And I’m a coach, I work with people every single day. And I help them from a one-on-one standpoint as well. And if you’re ever interested in that, just reach out to me I’m here for you can go to my website runningleancoaching.com, and click on work with me.
But I also want to make sure that I’m sharing a lot of information here on the podcast. And understandably there’s a lot of stuff I share on the podcast that is generalized information. It’s not specific to you as an individual and that’s what I do with my coaching program.
I work with you as an individual. And we put all this stuff together in a way, in a formula or recipe so to speak, that is tailored to you your goals, your needs, your lifestyle, and all that stuff. So what I do share here on the podcast has helped a lot, a lot of people, and I hope that you’re one of them.
Okay, so please reach out to me, and let me know if this is something that has helped you in any way, you can find me on social media, just search for Running Lean Podcast or, you know, Running Lean Coach on social media. And let me know how things have improved for you and how you’ve applied some of these principles. Okay.
One area that I think is very important, and this is why I decided to do this particular episode today is because of the mindset, the mindset is the thing that holds most people back, you know, I talk about running, I talk about strength training, I talk about nutrition, those things are all important.
And, you know, if you want to become a healthy human being, you got to be very consistent with those things. But really, the underlying force that’s driving all of your success that’s driving, all of the change in your life is your mindset.
With the right mindset, you can accomplish anything that you want, the wrong mindset, you’re doomed to failure. Okay, so we’re talking about mindset principles today, that runners need to know that you need to know that you need to apply if you want to make positive changes in your life, to your health, to your fitness, to your presence, to your mood, to the level of satisfaction and happiness that you have in your life. Okay.
So I’m gonna go through this list, I have 20 different mindset principles to share with you today. And I mentioned in the intro that each one of these is, I’ve done a deep dive on a separate podcast for each one of these principles. And in the show notes, if you open up the show notes for this episode, I will put links in there to each of the episodes that I took these from so that you can actually click on the link, and then you can go directly to that show if you want to take a deep dive into each one of these principles.
I’m gonna go through each of these relatively quickly, I’m gonna do a kind of an overview of each of these principles so you understand it. Some might dive into a little bit deeper, but for a deep dive, and each of these, click on the links, and you can go directly to that episode and listen to it.
And you know, usually talk for 20-30 minutes on each of these topics. So these are important. And every one of these principles is something that will help improve your life in some way.
And they’re not all required, I think if you adopted, you know, 80% of these, let’s use the 80/20 rule here, you know, 80% is going to be good, that’s going to be a good amount of principles to apply. And if 20% really don’t speak to you, that’s totally cool.
But start taking some of these principles and start applying them to your life today and see what happens. Okay. So, while I’m talking about these principles here, these mindset principles that I think are so vitally important, think about what it is you are trying to accomplish.
Do you want to lose weight, improve your body composition, get stronger, become a faster runner, and be able to run longer distances? Are you training for your first half marathon marathon ultra marathon? What are your goals from a health and fitness standpoint?
Or maybe this is like, related to your career right now? Maybe you’re starting a business, maybe you’re trying to get a promotion? Maybe you’re trying to improve your relationship? Think about what it is you want to accomplish.
What would success look like for you? And I guarantee you that you can apply these principles to those goals that you have for yourself, regardless of whether they’re related to running, or weight loss or not. Okay, so that’s my little frame that I want to put all this stuff into.
So the number one principle that I think and these are not in any particular order of importance or anything like that, but I just listed them in order of the way I did the podcast. So the earlier ones are going to be the earlier podcasts and the ones towards the end are going to be the later podcasts. That’s all.
Okay, number one is self-awareness. Self-awareness is a principle that you really need to start adopting and start thinking about and start embracing. If you want to make any kind of change in your life. One of the most important things you can do to start any process is to start developing self-awareness.
What does that mean? That means you’re aware of your own thoughts, feelings, and actions. You’re aware of your own behaviors and what is driving those behaviors. Typically, it’s your thoughts and feelings that are driving those behaviors.
Most people don’t do this, they’re not self-aware. Most people go through their lives, thinking that whatever they’re doing is other people’s fault. And that everything is happening to them. And that they don’t have any agency, and they don’t have any ability to change any of these things.
And I have to tell you, that you are in control, you have agency. And the number one step that you can do to start moving towards taking back that control of your life is self-awareness.
What is it you’re thinking about all the time? What’s on your mind? What’s worrying you? What emotions are you experiencing throughout the day? What behaviors are being driven by those emotions?
Start thinking about all this stuff, write it down, I encourage people to write what I call a “thought download”, which is just writing down everything that’s in your head and getting it onto the page.
When you do that, that creates a ton of self-awareness, right? That right there because you can actually look at what’s going on inside that brain of yours. This is a very, very important first step. So self-awareness.
And when you write stuff down, don’t filter any of that stuff, don’t censor it. Don’t try to make it make sense. Just write down what’s going on in your head. All those dark thoughts, write down everything that you’re thinking and feeling.
Do this every day, you’re gonna become a self-awareness ninja, you’re gonna be like, Oh, my God, I’m so in tune with how I’m feeling with what’s going on with me what, you know, what emotions I’m experiencing.
And this right here is huge, it’s gonna go a long way to helping you improve anything, right? You can’t improve something you don’t measure. So you have to build a measure, where are you with the self-awareness thing? Okay, that’s number one.
Number two, you have to learn to love the process. So a lot of people set out to change their diet, let’s say. And they stop eating sugar, and they start eating healthy whole foods. And it’s going pretty, okay, you know, maybe they’ve lost some weight.
Then there’s going to be a point in time, I promise you that this is going to happen, where you are going to experience a setback, or a failure or a stall in your weight loss. And you’re going to get frustrated.
And you’re going to say this isn’t happening fast enough. And you’re going to start to get start to feel like a failure, and you’re going to want to just quit. Because what you’re doing here is you’re basing the way you feel on the results that you’re getting, or not getting, or how fast it’s taking or not taking.
And we have to stop doing that we have to just dive into the process of change, and commit to the process of change and love the process of change. You want to change your diet, you gotta love that new diet, you want to get faster as a runner, you got to love speed work, you got to commit to learning to love that process.
And stop focusing on the results, the results will absolutely happen if you stick with it. And of course, there are changes that need to be made here and there along the way, which is fine. There’s no such thing as a straight path from point A to point B, it’s going to take a while to get there and it’s going to be circuitous.
It’s going to be backwards and forwards and you’re gonna get up and you’re gonna fall down and you’re gonna get up again. And this is the way that life works. There’s no such thing as success without a bunch of failures along the way.
So we have to learn to love the process of change. If you do that, the results will absolutely happen eventually. But if you’re pissed off about the process, if you’re pissed off about the food you have to eat or the fact that you have to run faster or whatever, you’re going to be miserable, and you won’t get the results because you’re going to end up just quit. So learn to love the process.
Number three, you have to avoid self-sabotage. Self-sabotage is one of those things that people do. I used to, and I see it every single day. And I and I can see it in you. It’s hard to see it in yourself, but I can see it in you.
And that’s one thing I love about coaching people is they start telling me a story about how you know they weren’t able to stick to their diet plan because of this and that and I’m just like, in my mind, I’m going self-sabotage, self-sabotage, self-sabotage. Like I could just see it happening.
And so again, this is like goes back to that self-awareness principle, where if you start to develop self-awareness, you can actually start to see when you begin to self-sabotage. Self-sabotage is a tricky thing. Things like procrastination, like when you’re delaying doing something because it’s hard. That can be self-sabotage.
When you don’t start something because you think you’re gonna fail at it. Oh, why would I even bother to try to lose weight because every time I do I fail? That’s self-sabotage.
I even see people do things where, let’s say they’ve, you know, they’re, they’re losing weight, and they get to some big number like, you know, they want to get under 200 pounds, I work with a lot of guys who want to, they just want to be under 200 pounds again, you know, and they get really close to that number. They’re like 202, 203, 201. And then all of a sudden, the weight starts to creep up a little bit to three to a five to six.
And they’re like, I don’t understand what’s happening. And we dive into it a little bit. And what happens is getting to that 199 number that feels really uncomfortable. And so subconsciously, your brain is going to self-sabotage because it doesn’t want you to be uncomfortable, your brain just wants you to be safe and comfortable and do the things you’ve been doing.
And to be at 190, and it feels super weird and uncomfortable because you haven’t been there since like high school, right? So you got to be aware of that though, you got to be aware that this is something that will probably happen.
I see it with most people I work with, they get to some round number 150, 175 to under whatever that number is for you. And they will begin to self-sabotage. To avoid that feeling of discomfort, the discomfort is just being in the one hundreds again, 199 or whatever it is.
You gotta avoid the self-sabotage, you got to be aware of what you’re doing. Be aware of your thoughts and feelings that are driving the behavior. Again, this is huge, huge, huge, okay, but watch the self-sabotage.
Number four, you have to make healthy habits stick, and healthy habits are how you accomplish all the good stuff you want for yourself, you want to get stronger, you need a healthy habit of hitting the gym a few times a week, every week, consistently.
You want to get faster, you need a healthy habit of running faster on a regular basis. You want to lose weight, you have to have a healthy habit of eating the right kinds of foods, even if you go out to dinner, even if you’re on vacation, even if it’s Thanksgiving, or Christmas or whatever.
Of course, there are some exceptions here and there. But for the most part, when you develop habits, it’s so much easier to stick to your plan because it’s just what you do when you have developed good habits.
Then going to the gym is a no-brainer because that’s just what you do. I go to the gym five days a week. It took me a while to get in the habit of doing that. But once I did, it’s like I look forward to it. Now, even leg day, I used to hate leg day.
I even talked about this recently on a podcast, I was like, oh, I hate leg day. But now I love it, it’s actually my favorite day because I can feel my legs getting stronger. And I can see the results. And I’m like, Yeah, bring it on, let’s lift some heavy weights today.
So you have to make healthy habits stick. And you have to learn how to do that. And you know, that requires getting your reps in, it requires a lot of discomfort, you got to get uncomfortable doing these things. Because for a while it’s going to feel uncomfortable, it’s not going to feel like a habit, it’s going to feel like work.
You know, getting up early to run four days a week or whatever is hard. You know, especially if you got kids, you’re trying to get this in before you go to work. That’s hard to do, it’s gonna be really uncomfortable. But once you do it for a while, it’s going to be no big deal. It’s just who you are and what you do.
So many people I work with love getting up at like four o’clock in the morning and they work out. I don’t get up that early, just FYI, but they love it. And I’m like good for you. Because they can get their workout in and then the kids get up, they can have time with their kids or husband before they go to work or wife or whatever. And then they feel much better about their day and it has become a habit.
Do you think getting up at four o’clock in the morning is easy? No, it is not, especially when you first start out doing that. But over time, it gets easier. Not suggesting you get up at four o’clock in the morning. But you have to learn how to make everything that you do that you want to do consistently has to become a habit.
Speaking of which, one of the best ways to develop a habit is what I’m going to call making decisions ahead of time. This is mindset. Principle number five. When you make decisions ahead of time, you’re using that thinking part of your brain, your pre-frontal cortex, when you make decisions in the moment you’re using your primitive brain, your amygdala, that’s like your fight or flight center.
That’s responsible for making those questionable decisions because you’re using that primitive part of your brain that just wants to feel good and wants to avoid pain.
So you’re seeking pleasure avoiding pain, that’s your amygdala is responsible for those kinds of decisions. Like there’s doughnuts, Heck, yeah. Like that’s a decision made with your amygdala.
When you decide ahead of time when you when you planned your lunch the day before. And you know you’re gonna have you know, chicken and broccoli and that’s what you’re eating for lunch and you brought it with you and you’ve made that decision ahead of time you planned it. You wrote it down. You prepped for it, you brought that you’re going to eat the chicken, the broccoli that you promised you.
And that’s how you’re going to make these healthy habits stick is going to be writing things down making decisions in advance 24 hours in advance has to be and I tell people this all the time you do this, I promise you, you’re gonna stick to that plan. Much, much easier to stick to the plan when you’ve decided in advance, okay?
Number six, the all-or-nothing mentality just has to go. This is not about all or nothing. One big problem people have when they set out to change their diet is they they have this thing thinking of like, they’re never going to be able to eat, you know, their favorite food again, like they’re never gonna have a piece of pizza in their life, or they’re never gonna be able to eat a french fry.
Or they’re never gonna be able to eat Ben and Jerry’s or chocolate or whatever it is, whatever your thing is. And I just have to tell you that I don’t think that’s, I don’t think that’s rooted in reality.
First of all, because you’re going to do that, you’re going to eat the french fries, you’re going to eat the burger, you’re going to eat the pizza. So this all-or-nothing mentality has to go out the window. And instead, I like to employ the, what I call the 90/10 principle when it comes to food because I think the 80/20 is a little too lenient.
If you’re trying to lose weight, and you need to stick to a healthy food plan, then I think 80/20 is a little too loosey-goosey there. Okay, so let’s go with about 90/10. 90/10 equals about one meal a week.
One meal a week, do what you want, eat some pizza, have some ice cream, whatever, it’s fine. It helps to kind of release some of that pressure. It’s like a release valve, you get this one meal where you can just eat some pizza and have a little bit ice cream. Okay, good. Now get back on track the next meal.
Don’t ever have two bad meals in a row. Don’t ever miss two workouts in a row. But this all-or-nothing mentality has to go. It’s like, oh, I’m either eating all healthy foods every day for the rest of my life. Or I’m not.
Another area a lot of people struggle with is in drinking alcohol. And they think that they either have to drink all the time or never drink. And there’s an in-between there. There are lots of people who drink very moderately, maybe once a week, maybe once a month, maybe not even that often, maybe a couple times a year. Why not? Why can’t that be a reality for you? It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Okay, so let’s just throw that one out the window.
Number seven. This is gonna sound contrarian, but it is not weight loss is not the goal. If you’re overweight, and you’re like, okay, I need to lose 30 pounds. Your goal, you might be thinking your goal is to lose weight. That’s not really what the goal is.
The goal is for you to become as healthy as possible. The goal is for you to get to this place where your body is operating the way it’s supposed to operate, that your body is functioning the way it’s supposed to function as a human being.
I always talk about fat-burning. Fat burning, we have to turn fat burning back on because this is our natural state as human beings we burn fat. When we’re burning fat, we feel better, we lose the weight, running improves, our mood improves our energy levels throughout the day improves our ability to concentrate and think clearly improves.
We need to get back to that natural state. And also when you get healthy, and your body is burning fat and you’re operating on all cylinders, your hormones are all regulated, your blood sugar’s regulated, and you just feel better you’re in, you’re in the best shape of your life, you’re feeling amazing.
And of course, we want to add in strength training and running and other things too. But the goal is not the weight loss, the weight loss is a side effect of becoming the healthiest version of yourself. So that is really the goal.
So that’s what I want you to focus on, don’t focus on “I have to lose 30 pounds” because when we do that, we’re like, okay, I just got to get this weight off as fast as possible. I’m going to go on the cabbage soup diet, which I don’t even know if that’s a thing, but it sounds terrible.
I’m going to just lose the weight as fast as I can. This is not sustainable. Can you eat cabbage soup the rest of your life? No, and nobody would want to be around you if you did. Anyway, think about that for a minute.
Okay, now put that image in your mind. So the goal is not to lose weight and lose it as fast as possible goal is to become the healthiest version of yourself and be able to sustain that long term.
So stop focusing on weight loss. I know sounds contrarian, right? Focus on becoming the healthiest version of yourself, the weight loss will happen as a beautiful little side effect.
Number eight, you have to break the habit of being you. What do I mean by that? That means that you have a certain way that you see the world we all do. We all have what is called a model of the world. So we all experience reality differently. It’s pretty, pretty trippy.
You know, the way that I see things is based on my past, my family of origin, one where I was brought up, my religious beliefs or non-religious beliefs, my goals, my successes, the people, I spend time with, the things I watched, the things I listened to, the books I read all that stuff and, and you have a whole different set of criteria that you are filtering the world through.
So your model of the world is going to look different from my model of the world. And I love this example of two people standing at the ocean. So you got two people standing at the ocean. One is looking out over the ocean and thinking, oh my god, this is the most beautiful, serene place, I love the ocean so much.
That’s me, by the way, I love the ocean. I need to live by the ocean, I just need to do that for the rest of my life. I just need to be by the ocean, and I’d be so much happier. Anyway, I’m in the Midwest, it’s cold, it gets cold in the wintertime. I don’t like that.
So two people standing by the ocean one thinks it’s beautiful, serene, loves it, and the other person is deathly afraid of the ocean. Why is that? Why do they have such different thoughts and experiences about the ocean?
Why do they see it as being one sees it as being blissful, and peaceful, and beautiful? And the other sees it as being dangerous? And it brings up all kinds of fear.
Well, maybe the one person used to be a surfer. And they surfed every day, and they loved it. And they just loved being in the water. And they love floating in the ocean and have lived by the ocean their whole life. And it’s just like a very calm, serene place to be, it’s their happy place. Again, that’s kind of me.
The other person maybe had a near-death experience as a kid, they like almost drowned in the ocean and were told never to go back in and that the ocean is dangerous and to stay away from it.
And just that simple, little act, that little bit of trauma maybe and the reinforcement from parental figures, authority figures, whatever, could really cause them to have completely different ways of looking at this thing that everybody would just agree is just water, you know. So that’s just an example.
But think about this, everybody in our lives has a different way of filtering the world. And I bump into this all the time with my girlfriend because we have different ways of seeing things.
I’m like, Oh, my God, this show we’re watching is so amazing, or this movie or this piece of artwork or whatever. And she’s like, no I don’t get it. I don’t like it. And I’m like how? You’re crazy. This is the best movie I’ve ever seen. Like, it’s just we just see things differently. I’m usually right though, just by the way.
Okay, so we got to break the habit of like being ourselves, we got to break the habit of doing the same things all the time, using the same filter to see everything, we got to open ourselves up to seeing things a little bit differently, we got to open ourselves up to doing things differently.
If you get up and do the same things every single day, and you do them the same way, you’re never going to break out of that you’re never going to expand past your own comfort zone, like we got to get out of the comfort zone.
That means doing things differently. That means pushing yourself everything you want, but don’t already have lies outside your comfort zone. So you got to break the habit of being you and you got to start to become someone else.
And I don’t mean like you got to put on a wig and like glasses and a fake mustache or something like that. But you have to start changing, we should always be changing and evolving and growing and becoming more.
And so that means that you got to break the habit of just doing things the same way every single day, start doing something different start, you know, pushing past your horizons, start changing your habits and start doing things differently and start becoming that different person.
I always tell people that I love it when they set a big goal like running their first marathon because they can’t run a marathon today, maybe their longest run is like five miles, and they want to be able to run a marathon. It’s going to require a lot of work, you know, four months or so of training, and they’re going to have to become a different person that process and just doing the training and showing up at the starting line of that event.
They’ll be a different person than they are today. What is that for you? What is that going to look like for you? What can you be in six months from now? Who do you want to be you got to be somebody different. And you need to work towards that. Okay, it’s got to break the habit of being you.
Number nine, you have to overcome your limiting beliefs. This kind of ties into what I was just talking about. But we all have limiting beliefs about ourselves. Limiting beliefs just means that there are things that limit our potential.
So there are things that we believe about ourselves that are actually holding us back. So it’s things like I can never lose weight because I’ve never been able to do it in the past. Um, I don’t have any willpower. I’m just a sugar junkie, you know, I have a sweet tooth so there’s nothing I can do about it.
Those are all limiting beliefs because they’re limiting your potential, or I could never run a marathon, or I can never qualify for Boston, I’ve heard people telling me this.
I had a woman I worked with a long time ago. And she told me that she wasn’t a real runner. She never felt like a real runner. And this was really holding her back. And I asked her about her running and she said that she’s been running every day 5k at least every day for like, five years. But she’s been a streaker, she’s had this long-running streak. And I’m like, what the what? Like you are absolutely.
What a limiting belief that is, though, that I’m not a real runner. Because I can’t run fast like some people are, I can’t qualify for Boston, stop doing that to yourself, stop having these limiting beliefs.
Take a look at what things you believe about yourself. And see where you can make some changes there and let go of some of that stuff. Just drop it like a rock, okay?
Number ten, you have to choose your struggle, you can choose the struggle of being unhealthy, being overweight, and not feeling good about yourself. Because that is a struggle, you can go through your life struggling with all of that, you can go through your life struggling with not living up to your potential, you can go through your life struggling with how you feel about yourself.
There’s another struggle you can choose though, that is the struggle of getting up early and going to the gym. That’s a struggle. That’s hard to do, of sticking to your food plan when everybody else around you is eating pizza or doughnuts in the break room.
And it’s going to be a struggle to not eat that stuff in that moment because you chose chicken and broccoli for lunch. That’s a struggle. Choose that struggle, though, because that one is actually going to improve your life.
Choose the struggle of going to the gym and lifting heavy weights that hurt, it hurts to lift heavy weights, it’s hard. I was at the gym this morning. And I was listening to a podcast and I was lifting weights and doing a bunch of reps. And I’m listening to my podcast, with the noise-cancelling headphones on, so I can’t really hear other people too much. And I can’t hear myself either.
So if I’m making noises, if I’m talking, I can’t really hear myself too well, I have to take out my ear pods, whatever you call those things if I want to talk to somebody, but anyway, I noticed today that I was doing all these reps, and I was grunting and like making noises.
And I kind of caught myself and I was like I think I’m being a little too loud here. But it was kind of funny because it was a struggle. It was hard. And I sort of caught myself. And you know, I had my eyes closed and I was grimacing on my face. And I was like, ah, you know, and making noises.
And people around me probably heard it because it’s pretty loud. But whatever. I mean, that’s what you do when you’re at the gym. But that’s a struggle going to the gym every day, lifting those heavy weights, it’s a struggle. But what do you get in return, you get a better body composition, you get more energy, you feel better, your metabolism improves, your ability to burn, fat improves, your running improves, you get faster, you get stronger, you can run longer distances, you look better naked, all that stuff because you struggled at the gym.
Instead of struggling by just sitting on the couch feeling sorry for yourself, don’t do that, choose your struggle every single day.
That leads me to number eleven, which is battling the resistance because this is going to happen. As soon as you start to do something different, the resistance is going to rear its ugly head, it’s going to come up and it’s going to be there and you’re going to be like, I really want to do this.
But that’s the resistance, oh, I really want to lose weight. But you know, changing my diet is hard. Or I really want to get stronger, but going to the gym, you know, I don’t want to pay for a gym membership or just too many people that gym, well, this is all resistance. It’s just excuses.
It’s BS, it’s your mind saying I don’t want to do anything that’s uncomfortable. Remember, your brain has one job, keep you safe, avoid pain, and seek pleasure. That’s it. It wants the familiar and it will, it will avoid the unfamiliar and seek the familiar every single time.
And all this stuff is called the resistance and Steven Pressfield talks about that in his book, The War of Art, I would definitely check it out if you guys are interested. It’s a it’s a great book. It’s about breaking through blocks, and you know, for creative people, but really, it applies to everybody.
And he really does a good job of talking about the resistance. So you have to go to battle with the resistance every day. Because it’s going to show up you’re going to be like I don’t feel like running today because blah blah, blah. That’s the resistance coming up.
You know, I talk to people all the time who want to work with me, and we have a conversation we get on Zoom we have a conversation. And I tell them all the reasons you know, or all the things that they can accomplish and they’re telling me all the reasons why maybe they can’t do it or it’s not the right time. That’s the resistance. It’s the right time. There’s no right time, right?
If you want to start and you want to change, today’s the day to do it, now is the right time. But that resistance comes up here like, well, maybe I’ll wait till after the holidays, like what you’re gonna wait like three months before you change something?
No, start today, you got to go to battle against the resistance. Every single day, every time that shows up, you got to beat that foe, okay?
Number twelve, is you got to get into the gain and out of the gap. So this is the gap versus the gain mentality, right? When we talk about the gap, that is the gap between where you are today.
And where you want to be, there’s a gap there, I want to lose 40 pounds, I want to be healthier, I want to change my eating habits. So there’s a gap between where you are today, because you’re not there.
I want to run a 9-minute mile instead of a 10-minute mile. There’s a gap there. When you focus on the gap, you’re constantly focused on where you are not. You’re constantly focused on the fact that you are not where you want to be. And I see this all the time with people who are trying to lose weight.
We’re working together for a period of time and they’re like, but I’m still not at x weight. I’m still not there. I’m not there. I’m not there. I’m not there. I’m like you got to stop focusing on that. Let’s look back and look at your progress instead.
What have you gained? You know, how is your mindset different? How are your energy levels? How are you sleeping? How are your clothes fitting? How are your measurements, your inches?
How many inches have you lost? Yeah, the scale might be going a little bit slow or whatever, who cares? Let’s focus on all the gains you’ve made. You’ve changed your relationship with food, you no longer crave the junk food like you used to. That’s a magical place to be.
Focus on the gain, stop focusing on the gap. Okay, focus on where you have made gains, focus on the progress you’ve made and stop focusing on where you are not. That’s number twelve.
Number thirteen is you got to get yourself immersed into this world, whatever that looks like for you. If you want to change, you want to make some big changes in your life, you have to immerse yourself in the world.
When I was training for Ironman, this was 10 years ago now. I immersed myself in the world of long-distance triathlon. And I read books and I listened to podcasts and I watched videos I was on YouTube.
I was on blogs, I was reading all kinds of articles, I was listening to podcasts and listening to audiobooks and talking to other people and spending time with other people who are into triathlon and training with people who are doing triathlon I immersed myself in this world of triathlon.
I had a training partner, we talked about this stuff all the time. And I encourage people to do the same thing. And I kind of created my coaching program that follows this principle where we immerse you in this world of other people who are all doing the same things.
So there are group coaching calls, where we all spend time talking about what’s working, what isn’t, what improvements have we made, you get to hear from other people, you get immersed in this world of, of people who are trying to lose weight and get stronger and run faster, run longer, they’re feeling good about themselves, it’s such a positive environment to be in, then you get the one on one coaching with me.
So you get this other layer of support and guidance, and encouragement. And then I have a bunch of training materials online, I’ve got this private podcast feed that you can listen to that’s not this podcast you’re listening to. This is like all the stuff I teach on the group coaching calls.
And so you have like literally hundreds of hours of trainings that you can be listening to. So you can really immerse yourself in this world of eating right and losing weight and doing it the right way and getting stronger and improving.
You’re running and all this stuff, right? So immerse yourself in whatever that looks like for you just get into it, do it all, okay?
Number fourteen, you have to live in integrity with yourself. That means that you do what you say you’re going to do. That means if you get up in the morning, and you have a run scheduled for today that you’re going to you’re going to do that run.
That if you are trying to eat healthy and you’ve got a healthy food plan you’re trying to stick to that means when you go out of town for that work trip you stick to that healthy food plan.
Because what happens is the opposite for most people, most people do the opposite. They are not in integrity with themselves. They think you know what I mean? I’m out of town, nobody’s gonna know that I’m not sticking to my food plan. So I’m just gonna eat whatever.
And then when they do that they they told themselves before they went on this trip that they were going to eat healthy. But then when they got there, they’re like, whatever, I’m just gonna eat the pizza like everybody else is eating in the Fettuccine Alfredo or whatever.
What happens in that moment is that they kind of break down that trust in themselves, they break down the integrity, they’re trying to build with themselves, and they no longer have the confidence to be able to stick with it, because they keep breaking these promises they made to themselves.
Being in integrity with yourself means you keep the promises that you make to yourself means you honor the commitments that you make to yourself and to others, but really to yourself.
It’s easier to keep commitments to other people because you got somebody there sort of holding you accountable. That’s another reason why I love coaching people because, you know, they got to show up and tell me what they did or didn’t do. And they’re way more likely to stick to a plan when they gotta report to me on a regular basis, tell you what.
Living in integrity means that you are in integrity with yourself, because it’s easy to just do whatever when nobody’s watching, right? Being integrity means doing the right thing, even when no one’s around to watch to see what you did.
So you got to build this trust in yourself, you got to build this integrity with yourself. That means making a plan and sticking to the plan, even when you don’t feel like it. When you do this on a regular basis, I promise you, you’re going to build so much trust in yourself and so much self-confidence that sticking to the plan is going to be no big deal.
Alright, number fifteen, happiness is overrated. Let’s stop chasing happiness, okay? Because here’s what happens when you’re chasing happiness. You’re going after feeling good. So what do we do when we’re chasing happiness, we eat to feel better, we drink alcohol to feel better, we do drugs to feel better, we shop to feel better.
We do all kinds of unhealthy behaviors because we just want to feel good, we just want to be happy. Here’s a fact, life is not supposed to be happy all the time. It just isn’t. That’s just not the way life is designed.
It’s like 50/50, like for half the time you feel pretty good half the time not so much. So stop trying to avoid half of your life, stop trying to avoid the 50% of life that’s not perfect, or whatever that isn’t like, quote unquote happy according to the movies or to Hollywood or the television shows or whatever.
Just accept the fact that you’re going to be unhappy sometimes. And it’s okay, it doesn’t mean anything’s wrong, it means you’re working, you’re operating the way you’re supposed to, as a human being.
So stop chasing happiness, it leads to all kinds of addiction, and all kinds of bad behaviors. Instead, just accept the fact that life is 50/50 and then move on from there. Okay.
Number sixteen, the other side of endurance. So when we talk about endurance we’re talking about most people think of, you know, running an ultra marathon, you know, oh, endurance, yeah, you got to be able to run for 24 hours straight and be able to run 100 miles or whatever.
Yeah, that is endurance, you know, running a marathon requires endurance, you got to build endurance. And I think building endurance is one of the best things you can do for yourself from a cardiovascular standpoint, and increasing your endurance.
And that could just mean like running a 5k, it could be running five miles a few times a week, and that’s perfectly fine. That’s how you build endurance. And then you could always build upon that if you want to if you want to improve that.
But there’s another side of endurance. And that’s the endurance of sticking with the plan. And we’ve talked a lot about sticking with the plan today. So far, it’s it’s a big mindset principle, a lot of stuff I do with the people I work with, is helping them stick with the plan.
Because it’s one thing to have a plan, and you probably know what to do, it’s a whole other thing to stick with the plan, right? So the other side of endurance is being able to have the endurance to stick with a plan, even when it’s hard. And that means that you endure, you know, days and weeks and months and years of being a healthy eater of somebody that exercises regularly.
Endurance isn’t just about running endurance is about you know, creating good habits and then seeing them out for the long haul, spell sustainability. Okay, so practice that kind of endurance. It’s great that you’re out there running long miles. apply that same principle, though, that you push through like you push through a long run, apply that same principle to sticking with your diet for example, okay.
Number seventeen, you have to overcome your fear of success. So many people tell me that they fear failure when they start out with something like this like I’m I really want to change my diet and lose weight but I’m so afraid I’m gonna fail. And and I get that because maybe they failed a lot in the past.
But the other thing that people fear is success, they fear being successful, they fear losing the weight because then they say, well, okay, I was able to lose some weight. But what if I can’t maintain it? What if I can’t keep it off, because I’ve tried this in the past, and it hasn’t worked?
I’ve tried this in the past, and I’ve been able to lose weight, but then it came back again, you know, or whatever. Fear of success is a real thing. And people are really afraid of who they are going to become when they accomplish X, Y, Z, whatever that is, you know, qualify for Boston, run your first marathon lose a bunch of weight. Because it’s different, and it’s uncomfortable, and you’re becoming a different person in that process. And that can be very scary.
You know, if I told you like, okay, you’re going to work with me, and in six months, you’re going to be a different person, you’re going to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, dude, I don’t know about that. Right?
And I’m like, no, you’re gonna be able to lose the weight, you’re gonna run faster, we’re gonna get you stronger, your body composition is gonna improve, you’re gonna stand in front of a mirror naked and be like, alright, I like what I see here.
That’s scary for people, because they’re like, oh, my gosh, I don’t know what that’s like, for me, I’ve never been there before. That’s scary, okay, you got to get over that. Embrace the suck of the process and just get over the fact that it’s going to be uncomfortable. And stop using the fear of success as an excuse to not start something, it’s totally worth it, by the way.
Number eighteen, the key to success is consistent aligned action, there’s nothing more to it than taking consistent aligned action. When you do that, you will make progress. When you make progress, you will feel more motivated to continue taking consistent aligned action.
The only way you’re gonna get results is through your actions, not through your thoughts, not through how you feel. The only way you get results is by taking action. And the action has to be aligned with your goals.
So think about that long-term goal that you have to lose 40 pounds, you need to take actions that are aligned with that goal. So eating cake for breakfast and dinner is going to be something that is misaligned, that is misaligned with that goal of losing weight.
And when you take misaligned action, you’re going to get misaligned results you’ll gain weight instead. If you eat cake for breakfast and dinner, instead you need to take aligned action. Focus on protein, and keep the carbs in check.
Don’t eat junk food, don’t eat processed foods, and stay away from sugar, that’s aligned action that’ll get you to your goals. And the consistent part is pretty self-explanatory. But you can’t just do it once, you have to continually do this.
So consistent aligned action, what are those actions that are in alignment with your goal, make a list, what are the things you’re going to do that are going to get you to that goal, it’s just steps, you know, it’s just steps on a ladder.
Let’s say you want to get to the top of the ladder, just take one step at a time, then you’ll eventually get there. But you have to do it consistently, you can’t just do it a few times, it has to be something you do on a regular basis.
Number nineteen, increasing your emotional tolerance, you have to be able to tolerate having emotions that talked about this on a recent podcast. So having emotional tolerance means that there’s going to be times when you let’s say, want to eat pizza when everybody else is eating pizza, but you’re not gonna eat the pizza.
And you’re gonna feel a little stressed out about that, and you’re gonna feel like a fear of missing out FOMO you know, you’re gonna feel desire for that pizza, because it’s sitting right there. And all these emotions that you’re experiencing can feel very intense, they can feel very strong.
And you think the only answer is just to eat the pizza to make those feelings go away. So you’ve got to get rid of the feelings, like I don’t want to tolerate these emotions anymore. So I gotta get rid of that. So I’m just getting the pizza and it does work, those emotions will go away.
But what if you increased your ability to tolerate experiencing those emotions? What if you were able to just have those emotions, you were able to feel desire, and you’re able to feel, you know, FOMO and you’re able to feel stress or whatever it is, and you just, were okay with that?
I mean, it doesn’t feel good. It’s not supposed to. But what if you were just okay with that? It’s a game-changer. When you increase your emotional tolerance, you’re able to stick with the plan.
You’re able to get through those moments where you would normally stress eat, or eat because you’re, you know, sad or angry or whatever. Your ability to tolerate your own emotions is just part of being a human being.
And it’s something you have to work on. It has to be something you work on every day you practice it again. It’s easier. I do this all the time. There are lots of times where I’m sitting there and I’m thinking, I really want to eat that. Still. It’s been years since I’ve had certain foods and I’m like, I still want that.
And I just don’t do it. And I feel a little bad, I feel a little uncomfortable. And it’s okay, I’m just, I’ve, I’ve developed a high tolerance for experiencing these emotions, okay. Fear is a big one. People are afraid to feel fear. What if you just felt the fear and you just did the thing anyway? It’s crazy what you can accomplish.
Okay, number twenty, and the last one I want to share with you today is the n equals one principle. And that means that you are an experiment of one. Everything that I’ve talked about here, on the podcast for the last four years, everything that you hear from other quote, unquote, like experts out there in the field of health and nutrition, and running and strength training, or whatever, you can listen to all the experts out there.
But it all boils down to you being an experiment of one, that what other people do the way that they do, it is not necessarily going to work for you. And that’s why I do coaching instead of handing over a document and telling you what to do.
Because there isn’t a document or a book, or a podcast, or an article that you can read that is going to give you the exact formula that is going to work for you. There is no such thing. We’re all different.
We all have our own, you know, cultures and our own lifestyles and our own food preferences and the ways we like to exercise our own goals, our own families like we have so many things that are unique to us that no two people are going to do any of this stuff the same way.
So you got to figure it out. I know you probably don’t want to hear that. But it’s true. You have to figure out what works for you and what doesn’t, you’re always an experiment. But this is actually good news. Because it means that you can try some things that may work and may not.
And if they don’t, then try something else. Don’t give up, keep going. But it’s always going to be n equals one. That means that the number of people in the experiment is one. And that is you. You are the experiment. Okay.
All right. Those are my 20 mindset principles that runners need to know and I think normal people need to know as well. Took me a little longer to go through these today than I thought it would, but that’s cool.
I just want you to know how appreciative I am of you listening to these episodes, I hope you get something out of these.
If you do, reach out and tell me how this has impacted you. I’d love to hear from you. And as always, I love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
