Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
It’s the start of a new year and lots of people are making New Year’s resolutions. I’ve seen all kinds of posts on social media over the last few days from people saying they are going to run every …
Continue Reading about 262. Forget the New Year’s Resolutions and Do This Instead →
When it comes to accomplishing big goals, you have to expect things to get hard. For example, losing weight takes time, and for some it can be a long and challenging road to get there. Yes, …
Everyone wants to know how to lose weight, how to get healthier, how to run faster, and how to get there as quickly as possible. We have become a society of instant gratification, from instantly …
Continue Reading about 255. The Shortcut to Health & Fitness Success →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, sports nutritionist, Master life coach and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you, properly fuel your body and your mind so you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to Episode 255 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, She Shortcut to Health and Fitness Success. Everyone wants to know how to lose weight, how to get healthier, how to run faster and how to get there as quickly as possible. We’ve become a society of instant gratification from being able to instantly download any music or any movie that’s ever been made to having whatever we want delivered right to our door, oftentimes, the very same day. Nowadays, people have no patience for anything, especially when it comes to something like losing weight, which can take a long time for a lot of people, it’s not uncommon for it to take six months or more to lose 20 or 30 pounds.
This is all good and fine, but isn’t there anything we can do to get there faster? So in this episode of the podcast, I’m gonna let you in on a little secret, the shortcut to health and fitness success, so that you can get to your goals maybe just a little bit faster.
But first, if you’re considering coaching, if this is something that you’ve been thinking about, if it’s something that you want for yourself, right now is the time to take action. For most of us, this is the off season. We’ve done our fall races. We’re starting to get into the holidays, and then we’re going to pick up our training again in January. So right now is the best time to get started, because if you want to lose some weight, if you want to change your diet, if you want to start, you know, working on getting stronger, or getting yourself ready to start your training in January, then you’re going to want a few weeks, a month or so, to get yourself ready for all of that. This is a very, very good time to change your diet, because you don’t want to start changing your diet in the middle of your training cycle, or, you know, right before your race. You can do that. And I work with a lot of people who do that very successfully. They, you know, they might be halfway through their marathon training, and they, we work on changing their diet, getting the fat adapted, getting off the sugar and stuff like that. And it can work fine for a lot of people. But honestly, if I had to tell you what’s the best time to start, it would be in the off season, and that would be right now, okay, this means that you’re going to make some changes to your diet. You’re going to get used to those changes. You’re going to start losing weight, you’re going to start feeling better come January, you’re going to be stronger, you’re going to feel lighter, and you’re going to be well on your way to getting fat, adapted and then feeling your best so that when you do start your training, you’re giving yourself every opportunity you you need in order to perform at your best.
Okay, so just understand that you know having a coach getting you through the holidays is also something to consider, because listen, the average American gains like eight pounds from Thanksgiving until January 1. Average, that means there’s a lot of people that gain a lot more than that. Okay, you don’t want to be one of those average people. Okay, so instead of, you know, showing up on January one, regretting all the decisions you made over the last six weeks or so, wouldn’t it be awesome to show up on January one feeling like you’ve been making progress all this time. So having a coach to help you get through the holidays is an amazing thing to have. You got somebody guiding you, supporting you, helping you along the way, keeping you on track so that you don’t become one of those quote, unquote, average Americans who gains about eight pounds during the holidays. Okay, so if you’re interested in coaching, like I said, Now is the perfect time to get started. Just go to my website. That’s your first step. Go to runningleancoaching.com. Click on work with me. You’ll fill out a little application, and you and I will get on a zoom call. I’ll tell you all about coaching, how it works. We’ll talk about your goals. We got to make sure that you know this is a good fit for you, and if it is awesome, we can get started right away. Okay, runningleancoaching.com. Click on work with me, and I will show you exactly how to become the most badass version of yourself, yet. Cool.
Okay, so today. I want to talk about the shortcut to your health and fitness success. And the reason I’m talking about this is because I was having a conversation with one of my running besties, so one of my running friends, and she mentioned that she would really, really love to be able to do one pull up. Okay, this is a goal that I’ve worked on with a lot of my clients. Actually, there’s a lot of, especially women out there who, they just want to be able to do, like a pull up or a straight leg push up, you know, like a normal push up. However you want to say that.
And it’s hard to do because it requires a lot of strength, and a lot of women just have never really had that kind of strength. Now there’s a lot of women that do have that kind of strength, which is amazing, but there’s some women that have not really developed that kind of strength, and to do a pull up requires a lot of upper body strength. So I started having this conversation with her, and she was like, This is my new goal. I really just want to be able to do one pull up. And I said, okay, I’ve worked with people on this before, so let’s talk about what you’re doing. And she’s doing a lot of the right things.
So one of the things I mentioned is probably the best thing you can be doing for this particular goal, to do a pull up, is work on lat pull downs. So that’s where you’re sitting at a machine where you’re sitting down, you kind of lock your knees in, and you grab a bar that’s straight above your head, and you pull that bar down to your chest. And the nice thing about this particular exercise is that you can adjust the weight so that you can actually pull it down. So you’re doing the exact same movement as a pull up, but you’re able to lower the weight so you’re not pulling your entire body weight. So let’s say you weigh 130 pounds. You know, you may only be able to pull down 60 pounds or something like that.
So if you’re just getting started with this, that is a really, really good place to start, because as you get stronger, you can begin to increase the weight that you’re pulling down. And you could go to 70 pounds, 80 pounds, 90 pounds, and that’s a really great progression in order to be able to pull up your own body weight. So the lat pull downs are a really great place to start.
Another thing you can do is, you can wrap a resistance band around the pull up bar, and then you step into that resistance band so that when you pull yourself up, it is taking some of that weight off of you. So you’re actually it’s going to pull you up, and the stronger the resistance band, the more weight that it’s actually pulling up. And I did this quite a bit when I was trying to learn how to do pull ups, when I was, you know, just building muscle and trying to get stronger, and had a hard time doing pull ups myself. I would, I was working out at this gym, and we would do these group classes, and we’d have to do pull ups, and I couldn’t do a pull up, you know, by myself. So I had to use the bands. So I step into the band, you know, you wrap the band around the bar, and then you step into it, and then it assists you up. Okay?
And they also have a machine that you can use that mimics the pull up, where you kneel on this machine and it and then you can adjust the weight. So anything like that is going to help you to get stronger. Again, the idea is that we’re working on this principle of progressive overload, where you’re going to overload your muscle groups, and as you overload those muscle groups, you’re going to have a positive adaptation, a positive response, and you’ll get stronger. And then the next time you do it, you should be able to do just a little bit more weight. And so that’s another thing that you can do if you’re interested in being able to do a pull up.
Another thing that she and I talked about was doing dead hangs. So that’s where you just hold on to the bar and let yourself hang. Now, this is a hard one for a lot of people, because they don’t have the grip strength, but it is one of the ways that you start to build that endurance. And you build, you got to have grip strength if you’re going to be able to do a pull up. So you need to build that grip strength. You’re building that forearm strength. You’re going to start building the bicep strength and the tricep strength, and, of course, the lat strength, and the shoulders, and things like that. So dead hangs is another great tool that you can use if you are interested in being able to do a pull up or increase the number of pull ups that you do.
Let’s see another thing that you can do if you’re interested in getting stronger in general, but especially if you’re trying to do something like a pull up or a push up for the first time, you’ve got to give your body what it needs in order to build muscle. So that means you got to increase your protein intake.
This is one area that she and I talked about where she’s doing all the other things I mentioned so far, but she wasn’t really, she doesn’t eat enough protein. She says, she totally admits, actually, I am probably not eating enough protein. I said, okay, well, let’s try to work on increasing the protein, because if you want to build muscle, you need the building blocks of muscle. So you need to give your body what it needs in order to turn that protein into muscle. So increase your protein intake. And a lot of people, especially runners, they don’t think about that correlation there. But if you want to get stronger and you want to get larger muscles or stronger muscles, you got to give your body what it needs in order to create those muscles, which is protein.
So a lot of runners don’t do enough strength training in general, and they don’t get enough protein in general. So if you make those two changes, right there, you start some sort of regular strength training routine, and you give yourself enough protein, you should be able to get stronger muscles so that you can actually do things like a pull up, okay? Okay, so these are just a few things that you can do if you’re interested in being able to do a pull up. And you might be thinking, what does this have to do with the shortcut to health and fitness success? Well, I’m getting to that. Okay, I’m taking a long way around to get there, but I’m, promise you, I’m going to get to that.
So she’s doing all these things, and she told me that it’s taking too long. And I just laughed, like I just did. And she said, well, how long is it supposed to take? And I said, listen, it’s gonna take whatever it takes. Everybody’s different. Everybody that I’ve worked with is at a different place with this. And sometimes you got to do this stuff for a long time. She’s been working on this for I don’t know the exact number, but I’m going to guess it’s just been a few weeks that she’s been doing these things. And a few weeks may not be enough time if you’re kind of starting from scratch.
So you’ve got to give yourself the time that is required in order to build that strength, and building stronger muscles takes time. So it’s not something you can do for a few weeks and expect to see, like, massive results, like, it’s gonna take a while. And the thing that kind of spurred me to want to talk about this today was that she wants it to go faster. She wants to know what the shortcut is. And the funny thing is, is that I told her, you’re doing the shortcuts, all the stuff that you’re doing, that is the shortcut. You know, if you want it to take longer, don’t do that stuff. You know, if you want it to go faster, keep doing what you’re doing like there really isn’t a shortcut in this particular instance to being able to do a pull up if you’re not able to do that.
I worked for a long time, I want to say, a few months, on getting to the place where I could do pull ups unassisted. You know, I used those bands. I wrapped the band around the top, stepped into it. I used that to pull myself up. And I was able to do that and keep lowering the, whatever you want to call it, the strength of the band. So I got to the really light bands, like the lightest ones that we had at the gym, super light, almost no resistance at all. And I could do those. And then I was able to do them without, but I could only do like one or two pull ups at a time. And, but then I, you know, got to the place where I could do seven to 10, you know, and, and today I can do like 10 or 12 pull ups at a time. And I have been working on that for a long time, you know.
But the thing is, if I had given up on myself, if I had just said, like, Oh, this is taking too long, why bother, then I never would have been able to get to that one pull up or 10 pull ups. And this is so true of so many things that we do in life that people will give up if it looks like it’s taking too long, which to me, is a really silly thing to do, because all these things we’re talking about today, not just doing a pull up or a push up, but being able to lose weight or being able to run faster, like if you want to run a faster marathon, that is not something that is going to be quick to achieve. You cannot run a faster marathon. You can’t get faster over that distance in just a few weeks, or even a few months.
Sometimes it takes a couple of years to get there. When I first started running, I remember my first marathon, actually had a pretty good time. It was under four hours, like 3:57:00 I think was my first marathon, and that was a pretty good time, but I wanted to do better. You know? I wanted to be closer to that 3:45:00 and so that was my goal for a long time, and I got a little bit closer, like I did a 3:55:00 and then I did a 3:50:00 like, a year later, and then I was able to do a 3:47:00 or something like that. And it just kept ticking down until, you know, it was probably six years. I mean, now that I’m thinking about it, yeah, it was six years after I ran my first marathon, when I had my marathon PR of 3:43:00, you know, which is nothing completely stellar, but for me, that was pretty amazing at the time and but it took a long time to get there.
You know, it’s not something that happens overnight, but if I had just given up on myself, I never would have got to that place, you know. So just understand that if you want something and it’s something that is important to you, it’s something that would be considered a big accomplishment, that it’s going to take time to get there, and that we have become this society of people who just, we thrive on instant gratification. We want everything right now, from being able to instantly download any bit of music or any movie we’ve ever wanted in our lives, we can just instantly watch it.
I was thinking about that today, because I thought about having to go get some music at the store, like, if you heard some music that you liked on the radio, if you if you heard a song that you loved on the radio, you could either, like, try to record that song off the radio, which was really hard to do, or what you could do is hear that song and then go to the music store, hope they had what you were looking for, and then buy that album, because you had to buy the whole album. Sometimes you could get a single, but usually you had to buy the whole album, and then to get home, and then open that thing up and take the plastic off and all that stuff, and then you could actually start listening to that song, but it was a process.
And now any song that has ever been created in the history of the world is instantly available to you. Any movie that has ever been made you can basically watch instantly on your phone, you know, so and then, you know, I’ve mentioned at the beginning of this episode things like, you know, ordering food. Or, you know, we can order food. We can just sit on our couch and have food delivered to us within an hour or so, or half an hour, or order something from Amazon and have it delivered sometimes within a couple of hours, you know, just about any item you can think of on the planet, and it’ll show up in your door within a day or two, you know, whatever.
But we’ve just become so used to instant gratification that anything that takes longer than a day or so or a few weeks just seems like, why bother? And we have to get out of this mentality. We have to start losing this mentality when it comes to things like our own health and fitness, because your health and fitness journey is something that you’re going to be on from now until the end of your life. If you do it right, it’s going to be something that you’re committed to forever.
And so if it’s something you’re committed to forever, it doesn’t matter that losing 30 pounds takes six months or a year. It doesn’t matter. What’s important is that you’re on that journey, and you’re doing something, and you’re moving in that direction every single day, even if it’s baby steps. You know my friend, it may take her three or four months to get to the place where she can do a pull up, or maybe six months, I don’t know, but I told her that it really doesn’t matter. She didn’t want to hear that. She just laughed and said, that is not the answer I was looking for. She wanted the shortcut. And the truth is, all those things that she’s doing is how you get there faster, like there isn’t really a true shortcut other than just doing all the little things that you can do each day.
You know, it’s kind of like running that faster marathon. You know, you got to do your speed work, and you got to do that a couple times a week. You might do a high interval session, high intensity interval session. One day, you might do a tempo run. Another day, you might have a couple of maintenance runs, then you have your long run on the weekend, and you got to rinse and repeat that over and over and over again. Same principle applies, though, that progressive overload, you overload your systems. You know, you overload your skeletal muscular system. You overload your cardiovascular system with these high intensity intervals. The next time you go for a run, your body has adapted positively to those stressors that you put on yourself, and you get a little bit faster, you get a little bit more efficient. Your heart rate improves a little bit. Your vo two Max goes up a little bit. That’s how you how you get better. That’s how you get faster. It takes a long time to get there, though, it is not something, there is no fast track. There is no next day delivery when it comes to your health and fitness. Okay?
So for my friend, she didn’t want to hear that, you know, that the shortcut was just doing all the things she’s already doing. She won the true shortcut. And when I told her there wasn’t one, she was a little bummed out about that. But I think she understands that. You know the thing is to never give up. The thing is that you just have to commit to this process, commit to the journey, and stay on that journey.
Now, I will say this, when it comes to having a shortcut to health and fitness success, there is something that you can do that will help you, and that is a true shortcut, and that is having a coach help you. And I’m not just saying that because I’m a coach or because I’m trying to get you to do coaching with me or anything like that, but a coach actually is a shortcut to your success, because they’ve already made all the mistakes, they’ve worked with hundreds of people, they know what works and what doesn’t work. You’ve got somebody there that can give you a step by step guide, which, when you’re trying to figure this stuff out for yourself, it’s, there’s so much information out there anymore that it’s very confusing, especially when it comes to things like your diet or getting stronger.
Like there’s so many different ways of doing this that having somebody there that’s in your corner, that’s got your back, that’s holding you accountable, that’s providing a step by step guide for you. Is really a pretty amazing shortcut, in my opinion. This is what helped me to become healthier, stronger, lose weight, like I had somebody just showing me what to do, and I just do what they said, like that, right? There is a true shortcut. Okay, it’s still going to take a while, but to keep that under in your mind, because it’s one of those things that you might have somebody guiding you and helping you through the process, but it’s still going to take whatever it takes.
Getting stronger is not a fast process. Getting faster is not a fast process. Losing weight is not a fast process, okay, it takes what it takes, and everybody’s different, and so we just have to accept all of that. We have to accept that, you know, we are, are committed to this lifestyle of being a healthy human being. We’re committed to this as a lifestyle. We’re not looking for short term fixes. We’re not looking for, you know, the fastest way to get there possible. What we’re looking for is what is going to work for us for the long term. What is going to keep us healthy, get us healthy first of all, and then keep us healthy for the rest of our lives. That’s what we’re really looking for here.
Okay, so you know, while I’ll say there really isn’t a shortcut. Having a coach is kind of like having the shortcut, right? It’s just a way to fast track your success as much as possible. So you’re going to get the benefits of having somebody that’s just done it all before and has that experience and that right there is the true power up. That is really the true shortcut to your health and fitness success. But at the same time, you have to just commit to the process, commit to the process of change. What am I doing today to better myself? What am I doing today to stay on my plan? What am I doing today? To be consistent? What am I doing today to get a little bit stronger? And you just have to keep doing these things over and over and over again and and you will see results. You will see progress.
If you don’t, then you got to do something different. You know, don’t keep doing the same things, expecting things to change for you, right? If it’s not working, try something else. But for my friend, who is, you know, working on doing a pull up, she’s doing all the right things, she just has to commit to this process and stay committed. She’ll get there. I know she’s going to get there when she does, I’ll let you guys know. I’ll ask her about it next time I see her, see how things are progressing, but I’ll try to keep you guys posted with her progress, because I think it’s pretty fun to watch.
Okay, that’s all I got for you today. I hope this has been helpful. If it has, feel free to share this with someone that you care about. It’s really all I got for you here. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean. I will talk to you soon.
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 →
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 247 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, the Mindset Shift Required in Order to Succeed. So lots of factors go into whether or not you will successfully achieve some goal, like how bad you want it, where you are in your life, your physical limitations, just to name a few. But one of the most powerful indicators of success is actually a shift in your mindset. And most people do not consider their mindset when they set out to accomplish some big goal, like, let’s say you want to lose weight, they just start with, okay, what should I do? What should I eat? What should I not eat? So in this episode, I want to talk about the mindset shift required in order to succeed so you can accomplish everything that you want in your life. Cool.
But first, let’s talk a little bit about what coaching means to me. So for me, coaching is a powerful tool that you can use to help you to accomplish all those hard things that you want to do in your life. I have done all kinds of hard things, and the times when I had a coach helping me, it was exponentially faster to get to my results, and the results were much better. So just keep in mind that, yeah, you can do lots of things on your own. I’m a self starter. I’m somebody that is pretty self motivated. But when I have a coach helping me, guiding me, showing me the way they’ve already made all the mistakes so they can tell me what not to do, and somebody that’s there holding me accountable for my actions, then my results are much faster and much better. So you can do lots of things on your own, and I’m a proponent of that.
And if you’re a self starter, or somebody that’s good at, you know, getting started and staying disciplined, great. But if you’re somebody that wants some help with that, maybe you are good at those things, but it just hasn’t been quite working out for you, whatever the reason. It doesn’t really matter, if you want some help, reach out. Coaching works where a lot of other methods don’t, because it’s not about some particular diet or some particular, you know, workout regimen. It’s about helping you, you know, pick the right things that work for you. It’s about finding the right formula of eating patterns of, you know, running and strength training patterns that work to help you to create the body, the mind, the life that you want for yourself.
Okay, so if you’re interested in coaching, we can have a conversation about it. You don’t have to commit to anything. You and I could have a conversation. It’s free to have this conversation with me, just go to my website, runningleanpodcast.com, because I’ve been working with a lot of people lately and talking to a lot of people lately who really, they get like what to do, but when it comes to actually doing it and sticking with it, you know, making changes and eating differently and working out regularly, they need some help with the mindset that’s required in order to stick with it, in order to make those goals that they have for themselves to become a reality.
And one of the things a lot of people don’t really understand is that there has to be some big shifts in your mindset in order for you to be successful with whatever it is you set out to do. You know, you can’t just decide you want to, you know, run a faster marathon and then just, it’s just going to happen. You have to change at a fundamental level.
We’ll get into all of that in just a second, but just to understand that there’s a lot of people out there, and you might be one of these people that you want more for yourself. You want to change. You want to improve. Maybe you want to lose weight or build a lean, strong body. You want to run fast. Faster. Maybe you want to run farther than you ever have before. So you want all these things for yourself, and you kind of know what you need to do to get there. Oh, yeah, I know I need to eat this way, or I need to work out, or I need to, you know, do my speed work. So you kind of might know those things.
But one area that most people tend to neglect is their thinking, their mindset. So just understand that, you know, in order to succeed at anything, and this could be your health, your fitness, it could be relationships. It can be your career. It can be, you know, if you’re in school, it could be you’re raising kids, all kinds of things, that in order to be a success, that you have to have a shift in your mindset. Okay? You have to sort of create a new mindset, all right.
So I want to start by just talking about the difference between your thinking and your mindset. So I’m going to start with talking about thinking, which is really, this is the process that your mind uses to produce ideas, to make decisions. You know, when you’re thinking about your past, your memories, this is all thinking. This could also be, you know, an opinion about something, or a judgment of something or someone. So it’s your thoughts about something, it’s you logically figuring things out. I like to say that thinking is just sentences that you say in your mind. So this is just your internal dialog.
Okay, so thinking is something that we do non stop, like we’re always thinking. You can’t not think. It’s almost impossible to not think about anything. There are Tibetan monks who sit on mountains in silence for years, you know, I’m assuming, and still can’t shut their mind off, you know, maybe some people can do this, but it is very, very challenging. So our mind is always sort of working, which is a good thing, you know? So that’s thinking. So it’s it’s our thoughts, it’s the sentences we say in our mind. It’s our logical planning, figuring things out, you know, how we think about other people, our opinions, our judgments, when we make decisions, all those kinds of things, and then we have our mindset.
So mindset is a little bit different. Mindset is your established set of attitudes and, you know, beliefs about things that really sort of affects and influences your outlook, your behavior, mind, and you have multiple mindsets. Just like you have multiple thoughts, you can have multiple mindsets. It’s like your frame of mind. It’s the way that you think. You know, it’s your collection of attitudes and opinions and program beliefs and all that kinds of stuff.
Okay, so your mindset is something that’s broader. And when I’m talking about mindset, I’m really talking about something much broader. And I’m going to come back to this in just a minute, but I want to start talking about beliefs a little bit, because beliefs are powerful things, and they go into making up your mindset. So beliefs are the thoughts that you think over and over again. So these are things that you believe to be true about the world, and beliefs are powerful, because beliefs really drive your actions, you know, and actions create stuff. You know, actions create results, whether it’s good or bad, you can’t have results without taking action. So your beliefs, a lot of times, will determine what actions you take or don’t take. And not everyone believes the same things. Your beliefs are unique to you. Beliefs are powerful because they, a lot of times, they determine what we believe we can and can’t do. You know, they determine what we want to do, first of all. So our beliefs, a lot of times, will determine our goals.
So if we think we can do something, if we believe we can do something, then we go after that thing. You know, if you believe in your heart that you can run a marathon, then you’ll probably be able to do that. So if you have a belief like I could never run that far, then you’ll probably never even consider doing that. And of course, our beliefs can change over time. So I used to believe that I could never run more than like five miles or six miles at a time. I ran a 10k once, and I thought, you know, maybe I can run a marathon, because I had never done that before, but I had that feeling of a belief that maybe that is something I could do now, prior to being able to run, you know, 10k I could, I would never think I could run a marathon. That was, it seemed impossible to me, like, who would want to do that first of all.
So I had this whole established belief about not being able to run that far. But over time, that belief changed, and I decided that, you know, I bet I could do that, and then my belief became, I’m going to do that. And I did believe I was going to do that, and I did accomplish that, okay, but it really required a change in my beliefs. And your beliefs about what you can and can’t do will always determine your results. You know, if you believe you can do something, you will probably be able to do it, and if you believe you can’t, you probably won’t be able to do it. So just understand that if you firmly believe I can never lose weight, you’ll probably never be able to and you know what?
Here’s something interesting. Your beliefs are optional. Like you get to decide what you want to believe or not. You don’t have to believe everything that you think. Okay. You don’t have to believe all of the things that you believe. Like you can actually change. You can change your mind. You know, as we get older, we tend to think, you know, that we are inflexible, that our mindset is fixed, but it’s really not, that’s a decision you’re making. And you can decide that you want to believe other things. You can decide that your mindset is malleable, that your mindset is changeable. You can, you can start adopting new beliefs about things, and this is a very healthy way to live your life when you question your beliefs, and you can actually change your beliefs, okay, but beliefs are very powerful. Just understand that.
So those things that you believe over and over and over again, this starts to become something that we would call belief systems. So when we take all sorts of, like, groups of beliefs, and we lump them together, then we become then we have these things that become belief systems. So these are groups of beliefs that feed off of one another. So an example of a belief system might be, I’m always going to be overweight because I’m weak. I have no willpower, I have no discipline. I’m lazy. This is too hard. I don’t deserve this. My metabolism is messed up. I always struggle with my weight. This is a belief system. These are all different beliefs, but we have lumped them all together, and they’ve created this very clear picture of something that we will never be able to lose weight with that sort of a belief system in place.
And I’ve known people like this who have this absolute belief system, and that’s just where they are. And they are unhappy. They don’t feel like they deserve to be happy. They don’t feel like they deserve to lose weight. They definitely don’t believe they can. And so they’re going to be, you know, kind of miserable forever. Now understand that you can have a whole different belief system. You can have a belief system that says, you know, I definitely can lose weight. I have tons of discipline. I have done hard things in my life before. I’m motivated, I am dedicated. I deserve this for myself. It has nothing to do with my metabolism. I can fix my metabolism. I do not have to struggle with my weight like this is a whole different shift in a belief system. And so your belief systems are something that you can change again. If you can, you know, change your beliefs. You can change your belief systems.
And these belief systems, they develop over time. A lot of times they take years and years decades to develop. A lot of times we have belief systems that are built over our entire lives. So every event of our life, every person we’ve interacted with, everything that’s ever happened to us, everything we’ve ever accomplished or not being able to accomplish, goes into making up some of our belief systems. And this can be very hard to overcome at times. And I get that for sure. You know, if you’re the kind of person that has, you know, dealt with childhood trauma and things like that. It’s going to be very difficult for you to get over that, and that’s where you probably need to, like, get some therapy and have somebody else help you with, you know, recovering from some of that past trauma and things like that, but understand that our belief systems are well developed over time.
And so you think that they are just fixed and that it’s something that you cannot change, but whether you believe it or not, they can change. And we all have these types of belief systems. Some of them are positive, some of them are negative, and just start to be aware of what it is that you’re believing about yourself. And we have belief systems around all sorts of stuff in our life over, you know, religious type of belief systems and political belief systems, movies, TV shows that you like. We have belief systems over music that we listen to.
So I have this friend who’s really into country music, and this is a whole lifestyle for her. It’s a whole mindset for her. There’s tons of belief systems about country music. It dictates the way she thinks, the way she dresses, what she does on the weekends, who her friends are, how her friends dress, how they behave when they go out. So there’s a whole belief system around this, you know, country, her love of country music, and it’s all cool with me. She asked me one time, you know, hey, do you like country music? I’m like not really. So, you know, we don’t really hang out much, which is fine, but good for her, you know, this is something that she’s really into. It could be something like whether or not you are really into fitness.
You know, one of my belief systems involves, you know, being a runner and physically fit, being strong, being healthy. So I tend to do things that fit with this belief system, my friends that I hang out with and I do things with. They are runners. They are physically fit people. They’re strong. They like to work out. They like to eat healthy. The person I’m dating is definitely part of this belief system. She’s a runner. She’s really involved in the running community. This is, like the podcast that I listen to have to do with health and fitness, different topics, mindset, the books I read, so a big part of my belief systems involve, you know, being a fit person and healthy and a runner, because I have these well established belief systems around all of that.
Okay, so all this is bringing me to what I really want to talk about, which is we’re going to go one layer deeper. So we’ve talked about our thinking, those thoughts, those things that we say in our minds. We’ve talked about beliefs, and then we have these belief systems, which are very powerful.
The next layer down in our minds, though, would be our identity. So this is like the very core of who you are. So anytime you say the words, I am, dot, dot, dot, we’re talking about thoughts that you’re thinking or you know your identity at your core level. So like, I am a father, I am a brother, I am a runner, I am a coach. These are all part of who I am at my core. You know my friend who is really in the country, she might be like I am a country music aficionado, like that could be part of her identity. It seems to be part of her identity.
So your identity is all of your thoughts, it’s all of your feelings, it’s everything you know, it’s everything that you believe. It’s all your belief systems. It’s like really the essence of who you are. And also understand that your identity is multifaceted. It is not just one thing. You know, I’m not just a runner. I have lots of identities, but understand that one thing we have to really fundamentally understand is that identity drives our belief systems. It drives our beliefs, it drives our thinking, and drives our results. So if you really want to succeed at something, whether it’s losing weight, running faster, running longer, becoming healthier, getting stronger, getting leaner, becoming the most badass version of yourself. You have to shift your identity. This is the mindset shift that’s required for you to succeed at whatever you want in your life, right?
So we have to change our thinking and our beliefs and our belief systems, but we really have to change our identity, and all these things are changeable. You can change who you are at any time in your life. It’s never too early or too late for you to do this.
Let’s see. 25 years ago or so, I used to smoke cigarettes and I drank beer, and I did both of these things to excess, in my opinion, but I had this identity back then of somebody who was a heavy drinker and a smoker. Okay, so that was part of who I was. So this determined what I did most days, most days I was just sitting around, hanging around certain types of people. This, you know, determined my health, my state of mind, my actions, and, of course, my results. I was overweight, I was unhealthy, I was lethargic, I was angry, I was sick, I was just in a bad way, all the way around, because I had this identity of like, this partier, drinker smoker, type of person, and in order to change I had to dramatically shift my mindset. I had to change my thinking. I had to change my beliefs, my belief systems, and ultimately, I had to make a shift in my identity. And of course, I had to change what I did, but it’s much easier to change what you do when you start at these deeper levels.
So here’s an example of how I did this. So, first of all, I really wanted to change. I had gotten to this place in my life where I was really sick. I was diagnosed with cancer at the time. I was really overweight. I was very unhealthy and I was questioning my mortality. I was really thinking, like, I could die, you know. And, and I had little kids at the time, and I was like, oh, my God, this is, you’ve got to change, Patrick, right? So I first really wanted to change, so I did. And I really wanted to change. And then I started doing things like, I started eating healthier, you know, and I quit smoking, I started walking, I even started running. And I didn’t really realize it at the time, but once I started doing some of these things, they started to break down my pre established belief systems. They started to, I started to make that shift in my identity.
You know, I started running. I started making new friends. I started reading books on running and health and fitness. I started listening to podcasts, all that stuff, as soon as podcasts became a thing, and then I started running races. I did a 5k, a 10k, I did a marathon. I started doing triathlons, ultra marathons, slowly over time, I became a different person. Now this is really scary to think about, like dismantling your belief systems, ditching old identities, becoming a new person. That’s kind of scary if you’re feeling a little bit like, you know, uneasy by just thinking about this right now, that’s normal. It is normal because we’re venturing out into the unknown when we do this, we’re starting to become somebody different.
In order to become somebody different, you got to ditch your old ways of thinking, your old belief systems, your old identity, and you have to adopt some new ways of thinking, some new belief systems, new identities. That is scary, because that’s not who you’re used to being. You’re used to being this one person over here, and now you’re saying, I want to be this other person over here, who’s, in my opinion, who’s better, who’s healthier, who’s going to live longer, you know, who’s nicer to be around, you know, and all the things that you want for yourself. And so it requires that shift, which is very scary.
And so this is why a lot of people will not do this, because it doesn’t feel good, it feels kind of bad. It feels like you’re, you’re, you know, you’re stripping away who you are at your core, because you actually are because that identity that you’ve been working on, or, you know, working from that identity that you’ve been, that’s been programmed into you over the last 30, 40 years, or whatever, it’s all kind of crumbling underneath you, and you’re like, now, who am I? Well, guess what, you get to decide. You get to decide what you want for yourself.
So here’s what I want you to kind of think about for this week. I want you to start with your goals. Like, what is it that you want for yourself? What are those outcomes that you want to create in your life? You want to lose weight, you want to run faster, you want to be stronger. Where do you want to be? And then start thinking about your thoughts. Like, what are the thoughts that you have about yourself, about your ability to accomplish these goals. You know, what do you think about regularly? And then, what do you believe about yourself? What do you believe you can and can’t do? Do you believe that this goal is attainable for you? Do you believe that you can do this, or do you believe that you cannot do this? And then, when we start thinking about beliefs, think about and look at your belief systems. You know what beliefs are all linked together to paint a picture of what you can and can’t do.
So think about all the things that you believe, about how likely you are to be able to lose weight or run faster, all right? And then start looking at your identities. What follows the words when you say those words I am, I am overweight, I am a slow runner, I am weak, I am incapable of being more like what are those things you say after the words I am? And which of these do you need to just let go of and then let them go. And then, what identities do you want to adopt instead? You know, I am a fit, healthy person, I am strong, I am fast, I am someone who loves running.
What is it that you want to adopt as your new identity? Who do you want to be? So think about that stuff this week, I think this will be very powerful for you. But if there’s anything that you want in your life, it’s going to require a change at that core level of who you are, at your core, and it’s a good thing. It’s scary, it’s uncomfortable because you’re venturing out into unknown territory. It’s unfamiliar. It’s not what you’re used to. So it’s going to be scary, it’s going to be uncomfortable, it’s going to be hard, and it’s okay. You can do it, okay. I know you’ve got this.
That’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
If you have a big goal like losing weight and keeping it off, then you know it is going to take a while to reach that goal. One of the main reasons people don’t reach their weight loss goal is that …
Continue Reading about 244. Motivation Strategies to Keep You Moving Forward →
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 244 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, Motivation Strategies to Keep You Moving Forward. If you have a big goal like losing weight and keeping it off, that’s a pretty big goal, then you know it’s going to take a while for you to reach that goal. And one of the main reasons why people don’t reach their weight loss goal is that they lose motivation. They do okay for a few weeks or a few months, and then all that motivation they had at the beginning, it’s gone, and they give up on themselves. It’s very common. The interesting thing is that there are different motivation strategies that work for different people. Not everyone responds to the same type of motivation. So today I’ve got a few motivation strategies to keep you moving forward so you can actually achieve all those big goals.
But first, one of the reasons why I became a coach is because I had such amazing experiences working with different coaches. I’ve had a business coach, I’ve had a fitness coach, I’ve had a nutrition coach, and all of these coaches helped me achieve things that I could not do on my own. Coaching is one of those things that has dramatically changed my life and elevated me to the next level in my health and my fitness, in my business. And I decided I want to help people too. I want to, I want to give people the gift of coaching, because coaching works where a lot of other methods don’t work, like particular diets, like you can buy a diet book and read it and know what to do, but it doesn’t give you what coaching gives you. What coaching gives you is a dynamic learning process, a feedback process of trying something, seeing how it works, getting some feedback from your coach, getting some guidance to help you either move in a slightly different direction or keep going in the same direction. Coaching gives you results where a lot of other methods, they just fall short, because all they’re doing is showing you the what they don’t help you tap into why you’re doing what you’re doing they don’t help you tap into self motivation, self awareness, the changes in mindset that are required to help you reach these long term goals and on and on and on. So for me, coaching was one of those things that I was like, I just want to do this, because I want to be able to help people the way that these people have helped me. So if you want some help, consider coaching, just go to my website, runningleanpodcast.com, click on, work with me. Cool.
Okay. Why am I talking about this today? So I have heard from a lot of people who say that they they get really motivated at the beginning of a process, like they decide they want to change their diet or start running or lose some weight, they want to train for a marathon, whatever it is. And they do really well for a while, but then at some point, that motivation just starts to fade, and it goes away, and then they quit, because the motivation is no longer there.
And just so you guys have a little point of reference here. I did a whole episode. I’ve done a couple of episodes on the podcast on motivation. One that I want you to check out. It was episode number 188, called the Cycle of Unstoppable Motivation. And I take a deep dive into how we take action to create results, and how those results help us to build confidence, and that confidence helps us to create more motivation. So it all talks about getting yourself into this cycle of what I call unstoppable motivation. So you can definitely check out that episode. I think it’s going to help. Help to enhance what I’m going to talk about today, because what I’m talking about today is a little bit different.
I have not really talked about this before. I don’t think on the podcast for sure, but different people get motivated differently and from different things in their lives, okay? And a lot of people who start out something, and then find themselves quitting after some time, a lot of times, they’ll say, oh, I just lost my motivation. So motivation is one of those things that we need, and it’s important that we have it. And one of the things that I want to talk about today is how we can best determine what type of motivation strategy works for us as an individual.
I want to just give you a quick definition of what motivation is. So motivation is the general desire or willingness of someone to do something. That’s it. It’s just a desire to do something. It’s like you feel like you want to do something. That’s motivation. That’s all you know. If you feel like you want to sit down and watch Netflix, that’s motivation. You’re motivated to go sit on the couch and watch Netflix. If you’re motivated to go for a run, then that’s a motivation for you. You have a desire to go for a run. So that’s that’s all that it is really but there are two main types of motivation that we all tend to experience. We all tend to have these two types of motivation. Some people are more apt to gravitate towards one or the other type of motivation. So I’m going to get into these here in just a second. But just understand that while I’m talking about this, I want you to think about yourself and think about which of these kind of applies to you.
Okay, so the first type of motivation that I want to talk about is something called away motivation. This is where you are motivated to move away from something that you don’t want. So an example of this might be you looked at yourself in the mirror naked recently, and you decided you don’t want to look like that anymore. You do not want that, you see a picture of yourself, you know, somebody posted a picture of you on Facebook, and you’re like, oh my god, you know, I don’t want to be that person anymore. So that is what we call an away motivation. You want to move away from something that you don’t want.
You know, it could be you don’t want to be the slowest person in your running group anymore, like or, you know, you don’t want to be somebody who can’t make the cutoff time of a certain race. Those are things you don’t want, and these things can be very motivating for some people. Some people are very motivated by what they don’t want, and it can be very helpful, especially to get you started with something like to get started in making some changes and doing some things differently. So having something that you want to move away from can be actually, can be good. Okay, so there’s not all bad, but it can be good.
The problem is that a lot of people may not take any action towards a goal until things get really bad, like they have to sort of hit a rock bottom first before they’re willing to take action. So they might be okay seeing themselves in pictures, and they’re a little bit overweight. They’re like, Oh, I’m cute. I’m chubby, whatever you know, I’m getting a little fluffy. I’m eating a little doughy, whatever you know might be cute, but then they finally see themselves, and they’re like, Oh my God, I’ve gained 100 pounds. Like, I’m obese at this point, you know? And that might be something where they’ve finally hit the rock bottom, or wherever you want to call it, not that that’s bad or anything like that. But you know what I’m saying? Like, it just may be one of those things where it takes a while before you’re going to get inspired to take action, because you know what you want to move away from is not painful enough for you yet. Okay?
The other kind of problem with people who are primarily away motivated is that they’re not really focused on an end goal. They know what they don’t want, but they don’t really know what they do want. Oh, I don’t want to look like that anymore. I don’t want to be slow anymore. So what? What they’re there. They may be motivated to move away from that, but don’t really have any direction. So they’re, they’re sort of, you know, in limbo, in a way, you know, they’re, they’re kind of like traveling towards some goal out there, but they really don’t have a clear idea of what that is. And there may be no end in sight.
It just may be, they’re just taking some steps, kind of willy nilly, and they’re getting some results here and there, but they’re really not focused on a particular point in the future or a particular version of themselves that they want to move towards. And so because of that, usually people who are primarily away motivated, they don’t get all the way to their goal because of this lack of direction, this lack of consistency, this lack of focus, this lack of long term goals that are very clear. So just keep that in mind. If you’re somebody who’s primarily away motivated, you may be doing some things and you feel like you’re just kind of like not making much progress, and you can never really reach a goal, and you end up stopping and starting and stopping and starting. This can be because you don’t have that clear purpose and focus and direction.
Also, people who are primarily away motivated find that this whole process can feel very stressful and anxiety inducing because they’re so focused on this version of themselves that they don’t want to be anymore, that it’s constantly putting them under this place of stress, and they’re stressed out about it, and they’re anxious about it, and it fills them with, you know, fear and dread, and that’s not a good place for a lot of people to be. Some people respond well with that, and a little bit of that is okay, a little bit of stress is okay, but too much of it, and you can kind of, it’s too much, and then then you end up quitting because you don’t want to be living your life so stressed out all the time.
Okay? So this is what we call away motivated people, or away motivation strategy. And so there are some negatives to the away motivation strategy, but there’s a couple points that are actually okay.
The other type of motivation strategy that a lot of people gravitate towards is the toward motivation. Okay, this is the type of motivation where you are motivated by moving toward what you do want. So an example, again, if you want to lose weight and keep it off, then your end goal is what you’re really focused on. You’re focused on where you want to be in the future. You’re focused on a goal weight. You have this idea of what your life is going to look like. You have this very clear image in your mind, this vision of your future self, and that is what you’re focused on.
So people who are primarily toward motivated are much more likely to continue or to take action, because things don’t have to be super bad to get them started with stuff, right? They can, they can tend to take more action earlier. They take action earlier. They know where they’re headed, because they know what it’s going to look like when they get there. They have a very clear vision of what they want for themselves, where they’re going, what that goal looks like.
So it’s very directional, right? You know where you’re going, you know where you’re headed, and because of this, you tend to take more consistent action, more consistent aligned action, because you’re taking action that is in alignment with those goals that you have for yourself, so you’re much more likely to make progress and much more likely to just reach your goals. And this type of motivation isn’t really stressful or anxiety inducing or is not as much as the away motivated type of strategy is.
So it can be a little bit stressful if you’re just focused on the gap between where you are today and where you want to be if you’re focused on where you’re not. So it helps to, you know, remember that you make progress, and that you know you’ve come a long way, and that you’re making baby steps, and you’ll get there eventually. Like all those things will help you to not feel as like, so anxious about not being where you want to be.
But so those are the two main types of motivation strategies. You know, we’ve got away. Would you want to move away from the things that you don’t want, that person you don’t want to be, those things you don’t want in your life anymore? And then the other one is moving toward, like, if you’re toward motivated, then you’re more motivated to move toward a future goal.
There’s a third option, though, and now third option is what we call the mixed motivation strategy. And this one’s interesting because it is a combination of the two. When you combine these two motivation strategies, which a lot of people do, then you kind of like, this is kind of like rocket fuel for you moving towards your goals, because you are propelling yourself away from what you don’t want. You’re propelling yourself toward what you do want, and so you’re using sort of the best of both of these types of motivation strategies to, you know, just launch you towards your goals.
So you want to combine some of that away motivation that’ll help you to get started and know very clearly what you don’t want, and you want some of that toward motivation, which is where you’re getting consistent action, where you have direction, where you’re headed towards a goal, where you’re not getting yourself completely stressed out in the process. So this third strategy is where you are consistently moving away from what you don’t want, and you’re consistently moving toward what you do want.
I believe this is probably the best motivation strategy for most people. You know, some people are very away motivated. They just are naturally more likely to be motivated by what they don’t want, and that is fine. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. Some people are very toward motivated. They have these very clear goals for themselves, and there’s nothing wrong with that either. But I think most people do well when we take a mix of both of these types of strategies, when you are thinking about where you don’t want to be, or where you have been in the past, or where you don’t want for yourself, and we can apply these strategies to anything in our lives, whether it’s our work, our health, our fitness, our relationships, we can move away from those things that we don’t Want and move towards the things that we do want.
And I think a good, you know, ratio for most people would be somewhere around 70/30 where you want most of your motivation to be coming from, where, where you’re going, like be motivated by where you’re going in the future, by what you do want for yourself. Because it’s a little bit more positive. It’s a little less stressful. I think it’s something that most people will more than likely be more likely to reach those goals if they are more toward motivated. So about a 70/30 split is probably where you want to be with this stuff. So a little bit of stress is okay and might help you to get moving. Too much may just drag you down knowing where you want to go, that’s great, but you also have to be taking consistent action in order to move towards that goal.
So think about this. Where do you fall on this spectrum? This is kind of the thing I want you to think about this week. Are you more away or toward motivated, or do you use a combination of both? Is that how you get motivated and what keeps you going? What keeps that fire burning within you?
Think about this this week. You know, if you’re looking for more motivation, in general, if you’re lacking some motivation, or you’re not taking action on a particular goal, ask yourself, you know, what do you want to move away from? And get very clear about that, and then talk, you know? And you can do this as like a writing experiment or writing exercise. I think that’s a really good idea. Write down some things that you want to move away from, write down some things you want to move toward, paint a clear picture of each and then just take some aligned action so that you can start making progress on all those goals. Cool. I think those will be fun for you to do this week.
Okay, that’s all I got for you today. I know you got this. I love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
When most people set goals for themselves, they think small. They set goals that feel doable, safe, and comfortable, goals that won’t cause them too much suffering if they don't achieve …
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 232 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, Achieving Impossible Goals. When most people set goals for themselves, they think small. They set goals that feel doable, that feel safe, that feel comfortable, and goals that won’t cause them too much suffering if they maybe don’t achieve them, but is this really what you want for yourself? I don’t think so. Not me. Definitely not.
I want to set goals that feel kind of scary, uncomfortable, and downright impossible. So in this episode, I’m going to explain why you shouldn’t be setting small, easily achievable goals, but instead working on achieving those big, impossible goals.
But first, if you’ve been thinking about improving your health, your fitness, your running, if you’ve been thinking about losing weight, improving your diet, and you want a ton of guidance and support to help you get there, you might want to consider coaching.
The fact is, coaching works where other methods fail because it’s not about one particular diet or one particular exercise routine. It’s about understanding what works for you as an individual, and then learning how to do that on your own.
One thing I tell all my clients is that you need to not need me at some point. You got to get to this place where you can do this on your own. My job is to help you get to that point. What good is it to make these lifestyle changes if they’re not sustainable for you? They have to be sustainable for you, right?
This stuff has to become easy and effortless for you, so that you can do it on your own, so that you can stick with it. My job is to make sure you stick with it. So if you want to hit the easy button on your weight loss goals, on your running goals, on some big, impossible goal that you have for yourself. Let’s work together to get you there. Just go to my website, runningleancoaching.com click on work with me, and I will show you exactly how to become the most badass version of yourself yet Cool.
All right, let’s talk about achieving impossible goals. So right now we’re about halfway through the year. It is the beginning of June 2024, right now. So if you’re listening to this in the future, that is very cool, because it’s like time traveling. You’re like time traveling. But anyway, so if you are listening to this in real-time, then we’re about halfway through the year.
You may have set some goals for yourself, maybe some running goals. Maybe you ran a spring marathon or spring half marathon, or some spring races or ultra-marathons or whatever. And now it’s time to kind of reassess your goals. And you’ve taken some time off, or kind of in the off-season right now, and so you’re thinking about goals for the fall.
So you might be setting some intentions and some goals for some fall races, or maybe you have other health and fitness goals. Maybe you have a weight loss goal, and now would be a great time to get started on that. And so right now is a good time to be thinking about setting some big goals for yourself.
But here’s the thing, most people, when they set out to set a goal, when they decide on goals that they want for themselves, they they pick a goal that’s either too vague or too small. So they pick goals that are vague, like I want to lose weight, or I want to eat healthier, or I want to get stronger, I want to get stronger, I want to run faster, I want to run more.
These goals are very vague because there’s nothing specific to commit to, right? It’s much harder to commit to goals like I’m going to lose 20 pounds, I’m going to stop eating processed food, I’m going to I want to be able to lift 315 pounds in a deadlift. I want to be able to be able to do that three times. Or run a 23-minute 5k or run four times a week.
When we get specific with our goals, they become it’s a little bit harder, right? Because you now you’re kind of, you have to hold yourself accountable. You’re you’re on the hook for something. But a lot of people won’t do that. They’ll just pick vague goals, like, I need to eat healthier. What does that even mean? They don’t even know what it means.
Like, they’re just like, saying it because they they know that if they don’t achieve it, they don’t really have to fess up to anything. They don’t have to own up to anything. There’s no own ability. There’s no accountability there. So. Vague. We don’t want to set vague goals, and we don’t want to set goals that are too small.
A lot of people set goals that are very small. I want to lose five pounds, or instead of running a 5k I want to run maybe 6k okay, that’s fine if you’re just getting into running. But listen, set some goals that are bigger, because when you set these small goals, you know they’re easily achievable. They don’t require you to get out of your comfort zone at all. They are well within your comfort zone a lot of times.
You’ve probably already done these things. You’ve probably already lost five pounds. A bunch of times to say, like, oh, I want to lose five pounds. That’s something you know you can do. You already know you can do that? You’ve done it before, or you’ve got clothes, or it just seems easy for you.
The problem here is that setting these tiny little goals means that you’re probably going to achieve them, which is fine, but what did you gain in the process? What did you learn? How much did you grow? Who have you become in that process? Small goals. They feel safe, they feel comfortable, they feel doable. These are what people call realistic goals.
Oh, you need to be realistic. I say screw that. We need to set goals that are unrealistic. You need to set some goals that are way outside your comfort zone. And I call these impossible goals because they are impossible for who you are right now, who you are here today. You cannot achieve these big goals you know you, you should always have some, some goals that feel impossible for who you are today, that are not comfortable, safe or realistic.
Who wants to achieve realistic goals honestly? You need to be going after things in your life that feel impossible, because when you do, when you do achieve those goals. They can be life-changing.
Achieving impossible goals means you have you’ve done a lot of work to get yourself to the point where you could become the kind of person to achieve that goal. It means you’ve accomplished something you never thought you could, and then you did that. That’s an amazing feeling, right there. So instead of small, vague goals, we want to set big impossible goals, goals that feel unrealistic, that feel uncomfortable, that don’t feel like they’re in your comfort zone, that don’t feel safe, that don’t feel doable, they should feel impossible.
And really this is the biggest benefit of setting and going after these big, impossible goals is who you become in the process. You know, think about a small goal like losing five pounds. You can do this with pretty little effort. It’s not going to take much time. You’ll probably gain it back pretty quickly too, because you didn’t set a goal like, oh, I need to, I’m going to lose 30 pounds, and then I’m going to keep it off, right?
But, okay, let’s just say you want to lose the five pounds. That’s great. Okay, fine. Who did you become in the process? What’s changed for you? What did you learn? What’d you learn about yourself? What’d you learn about sustainability? How have you grown? My guess is not much of any of that stuff. You probably didn’t learn much. Probably didn’t grow much. You’re basically the same person.
Okay, well, let’s use the example of losing 30 pounds and keeping it off. Now that might feel more like an impossible goal for you right now. So let’s say it takes you a year to lose the weight. It takes you a year to lose 30 pounds, and then you’ve maintained that weight loss for another year. So so far, we’ve talked about where you’ve invested two years of time into this goal already. Okay, that’s a lot of time.
What did you learn about what did you learn along the way? Maybe you had to learn how to plan meals around family vacations and social events and holidays and work trips. You had to learn how you could have some cheat meals here and there without going completely off the rails. That takes some time to figure that out.
You learned how to change your mindset around food, so you no longer have those cravings for sugar all the time. And then when you do occasionally have the cravings, you know how to deal with them. You don’t let them derail you like you can just move on, right? You’ve learned which foods work for you and which ones don’t.
You learned how to maintain your weight loss over time, which is actually the hardest part of all this. So you’ve grown. You’ve learned all these things, and you’ve grown in the last two years.
You no longer have the mental and emotional hangups around food. You feel like you’re back in control of your eating for once in your life, you’re no longer operating on autopilot. You’re no longer eating mindlessly. Basically, you’ve become a different person, the person you were two years ago when you started on this journey could not have done any of this stuff.
This was impossible for who you were two years ago, but that’s not who you are here today. You’ve become a completely different person. So. This is one of the most important outcomes of achieving an impossible goal. It’s who you become in the process, who you are here today. You can’t achieve that goal, that goal is way outside your comfort zone.
Maybe your impossible goal is running your fastest marathon this fall, and it’s impossible because the person you are here today cannot run. Let’s say it’s a sub-four. You want to run sub-four marathon, and you’ve never been able to do that, so that’s not who you are today. You cannot run a sub-four, four-hour marathon today.
So this is an impossible goal for you, but in order to achieve that goal, you have to get to work. You have to stick to a pretty rigid training schedule for months. You have to do all the speed work. You have to keep improving your tempo runs like improving the times, improving the distance, and improving the amount of time that you’re running fast.
You have to be able to sustain that, and it’s going to require that you stick to a strict eating plan to support your running goals, because you don’t want to gain a bunch of weight during this training season, right? If you’re trying to PR, you’re trying to run your fastest marathon ever.
So this is this all feels impossible for who you are today, but listen, you do the work. You show up for yourself, day after day, week after week, month after month. Come the fall, when you’re towing the line at the start of that marathon, you’re the kind of person who could run a sub-four marathon, because you’ve done the work, you’ve completely become a different person, but between today and who you are six months from now.
So this is one of those things where we think that a goal feels impossible to us, and it does feel impossible to us, but we think it’s impossible for us to achieve that goal. And in reality, there is a possibility that we can do we can pretty much do anything we want, right? But you got to set your mind to it. You have to commit to the process. You have to commit to becoming the kind of person that can do that.
And then listen, when you show up at the start line of that race, you’ve become a different person. You’ve learned, you’ve grown. You’ve become so much more than you ever thought you could become. It really doesn’t even matter if you hit the goal or not. So let’s say you run a 4:01. Is that a failure? Did you fail? I say no, because look who you are. Now, you’ve become this completely different person. You’ve learned, you’ve grown, you’ve become more it’s not about achieving the goal necessarily. It’s about who you become in the process.
Now, of course you want to achieve the goal, and of course you’re going to do the work to basically make sure that that outcome is inevitable, but the real underlying purpose of all of this is to learn about yourself, to grow and to become more and if you do that, I say that you have absolutely succeeded.
And then also keep in mind that every success requires a lot of failures to get there, right? Every success was built upon a big old pile of failures. I think Henry Ford said that, so don’t be afraid to try fail, try fail, try fail, until you succeed. The number one rule with all this stuff is you never, ever, ever give up.
You keep going until you achieve that goal, impossible or not, because if you never quit, you will eventually achieve that goal. If you’re committed to achieving that goal, you will get there eventually. So that impossible goal can become possible for you.
Now, I’ve done a few impossible things in my life. Some years ago, I completed a full Ironman. You know, I’ve run 50 miles, 100 miles. Last year I did a 12-hour solo run, unsupported, no headphones, no talking to anybody. Very much a solo in my own head event.
But for things like running 100 miles, you know, when I signed up for that, I could not run 100 miles. I was not the kind of person that could run 100 miles. I couldn’t imagine doing that. This was impossible. This felt impossible for me. And here I was paying the money on their website and signing up, and, you know, saying that I was gonna, like, sign up for this thing. And I’m like, “Who do you think you are, Patrick, signing up for 100 miler? This is ridiculous. You’re ridiculous. I don’t see how you’re gonna do this.” because I didn’t know at the time.
I was like, I know that somehow between now and, you know, a year from now, or however long it was, I think it was maybe 10 months, 11 months, something like that, that I signed up in advance. I knew that I was going to become the kind of person that could run 100 miles by the time I started that race.
And for me, showing up at the start line, knowing I did all the work, was the big accomplishment, and then doing it, obviously it was amazing, you know? But every time I set out to do something big like this, it feels impossible for me at the beginning of the process.
Yeah, and I know that in order to get there, I got to do the work and I have to level up. I got to learn and grow and become more and I know that by the time I show up at the event, I’m a different person, and I’ve already succeeded. In my mind, I’m it’s already a success.
And then when you do achieve something like that, when you do the hard work, and you set out to do something that is impossible, and you actually achieve it. You finish the race, you lose the weight, you’re able to keep it whatever that goal is for you, it becomes so much sweeter because it was so hard.
Listen, I am not a crier. I am not somebody who cries. Have a very hard time, like crying even. So, okay, I will say this about movies, I will cry. I do cry at movies, but every time I’ve completed something impossible, like, you know, finishing my Ironman, running my 100 miler, 50 miler, even half Iron Man like I’ve cried at the end of these things, because it’s such an emotional event.
It was, it was a life changing event. And so when you set out to do something that feels impossible and you actually do it, there’s no other feeling in life quite like that. So I want to encourage you to think about this. Think about something big, something that feels impossible for you today, something that you want to achieve, and pick one thing that really stands out, that gets you out of your comfort zone.
I want you go to go after that one thing. Don’t pick 10 different impossible goals, because it’s just too overwhelming. You need constraint. You have to practice constraint of focus. Focus on one goal at a time. Go all in on that one goal. When you finish that one goal, then you can move on to something else, right? And it kind of depends on the goal.
But for me, I like to have one impossible goal on my plate every year, or maybe one every other year. It depends on how big the goal is, how much time it takes. Blah, blah, blah, okay, but have something in mind. Pick something, and then I want you to go after that. I want you to go all in on yourself, see what you’re capable of. Don’t think small. Think big. Don’t think realistic. Think unrealistic. Don’t think doable, think impossible, and then get busy doing the work to become the kind of person who can achieve the impossible. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
