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Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

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78. The Problem with Streaks

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When it comes to habit change, there’s this idea that if you do something every day for a period of time - 30-60-90 days - then you will automatically develop a new habit. I cannot tell you how …

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Podcast Transcript

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 78, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m talking about the problem with streaks. So when it comes to habit change, changing any kind of bad habit if you want to create new habits.

There’s this idea out there that if you just do something every day for a period of time, like 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, whatever it is, then you will automatically develop a new habit. And I just have to say that this is wrong. Okay, it just doesn’t work this way, there’s a lot more going on under the covers, there’s a lot more to habit to change than just like doing a certain behavior every single day.

How many times have you ever had a streak going like maybe you’ve given up sugar, or you’ve quit drinking for weeks or months straight, and then one day something happens, and just like that the streak is over. And then you’re right back to your old ways as if nothing has ever happened, right? This is very, very common, it happens all the time.

In order to create new habits, we have to make changes at a deeper level. Right? This very surface-level thing of just changing a behavior is not enough to make new habits and to create deeper, meaningful changes. Okay, so today here, I’m going to be talking about the problem with streaks.

And what you might want to focus on instead, if you really want to make lasting, meaningful changes in your habits. Okay, but first, if you like this podcast, you have to come check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook.

This is a group that goes hand in hand with the podcast, we extend the conversation over there in the group, we have a two-way conversation that gives you a voice gives you a place to ask questions and get feedback. And I’ve got a new challenge coming up. I haven’t done a challenge for a little while.

And I’ve been thinking a lot about this. And a lot of people have been coming to me talking about this subject. And so we’re going to be tackling this in July. And this is the challenge where I’m calling it dry July. Starting July 1, we’re going to give you an opportunity to take a break from alcohol, like maybe you just wanted like to see what it feels like to not drink for the month of July. And see if you feel better.

And I want to be very clear, this is not about like a streak is not about like putting in the number of days together or anything like that. This is about a group of people who all want to, you know, see if they feel healthier, and see if they feel better without drinking alcohol. Alcohol is not bad, I want to make sure you guys understand this. I’m not anti-alcohol.

But if you’re trying to lose weight, or if you’re trying to, you know, hit some sort of running goal or some sort of health goal, alcohol can be detrimental to weight loss, it can be detrimental to your running performance. And so we’re just going to talk about that. We’re going to talk about alcohol you know why you might want to limit or moderate your alcohol intake. And if you’ve ever tried to do this on your own, it’s been hard, come and join us and we’ll do it together.

Okay, we’re going to support each other, encourage each other, I’m going to do some kind of training in coaching in the Facebook group in the month of July. I’ll be talking about this subject here on the podcast too. So it’ll be a lot of fun.

This is not for people who are, you know, addicts or alcoholics like you need to seek some professional help with that kind of stuff. This is just for people who, you know, maybe want to like limit their drinking or just you know, maybe they drink a little too much and they want to like see what it would feel like to, to moderate or to quit for a little bit. Okay, so just go to Facebook, search for Running Lean community and come join us. It’s gonna be fun. I promise it’s gonna be fun.

And here’s another five-star review of the Running Lean podcast. This is from S4Waltz. And S4Waltz says, “Thanks for all you do. Hi, Patrick. I just finished listening to your interview with Leticia. I started listening and found your podcast during the pandemic and her story was amazing. I quit sugar after hearing your story and I guess, I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks. I actually started running in the late 1970s with my dad. I’m 63 now and hearing encouragement is needed no matter how long you’ve been running. The good thing about getting older is how many times I’m the only person in my age group. So I always place in my age group.”

That’s awesome. And then this person goes on to say, “Here’s a fun story, my first 10k, I wore cut-off blue jean shorts, because I didn’t know what people wore for running. Keep up the great work. And thanks for all you do.” Thank you S4Waltz, for that awesome five-star review.

And just so you know, I had this recurring nightmare where I show up at a marathon. And I’m, I have nothing on but jeans, I mean, I’m wearing like a shirt or whatever. But I don’t have running shorts, I’m wearing jeans that I have to, you know, toe the line at the start of a marathon wearing jeans. And so that’s kind of a nightmare of mine.

And listen, if you want to share the love, I would really appreciate it just go to wherever you listen to your podcast, scroll down to where it says leave a review, tap the stars and write a few words of a little love that you got for the podcast, I’d really appreciate that. I love hearing that you guys are getting something out of this.

And then hey, if you ever want a little bit of help losing weight, becoming a fat-adapted runner, or learning how to change habits, for good, for real, I got you covered. I work with runners every single day as a one-on-one coach, and a coach can do a lot of things for you, a coach can help encourage you to do things that you don’t want to do.

A coach can hold you accountable. A coach can help you navigate all the confusing information that’s out there about running nutrition, weight loss, all that stuff. And a coach can be your guide and your support and that expert to help keep you moving in the direction of your goals.

My goal as a coach is always to help you become the person that you want to become. So we talked about that, who is it that you want to become? How can I help you get there? And you know, I do a lot with helping people see how their mind works and helping people change bad habits and eliminate bad habits and create new healthy habits.

So that, you know, feeling good, being healthy can just become a part of who you are. And what you do, it just becomes the new you. So that’s the goal of coaching. And that’s kind of how it works. So if you want to learn more, or you want to apply for coaching, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply.

And then you and I will jump on a Zoom call and we’ll have a conversation, we’ll just see if it’s a good fit. It’s not for everybody. And that’s fine. But if you want to just see what it’s all about, it can’t hurt to have a conversation that doesn’t cost you anything except maybe about 30 minutes of your time. Cool. All right. All right.

So let’s get into this topic of streaks, okay, and the problem with streaks. So first of all, I want to make sure we’re all on the same page about what we’re talking about here. We’re not talking about the kind of streaks where you run naked in public to amuse or shock others, that is actually one definition of a streak. We’re not talking about running through the quad, streaking through the quad. You know that is not what we’re talking about here.

We’re talking about a continuous period of specified success. This is what the definition of a streak is the way we’re sort of framing it in this conversation today. Okay. And listen, I gotta say this upfront, and I’ll talk more about this later. But I’m not opposed to streaks, I don’t think they’re bad. Okay. But I think we have a misconception about what a streak is going to do for us. And that’s what I want to address today. Okay.

So if you’re a runner, and you’re on some sort of running streak, and you’ve been running every day for months, or years, or whatever it is, like more power to you keep doing that. I did that for a while I’ve done that several times. I’ve done a month-long streak, I think I did up to like 80 some days of running every day until I just forgot one day.

And then I woke up the next day. I’m like, well, that’s over. And I’ll talk a little bit about that too, and about how that makes us feel because sometimes that’s the problem with streaks. That’s one of the problems is that we beat ourselves up about it. Okay.

But the biggest problem I see. And the biggest problem I want to address is this: is that we think that a streak of doing something every single day is going to somehow automatically change you. Like if you have a bad habit, all you have to do is just, you know, not do it every single day and then eventually you’re cured. Or, you know, if you’re you know, somebody that you know, maybe he drinks too much, or maybe eats a lot of sugar. And you’re like, you know what, I just got to stop doing this for 30 days, and then I’ll be fixed, you know, you think that it will automatically change you.

And I have to say that this is just not true. It’s just not true. We’ve all done this before, we’ve gone on a diet for months sometimes, and then just gone right back to doing what we did before. There are people who, you know, they check themselves into rehab, because they, maybe they drink too much, maybe they, you know, have this problem with drinking or drugs or something like that.

And this is so common, they go into rehab for like, 30 days, and they just come out, and they just go right back to drinking, or people who go to prison, people get locked up in jail for years, and then they come out and they just start drinking again or doing the drugs or whatever it is that got them locked up in the first place.

And you would think just being away from this for a period of time would be enough, but it’s not. Because you’re not, you’re not addressing the underlying issue here, okay. You know, if somebody like stops eating sugar, like, let’s say, you stop eating sugar, and we’ve done this before, in that Facebook group, we’ve done like a no sugar challenge, okay?

If you stop eating sugar for a month, and then all of a sudden, one day, you know, oh, it was so and so’s birthday at work. And so they had cake, and I just ate a cake. You know, I had this bad day at the office, and I came home and I just had ice cream for dinner, you know, this happens all the time.

This is very, very common, just not eating sugar for 30 days doesn’t automatically mean like you’re cured, or you’re never going to go back to it again. Okay, we’re not addressing the underlying issues. And the real problem isn’t that you’re not doing enough of it, or you haven’t put the right number of days in a row together. Like that’s not what the problem is.

The real problem that’s not being addressed is you haven’t changed your thinking. You have to change your thinking if you want to change a habit. So I’ve talked about this before here on the podcast, and that is this idea that our thoughts cause our feelings and our feelings drive our actions. You know this is the think, feel, act cycle.

And when we understand that it’s not about what we’re doing, that’s causing us to think a certain way, it’s the other way around, the way we are thinking is driving our actions ultimately. And so if we want to change behavior, you know, create a new habit, a new healthier habit, something that’s going to last, we have to change how we’re thinking and feeling about it, in order to change the actions.

And the actions are important too. Like you have to you know, like, if you want to quit smoking, you have to not smoke, right? That’s part of the deal, right? You have to do that as well. But you have to focus on the thinking and feeling part, if you don’t focus on that, something’s going to happen. And you’re just going to pop right back into that old habit again. Okay.

So our thinking is really the key, and just changing some habit or doing something every day doesn’t change our thinking about it. Right? Otherwise, you know, this would be so much easier for us, right? Just don’t eat sugar for 30 days and you’re cured, you’ll never want it again, it’s not true.

Because if you’re in the habit of, you know, eating sugar all the time, because it makes you feel good. You know, it’s solving a problem for you, it’s solving an emotional issue that you’re having, it’s numbing you out to your emotions, so you don’t have to feel them.

I guarantee you can put, you know, six months straight together, and it’s not going to change how you think and feel about it. Because you haven’t addressed that part of it. Okay. So that’s like, my number one issue with streaks is that they don’t really address the cause of the habit in the first place.

Listen, our brains are malleable. Our brains are amazing and powerful. And we have all these habits that we’ve created over the years and decades of our lives. Like, you know, drinking is a good example. Just because, you know, every let’s say you drink every day, you’re this kind of person after work, you just come home, you have a glass of wine. It’s how you unwind, right?

It’s how you, you know, just relax, you know, but you’ve been creating this habit of every time I come home from work and I want to unwind, I want to like kind of numb out a little bit because maybe I’ve had a stressful day I’m feeling a little bit of stress or a little anxiety. Little anger or something like that inside, and I drink the wine. And it kind of numbs me to that.

And so you’ve just gotten this habit of, you know, feeling an emotion and then numbing it out with a little bit of alcohol. Right? Very common, it’s not a big deal, okay, but if that’s something you want to change, if that’s no longer working for you, and you want to change that, you’re going to come home from work, and you’re going to not have the alcohol but you’re going to feel terrible, you’re going to be like, I don’t, this doesn’t feel right.

Because you haven’t retrained your brain with a new, you know, thought feeling action pattern, the pattern, you’re, you’re interrupting the pattern by not, you know, rewarding that emotion that you’re feeling by not numbing to that emotion that you’re feeling.

But you haven’t changed the behavior at all. You’re just changing, you’re just like not giving your brain what it wants, you’re not, you’re not squashing down those emotions, okay? So we have to change things at a deeper level, okay. thinking, feeling, and acting, are the things we have control over in our lives.

And so these are the things that drive us. These are the things that create habits. Our brains, our habits are, are ingrained in our brain, they’re like, we have these neural pathways that are well developed and well-worn pathways. They’re very, you know, they’re like, fast like you, you think, feel and act so quickly, like, I’m just all of a sudden feeling a little stressed out, boom, the wine is already in my hand, and I’m drinking it. That’s how habits work.

Okay, so we have to change at a deeper level. But we can, like I said, our brains are malleable, we can actually change the pattern. And over time, you can change that thought, feeling action pattern, and create new neural pathways.

But it requires change at all three places, you cannot just change the action that you’re doing. You have to change the thoughts and the feelings as well. Okay, so that’s like the number one issue I have with any kind of like streak, okay, you’re not if you want to change a habit, you’re not addressing the real underlying causes of the habit and the underlying mental and emotional states that are driving the behavior. Alright.

Alright, the other issue I have with streaks is this: is that if you miss a day, you beat yourself up like crazy. So let’s say you put together a bunch of days in a row, let’s say you’re doing a running streak, and you run every single day for 60 days, or 90 days, or whatever it is. And then you miss a day. Oh, now you’re back to zero. You’re a failure.

You like you make it mean something really awful and negative like you’re a bad person. And all that hard work you’ve done, everything you’ve done is just wasted. It’s all gone. Now. I think this is a dumb way of looking at things, okay. When you beat yourself up, because you miss a day, I think you’re really missing the big picture.

All right, you’re just looking at a streak of a number of days. And you’re making it mean that like, you’re a good person if you continue with the streak. And if you end the streak, you’re a bad person. But I gotta tell you something, just about every single streak is going to come to an end at some point, right?

Just about every single streak that you engage in is probably going to come to an end at some point. Now I know people who have been on running streaks for 10 years, 15 years, they run every day and more power to you. That is amazing. That is really cool.

But if they were to stop that it doesn’t mean anything bad. It doesn’t mean that they have failed. It doesn’t mean they like their all that hard work is down the drain. But we think that’s what it means when we miss a day of a streak, you know, and I just have to make sure that we all understand that it doesn’t mean anything. Doesn’t mean anything.

It’s not anything negative unless you think it’s something negative. And that’s another problem I have with it is that we just think that it’s a bad thing if we end our streak, or if we don’t you know if we’re not successful if you say oh, you know, I’m going to stop eating sugar for 30 days and then halfway through. You eat half a doughnut or something like that.

Oh, all that hard work is down the drain. It’s not down the drain. You haven’t messed anything up really. Just go back to not eating sugar again. Boom, it’s easy. It doesn’t have to mean anything doesn’t have to be. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It doesn’t mean you are a failure.

It doesn’t mean you have faith. It doesn’t mean you’re not improving your health, it just means that you, you know, you had a little mini failure or a setback or whatever you want to call it, it’s not a big deal, though, we just pick ourselves back up and start over.

You know, that’s all. That’s the work. The work is we just carry on, no matter what, no matter how many times we fall off the wagon, or whatever you want to call it. There’s no wagon, right? So a streak misses the bigger picture here.

And the bigger picture is this. Why are you really doing this? Why are you running every day? Why do you want to stop eating sugar for 30 days or 90 days? Why are you, you know, lifting weights every day? Why are you not drinking? What is the goal? If the goal is to just put a certain number of days together in a row? And to check them off on your calendar like x x x?

Like if that’s your goal, how many is is the right number? How many is enough? If you get to 100 days does that? What does that mean? All right, have you changed anything really? I think when we just focus on a number of days, in a row of something, we’re missing the bigger picture, we’re missing the big lie. Why are you doing this?

You know, I talked about this before, like I made this like, promise to myself last month, I was going to do yoga for a month for 30 days straight. And I got to about day 27. And I just couldn’t do it. Like I just had, I was traveling, I just didn’t have the time and I came to about 10 o’clock at night and I was like I made a decision I could either do it and it would have been weird, I was ready to go to bed.

Or I could just like skip it and make it not mean anything. And that’s what I chose, I made the decision to just skip it. And I was fine with that I felt good about that effect. It felt liberating. I felt like you know what? This, what a relief. Because sometimes we get into streaks of doing things every single day, and it becomes stressful for us. Is that how you want to go through your life, like stressed out about, I can’t miss a day of running, or I can’t miss a day of doing yoga, or I can’t miss a day of not eating sugar, whatever it is?

No, that’s not the point of life. You can’t go through your life that way. That’s no way to become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself to be stressed out about it every single day.

Listen, when I’m working with people, and we’re working on changing diets, and you know, changing their exercise and creating new habits and things like that we focus on the fun, we focus on making it enjoyable.

Because if you don’t, if this is a stressful nightmare for you, I guarantee you, you are going to fail, you’re going to quit, who wants to do that? I don’t want to do that I want to live my life that way. So what’s the bigger picture? Why are you really doing this? Why are you engaged in this, you know, a streak of whatever it is running every day? Or you know, not drinking every day? Why? Why do you want to do that? Why is that important to you?

Some examples that I hear from people are, you know, I want to be around for my kids. You know, I feel so good. When I’m not eating sugar, I feel so good when I’m not drinking. I want more of that in my life. I want to be able to play with my grandkids. And the way I’m going you know I’m you know my doctor says I need to get my blood sugars under control or whatever.

Like I want to lose weight, I want to be a strong and lean runner, I want to you know, I want to look good naked. I want to be a good example. I want to set a good example for my kids. And when you look at it this way, when you think about the bigger picture, the number of days in a row becomes irrelevant.

Doesn’t matter how many days in a row, you did something who cares? Do you want to just say it on your gravestone, you know? Well, you know, they ran 864 days in a row, but then they were a failure. No, you just want it to be like, you know, this is a badass person.

They were awesome. They were healthy. They were around for their kids. They were a good example for others. They inspired other people to be more they became the best version of themselves. That’s what I want. I don’t think you can fit all that on a gravestone. But I’m just saying that’s the way I want to be remembered.

So I think, you know the counting numbers of days in a row of something just kind of misses the bigger picture right. Now, here’s I’m going to kind of contradict myself a little bit here because I haven’t had a drink of alcohol for over 14 years. And I’m not going to end that streak anytime soon that I know of.

Alright, I’m not like purposely going to set out to like in that streak of not drinking. But my goal with this is not to put a number of days in a row together. That’s not the goal. I’m not just checking days off a calendar. My goal with not drinking is that I feel better when I don’t drink and I don’t have a desire to numb myself to my thoughts and feelings anymore.

And I want to live life and experience my emotions without numbing out to them. And so that’s why I don’t drink alcohol. And you know what, it’s fine, you know, I don’t have a desire for it anymore. And it’s fine for me to just like, I don’t want it.

And here’s where I’m kind of contradicting myself, because I have this app on my phone, and you can plug in like the date you stopped drinking, and it gives me some information. It says you’ve been sober. You’ve been sober for 14.2 years, 170.5 months, 5190 days, 124,548 hours, okay. And I look at that every now and then I just go hmm, all right, cool, whatever.

But what if, hypothetically, what if I had a drink? What if I had a sip of alcohol? And I had to put all those numbers back to zero? Does that mean that everything I’ve done and learned and accomplished in the last 14 years has been wasted? Does that mean that it was all for nothing? Does that, you know, diminish everything that I’ve done? Have I thrown it all away? Is everything down the drain? No, doesn’t mean any of that stuff doesn’t mean I’m a failure. I failed. No.

And I hear people talk about this sometimes in, you know, some of the sobriety sober circles that I’m in some of the, you know, networks that I’m in, and they talk about oh, so and so sober for like 20 years, and then they went out and drank. They just threw it all away. Really did they throw it all away? I don’t look at it that way. I don’t look at it that way at all.

I think you learn so much when you can change your habits. And when you can, like change your thinking and change your feeling and your actions and change that whole cycle and like really become aware and curious about how your brain works. And like you, I think you just learned so much and you grow so much in that process that it doesn’t matter how many days in a row, you do something, it really, really doesn’t.

You know, the real goal is to create healthy new habits that help you to become who you want to become that help you to become more. The real goal is to change how your mind works at its core to change your, your, your state, you know, to change your internal state so you can change your external reality to change your external world. The real goal is to reprogram your mind with new thought, feeling, and action patterns.

You know, and the way you do this is through awareness and curiosity. Just notice how you think and how you’re feeling. When you’re about to take an action. You know, when you’re about to do something when you’re about to grab for the drink, when you’re about to go for the sugar when you’re about to go off your plan or like not go run because you just don’t feel like it like what is your brain telling you in that moment? What’s important to you?

Be curious, be aware of how your brain is working. Now, I’m not saying streaks are bad, streaks are not bad. There are some benefits to streaks. And there are some reasons why you might want to do things every day in a row. Like it’s kind of motivating for some people.

Okay, so let’s say you’ve been running every day, and you know, there’s a day where you just don’t feel like it. Or maybe you have been like staying off of sugar. And then there’s a day where like, you’re all of a sudden you’re like I just want to eat some ice cream right now.

But you’ve said to yourself, well, you know, I’ve put a bunch of days together in a row. So I don’t want to break that streak like that can be kind of motivating for people. But I’m just telling you don’t rely on this one thing to change your habit because that’s not going to work.

Inevitably you will break the streak. Something will always happen. You’re going to break the streak and then what? You’re going to beat yourself up you’re right back to where you were before because you haven’t actually changed your thinking and feeling about it. Okay, but it can be a little bit motivating for some people, right.

Another thing I think is cool about streaks is that they can be kind of fun, like doing a 30-day challenge. Friends, like we’re gonna do in our Facebook group is kind of fun and can help you to maybe help you to do things that you might not normally do on your own. Right.

So you’ve got the support of people around you, you’re having fun doing something together. But just know that it’s not a magic pill, that’s going to automatically mean you have like, all these new habits, and you’re a changed person. But it can be fun. And it can help you to, you know, start to learn about yourself.

When you combine a streak with understanding how your thoughts and feelings work, that’s powerful, right, but just doing a thing every day and checking it off the calendar is not enough, really. Because listen, you can lock yourself away in a cabin in the middle of the woods, and try to get away from alcohol or try to, you know, distance yourself from ice cream, or whatever it is.

And then one day, somebody’s gonna come along with a bottle, or an ice cream cone and just be like, Hey, would you like to indulge in this and you’re just gonna screw it all up for you. Like, you just can’t get away from it right? And we have to understand how our brain works.

We have to change the way our thoughts and feelings and actions, that whole cycle, that whole pattern works in order to make these lasting and meaningful changes in our lives. Okay. Again, think about your why, why are you doing this? Why do you want to give up drinking? Why do you want to, you know, stop eating sugar so you can lose weight? Like, why is that important to you?

When we think about this, it starts to really tap into some deeper things that we can address and work through. Okay. All right, you guys, I hope you join us over in the Facebook group in July for our dry July challenge. I think it’s gonna be a lot of fun. We’re gonna have some fun just talking about, you know, maybe taking a break from alcohol for a little while.

And I hope you got something out of this particular episode today. If you did, please consider sharing it with a friend. I would love that. And as always love all of you keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

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

77. Happiness is Overrated

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There’s a lot of talk out there in the personal development world about happiness. There are so many books on how to be happy all the time and how to be happy about everything, and honestly, I see …

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Podcast Transcript

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 77, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I am so happy to be here talking about happiness today. And my take on happiness, which might be a little different from what most people say about happiness. I have this idea that happiness might be a little overrated. So I’m going to talk about that today.

Listen, there’s a lot of talk in the personal development space, about happiness about how to become happy all the time, and how the goal is to just like, we need to be happy all the time. There are books on this, there are podcasts on this, there are all kinds of teachings out there about how to be happy all the time. And honestly, I think this is kind of a problem because my take on happiness is a little bit different.

I think happiness is not the goal, I don’t think our goal or our purpose in life is to be happy all the time. So I believe we are put here on this earth for something bigger, and much more powerful than just like being happy.

Okay, so in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to explain all of that, I’ll break it down. I’ll explain what I mean when I say that happiness is overrated, and I’ll offer my take on what I believe my life’s purpose and your life’s purpose really is.

And then as a little extra something, be sure to listen to the end of this episode because I’m going to walk you through a very powerful happiness, exercise. Okay, so be sure to listen to the end of this one, because it’ll be kind of fun, fun thing for you at the end here.

But first, if you haven’t already joined us on Facebook, come check us out the Running Lean podcast community, I created this group as an extension of this podcast so that we could have more of a two-way conversation because it’s just me here talking into this microphone. I know you’re listening on the other end there. But I like to have that interaction.

And so in the Facebook group, you can ask questions, I can chime in and help answer those questions. And then each week, I do a little coaching a little teaching in the group. And I love doing that. It’s super fun to connect with you guys. live and in person, so to speak, right virtually, virtually live and in person. So come and check us out on Facebook, just go to Facebook and search for Running Lean community and you’ll find us we have fun, we have a lot of fun.

Here’s another five-star review of the Running Lean podcast. This one’s from Maddie. And she says “Five-star plus, I’ve only been listening a few weeks and listened to most podcasts more than once very informative, very encouraging. I’m also a member of the Facebook group, everyone is there to support, encourage and help each other.”

Thank you, Maddie, for that awesome review. And yes, the Facebook group is amazing. And if you feel the urge to drop a review of the podcast, I would really appreciate it. You can just go to Apple podcasts or Spotify or audible wherever you listen to your podcasts and tap the stars. Leave a few words and you’re good to go. I’d really appreciate that. Thank you so much.

And then listen, if you’re ever looking for a little bit of help with all this stuff, losing weight, becoming a fat-adapted runner, changing your mindset, you know, working through all the issues we have around sticking to our plan. This is what I do as a one-on-one coach, this is the kind of work we do together. Listen, everybody I work with experiences some sort of a transformation.

Sometimes it’s the transformation of the mind. Sometimes it’s the transformation of the body sometimes it’s both. But I promise you that working one on one with a coach for a period of time can be very transformative. And just imagine what you can accomplish in like three months working one on one with a coach. It’s It’s amazing. Right?

So a coach just doesn’t you know, tell you what to do. A coach is there to support you. guide you offer you encouragement, support, knowledge experience, but also a coach there to help you do the things that you know you should do that you don’t want to do. There might be a little bit of tough love involved with coaching as well. That’s all part of it.

But the goal of coaching is not to just teach you a bunch of stuff, but to help you become the person that you ultimately want to become. So if you’re ever interested, you can just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply and apply for coaching, we’ll get on a Zoom call, we’ll have a conversation about and see if it’s a good fit for you.

No obligations, it doesn’t cost anything to jump on this call with me. It’s just me and you, having a little chat about your goals and seeing if coaching is something you’re interested in. And if you’re a good fit, cool, awesome.

Okay, let’s get into this topic because I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. And I’m finally like, okay, I’m ready to have this conversation with you guys. This is one of those maybe a little bit of tough love conversations. And I just want to start out by saying, like, happiness is not the goal, happiness is not the end result that we’re looking for. At least it shouldn’t be, okay?

But a lot of times I talk to people, and I’ll say like, tell me about your goals, what do you want for yourself? And inevitably, something will come up, like, oh, I just want to be happy. You know, I know that if I just lose weight, then I’ll be happy. Or if I can just run a faster marathon, then I’m going to be happy.

And I want to caution you guys against this. Because if you’re looking at happiness, as the end result of, of what you really want for yourself is like, that’s the goal I’m trying to reach, I’m trying to get to this place where I can just be happy all the time, you are going to be disappointed. It is almost impossible for you to be happy all the time. And I’ll talk about this more, I’ll break this down for you here.

But I just want you to know that happiness is one of those emotions that we want. And we desire. It’s one of our positive emotions, right, it’s a wanted emotion, it’s something we want more of in our life. And we can absolutely have more happiness in our life. But to think that, like, we’re going to be happy all the time.

And I think this is the mental image we project and this is the idea we get in our heads about, you know, if I could just lose this weight, if I could just lose the 30 pounds, get back to this weight I was when I first got married or when I was, you know, at my peak, then then I’ll be happy.

You know, and we do this in other areas of our lives, too. Like, oh, if I just had a better job, I’d be happy. Or if maybe I had a better relationship, you know, I’d be happy. And I want to caution you against thinking this way. Because accomplishing some big goal in your life or, you know, changing, you know, moving or changing a job or changing a relationship. Those things are all great. And you should always be wanting to accomplish things in your life.

But if the end goal is to be happy, you’re going to be disappointed. Happiness should not be the end goal, okay? Because happiness is just an emotion and emotions we can experience they come and they go, you know, you feel happiness, you feel joy, you feel sadness, you feel sorrow, you feel shame, or guilt, or stress or boredom. These are all emotions that we experience at different times in our lives, different times in our day, you can go through a whole day where you’re feeling a whole breadth of emotions, right?

Which I think is super cool, because as human beings, we get to experience all of these cool emotions. And as far as we know, we’re the only creatures in the universe that experience emotion in this way, especially this wide breadth of emotions.

I think somebody told me once they’re like dogs, dogs feel emotions, too. And I’m like, Yeah, probably. Cats, not so much. Dogs. Yes. But we get to experience all these different emotions, okay? And if we’re just, you know, set on, like, I just want this one emotion to be around forever. And that’s it. Like, I think this is, this is dumb to think this way, honestly. Okay.

So I don’t want you to be in this place of like, chasing happiness and making happiness the goal. Okay. Happiness is not a permanent state of being, it’s not something that you can just experience all the time. And if you see people that are like, Oh, that person is just happy all the time. I promise you they are not.

And they why would you want to be? Why would you want to be happy all the time? The purpose of your life is not to be happy all the time. Because when you’re happy. Where are you like everything is great, right? You’re comfortable. Everything is going perfectly well right? and you’re, you get to this place of contentment. Right?

And that’s okay to feel contentment, that’s okay to feel comfortable. But I think we get into this place of, oh, I just want to be happy. And then you want to be content and you get comfortable and just feel sort of, you know, like your life is sort of soft, soft and happy and comfortable all the time. Is that really what you want for yourself?

So you no longer need to work to improve yourself, you no longer need to push yourself, you no longer need to change anything in your life, because you’re just happy. I think this is the problem, right? I have this vision of being happy all the time, like this, if you guys saw the movie, Wally, the cruise ship in space, you know, with all the fat happy people, like everybody’s become so happy. And they don’t have to do anything. And they’re so comfortable that they’re so fat, they can’t even walk anymore.

So they get carted around in these little hover chairs. And there are all these robots that do everything for them. And all they do is like sit around and eat and drink all day, and they’re just fat slobs, right? It’s just like, so hilarious.

But it’s not unlike this vision of like, Oh, I just want to be happy all the time. You know, and just happy, soft, comfortable, you know, and content. And I don’t think this is what we want for ourselves. So this is kind of what I mean when I say happiness is overrated. I think if you want to evolve and you want to grow and you want to become something more than what you are right now, that there is a level of unhappiness required that there is some discontentment that is required if you want to become more.

And this takes me to what I believe the purpose of life really is for us, the purpose of your life is not to be happy all the time, the purpose of your life is to become more. Becoming more requires you to be somewhat unhappy and somewhat discontented with how things are and somewhat uncomfortable, right?

For yourself or others for your community for the world. Like there needs to be some level of discontentment with the way things are, in order for you to want to grow and become more to change to evolve. Becoming more means experiencing some amount of discomfort, some amount of pain or hardness or suffering.

We don’t grow and evolve by sitting around on our butts in our comfort zone all the time. If I could grow and become more by just sitting on the couch watching Netflix all day long, I would absolutely do that. But it doesn’t work that way. It does not work that way.

Becoming more means and I want to break this down for you. Because I talk about this idea of becoming more what does that mean? Becoming more means becoming more of who you are not becoming someone else. But just becoming more of you. More of who you want to be.

There’s this version of you that’s inside you that’s lurking inside you that maybe you’ve always been afraid to, to let her out. That’s what I’m talking about. I want that for you. I want you to be more authentically you. And I don’t know if I’ve shared this with you guys before this quote from Dr. Seuss. And it’s from one of the Dr. Seuss books. I can’t remember which book it’s from. But the quote is this: “Today you are you that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you.”

Anytime I talk about like becoming more you I always this quote always comes to mind like there’s no one alive who’s youer than you. Becoming more means living up to your true potential becoming the best you can be right? Most of us are living up to about 40% of our potential. This is below average, I want more for myself, I want to become more.

I want more than that for myself. I want you to want more than that for yourself. I don’t want to be below average. I want to be well above average 40% is not cool with me. Shouldn’t be cool with you either. We need to tap into more of who we are more of what we are capable of.

So to become more though it means you have to experience some level of discontentment or discomfort with where you are right now. And that’s okay. It’s not a bad thing. Like to not be happy where you are right now this is okay. That just means you want more for yourself. It’s amazing actually, right, if there’s you know, discontentment a little unhappiness that will actually serve you and actually help to drive you forward.

And being unhappy sometimes or being discontented sometimes. Don’t look at this as a negative thing. We think of this as being negative, I’m discontented, oh, I’m unhappy. It’s okay. You know, Life is 50/50. You know, we experience 50% of the time, roughly, we have positive emotions, and 50% of the time, you know, we experience quote, unquote, like negative emotions, right?

And it’s meant to be that way, life is supposed to be about half and half. Because as humans, we get to experience all the emotions, this wide breadth of emotions, the good and the bad, we need the contrast. Because without sadness, we wouldn’t have happiness. without sorrow, you wouldn’t know what joy feels like without conflict, you wouldn’t feel peaceful.

Without some sort of discontentment, you wouldn’t have any reason to grow. And to become more. We need the contrast. The contrast provides clarity for us. Otherwise, all these emotions would all just like, blend together, and just be like, blah, right?

So we have, you know, emotions that feel good and positive, and there are emotions that we feel that we experience and we feel maybe not so good. And then we might label these as negative, okay.

And listen, negative emotions are not to be avoided or pushed away or numbed out, we do this all the time, we experienced some sort of negative emotion, and we want to just push away wanting to go with his fastball, get back to being happy, I don’t want to feel this way.

Do not make the mistake of pushing these emotions away, do not make the mistake of trying to just feel happy all the time. Because when you do this, you get caught in this practice of running away from half of the emotions you’re trying to that you want to feel, you know, end up, pushing away, and numbing out to half of your life. These negative emotions are things that we should absolutely allow them to be there.

I don’t even like to use the word negative to describe emotions, because I don’t really think they’re negative, I think it’s just part of who you are. And when we say negative then we think, Oh, I, they’re, they’re bad, they’re not bad.

Now, some of these are difficult emotions, their unwanted emotions, they’re highly charged emotions, they’re strong emotions, you know, shame, guilt, hurt, sadness. These are emotionally or energetically charged motions, they really make you feel something in your body like you feel these emotions deeply. Right. And it’s okay to feel deeply. Happiness and sadness.

It’s okay to feel deep guilt and hurt and shame, and joy, and excitement and motivation. But when we push away half of our emotions, we’re not experiencing like half of our life or numbing out to half of our experience in this world. So what does this look like?

So if, for example, somebody that you care about dies, you want to feel sadness for that person, you want to feel sadness for that loss. You don’t want to push that away. You don’t want to be happy about that. Right? So that’s kind of what I’m talking about like when we want to feel happy all the time.

That means you want to feel happy when somebody you love dies, do you want to feel happy when your husband cheats on you? You know you want to feel angry. You want to feel hurt, right? Because that is how we are wired as human beings and it’s good. It’s good to feel these things. You should be angry. If your husband cheats on you like that is something you can absolutely be angry about.

Allow that to be there don’t push it away. You don’t need to feel happy about those things. Okay, that would be weird. Okay. So whenever we experience certain emotions we want to push them away as fast as possible. A lot of times what we do is we numb out to those so we go, we eat something or drink something, we go shopping, whatever we do. We’re trying to feel better, just like right right now I just want to say feel better. I just want to feel better.

I don’t want to feel sadness, I don’t want to feel shame. I don’t want to feel guilt. I don’t want to feel stress. So I’m just gonna eat something, you know, and we condition ourselves to eat and drink our way to feeling better. To try to make ourselves feel happy. If I just eat this cake, I’m gonna be happy.

You guys, it doesn’t work. I talked to people every single day who tell me, you know, I wasn’t feeling good. I was stressed out or I was unhappy, and I just wanted to be happy. So I, you know, I ate the cake, because I thought that was gonna make me feel happy. Oh, okay. How’d that work for you? Do you feel happy? Hmm. No, I mean, you know, it tasted good. Gave me a sugar rush. But I wasn’t happy.

We eat and drink ourselves into oblivion sometimes, because we think that it’s gonna make us happy. And we think it’s gonna make us feel better. But it doesn’t. It tricks your brain into making you think you’re feeling better because it’s a, it’s like a drug, sugar as a drug. I would argue alcohol is a drug.

And we use these things to trick our brains into feeling good, right? Because we release dopamine, they light up these pleasure centers in our brain. And so we feel good. Our brain thinks we feel good. Our brain thinks we’re happy. But are we really happy? No, we just think we are.

And listen, the difficult emotions like the stress, the boredom, the sadness, whatever you’re experiencing, it’s still there. It hasn’t gone anywhere. Okay. So I don’t want to chase this idea of happiness as something that we need to get to as a destination as an end result. Happiness is something we can experience and we should experience.

I think we can increase the amount of happiness in our lives and I’ll talk about that more in a minute. But I don’t want to get stuck in this idea of chasing happiness as the goal. So not the goal. The goal is to become more and I don’t want to conflate being unhappy with like grumpiness. Okay, because I think we can do this.

I think there’s a misconception that like if you’re a grumpy person you’re unhappy. Just because you’re discontented with the way things are. You don’t have to be a grim kin or a snark. Okay, you can be happy, or you can be unhappy and discontented and still be positive. You can be unhappy and discontented and still be kind, generous, selfless, and friendly. And motivated.

You know, when we talk about weight loss, a lot of times people are discontented with the way they are today. I don’t like my body today. I feel fat. I feel I’m ashamed of who I am. I don’t want you to be ashamed of who you are. We have to love ourselves exactly as we are right now.

You can absolutely love yourself how you are right now. And have a positive body image and be discontented and want to become more and want to lose the weight. You can do both. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. Love yourself exactly as you are and want to become more you can do that. I love that. I love that idea.

So I don’t want you to think that if you’re unhappy, that means you’re, you know, you’re just a jerk to everybody. Because that’s different. That’s just you’re a jerk, okay? If everybody you meet is a jerk, you’re the jerk. Just so you know. Okay.

I saw that meme recently, I thought was pretty funny. And listen, I’m not about anti-happiness. Okay, I absolutely think we can increase the amount of happiness in our lives. And I think we should, I think we should be working on ways to increase the amount of happiness in our lives. As long as we understand that this is not the end goal.

We should increase the time the amount of time that we spend experiencing positive or, you know, wanted emotions like joy and excitement, and delight and happiness. You know, all of these things in love. Oh my gosh, love what a great emotion to experience. Don’t you want to experience more love in your life? Absolutely.

So we just don’t want to make that like the absolute goal, right? Remember, your purpose in life is to become more of who you are. So I’m not anti-happiness. I just don’t want you to seek it as the purpose of your life. The purpose of your life is not to be happy. Because if you make that the purpose of your life, you’re going to be miserable a lot of the time because you’re going to be, you’re not going to be where you want to be. Right.

So happiness is one of those things that it’s just an emotion that you can experience. And it’s an emotion that you can experience anytime you want. And so if, if you’re into it, I’m going to walk you through a little exercise here, where you can actually experience a great deal of happiness right now, right here in this moment, okay?

So, if your goal with this, I’m going to just kind of walk you through this little exercise, okay, this is really powerful. And something you can do. Anytime you want to experience more happiness, or, or any other emotion that you want to experience and you want to create more love, we’re just going to use happiness because that’s kind of what we’re talking about today.

So here’s what we’re going to do if you’re listening to this, and you can, you know, sit down or, or just close your eyes, and just relax a little bit, that’s a good way to do this. But if you’re out running or driving or something like that, and you’re listening to this, that’s totally fine, too, you don’t have to close your eyes, don’t close your eyes, if you’re driving, unless you’re driving your Tesla with autopilot on, and that’s totally fine. But even then keep your hands on the steering wheel.

But now, so just like if you’re out running or something like that, you can still do this, you just do it with your eyes open. Okay. And so here’s what I want you to do, close your eyes, and I just want you to like, relax, take a couple of deep breaths.

And just try to relax a little bit, okay, because we just want to like, we want to tap into a different state right, now we want to tap into a state where we feel a little more calm, a little bit more relaxed, a little more at ease, we just want to slow down a little bit here, okay.

And what I want you to do is I want you to think about a time when you are really happy. I want you to think about a specific moment in time in your past when you were really, really happy. And then I want you to go back to that moment right now. Go back to that moment in your mind.

Float down into that moment and see what you saw through your own eyes. Hear what you heard. And I want you to really feel the feeling of happiness. From that moment. Start to tap into what that feels like. And you can start to feel it in your body. And start to feel that energy flowing in and through you.

And as you’re experiencing this moment of happiness, I want you to turn it up a little bit. Want you to crank up the happiness, just like you would adjust the dials on an OLED television to like, make it more vibrant. make it clearer, turn up the level of happiness that you’re feeling right now in this moment.

Make it even stronger until you feel like you’re just overflowing with happiness. And you feel that happiness just wanting to burst out through you. And you can feel this energy welling up and just growing inside you. It feels so good. Doesn’t it feel good? Feels good to be happy. And this happy feeling that you’re experiencing right now in this moment. You can tap into this any time you want. It’s cool. I love this.

I love feeling good and I love tapping into an emotion an emotional state like that. And that’s as simple as it is right there you guys. You can feel happy like that any time you want. You can feel love like that anytime you want. You can feel confidence just like that anytime you want. Just go back to a time when you felt super confident and walk through that same exercise.

I would encourage you to really re-listen to this like last section of this podcast. And you can plug in different emotions you can plug in, you know confidence or motivation. Love is such a good one too. Who doesn’t love to feel love? I love to feel love.

Whew, I’m feeling so good right now. I love doing that. I haven’t done that exercise for a while. And I was just doing it with you guys just now and I’m just feeling so good right now. I’m like beaming. Okay, so that’s all I got for you today. I hope this was helpful for you.

In a way, I hope you got something out of this episode. If you did consider sharing it with a friend that would mean the world to me. And as always, I love you all. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening, keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

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

70. Becoming an Emotional Adult

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There’s one big difference between people who consistently reach their goals and those who do not. It doesn’t have anything to do with how bad they want it or how early they get up in the …

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Podcast Transcript

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 70 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray. 70 episodes! This is so fun. I just love coming on this podcast and sharing this stuff with you guys. Today I’m talking about becoming an emotional adult. So I’ve noticed that there’s one big difference between people who consistently reach their goals, and those who do not.

And it doesn’t have anything to do with how bad they want it, or how early they get up in the morning. It’s more about whether or not they’re living their life as an emotional adult. So yes, this episode of the Running Lean podcast is all about emotions, we’re going to talk about feelings. I’m going to be talking about the very important role that your emotions play in whether or not you are getting the results that you want in your life.

Whether your goal is to finish a marathon without bonking or know how to lose weight and keep it off for good. You have to become an emotional adult in order to get there. Becoming an emotional adult, this is one of the most powerful skills you can learn. And it’s key to becoming the most badass version of yourself. So I’m gonna get to all that in just a minute.

First, if you haven’t already joined us on Facebook, come check out the Running Lean podcast community, just search for Running Lean community on Facebook. It is a group of people just like you. We all share common goals, we share common struggles, we help each other, we encourage each other, we ask questions, we get answers, we support each other through this journey.

Having a community to lean into is so helpful. So come and check us out. We have a lot of fun in there. I do weekly trainings every Sunday afternoon, little Facebook Live, where you can bring questions and I’ll answer them for you. I created that community on Facebook as a way of extending this conversation making it a two way conversation because I’m here talking into this microphone on this podcast. But I can’t hear back from you.

What’s going on with you? I want to know what’s going on with you. So that’s why I do this over in the Running Lean community on Facebook. So come check us out over there. And then here’s a message I got recently from a new podcast listener.

And this is from Deb and she says, “Wow, Patrick, listening to your podcast is life changing. I stumbled across it yesterday. And I’ve spent the last two days smashing through loads of them. Thankfully, I have more for tomorrow. You speak so well cut to the chase, no BS, very informative. I’ve recently signed up for a half marathon and know that I will complete it. Thank you for you.”

That’s so awesome. I get messages like this all the time. If you want to share the love and just give back and let me know how you feel about the podcast. If this has helped you in any way, you can leave a review. Just do that on Apple podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast. I don’t know where to do it. Just figure out where it says like leave a review, write a quick five star review. Tell me what this podcast means to you. I would love to hear from you.

And listen, I know that I talk a lot about diet, nutrition, weight loss, dealing with your emotions, and all this stuff can be helpful and awesome and all that but also may feel a little overwhelming. And you probably just want to know like how do I start? Where do I go? How do I make this work for me?

Well, as a one on one coach, I got you covered. I can help you make sense of all of this. We can put together a plan that will work for you because listen, we are all different. We have different body types, different metabolisms, different goals, different needs, different likes, different dislikes. And there’s just not one way of doing things that works perfectly for everybody.

So my job as a coach is to help you figure out what works best for you. So working together will define your goals. We’ll put together a plan that’s tailored to help you reach those goals. And listen, this work that we do together and coaching is not just about diet and nutrition. It’s about becoming the healthiest version of yourself.

Becoming the healthiest human being that you can possibly be physically, mentally, and emotionally. You know, I work with people who have been struggling with weight for the majority of their life and they’re finally ready to change for good. I work with runners who are tired of bonking all the time, they’re ready to stop hitting the wall and start hitting their goals.

I work with people who want to end the emotional eating, who want to take control of their thoughts and feelings, and get over feeling obsessed about food all the time. So whatever your health and fitness goals, I’m here for you, I’ll be your guide, I can show you the way I can help you become that badass version of yourself. To learn more and apply for coaching, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply, and we’ll have a conversation. It’ll be fun.

Alright, let’s get into this. Speaking of fun, let’s get into this topic of becoming an emotional adult. So in order to get started with this, I need to talk about what the difference is between being an emotional child and being an emotional adult. So being an emotional child is easy. This is something we’ve been doing since we were toddlers. Okay?

So if you’re a toddler, and you parents out there that have toddlers right now, I feel for you, I really do. My kids are grown up. Now, we don’t have to deal with this anymore. But when you have a toddler, what do they do when things don’t go their way? Right? They scream and cry, they lay on the ground, in the middle of Target, and just have a fit. Right?

And, you know, they, they’re like, you know, oh, you know, this isn’t going my way. I’m not getting what I want. I want this but I can’t get it, you know, I can’t have it or whatever. Or you’re so mean to me. You know, and they just kind of have a fit. Okay? This is what it means to be an emotional toddler. And it’s fine. To be this way when you’re a toddler like this is kind of normal for toddlers to act this way, right?

But here’s where this plays out for us as adults. So you kind of see this all the time. You kind of act the same way. It’s a little more subtle. But you’ll say things to yourself. Like, I can’t have this. I’m not allowed to eat cake. I want this cake. But I’m not allowed. Nothing ever works for me. My life just sucks. There’s nothing I can do about it. Nothing ever goes my way. Right?

Doesn’t this sound whiny? I know I sound like I’m whining right now. But this is what we do to ourselves. We talk to ourselves this way we say these kinds of things. We blame everyone, we blame everything on what’s going on with ourselves in our own lives. Okay, so when we talk about emotional toddlers, we’re talking about people who play the victim who blame others, their blamers they’re complainers.

They always have stories and reasons and excuses for why they can’t reach their goals, why they can’t stick to their plan. I hear these stories all the time. You know, I hear them from friends and family and clients. Sometimes they tell me about, you know, oh, I had this really hard day at work. And that’s why I had to eat cake for dinner instead of the chicken that I was planning on making.

And as I’m saying this out loud, doesn’t it sound sort of ridiculous? But these are real situations. These are like real things that go through people’s brains. You know, they’re like, oh, yeah, I had a hard day at work. And so I had to eat cake. We all do this too. And I’ve done this before too. And I’m not immune to any of this. Okay, so this is just something we all do.

But I want to just make this very clear distinction between what it means to be an emotional toddler, what it means to be an emotional child. And what it means to be an emotional adult. Okay?

So emotional child, blaming, complaining, things don’t go your way. I can’t have this, I’m not allowed. Nothing ever goes my way that kind of stuff, right? So let’s contrast that with what it means to be an emotional adult. So when you’re an emotional adult, you don’t throw fits if things don’t go your way.

You don’t blame other people or other circumstances for what’s happening in your life. You don’t have excuses. You don’t have stories you’re not blaming, you don’t have reasons. Instead, you take responsibility for all of your results. Good and bad. You gained three pounds this week. Okay, why? What did I do differently? What can I do to change that?

Didn’t hit my running goal this week. Why? What happened? How can I get back on track next week? Doesn’t it sound better? There’s no blaming, no complaining, there’s just taking responsibility for everything that’s going on in your life. All of your results, the good, and the bad. Yes, all of it. It’s all, it’s all your fault. Okay.

So another way of looking at this is a concept called cause and effect. In every situation, you are either at cause or you are at the effect of others. So you are either the cause of the result, meaning you are taking responsibility, you’re taking ownership. This is all on me, hey, I ate the cake, I chose to eat the cake that’s on me. This is what it means to be at cause, okay, or you are at the effect of your circumstances.

Someone at the dinner table said I was no fun because I didn’t want to eat the cake. So they made me feel bad. So I ate the cake. It was their fault. Like that’s being at the effect of your circumstance. I had a bad day at work, so I ate cake for dinner instead of chicken. That’s being at the fact that’s just blaming others, you don’t take responsibility there, okay?

Here’s something I need you guys to understand. You are not a victim of your circumstances. Okay? Circumstances in our lives are always neutral. People can say anything they want, people can do anything they want, things can happen at work. And they always will. Some of it you like some of it you don’t like and it’s all basically it’s all neutral.

None of this stuff means anything to you until you have a thought about it until you assign meaning to it. So big, challenging things can happen in your life, things that, you know, don’t really mean anything, until you create a story about what this thing means to you.

For example, let’s say and this is pretty subtle, and this is very common to let’s say your husband says something to you like, you know what, honey, you’re fine, just the way you are. You don’t need to lose any more weight. Okay, what do you do with that? How do you respond internally?

Like, what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear that? Think about this. What’s the story that you’re telling yourself about those words? Because here’s the truth. The truth is, they are just words, your husband said some words, this is a neutral circumstance. You can make it mean whatever you want.

But he just said some words. You can just ignore him if you want to. But you can make it mean that he’s right. Oh, maybe I’m just being selfish here. You know, I really want to make him happy, I should probably just go back to doing what I was doing before. Even though I was gaining weight. I was unhappy. But, you know, you know, maybe making him happy is more important than me losing weight and feeling good about myself.

And maybe he won’t love me if I lose more weight, you know, maybe all this stuff I’m doing is making him uncomfortable. And I don’t want him to be uncomfortable. So what do you do when you start thinking this way and you start feeling this way? You go back to doing what you were doing before you give up on your goal of getting lean and getting healthy. And you just stay unhappy and overweight? Because you’re making these words means something to you. So that’s one way you can go.

Another thing you can do with this information is that this person said to you these words that this person said to you, oh, you’re fine. You don’t need to lose weight. You can make it mean that here’s a person that’s just voicing his opinion. Okay, thank you for sharing your opinion. I appreciate that. But you know what? I’m doing this for me. Not for you. Your opinion. You know, thank you, but I’m good.

You know what I’m doing might make you feel uncomfortable, but that’s your problem. I’m going to carry on because I’m becoming healthier. I’m feeling better. Running is getting easier. I’m losing weight. I love living this way. And when you make it mean that and when you can like start thinking those thoughts and feelings about what this means to you, you’ll stay on track.

You know, you actually will become that healthiest, most badass version of yourself. yet. So this is just an example. And you can replace, you know, my husband said some words with other stuff, like my boss said stuff to me at work, or I got a flat tire in my car, or my kids are driving me nuts, you know, or I can’t run because of this injury or my daughter broke her arm, or any other litany of circumstances that are happening in your life, because those things are always going to happen. Always, always, always.

It’s interesting. I was talking to a client recently about this very issue. And she said, Yeah, because she had a situation at work that was causing a lot of stress and I said, Well, how do you respond to other challenges that you face? “ And she said that she had recently got a nail in her tire in her car. And she didn’t freak out about it. She just, like, drove her car to the tire place and like got it fixed, got it patched and then was on her way didn’t make it mean anything.

But we can do this, we can say, Oh, how about this nail in my car tire? I gotta tire my car. Yeah, of course, you know, I got a nail in my tire. So this means that I’m gonna have a bad day, this is so stressful. Oh, my gosh, you know, like, we can create this whole story around it right and drive ourselves crazy.

That’s being an emotional toddler about it. Being an emotional adult is handling a situation like that. And just going like that, no big deal. I’m gonna go get this fixed. And I’m on my way. So we can do that easily with stuff like getting a nail in your tire.

But what about when it comes to what our husband says to us? Or what our boss says to us, or how our kids are behaving, we make it mean something else. Okay, we get to choose how we respond to every circumstance in our life. We can respond like a toddler, lay on the ground and kick our legs and scream and cry about it.

Or we can respond like an emotional adult. Here’s an example from my life. Speaking of challenges, 14 years ago, I decided I’d had enough drinking alcohol just wasn’t working for me, okay. And so I quit, quit drinking. And during the last 14 years, I have had all kinds of challenges in my life.

I’ve gone through breakups and divorce, I’ve changed careers. I’ve lost jobs. Both my parents passed away. I’ve started businesses and then failed businesses. And through all of these 14 years, there were all kinds of reasons and excuses that I could have turned to alcohol as a solution, like, oh, yeah, my, my parents just died. Like I could choose that as an excuse to drink. And most people would probably say, Yeah, I’d probably drink over a lot of that stuff, too. But I never did, I never felt the need to take a drink.

I’ve never felt the need to revert to being an emotional toddler because of what’s happening in my life. I don’t blame the outside world, for how I feel, or for what I’m doing or not doing. I’m staying true to myself through all of it. In fact, staying true to myself is why I’ve been able to handle these big challenges in my life.

Because I’m not afraid to experience the emotions. I’m not afraid to feel my feelings. I don’t have to numb my emotions with alcohol or food anymore. And numbing out is a way of being an emotional toddler. This is the way we sort of practice emotional childhood. Okay?

So when you go through something that challenges you and you’re absolutely going to feel some emotions, right? You’re going to feel fear, you’re going to feel frustration, you’re gonna feel stress, you’re going to feel sadness or, or loneliness or failure or shame or whatever it is, you’re going to feel some emotions. So when you go through these big things in your life, most people, the way most people deal with these difficult emotions is they drink something or they eat something they turn to some sort of external thing to make them feel better inside.

Temporarily anyway, like it just feels good to eat some cake right? It feels good to drink some alcohol. The problem with this approach, though, is that it comes with negative consequences. Right. And maybe you drink too much, or you wake up with a hangover, you know, or maybe you eat too much and you end up gaining weight and you feel terrible.

This is what it means to approach the challenges in your life like an emotional toddler or you’re just like, I don’t want to feel this way. So you just like drink yourself numb or eat yourself numb and it doesn’t work. Right? It doesn’t doesn’t mean those feelings go away. They just temporarily you’re putting them on hold, you know, you’re just, you know, drinking something to make you feel better, temporarily. Doesn’t do anything for the actual feelings. Your feelings.

Because you’re gonna wake up, you’re gonna be hungover, you’re gonna feel like crap. Alright. And then you’re still gonna have those feelings. You’re gonna be like, No, I got to deal with this. And then you go, just want to drink again. It’s a never ending cycle. So numbing out is emotional toddlerhood, right? We don’t want to do that.

We want to feel our feelings. And this is where things get tough for most people, okay. Most people do not like to feel difficult emotions. And this is normal. Like, I don’t like to feel these things. Fear, sadness, anger, loneliness, grief, shame, overwhelm, frustration, stress, anxiety, these are all emotions, these are all feelings that we feel. And most people will do anything to just not have to feel these feelings.

But most people are coming from this place of like, being at the effect, right being at the effect of everything that’s happening around them being a blame, or being a complainer being an emotional toddler. So here’s a radical concept for you. What if you were willing to just feel those emotions? What if you didn’t do anything? To try to make them go away? You just felt them? What? I know, it’s a crazy concept.

What would that look like for you to just feel your feelings? I promise you, it would not feel good. I promise you it would be uncomfortable. But here’s the thing. This is how you become more emotionally evolved. This is exactly the way that you become an emotional adult, it’s about experiencing your emotions, feeling your feelings, allowing them to be they’re not doing anything to change them, just allowing them to come and go like a wave.

So we experience thoughts in our head, you know, in our brain, we experience emotions in our body. And so in order to feel those emotions, you have to get in touch with your body, you have to process your emotions, you have to get in touch with how you feel in your body. Sometimes it’s like a tightness in your chest.

Or, you know, your shoulders are tensed up, you know, your shoulders start to raise up towards your ears. That’s like stress, right? And we experience these emotions, we feel them in our body. This is where a lot of people just don’t like that feeling. They don’t like that feeling.

I’ll tell you what, one one thing that’s really amazing at working through this stuff is to go for a run, because then you’re like, you’re changing the feelings in your body. Okay, we’re not, we’re not stuffing the feelings down, what you’re doing is you’re doing something that is healthy. And that allows you to get in touch with what’s going on inside your body.

This helped me so much over the last couple of years, especially last year when I was going through a divorce and I was feeling all these intense feelings, you know, sadness and loneliness, and hurt. And I would go for a run. And I would still feel those feelings, but, but it was like I was able to process them, I was able to let them come and let them go.

Alright, and then I was able to carry on with my day. So this is how you become an emotional adult is to just allow the feelings to be there and not do anything to change them. Stop the complaining, stop the blaming, take 100% responsibility for everything you’re feeling and everything that’s going on good or bad in your life.

And you have to practice. This is a skill that you can learn. Right? This is one of the most powerful life skills that you can learn in my opinion. And you have to practice it and it is not easy. And I talk to my clients about this all the time. I talk about just letting the uncomfortable feeling be there. Right, it will not feel good.

But if you can practice it and you can just be with these emotions, it will get easier. I promise you just like anything else in your life. The more you practice it, the better you get at it. So this is how you become an emotional adult, this is how you become a total emotional badass. Because here’s the cool thing about this, when you learn how to do this, and you get good at this, when you’re no longer afraid to experience some of these emotions, there’s nothing you can’t do.

So most people will, you know, quit on themselves, they’ll give up their goals and their dreams, because getting there doesn’t feel good, it’s uncomfortable, you’re out of your comfort zone. And so most people will just quit on themselves. All because of a feeling because they just don’t want to feel uncomfortable.

They don’t want to feel the fear. They don’t want to feel the disappointment if they don’t make it or if they feel like a failure. But what if you didn’t care? What if you were willing to feel all of those emotions? What if you’re willing to feel any emotion? What do you think you could accomplish?

Oh, my gosh, there’d be nothing to stop you from achieving anything you want in your life. I’ve experienced this huge, huge amount of success, and abundance and joy and accomplishment in my life. Because I’m willing to get uncomfortable. I’m not superhuman, honestly, far from it. I’m just a normal average job here, right?

I’m just more willing to experience some of these difficult emotions. And most people, I’m more willing to put myself out there and be uncomfortable and go through it, have the fear, have the anxiety, and show up anyway. And then take responsibility for everything that’s happening in my life, good, bad, or otherwise.

So here’s my call to action for you this week. I want you to just notice, like be aware of when you’re being an emotional toddler. Don’t judge yourself. You know, don’t beat yourself up about this. But just be aware that you’re doing it. Where are you blaming others? Where are you complaining?

Where are you saying things like, I can’t have that. I don’t get to do that. Because you’re making a choice. These are all choices you get to make, be an adult about this, be an adult about your emotions, take responsibility for everything, everything, everything that you’re getting in your life or not getting the good, the bad, everything. It’s all on you.

I have this t-shirt, and it’s a black T-shirt with big white lettering, and it says everything is my fault. And I wear that T-shirt to remind myself that everything in my life is my fault, whether it’s good or bad. I am the cause of everything that’s happening in my life.

Now you know what somebody said to me? Not what’s going on at work? Not what’s happening with my running injury? Nothing. It’s all on me. So where are you at? Are you the cause of everything? Or are you at the effect of everything? Are you at the effect of your circumstances? I want you to take full responsibility for all of this, this is radical. This is crazy.

Most people don’t do this. But you know, if you’re living at the effect of your circumstances, you have all these stories and excuses and reasons and you’re blaming yourself and your complex. We don’t want to do that, we want to take responsibility for all of it. Be an emotional adult.

And if you’re finding yourself trying to avoid feeling your feelings, you just want to push your feelings away. I don’t want to feel this right now. I’m going to eat something, I’m gonna drink something. What if you just allow them to be there and see how it goes like practice that practice feeling your feelings. I know this is such a crazy concept. We don’t talk about this.

I’m not afraid to talk about feelings. I’m not afraid to talk about emotions. I think this is a skill we should be teaching our kids, honestly. Because when you get good at this, there’s just nothing you can’t do. I want you to be willing this week, I want you to be willing to get uncomfortable emotionally so that you can become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself yet because this is how you’re going to get there.

Okay, so that’s all I got for you today. I hope you got something out of this episode. And if you did, please consider sharing it with a friend. I love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

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

53. How to Overcome Self-Sabotage

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Self-sabotage is when you say you want to lose 30 lbs but you find yourself eating chocolate cake every day. What is happening here? By eating the cake, you are completely undermining what you say …

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Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 53 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, this is actually the very first episode of 2021. This episode will come out on January the first. So Happy New Year, everyone. And I thought it was appropriate to talk about this topic, especially as we start the new year and that is how to overcome self-sabotage.

Self sabotage is one of those things that we all do. We’ve all done it. No one, none of us are immune to it. Self sabotage is like when you say I want to lose 30 pounds, but then you find yourself eating chocolate cake every day. What is happening? When you eat the cake, you’re undermining your goals. You’re undermining what you really want for yourself.

Okay, so if this sounds familiar to you this kind of thing. Rest assured you’re not alone, we all do it. The problem though most people think that self-sabotage is just something that happens. It’s like a part of life, and they have no control over it. That is not the case, the reality is that we absolutely can do something about it. So I’m going to talk about what self-sabotage is, and how we can overcome it in this episode. Okay.

Real quick, the Running Lean monthly coaching group opens in just a couple of days, January 3, 2021. This is my monthly group coaching program, where first of all, you get access to all of my online courses, including my flagship program called the weight loss training course for runners. This is where you learn exactly how to become an efficient fat-burning machine.

Right, you want to lose weight, you got to burn fat if you want to be able to run longer and farther and, and more efficiently. Fat is a great source of fuel. So you got to transform yourself into an efficient fat burner. So I’ll teach you exactly how to do that. You also get in the monthly coaching group, you get these live group coaching calls with me and your fellow runners.

So you get the group support, the encouragement, you get the accountability, you get help, you get to ask questions, and get answers. I want to help you reach your goals in 2021. Joining the monthly coaching group is a great way to do it. We’re also going to be doing a powerful goal-setting workshop in January called achieving the impossible I want to help you achieve some impossible goals in 2021.

So join the monthly coaching group and you can do all of that amazing stuff. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join and let’s make 2021 a year of transformation. Become the badass runner you’ve always wanted to be; runningleanpodcast.com/join. And then I did want to mention that we have a new challenge that we just started over in the Running Lean community on Facebook.

So come check us out over there because we’re doing the January journal challenge and that is where I am challenging you to write in a journal every day for the month of January. Now you might be thinking Patrick, whatever. What is this like a dear diary kind of a thing? No, it is not.

This is like journaling, with intention. Journaling, with purpose journaling because you want to accomplish something. Journaling is an amazing way to help you reach your goals. Whether you’re journaling, for weight loss journaling, for some big running goal. Some people will call it a training log or a food log. You can call it whatever you want. There are different ways you can journal.

But the benefits of journaling are amazing in that it’s just such an incredible way of creating a new positive mindset, but also helping you create new thought habits, new thought patterns, and helping you to answer reach your goals. So we’re going to be talking all about what journaling is and how to do it the right way.

And I also have daily journal prompts that I’ll be offering up to you all through the month of January. So it’s going to be kind of a fun challenge that we’re doing in the Facebook group. So go just go to Facebook and search for Running Lean community. Okay.

Bring on the self-sabotage stuff. Today I’m talking about how to overcome self-sabotage. So let’s talk about what self-sabotage actually is. So the definition of self-sabotage, if you look it up, on the Googles, it says, self-sabotage refers to behaviors or thought patterns that hold you back and prevent you from doing what you want to do.

Self-sabotage is when you consciously or unconsciously undermine your thoughts, dreams, goals and desires. So when I look at those definitions, I’m like, Whoa, that is? That is a very, very good definition. So I kind of combine that and say self-sabotage is patterns of thoughts or behaviors that hold you back keep you stuck, or prevent you from reaching your goals. So how do you know if you’re self-sabotaging?

Like how do you know that this is something you’re actually doing. One thing you can do is take a look at your current actions, your behaviors are the things you’re doing in alignment with your long-term goals. If not, then it could be a form of self-sabotage. For example, let’s say you want to lose weight, and you decide you’re going to stop eating sugar and flour. This is a pretty, pretty common thing to do, right? If you want to try to lose weight.

So you stop eating all the refined carbs, you stop eating all the sugar, and like you’re doing okay, maybe for a couple of weeks, you’re doing okay, but then you have like a stressful day at work. And there’s like an accident on your way home, it takes you forever get home, you’re stuck in traffic, you come home, you’re tired, you’re frustrated, you open up the fridge because you’re going to your plan on eating a healthy dinner, you got a salad and a piece of chicken that you’re gonna have for dinner.

So you open up the fridge, you’re standing there, lo and behold, there’s this beautiful chocolate cake just sitting right there calling out to you eat me, it’ll make you feel better. You’re all stressed out, this is going to fix all of your problems. Chocolate Cake talking to you. So instead of eating your healthy dinner of chicken and salad like you planned on doing, you just grab the cake and you eat the whole thing while you’re standing there with the door open.

And you’re like I don’t understand what’s happening. I’m self-sabotaging. So you have this long-term goal, you want to lose weight, but your behavior standing there in front of the fridge with the door open eating a whole chocolate cake is completely undermining your progress towards your goals. Right.

So this is what self-sabotage looks like. Okay. And I know this is kind of an extremely funny example. But we do it to some degree like this all the time. Okay. Here’s a more subtle example of self-sabotage. And this may be something that you can relate to, because this is my experience.

So a few years ago, I stopped doing the longer distance running, I stopped running marathons and running ultra marathons. And I loved doing that. This is like who I was. I was like the ultra marathon guy, you know, and I just love getting out there and running all the 50K’s and the 50 milers, and stuff like that.

And I just stopped doing it because I told myself all this stuff. I gave myself all these reasons why I didn’t want to keep doing these long-distance events. So I told myself I was getting too old is too hard on my body. It’s not good for me, oh, it’s hard on your knees. Whatever those days are behind me, you know, the glory days are behind like it’s just all gonna go downhill from here, whatever. I was telling myself all this stuff. That is not what I really wanted for myself though.

What I really wanted for myself was I wanted to continue to be the ultramarathon guy. I wanted to continue to run the long-distance events but subconsciously, I was telling myself all these little stories because I was afraid because training for those events and running those events is hard, and it’s uncomfortable.

And I was telling myself all these little lies, basically, because I didn’t want to feel uncomfortable. You know, it was getting me outside my comfort zone when I started thinking about running a marathon again are these Ultras, and I just didn’t want to feel uncomfortable. So I told myself all these lies, and then I just stopped running the long-distance stuff.

Okay, so that’s pretty subtle, right? I mean, you, you kind of think that you’re just, you know, these are just the this is just the truth. And this is just, these are all the reasons why I can’t do this anymore. But, you know, kind of underlying all that was this lie. This lie that I was trying to just stay safe and secure and comfortable.

When in reality, I really wanted to continue doing those things that brought me so much joy. Yeah, they’re hard to do, but they brought me so much joy and, and fulfillment when I did that, okay. But I was self-sabotaging by telling myself all these lies. You know, another subtle way of self-sabotaging is to just say to yourself, you know, I’m okay, being overweight, I’m okay, at this weight, I’m just, I’m fine the way I am. Even though, deep down inside, you really want to lose
30 pounds. And I’m not talking about like, body image issues or anything like that, if you’re okay with where you are, like, honestly, like you, you don’t want to lose weight, that is perfectly fine.

But if deep down inside, you really do want to lose weight. But you’re telling yourself, you know, lies like, I’m okay, where I am, or, you know, this just never really works for me anyway. Or it’s just kind of too hard. I don’t want to be that uncomfortable. All those things, we tell ourselves our little subtle forms of self-sabotage. Okay, so just be mindful of that.

Okay, I’m just kind of going through what self-sabotage looks like, and how it can be kind of subtle. Why do we do this? Why do we self-sabotage? Why do we say we want to do something, but then do something different? And really, it has to do with wanting to stay comfortable, you know?

Our brains are always looking for safety, like our brains are really good at seeking comfort and avoiding pain. Okay, this is great. This is helped us to evolve as human beings over millions of years. You know, seek pleasure, avoid pain, this works really well. So when we self-sabotage, we’re actually getting a positive effect by doing this to ourselves.

Our brains are thinking that it’s a positive effect because we’re avoiding some sort of pain, right? Some sort of discomfort. Right? So it might be the feeling of safety, security, or just plain old comfort, right? So but that primitive part of our brain wants to avoid any sort of discomfort, discomfort, you know, feels like pain to our brain.

And so we might just go, oh, you know, running a marathon. That’s hard work that’s like, this is discomfort. I don’t want that. You got to stay safe. Come over here. The same thing with like, when you tell yourself, oh, losing weight is too hard, or I can’t do it. Or maybe I’m just okay being this way.

You’re telling yourself, I don’t want to go through the discomfort of losing the weight, I don’t want to go through any kind of discomfort. So instead of reaching this goal, that might be a little uncomfortable getting there.

I’m just going to keep telling myself that I’m okay where I am, even though that’s not really what you want. So that’s what self-sabotage looks like. And that’s kind of why we do it. Think about where in your life right now. You’re avoiding pain and discomfort.

You know, what goals do you have? Where you’re where you might have to get uncomfortable? And how are you avoiding achieving that goal or working towards that goal? How are you avoiding getting uncomfortable? Because your brain is telling you to stay safe? Think about that.

It’d be interesting to kind of hear what you guys think about where you’re seeing this in your own life. Okay. But self-sabotage the positive benefit we get from it is that it keeps us from having to feel uncomfortable, right, but disk Comfort is the price we have to pay if we want to achieve anything worthwhile. You know, I talk about this all the time, right?

Embrace the suck, embrace the discomfort. But for example, if I decide I’m never going to run another marathon, then I don’t have to go through any of that pain and discomfort of training for the marathon. If I never, if I say I’m never running an ultra again, you know ultras are too hard, that’s too hard on my body, I’m too old, those days are behind me, then I never have to go through the discomfort of training for one again, I can stay safe right here, my little comfort zone.

You know, if you say to yourself, I’m okay, being overweight, it’s too hard to lose weight, all that stuff, then you don’t have to endure any of that discomfort of losing the weight, right? You just keep eating the chocolate cake. And, and you’re good, you’re comfortable. You’ve succeeded in staying in your comfort zone, good job. You’ve succeeded in avoiding all the pain and seeking out the pleasure.

You’re satisfying that primitive part of your brain. But the things you really want for yourself, your hopes, your dreams, and your goals are all washed away. Right? So why do we self-sabotage as we think we’re getting some positive benefit, which is to stay comfortable. But is that what you really want for yourself? I say, no.

So here are some ways that we self sabotage some ways that are a little subtle, and you may not be thinking about all the time, but they’re not as obvious. So one way that we self-sabotage is by procrastinating. So this is the act of, you know, delaying, or postponing doing something. Okay, so we put something off because we don’t feel like doing it. Well, I’ll do it tomorrow.

When you put it off, when you say I’ll do it tomorrow, you don’t have to deal with it right now, you don’t have to do anything uncomfortable right now. Right? When you say, Oh, I’m going to change my diet, I’m going to change the way I eat, I’m going to focus on my nutrition, you know, starting next month.

So that’s a very safe thing for you to do, it causes no immediate discomfort, you just push it off. And then when next month comes, you’re like, I know, I said I was going to do that. But I’m really not ready for that yet. And I’ve got all these other things going on in my life. So I’m just going to, I’m going to do it next month. And we just keep doing this right, we just keep delaying the discomfort. It’s just a constant delay, delay, delay.

Delay is a killer of hopes and dreams. If you just keep putting stuff off, you’re never gonna get it done. Okay? This is a very common way that we self-sabotage procrastination.

Another way we self-sabotage is by doing something called buffering. Buffering is where we use some external thing, food, alcohol, drugs, shopping, whatever, to try to make us feel good. Inside, we have difficult emotions we’re dealing with. And so we use something external, like food or alcohol, to feel better, right? We’re using something external to feel better internally.

You put a buffer between you and your emotions. And you know, it’s buffering because it always comes with some kind of negative consequences, right? So you might be stressed out. And so you eat and you gain weight. Right? you overeat, you eat all the chocolate cake, and you gain weight and you never reach your goal. This is when you know it’s buffering, okay?

Some people use shopping in the same way you get that little dopamine hit every time you buy something, you know, and it kind of feels good. People use drugs, and people use, you know, cigarettes and alcohol. Some people even use exercise as a form of buffering because they don’t want to deal with the stress in their life.

And so, instead of dealing with the emotional experiences you’re having, you just use something to feel better temporarily. Right? It doesn’t really help you with the emotion you’re experiencing with the stress with the anger with the sadness, whatever it is you’re experiencing. It just covers it up temporarily. It just kind of makes you feel good in the moment, right? Very, a very common way that people self-sabotage is using some substance or something to just try to make themselves feel better.

And it’s self-sabotage because, you know, think about it like alcoholics who drink too much. They know they shouldn’t drink but they do it anyway. They know that drinking is going to cost them their marriage, their job, they won’t see their kids they may lose everything, but they drink anyway, this is a very common way that alcoholics self-sabotage, right.

They would rather drink than have to deal with all the feelings and especially the feeling of like not having that alcohol in their system. Okay, so buffering, with food, with alcohol, with drugs, or with shopping is another way that we self-sabotage.

Another pretty subtle way we self-sabotage is by just never starting anything. And this is like procrastination. But it just kind of goes on and on, you actually never do anything at all. And I see this, a lot of times, I talk to people all the time about changing their diet, right, and changing their relationship with food and changing their health and their fitness. And they tell me, without a doubt, I’m ready, I’m ready to lose weight, I’m ready to change my diet, I’m ready to, you know, go all-in on this, but then they never do anything about it.

You know, they just keep talking about it, they just keep saying they want to do it. I talk to people all the time, let’s say this. They want a different life for themselves. They want to be healthier. They want to eat better, they want to lose weight, they want to be in better shape, but they never do anything about they never get started.

I mean, it’s a little different than procrastinating, like constant procrastination. It’s like procrastination to the next level. Just never starting you, you just have to start. But again, it’s like one of those things, it’s uncomfortable. And we know it’s going to be hard. And so just talking about it is much easier than actually doing something about it. But the very, very common way that we self-sabotage.

How many things in your life have you been talking about doing? Think about it. How many things have you said, you know, it’d be nice to do that, to take that vacation, to change this about myself, to run a marathon, to whatever your goals are? Quit your job, start your own business, make more money, you know, get married, whatever it is, what is it that you just keep talking about, but never doing?

I’ll be honest with you, I keep talking about wanting to get out of here in the winter, and go live somewhere warm for at least a couple of months. And I keep talking about it. And I never do anything about it. I self-sabotage in that way. I’m gonna have to do something about it probably this year. Since I’m now that I’m bringing it up. I’m totally calling myself out on this. Oh my god.

But like, it’s one of those things that I’ve been talking about for a couple of years. And I really haven’t done anything about it. And I just need to like pull the trigger and do something about it. Go somewhere warm. Go live on a beach for 30 days in the winter. Oh my gosh, that’d be amazing. So I’m gonna do something about it. You watch.

Alright, another kind of subtle way that we self-sabotage is we just quit? I guess this isn’t that subtle. Right? Quitting is different from what I call failing. So, you know, there’s really no such thing as failure. Like, I think, you know, true failure is just quitting, honestly. But I think failure is a part of the process of accomplishing anything that you want in your life.

If you want to lose weight, let’s say, and you are trying a bunch of different things, and they’re just not working. Those are like little failures. And that’s okay. You just got to keep trying stuff until you figure out what works for you, right. I’ve been experiencing this lately, learning how to do a handstand, right? This is a goal of mine, it’s really hard to do.

It’s very, very challenging. And I keep failing, I keep falling down. And I can’t balance properly. And I’m not strong enough yet. But I keep doing it. So the only way that I could actually fail at that is if I just quit, like quitting is the ultimate self-sabotage. If I just keep trying, and I keep having these little failures, and I but I keep going and I keep learning what works and what doesn’t.

And this is what I’m doing. I’m falling down. I’m trying to get my hands down and falling down. I’m learning that I have to be I have to work on my balance. That’s a big part of this right and my core strength. So I’m working on those things, and I’m learning as I go. But if I were to just say like, oh, I tried it once and I can’t do it. And I quit. That’s like the ultimate self-sabotage. So I’m not gonna do that. I’m gonna keep going.

So you may not even be aware of why you’re quitting. It’s kind of like what I was talking about earlier when I decided I wasn’t going to run the long-distance events anymore. I was justifying it and it sounded like, you know, justifiable, it sounded like these were good reasons for not wanting to run long distances anymore.

Oh, I’m too old. It’s too hard. I don’t like doing that. But really, I was just quitting, I just quit. I just gave up. I didn’t want to do that. That’s total self-sabotage right there. So those are a few other ways that we self-sabotage, some subtle, some not so much. But here’s what happens. Here are some of the negative side effects that we experience when we self-sabotage.

So you’ve you feel like you’re choosing safety and security, you feel like you’re staying comfortable. But what you’re really doing is you’re, you’re hurting yourself. And here’s how, when you self sabotage, in whatever way that looks like for you, whether it’s procrastination, quitting, whether that’s you know, buffering, or just like never starting anything, you just stay stuck where you are.

Right, if you want something that you don’t have, like, you have to get out of your comfort zone, right, everything you want, that you don’t already have is outside your comfort zone. But getting out of your comfort zone does not feel good is scary out there. It’s uncomfortable. It’s why it’s called comfort zone. It’s the unknown. In order to grow, in order to become the best version of you.

Like, let’s say you want to lose the weight and run faster, run farther, whatever that looks like for you. Whatever vision of yourself, you have for yourself, the person that you ultimately want to be, you can’t do any of those things. If you just stay stuck and comfortable where you are, you have to get uncomfortable.

When you self sabotage, you hold yourself back from reaching all these goals from becoming who you want to become. So you’ll never become that person. You’ll never know what you’re capable of achieving. You’re gonna miss the opportunity to find out what you can do and what you’re really made of. You’re never going to realize your full potential.

This is one of the most costly side effects of self-sabotage is that you’ll never reach your full potential. I have big goals for myself in 2021 I am very aware of the ways that I self-sabotage okay. I do it in some subtle ways. Sometimes it’s it looks like procrastination. Sometimes it looks like quitting. But I’m so aware of this now I know what I’m doing it.

And I know that when I find myself seeking comfort when I when I’m seeking when I’m when I would just want to feel safe and comfortable and complacent. I know I’m probably self-sabotaging in some way. I know when I find myself feeling uncomfortable, maybe a little bit afraid. Maybe a little bit on the edge. I know I’m not self-sabotaging. And I know I’m right where I’m supposed to be because I’m getting out of my comfort zone. I do that.

Isn’t that crazy, though? Like embracing the discomfort is kind of the opposite of what we’re taught our whole lives, right? We’re always taught like just feel good. You just want to feel good all the time. Just feel comfortable, safe, and secure. But that’s not how these things work. Because it’s not how you become more. Right? Self-sabotaging does make you feel safe and secure. But it also prevents you from becoming who you want to be. It prevents you from achieving big things.

So what do we do about all this? It’s probably what you’ve been asking yourself this whole time. How do we overcome self-sabotage, Patrick? Well, I’m gonna tell you right now, the first thing you want to do to overcome self-sabotage is to focus on taking aligned action on your goals and dreams.

So figure out what it is you want to accomplish. What are your goals? If you don’t have any goals, that’s actually a form of self-sabotage too, just FYI, right. Oh, I don’t have goals. No, you’re not going to you’re not going to achieve much then. Okay. But if you do have goals, I encourage you to have goals.

Think about one of your goals. And then think about everything you did yesterday. What did you do yesterday to work toward that goal? Did you do anything? Did you do a couple of things? Why or why not? This is what it means to take aligned action, you have a goal, and there’s something important that you want to achieve.

And then every day, every day, you take little steps towards reaching that goal. So your goal could be I want to run a marathon. And so yesterday, you ran a mile, and you logged your workout in your training journal, and you wrote a few notes about how you felt about that run. This is the kind of stuff we’ll be talking about in the journal challenge in the Facebook group, FYI.

So you took a line action, right, you ran and you logged some stuff in your trading journal, and you’re keeping track of your progress. And you stuck to your plan and you ran your workout yesterday. Perfect, you’re taking aligned action towards that goal.

Let’s say your goal is to lose 30 pounds. So you look at what you did yesterday, you planned your meals ahead of time, you didn’t snack between meals, you stuck to your plan, and you logged everything in your food journal, perfect. Another form of taking aligned action towards your goal. That’s what it means to take aligned action.

So if you’re not doing something each day, to move towards this goal that you say is so important to you. That could be a form of self-sabotage. Okay, so the number one thing you can do, to overcome self-sabotage is to take aligned action every day, when you focus on taking some sort of action that moves you in the direction of your goals of your hopes of your dreams, you can avoid self-sabotage.

The second thing you can do to overcome self-sabotage is to stop focusing on the past and focus on the future instead. If all of your attention, and all of your focus is on your past, who you used to be the all the ways that you have failed, all the things that have not worked for you, you are just going to stay stuck in that past, you’re going to keep creating more and more of that past in your future.

When we focus on all of our past shortcomings, and the things that have never worked for us, we just create more and more of that, in our future. Your past is just a series of thought patterns. It’s a series of mostly subconscious mental habits. And we need to break those old habits, we need to break out of those patterns, we need to start working on new thought patterns, we need to create new mental habits for our future.

We don’t want to keep doing and thinking and feeling the same things over and over again, that we’ve been doing in the past, right? So who is it you want to be in the future? Think about this, think about the future version of yourself. So you’ve already achieved your goal.

Let’s say you, you want to lose 30 pounds, you’re already there? What does that person look like? How do you think differently? Because you’ve already achieved this goal? How do you feel about yourself? Focus on that amazing future version of you. Instead of focusing on what you’ve done or not done in the past.

I have this vision for myself. I want to be stronger. I want to be more muscular. I want to be ripped. Okay. And I think about that future version of myself all the time, I see myself standing in the mirror looking at myself, and I’m kind of jacked. You know, I’m feeling really good about how I look and how I feel about myself.

And if I were to just focus on my past and how I haven’t really been able to build much muscle in the past, I only see my future vision of myself would be just that skinny guy who I used to be who lacks muscle definition. Focusing my attention on who I want to be that jacked version of myself who I want to become keeps me motivated and moving in that direction.

Whereas if I focused all my attention on how I’ve always been the skinny guy and I’ve never really been very muscular. I just feel All terrible about myself. And I’d always be moving in that direction. And when I say the skinny guy, I don’t, because I was pretty fat at some point, but I was still never had like muscle definition, right? I just had like fat arms, I didn’t have muscular arms, you know, and I want that. That’s what I’m working on.

But where you focus, your attention is the direction you move. So if I’m focusing my intention on this amazing, healthy, muscular version of myself in the future, I’m going to be moving in that direction. If I keep focusing on this person I used to be, that just doesn’t feel good at all. But I’ll be moving in that direction. I don’t want to do that.

So my encouragement for you in a way that you can really stop the self-sabotage is to stop focusing on what’s in your past, stop focusing on what hasn’t worked on your failures, and all that other stuff, and start focusing on who you want to become. Focus on the future you, and then you’ll always be moving in that direction.

Alright, and then the third way that we can overcome self-sabotage is to manage our minds. Right, we self sabotage, because we have thoughts and feelings about why we can’t do something or about how will never amount to anything, or it’s too hard, or that’s just not who I am anymore. Whatever thoughts and feelings we have about ourselves, you have to understand something, these thoughts that you have about yourself are not the truth. They’re just thoughts. They’re thoughts in your head. They’re just like sentences, you keep saying to yourself over and over again.

And sometimes we say these things to ourselves so often, and for so long, that they just become these deep-seated beliefs that we have about ourselves, even though they’re just thoughts, they’re not the truth. I had these beliefs that running Ultras was too hard, that I’m too old. And I thought these things over and over again until I quit training for those events. And in they became true for me.

So beliefs are just recurring thoughts that we have, like habitual patterns of thoughts. And honestly, you can change them if you want, you don’t have to hold on to them. I was holding on to them. And it was keeping me feeling terrible about myself and staying stuck and staying small. So if you have a belief that, like, let’s say, you have a belief that no matter what, you’ll never be able to lose weight, I can almost guarantee that you never, ever will be able to lose weight.

If this is a strong belief that you have about yourself, you’re never gonna be able to lose weight, I guarantee you. In order to stop the self-sabotage, you have to change these thought patterns. Right? And one of the first steps is just to recognize that all these thoughts are just that they’re just thoughts, then they’re not necessarily true. Just have that awareness. Your thoughts are just how you are choosing to respond to the world around you.

So here’s my example. You know, I had all these thoughts about how you know Ultras, were too hard. I’m too old. I don’t like doing them. Maybe just like running half marathons is better. Yeah, that’s what it was. Half marathons are better. This is like a thought that I was telling people like, oh, you know, you get it done in like two hours. And you know, the training is easier, and all these other things. And so I really believe this.

All of these thoughts, though, like, these beliefs that I had created, created this, like, whole belief system around ultras being too hard, and, you know, half-marathons being easier. And, man, it just became like, part of who I was, but it wasn’t the truth. You know, when I stopped to look at this and to really think about like, what am I doing here? Like, are marathons really too hard? Am I too old? Are halves really better than full marathons are Ultras, you know, only in my past?

And when I really sat down and asked myself these questions, the answer was like, no, none of this stuff is actually true. Lots of people would say, marathons are not too hard, or they’re not too old. I know people that are like in their 70s and 80s that still run marathons or Ultras, I know a lot of people that say a half marathons are not better than full marathons.

Like, I can decide what’s true for me. So I chose, eventually, that all these thought patterns that I had these beliefs that I had, were just that in that I don’t have to, like, hang on to this stuff anymore. Because hanging on to this stuff was just keeping me feeling small and safe and comfortable. Yeah, but also, I wasn’t doing the things I really wanted to do. pretty subtle. But it felt so true for me.

I really could justify not wanting to do these harder events because of these deep-seated belief systems they created all-around how hard this stuff was. And so this is like total self-sabotage, for me. So why this is so important is because your thoughts, create your reality, everything that you have in your life right now. All of it is created by your thoughts.

Things happen in your life, you have circumstances that happen in your life, and then you have thoughts about those circumstances. Right? Always, always, always you have thoughts about stuff that’s going on around you. And it’s your thoughts that create your feelings. So if you feel motivated, it’s because you had a thought about something that created that feeling of motivation. And then those feelings drive your actions.

So when you feel motivated, you take certain actions like usually, if you’re motivated in the right direction, those actions you’re taking are aligned actions that move you towards your goal. So when you think marathons are too hard, that creates a feeling of deep motivation inside you. And when you feel demotivated, you’re probably going to take action, that’s like self-sabotaging action, or you don’t do anything at all right, you just give up, you just quit, you don’t do it. That was my experience.

So I had all these thoughts, they created these feelings of like, discouragement, uncomfortable, or D motivation. And then I just gave up, right? This is all based on my thoughts. So the trick here is that you have to learn to control how you respond to everything happening in the world around you. Your thoughts, always create your feelings, your feelings, always drive your actions. Just know this, when you know this, you can start making some changes here.

Another example of how your thoughts create your results is if you constantly think you can’t lose weight, and you’re going to feel that those thoughts are going to make you feel defeated. Those thoughts or that feeling of being defeated is going to keep you from taking aligned action, right. So you’ll just stand in front of the fridge with the door open and eat the whole chocolate cake.

This is a classic, you know, self-sabotage. And it’s all caused by your own thoughts and feelings. Think about this, your current weight is a direct result of your thoughts, your beliefs, and your belief systems. And the emotions you create by your thoughts. All of it creates your current weight, it creates everything in your life right now.

And if you think well, doesn’t matter what I’ve done in my past, I’m going to lose these 30 pounds no matter what no matter how long it takes, I’m going to do whatever it takes. And I’m going to get there. This is a whole different way of thinking. This is going to make you feel super motivated. This is going to keep you sticking to your plan.

You’re going to take aligned action, regardless of there being chocolate cake in the fridge. And I can guarantee that you will lose weight. I see this all the time in my clients that tell me oh yeah, I just got through Christmas and there were all these cookies around and pies and everything and I didn’t even want to eat it. I stuck to my plan. And I felt so good about myself. And I’ve lost a few more pounds this week. That is amazing. It’s all because they’re choosing what to believe about themselves. They’re choosing thoughts that help them to stay motivated.

Change your thoughts. You change your reality change your thoughts, you can change your weight, change your thoughts and you can run an ultra. Okay. This is what it looks like when I say you got to manage your mind right you have to change what you’re thinking mindset is the key to all of this and you won’t get it perfect right away. This is a daily practice, I still work on this.

But when you have that awareness, when you keep working on it when you keep thinking about your thoughts, pretty meta, but when you keep focused on how your thinking is creating the results that you’re getting in your life, you can absolutely do something about it and you can start creating the results that you really want in your life by just changing your thoughts. Okay, and there, there becomes nothing that you can’t accomplish. There’s nothing you can’t do with the right mindset.

So quick recap here, self-sabotage. It’s patterns of thoughts and behaviors that hold you back that keep you stuck that prevent you from becoming who you really want to be. How do you know if you’re self sabotaging? Usually, it’s because your actions, your habits, and your behaviors are not in alignment with your long-term goals.

Why do we self-sabotage? Because our brains think we’re gonna get some kind of positive benefit from it. Like we’re avoiding pain, we’re seeking pleasure trying to stay comfortable. Some of the common ways we self-sabotage are by procrastination, buffering, we never start anything or we just quit, we just give up.

And some of the negative consequences of self-sabotage are really it just keeps us stuck. It holds us back and prevents us from becoming who we want to be from reaching our goals, from accomplishing our big impossible goals and dreams. And we just stay small. We never get to become the best version of ourselves.

And how do we overcome self-sabotage? Well, take aligned action towards your goals and dreams every single day. Remember to focus on your future, that future amazing version of you instead of your past. And then learn how to manage your thoughts and feelings. You change your thoughts, you change your results. Cool.

All right, I hope you got something out of this today. Remember, the Running Lean monthly coaching group opens up January 3, everything I just talked about here, how to take aligned action towards your goals, how to focus on your future, how to manage your mind, all of that stuff. We’re going to be talking about all of that in the monthly coaching group. I’ve got this brand new course called achieving the impossible. It’s going to be amazing.

You also get access to the weight loss training course for runners to learn exactly how to become a lean fat-burning machine, you get those live group coaching calls with me. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join. Enrollment opens January 3, go all-in on yourself, make 2021 the year you transform yourself into a lean, fat-burning running machine. Cool.

You got this, my friends. Hey, thank you for joining me every week here in 2020. I am looking so forward to 2021. As always, lots and lots of love to each and every one of you keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles or starving yourself and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a lien running machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and you’ll learn the three secrets to losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become lean running machine.

52. Looking Back and Moving Forward

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Contrary to what I see plastered all over social media, I don’t think 2020 was that bad of a year, at least it wasn’t for me. I accomplished more in my life this year than in the last 5 years …

Continue Reading about 52. Looking Back and Moving Forward →

Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode number 52 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, the topic is looking back and moving forward. I want to take a look back over lessons learned in 2020. And I want to talk about what it means to move forward into this new year 2021.

And contrary to what I see, plastered all over social media, I don’t think 2020 was that bad of a year. At least it wasn’t for me. I accomplished more in my life this past year. I feel like I’ve grown more in this past year than I have in like the last five years combined. Yes, I had to overcome a lot of personal struggles this year. And yes, I had to blow past my own limitations this year. But regardless of all that, I’m not choosing to look back on this year as a dumpster fire.

You know, I’m not looking at 2020 as the worst year ever. In fact, I want to say that I think 2020 has been one of the best years of my life. So in this episode, I’m going to be looking back at 2020, I’m going to share some of the valuable lessons that I learned. And I hope you’ve learned as well. And I’ll be focusing on and I’ll be talking about what I will be focusing on as I move forward into 2021. And some things that you can start thinking about focusing on as you move forward into the next year.

Before we get into all that though, please come check us out on Facebook, just search for the Running Lean community, it’s a bunch of cool people is what it is. All hanging out, talking about running, sharing stories, encouraging each other, supporting each other. It’s a very positive group of people. And you should definitely come check us out just search for Running Lean community on Facebook.

Also, I wanted to let you guys know that starting January 3, I’m opening the doors to the Running Lean monthly coaching group. Right. This is my monthly coaching program, where you get access to all of my online courses, including my flagship, my flagship program, called the weight loss training course for runners, that shows you exactly how to become an efficient fat-burning machine. You also get live coaching calls with me and fellow runners.

So if you want coaching and encouragement and support and accountability, so that you can hit your goals going into this new year, this is the group for you. Also, we’re going to be doing this cool and very powerful goal-setting workshop called achieving the impossible in 2021. That you definitely don’t want to miss so you can find out information about this just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join.

I want you to make 2021 your year, make it your best year yet become that badass runner that you’ve always wanted to be. Join the monthly coaching group and I will help you get there and so will your other runners. Okay, runningleanpodcast.com/join. Okay, let’s talk about this past year. First of all, I wanted to mention this. This is episode number 52 of the podcast which means that we have now a full year’s worth of podcasts if you listen to one each week. So the first episode came out the first week of January last year.

So we are coming up on the anniversary. But basically, we’ve got a whole year of podcasts under our belt. Oh my gosh, that is so fun. This is very exciting. You know, most podcasters when they start out. I think the average is something like they get to like episode number seven, and then they just quit.

That’s not how I roll. That is not how I roll. So I feel good about the content that I’m sharing with you guys. I hope you enjoy these podcast episodes. I know I have a lot of fun making them. I love sharing these ideas. And I hope it’s helpful in some way. And if you find it helpful, you could always hit up iTunes and leave a quick review and tell everybody else how much you love it.

But yeah, a whole year of podcasts. That’s very, very cool. So let’s talk about lessons learned. Let’s talk about the lessons that I’ve learned in 2020 and this is not everything I’ve learned. But these are some of the key lessons that I learned that I want to share with you that I think you can probably relate to.

So the first lesson I learned in 2020, was that I am stronger than I thought I was and that I am a much stronger person than I give myself credit for. You know, I struggled a lot with adversity at the beginning of this year, I was going through a divorce, I got a couple of work furloughs, I got furloughed from two jobs. There was a lot of financial insecurity happening in my world. We were in, we had just started this global pandemic, and everything was shutting down. And it was this was hard.

For me, this was a very challenging time. For me, this was a very emotional time for me. And here’s the thing, though, I can look back on all that now and say, wow, I made it through all of that. And I feel like I’m in a better place now. I feel stronger now than I did at the beginning of this year, for sure. I feel like I’m a different person now than I was the beginning of 2020.

And all that emotional stuff that I had to deal with, I had to learn how to kind of experience all those emotions, how to feel my feelings. And I learned also that, you know, your emotions can’t kill you. That it’s just a feeling you feel in your body. And they do pass, sometimes it takes a while.

But things like, you know, going through a divorce, that was very tough on me, it forced me very much forced me out of my comfort zone. Right, I was kind of forced to start over. Right here I was on my own and just got to figure everything out again, and starting from scratch in a way.

But what was cool is that I decided early on this year, that I wasn’t going to let this break me. I wasn’t going to let this thing that was happening in my life. You know, damage me or, or weaken me, I was going to get through it. And I was going to be stronger on the other side of that.

It’s like when you go to the gym, and you and you, you have to lift weights and like tear down your muscles in order to build them back up again, right? It’s kind of the same thing. Sometimes you have to go through this tough stuff, mentally and emotionally. So that you can kind of build that mental and emotional strength that you need to get stronger.

Because, you know, if everything’s just going hunky-dory in your life, you don’t have to really work those mental and emotional muscles, right? So, this kind of adversity that I was going through these tough times that I was going through, forced me to become mentally and emotionally stronger. I had to endure some pain.

But I decided I wasn’t going to wallow in it, I wasn’t going to indulge in it. I was going to allow that pain to be there, process it, and move through it. And I found out something interesting about me that I can get through a lot of stuff. I’ve been through a lot of stuff in my life. I’ve quit drinking, I went, that was my second divorce. But I had cancer, I’ve been divorced twice, I quit drinking, I was you know, drinking too much and had to stop that was very challenging. All these things that I’ve gone through. And each time I go through something like that, I come out on the other side. I feel like I get a little bit stronger.

And this year, there was a lot going on, then I think I got much stronger. I think I’m much stronger than I thought I was. I don’t give myself enough credit sometimes for how strong I am. You know, and earlier this year, I would have told you that I can’t handle this. There were times where I was literally like thinking, I don’t know what I’m going to do here. I can’t handle this.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been there in that place. It’s a terrible place to be, honestly feels terrible. But I did handle it. Somehow I managed to get through one day at a time. And then here I am, you know 12 months later, and I feel amazing today. I’m in a really good place today.

And I kind of look back at these tough times and say I’m sort of glad that happened. Now, isn’t that crazy that we can say that? Like we go through things that are terrible, and we wish for anything that they could just be different. Just make all this pain go away. But that’s how you learn. That’s how you grow. That’s how you become more of who you want to be. So that was a very, very profound lesson that I had to learn this year, that I am much stronger than I give myself credit for.

Another big lesson I learned this past year, is all about what I can and what I can control. So here’s what I’ve learned that I can control: I can control my own thoughts, my own feelings and my own actions, what I think, how I feel, and what I do, that’s what I can control. You know, what I can control.

Everything else that I didn’t just mention. That includes what other people think, what emotions other people have, when other people do it, that includes what other people think about me, or how they feel about me? Or what they do or don’t do to me, you know, all this stuff? Like? It sounds so simple, right? And I think we all kind of understand this intellectually, right?

That you can’t control other people, but do you believe it? Do you really believe it? Do you live it? Or are you always just wishing people would do things your way? I know, that’s the way I was living for a long time. I was a pro, I tried to control other people, especially my partner for the last nine years.

You know, I didn’t really see it at the time. But looking back on it, I can, I can very clearly see. I was always trying to get her to think and act my way. And if she would just do that, everything would be fine. Right? If they would just do things our way then everything would just be perfect.

But trust me, I have to tell you something, it does not work. The only person that was miserable and frustrated all that time was me. Okay, so really, I had to take control of the things that I could control my own thoughts, feelings, and actions.

And this was how I was able to finally lose weight. I mean, this is how I was able to, you know, do things like run a marathon this year and run an ultra marathon this year. Because I wasn’t blaming other people.

And that leads me to my next lesson, the next lesson I learned this past year, which is that not only do I know what I can and can’t control, but I’ve learned how to take radical responsibility for everything in my life. Radical responsibility for everything in my life. I have this t shirt. And it says in giant, a black T shirt, it says in giant white letters, it’s all my fault.

And some people see that and they don’t understand what it means. But here’s what it means. It means that everything I have in my life, everything that’s happening to me every result that I get in my life, whether it’s good or bad, it’s all my fault. You know, if I’m having a good day, that’s my fault. If I’m having a bad day, it’s my fault.

And here’s the thing, people think, oh, that’s terrible. How’s everything your fault? But I have to tell you, this is bad news. Yeah, but it’s also good news. It’s bad news. Because, well, here’s the thing, you can’t blame anybody else anymore. For how you feel. Now things are going with you. It’s good news because you get all your power back.

You are in control. Right. And this kind of goes along with taking control of your own thoughts, feelings, and actions, taking radical responsibility for everything that you have in your life. So when I’m constantly blaming other people, and I did this for so long, you just you’re in a place of blame.

You’re in a place of shunning responsibility, everything is happening to you, and you have no control. It’s a very disempowering place to be. So for example, when I found myself 40 pounds overweight at the beginning of this past year, I was trying to figure out how to lose weight. I was trying all these different things.

And you know, one of the things that I remember thinking to myself was, and she was my partner at the time, you know, she would just stop stressing me out all the time. I could build and stick to my eating plan. You know, if, if things were just different here in this relationship, maybe I wouldn’t be so stressed out all the time. And I could just stay on track here. I wasn’t taking ownership of my actions. And I wasn’t taking ownership of the results either.

Because for the past few years, I had kept putting on weight and kind of blaming other people for that very disempowering place to be in giving all my power away to somebody else. But when I decided to take responsibility, when I decided to be the cause of all of my results, in other words, I’m looking at myself in the mirror and looking at these extra 40 pounds on me, I’m like, this is your fault. This is your fault.

This is a very empowering place to be. Because now I have the power to change that. But when you’re always blaming somebody else for where you are, you give all your power away. They’re in control, you’re giving control to somebody else, this is not a good idea. And I hear this a lot of times from clients who tell me why they can’t stay on their eating plan. And they give me all these excuses.

And they talk about, you know, work is very stressful, or, you know, my husband is very unsupportive, or, you know, I just had a bad day, or whatever it is, and there is always there all external circumstances, people, usually other people, my boss yelled at me, my husband was being a jerk, whatever it is. And they’re basically saying, Okay, I can’t do what I really want to do here my life because of what somebody else said.

And then that’s just a very victim kind of place to be and you don’t want to live your life that way. You know, when I stopped blaming other people, and I started asking myself, Hey, okay, why have you gained 40 pounds? What are you going to do? How can I take 100% responsibility for where I am? And for where I want to be? How can I take 100% responsibility and make this happen for me? How can I lose this weight? What am I going to do?

It doesn’t matter what other people think, or other people say, or other people do. None of the other stuff matters. I wanted to be the cause, not the cause of where I am, the cause of where I wanted to be. How can I make this all my fault? This is a crazy mindset shift.

Honestly, think about this, if you stop blaming, and just start taking responsibility for everything in your life. How good running is going for you whether or not you’re injured. If you’re losing weight or not, if you stay on your food plan or not. How you’re doing with work with your business, with your kids, with your relationships.

When you take 100% responsibility, it is a game-changer. It’s a crazy, crazy mindset shift. Not something a lot of people think about. People just want to blame others all the time. You don’t have to do that. Big, big lesson learned for me this year. Here’s another one.

This one looking back on it, I was like, I didn’t even realize this is a thing. But here’s the lesson I learned. I can change anytime I want. I can always change my mind about anything. So can you. So I’m 54 years old now. For the past 15 years, I’ve been vegetarian and then plant-based. And this was, you know, working for me. I thought this is the best way to go for me.

Until it kind of stopped working right, I was eating a lot of processed foods, I was eating way too much sugar. I gained all this weight. I was still running a lot but it wasn’t working. Wondering, running was not helping me lose weight. I wanted to feel good about what I was eating. I wanted to just go back to eating real food, whole foods as close to nature as possible food their ancestors would have eaten.

And I decided that I was going to make a big change. And I went back to eating meat again. And I thought like I could never do that like that’s just not who I am. What are people gonna think of me? What am I going to think of myself? You know? And I have to tell you that it was like one of the most liberating things I’ve ever done to just say screw it. I don’t care what anybody else thinks. I’m going to do what I think is best for me. There’s a radical concept. Right?

But I can always change I can change my mind about anything I want at any time, I don’t have to be so dogmatic about this stuff, and that was stressing me out, I felt very dogmatic about being a plant-based athlete, you know. And like I was gonna get ostracized from some club if I started eating meat again.

And you know, there are probably people out there that have like, unfollowed, me or whatever you want to call it, I don’t really care. It doesn’t matter. I’m doing what I think is best for me. So I went back to eating meat again. And I’ve never felt better. I lost the 40 pounds, and I feel great. I’m stronger than ever. Running has been amazing for me this year.

So it really doesn’t matter how old you are, how long you’ve been doing the same things, you can change any time you want. You can change your mind. You can always learn new stuff, you can grow, you can evolve, you can become anything in anyone that you want in your life, you don’t even have to have a good reason to do it. You just have to feel good about it. Okay.

So this was a big one for me. And, and I love this because it’s kind of freeing because it means like I can change again, what am I going to do this year? I don’t know, who knows. But the thing is that we don’t have to be stuck where we are, we can always make different choices and change.

Alright, here’s another lesson I learned. And this is a big one. That failure is not optional. It’s actually required. Now, this might sound counterintuitive, because I know a lot of people, you know, have these T-shirts and memes that say like failure is not an option. And I’m like, no, I think failure is completely an option. I think it’s actually a requirement.

And for me anytime I set out to accomplish some big goal. You know, for example, when I became a fat-adapted runner, this took me a long time. But I felt terrible for a long time, every time I went out for a run. When I stopped eating sugar, I felt terrible. And I had no gas in the tank, you know, my body was not used to running on fat. And it took me a long time before I started feeling better and before running got easier.

But every time I went out there to run, and my legs felt heavy. And I was like, this feels awful. This is not working. This sucks. Like I feel like a failure. This went on for weeks. By the way, I had a lot of what you would call failures. I think it took me like over eight weeks to become fully fat-adapted to where my body was an efficient fat burner. And running started becoming super easy and actually much, much better.

But had I like given up at some point, I’d never be where I am today. You know, I’ve done some pretty amazing things this year. Because I am fat-adapted, you know, I ran a marathon and ran a 50k with zero calories. And was able to do that because I’m such an efficient fat burner.

Now, there’s this quote, I don’t know who said it. But it’s like, every success is built upon a pile of failures. I love that quote. Because what it means is that if you want to accomplish something big if you want to succeed, you have to sort of fail your way there. Now, a lot of people don’t like to even use the word failure.

They’re like, oh, well, that morning, talk about there’s no such thing as failure. And I’m like, yeah, there is; you try something, it doesn’t work, that’s a fail. And it’s fine. It doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t mean anything bad. All it means is that you did something that didn’t work. And I see this with my clients all the time, who are trying to, you know, change their diet, and they’re trying stuff and it’s not working.

And they feel like a failure, and they just want to quit and I’m like, we just learned something that didn’t work. Let’s try something else now. How many times are you willing to fail? Because if you decide ahead of time, that failure is a requirement to succeed, that it’s not optional, that it will happen, you will fail, and that is how you get to that big goal that you want.

Then you learn to embrace the failure. When I set out to do something big I know that there are going to be failures along the way. And that’s cool. I plan on it. I look forward to it now. And I know it sounds stupid. Oh, I look forward to failing, but in a way it’s like let’s get these out of the way. Let’s learn what we need to learn so that I can get to this big goal. So I have learned that failure is not an option. It’s actually required, I’m not afraid of failure. I plan it, I look forward to it. And it’s just part of the process.

You know, another big lesson I learned is that it is the challenges that actually change. So when we go through these big challenges we grow. The harder the challenge, though, the more we grow. I hate that it works that way. But it does. You know, if you just go through tiny little challenges, you grow a tiny, little bit.

But when you have to face big challenges, then you grow in a big way. And I’ve learned to embrace these challenges. And I’ve learned to embrace the discomfort. Because I know that when I do that I become more I become more of who I want to be. And I can’t tell you how many people avoid this. They avoid discomfort at all costs, they want to just stay in their comfort zone. Because it’s scary out there. It’s uncomfortable.

So they only do these little easy, tiny things. But what does that do for you, you don’t really grow, you don’t have this expansion of yourself. So for example, I was going to stay small this year. And halfway through the year, becoming fat-adapted, I’m starting to feel better. I’m running with some friends.

They’re training for a marathon. But I’m like, I’m only doing a half marathon. I don’t do marathons anymore. This is these are too hard. Marathons are too hard. I’m not doing that anymore. And it felt like it was outside my comfort zone. I didn’t run a marathon last year, I ran just one half, or maybe two half marathons last year.

But I haven’t run a full marathon and a couple of years. And it just seemed like something I didn’t want to do. Too hard, too uncomfortable. I didn’t want to go there. But at some point, I just made a decision. You know what? Screw that I want to be more. I want to push myself, I want to see what I could do. I want to blow my own mind.

So you know what? I’m in. I’m going to run this marathon with you guys. So I trained for it. I ran it. It was amazing. And then like seriously, like just about a month later, I find myself running a 50k. And I’m like, okay, well, this is hard. This is something that’s big. And I didn’t think I was going to be doing it again.

I mean, here I am earlier this year thinking I’m never going to run a full marathon again. And I ran a marathon and a 50k within the span of like five weeks. It’s crazy, right? Why? Because I decided that it was these big things that the hard things are what I embraced that I that make me bigger and better.

It’s the big challenges that change us in big ways. In the beginning of this year, I completely changed my diet, you know, I stopped eating all that plant-based stuff, all the processed foods, stopped eating sugar and started eating meat again, and all this stuff. This is a big huge change. This was very challenging for me at first, I didn’t know what to eat, I hadn’t eaten meat in like 15 years.

That big change though is what got me to where I am today. It’s how I became who I am today. It’s why I do what I do today. Because I went through this massive shift in my diet and the way I looked at food, my relationship with food, the way I look at exercise, all of that stuff. The bigger the challenge, the bigger, the change. It’s the challenges that change us, and why not go big?

Alright, that was another amazing lesson I learned. And then one other lesson I learned. And this is the last one I’ll talk about. There were other lessons I learned too. But these are just the key ones, the ones that really stuck out with me. The last one was this. I can do anything I set my mind to. I can do hard things, I can accomplish some big ass goals.

I figured out that if I adopt the right mindset that I can do anything I want. And so can you. You know, for so long, I struggled with my weight. I just felt gross. I looked at myself in the mirror and I was fat. And I felt doughy and I was ashamed of myself. I’m this like ultra runner, and I can’t even button my pants anymore. I didn’t have any love for myself at all. My self-esteem was down the toilet. And every time I tried to lose weight I failed. The struggle was real.

I knew that if I really wanted to lose weight, then if I really wanted to keep it off for good, which I did. I wanted to completely change how I looked at food and everything. I knew that in order to do that I would have to develop this entirely new relationship with food. And so I kind of asked myself, like, what would that mindset look like? Who would I have to become?

If I wanted to have a whole new relationship with food because I knew the only way I was going to sustain this was that I had to change the way I looked at food, the way I thought about food the way I felt about food.

And I was able to do it. But I had to get my mind right first. I had to, I had to, like adopt this new identity of like, I’m a person who eats this way. I was no longer a person who eats four bowls of cereal in the morning, I was a person who eats bacon and eggs. And now this is just who I am. This is the way I eat. This is what I do. It’s a habit, a way of life. It’s simple, easy, effortless, really, it is.

And I feel like there’s this incredible freedom. Knowing that with the right mindset, I can create anything I want in my life, any result that I want, any goal that I want. It all starts and ends with mindset. So I can do anything I set my mind to. And you know what a crappy mindset will get you crappy results every single time. But an expansive positive creative mindset will get you amazing positive results every single time.

So you can do anything you want. Just gotta have the right mindset. So those are the big lessons I learned in 2020. I’m going to take all these lessons and slide into 2021. And armed with these lessons and make this just an amazing year. I’m very excited. And so here’s a couple of things moving forward that I want to talk about. Here are a couple of things I’m going to be focusing on going into 2021.

First of all, I want to focus on the idea of accomplishing the impossible. So I want to do things next year, that seems so big and so crazy, that they just seem impossible. So I have running goals, I have fitness goals, I have business goals, I have personal goals, and I have all these different goals. And for each one of these, I have something that seems impossible for me. Because here’s the thing, why aim for tiny little goals? Because what if you get them? Why don’t you for big, huge, impossible goals? Because what if you get them?

So here’s one of my goals. I’m not going to share all these with you right now. Some of these I’m not ready to share with people. But I am going to share this one because I’ve been posting about it on Facebook. So I have this goal. This is one of the fitness goals I’m going to learn how to do a handstand. So why do I want to do this?

Well, for me, this seems impossible. I think it is super hard. When I see people that can do handstands. I’m like that person is a total badass. It’s super hard. It requires arm strength, shoulder strength, and core strength. It requires balance, and coordination. It requires a lot of patience and a lot of practice. And I’ve never been able to do something like this.

I wasn’t into gymnastics or anything like that, you know. And this is just something that’s way outside my comfort zone and has always seemed impossible for me. But I think it’s just so badass. So I am practicing doing handstands every single day. I’m learning what it takes. I’m practicing a little bit every day. I’m working on building strength, building core strength, building balance, all these things.

And I will be honest with you, I’m failing a lot. This is one of those things where I’m like, literally falling on my face quite often. So and this is just one of my goals. But this is just an example of something that I’ve set out to do. And you know what I’m going to keep you guys posted on the handstand progress and how I’m doing because it is fun.

And I feel like I can get there. It’s going to take a while though. I’m still working on the whole, being comfortable being upside down. Like that just doesn’t feel normal to me. And I’m really off balance. So I’m building my strength but the balance will that’s going to take a while. So think about what you want for an impossible goal.

Maybe you want to run a half marathon or a full marathon. Maybe you want to do your first ultra like a 50k or maybe you want to do like something you’ve never thought possible like run 100k or 50 miles or 100 miles, maybe you want to lose a lot of weight. Instead of thinking, oh me, I could probably lose 10 pounds, why not shoot for like 30 pounds, or 40 or 50 or 100 pounds.

Maybe like, you want to quit eating sugar, totally get off of that or quit drinking alcohol. Whatever it is. It should be big, it should be something that feels impossible for you. But I want you to think about that, because I don’t want you to, like settle for some small goal, some small accomplishment, I want you to think big.

Think about something that seems way outside your comfort zone. And then I want you to go all-in on that goal. Because you know what you can do anything you set your mind to, why not set it on something big. So going into 2021 accomplishing the impossible.

That is one thing I’m really focused on. I’m also going to get even better at failing, like, since failing is how we succeed, I’m gonna get really good at failing to embrace a lot of failure, I’m going to anticipate it plan on it, and build up a huge pile of failures with everything that I do.

Because I know that every time I fail, I move on. And for example, this handstand thing I’m doing is a lot of failures, I am literally falling on my face or my butt like many times a day. It doesn’t scare me as much it scared me at first, like falling and stuff like that. But now I’m kind of getting the hang of it.

And I just think it’s hilarious that I’m this like grown man like trying to do something and just falling down and just cracking myself up. But the more I do it, the better. I’m getting at it. Like the more I do it. The stronger I get, the more I do it and fail, the more I learn how not to do it, and what doesn’t work. And I’m getting better. And I’m making progress.

So failing is something I’m just going to embrace even more, and I want to get really good at failing. And then the other thing about this coming year is that I want to continue to learn and continue to grow and continue to change and continue to become more of who I want to be.

I love, love, love learning. I’m always reading books. I’m always learning something new. I always want to expand who I am. You know, I said this earlier, like I’m a different person now than I was a year ago. And I look back over that. And I can point to all the reasons why all the challenges I’ve faced the books, I’ve read the podcasts, I’ve listened to the people I’ve coached.

All the training that I’ve done, the certifications I’ve gotten, all the stuff that I’ve done and learned has helped me to grow and change and become who I am today. I am not the same person today, as I was at the beginning of this year. And I don’t want to be the same person at the end of 2021 that I am right now.

So I want to be more. Very, very excited about this next year. I really am. I can’t wait to see what I can do. I can’t wait to see what you can do. So here’s the thing you get to make 2021 Whatever you want it to be for you. Why not make it like the most amazing year of growth yet for yourself? Because you know what?

You get to decide, take radical responsibility for all of your results make the impossible happen next year. What would that look like for you? What would it look like to go all-in on yourself on some big-ass goal? How would that feel? Does that scare you a little bit? It should scare you because that means you’re kind of getting out of your comfort zone. This stuff scares me to do it anyway.

Because when you get out of your comfort zone, you push past that fear and everything. That’s where you become more, that’s where all the good stuff is. Okay, remember January 3, the Running Lean monthly coaching group opens up we’re going to be doing the achieving the impossible workshop.

We got that weight loss training course for runners that you’ll have access to you’ll learn exactly how to become a lean fat-burning machine. You get those live group coaching calls with me go all in on yourself in 2021 Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join get on the list.

And hey, this has been an amazing year. I look back at this year and I love love. Love it. I love 2020 It was amazing. Thank you guys for listening and supporting me and just being a part of my tribe here. I love each and every one of you keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles or starving yourself and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a lien running machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and you’ll learn the three secrets to losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become lean running machine.

43. Embrace Discomfort

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Most people are afraid of being uncomfortable. I think this is a real shame since getting uncomfortable is the only way to achieve anything worthwhile in this life. But it happens all the …

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Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode number 43 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I want to talk about how to embrace discomfort. Most people are just afraid of being uncomfortable. Let’s face it. I think this is a real shame, though, because getting uncomfortable is really the only way that you’re going to achieve anything worthwhile in your life.

But I see it happening all the time, people will willingly trade away their big goals and their dreams just so they can avoid any kind of discomfort just so they can stay comfortable. Here’s the thing though, the only thing that stands between you and your goals is the discomfort of getting them. So in this episode of the podcast, I will explore what it means to embrace discomfort, and why it’s such an important factor in achieving everything you want in your life.

But first, let’s talk about the Running Lean community on Facebook. This is a positive energetic, encouraging informative group of like minded runners that goes hand in hand with this podcast. And I have a big announcement for you. If you are not currently part of the Running Lean community on Facebook, I would encourage you to jump in there as soon as you can, because I am doing something next Sunday November the first that I’ve never done before.

And you have to be in the group in order to check it out. I’m doing an epic training event. You will not want to miss this. The event is called Getting Lean, How To Transform Your Body Into A Lean, Fat Burning Machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting, and develop the habits required to make it all last for a lifetime.

So I’m sharing my proprietary kind of six part framework for becoming a lean running machine. This is the exact framework that I use with my coaching clients. I’m pulling back the curtain. I’m sharing it all with you.

That will be Sunday, November the first at 4pm, Eastern time in the Running Lean community on Facebook, it’s free to join, you have nothing to lose. You do not want to miss this event though. It’s going to be awesome. So just go on Facebook and search for Running Lean community. And join us on Sunday, November 1 For this epic event. Okay, let’s talk about our Running Lean manifesto.

So today, the principle I’m sharing with you is to embrace discomfort. So what is the Running Lean manifesto? Well, a few months back, I created a list of things that were important to me: my guiding principles. So a manifesto is a list of guiding principles, it’s a set of values to live by, these guiding principles have become my North Star.

As long as I’m following these principles, I know I’m living the kind of life that I want to live in that I’m heading towards my goals. And I want to share this with you because I want you to adopt this as your guiding list of guiding principles as well.

So your manifesto is a blueprint that you can live your life by. It’ll help to keep you on track, help you keep moving in the direction of your goals, your dreams, everything that you want to achieve. So it’s just, it’s always easy to see where you are by checking out where you are in accordance with these principles.

Am I where I’m supposed to be? Am I following these principles? Yes or no? It’s pretty easy to know. Okay, if so, following this list of principles, having this manifesto actually gives my life meaning and purpose and drives me forward.

So here’s what the Running Lean manifesto is. Number one is eat real food. Number two is live vibrantly. Number three is to thrive in your body. Number four, embrace discomfort. Number five, run because you love it. Number six, love yourself unconditionally. Number seven, think, feel and act with purpose. And number eight to be an example of what’s possible.

So I’ve been sharing a few of these. And over the next few episodes, I’ll share the rest of them taking a little bit of a deep dive into each one of these principles. And again, my hope is that these become your guiding principles, too, that these help you to create the meaningful life that you want for yourself.

So today, we’re talking about the fourth principle from the Running Lean Manifesto: embrace discomfort. And I did an episode a few episodes back called Embracing The Suck, episode number 35 of the podcast, which is just a different riff on this same topic, but it’s definitely worth checking out.

I got a lot of good feedback from that episode. But it will help to round out this whole idea of embracing discomfort. Okay, so let’s get into this. Here’s the problem as I see it. We all expect life to be comfortable all the time. We want to stay comfortable.

And this kind of makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint, we as humans have evolved to avoid pain and seek pleasure. And this served us really well, as we were evolving as humans, as we were hunter gatherers.

When we were faced with an actual danger, like a saber toothed Tiger, we were programmed, we’ve programmed our brains to run away, that served us really well. It kept us alive. Understanding that there’s danger. And you know, wanting to avoid that danger, wanting to avoid pain, and seeking pleasure is good. It’s a good thing.

But today, there’s no saber toothed Tiger. But we still see danger all around us. Right, we see danger in work stress, we see danger and fear in the way people talk to us. We see danger in fear in people’s comments that they make online. Our primitive brain still wants to avoid pain, and is always trying to seek pleasure.

So we’re always still trying to kind of feel good all the time. Even though there isn’t any real danger out there. Or a focus of our energy is always on just being happy all the time, if that is our only goal in life, just be happy all the time, feel good all the time. The problem here is that this is not the way life works. This is not reality.

Reality is different. Reality is this life is kind of 50/50 when you accept only the good stuff in life, and you reject all the quote unquote, bad stuff in life, you are basically miserable 50% of the time. So 50/50 means that half the time, life’s gonna be pretty good, you’re going to feel good things, you’re going to kind of go your way, and the other half the time, not so much.

Things aren’t going to go your way, you’re not going to feel good. You’re going to experience good emotions, about half the time. And then you’re going to experience some negative emotions about half the time. That’s just the way life is. 50/50 means that we embrace all of it though, because this is what it means to be a human being.

The human experience is not just feeling good all the time. The human experience is experiencing all of it, the good and the bad, not just the good stuff. Okay. When we only accept the good and want to reject all the bad, we are in so much turmoil. We put ourselves through so much turmoil, because we’re not accepting half of the way life is. Okay.

Here’s an example from my own life. Honestly, every day when I wake up, I feel some level of discomfort. And no, not just because I’m 53 years old. I wake up and I feel some amount of fear and anxiety every day, because I have to show up. I have to show up to coach people, to create this podcast, to run my business, to run.

You know to go out there and run miles and miles. I have to show up to work out to stay fit. I show up every day in a way that I want to practice all of these principles and everything that I do. And I have to say that it’s not always comfortable, it is uncomfortable. So I wake up and I feel uncomfortable.

And I’m putting myself out there, you know, especially as a person who does a podcast with a following, and a big Facebook group, you know, I’m putting myself out there every single day. And here’s the thing about me, I’m an introvert, this is not comfortable for me. It’s not.

But you know what? I do it anyway. If I rejected discomfort, I would just stay in bed all day and watch Netflix. That’s comfort for me. That’s easy. That’s what’s safe. That’s what feels good. But that’s just my primitive brain, trying to avoid the pain and seek pleasure. That is not what I do.

Why don’t I just do that? Why don’t I just stay in bed? Why don’t I just watch Netflix all day? Why do I put myself out there like this, even though it’s uncomfortable? Here’s why. Because I decided that my job is to make a difference. My job is to be an example of what’s possible.

My job is to become more, to create change. Do you think I could do that? Do you think I could do my job if I’m in bed watching Netflix all day? I wish I could. But that’s not how this stuff works. That’s not how life works. It’s because I want more for myself. It’s because I want to become more that I’m willing to embrace this discomfort of putting myself out there.

Because that discomfort, that’s what it takes to become more, that’s what it takes to get there. Discomfort is the price you have to pay. If you want to achieve more. The cost of achieving your goals is discomfort. You cannot be, do, or have more without experiencing some amount of discomfort. You just can’t.

You know if being, doing, or having more was comfortable, you’d already have it. If it was easy, you’d already have it. Everything you want, but don’t already have lies outside of your comfort zone. And it’s precisely because it’s so hard and uncomfortable. That makes it so worth it. I know I hate how that works, too. But that’s the way it works.

Losing weight is hard. It’s an uncomfortable process to go through. No one would disagree with that. But when you embrace the discomfort instead of rejecting it when you put in the work, and you get to that goal. What an amazing accomplishment. What an amazing feeling that is.

I put myself through a lot of discomfort this year, getting to my goal weight. So I’ve told this story before but you know, I had put on like 40 pounds over the last couple of years. Even though I was eating what I thought was a great diet. I was eating a plant-based diet. But I was addicted to sugar.

So earlier this year, I was like I have to figure this out. And so I did all the research, I read all the books, I listened to all the experts, I attended seminars, workshops, I got training on not just the physical aspects of weight loss, but the mental aspect and the emotional side of things, too.

I went all in on creating change for myself. And honestly, this was a very uncomfortable period for me. I stopped eating sugar, and carbohydrates. Basically, I stopped eating processed foods. And I even went back to eating meat again, which was a whole nother uncomfortable place to be. This was a big decision for me, by the way.

And I did a whole podcast about that. Because it was a big uncomfortable thing for me to go through. So you can check that out when I can’t remember what number that is, but it’s called why I decided to start eating meat again. But I did all of these things.

And all of these things, you know, not eating sugar, not eating processed foods. Going back to eating meat again. All these things went against everything I was believing in up to that point. It was a very uncomfortable transition period for me. But I knew that the only way through it was to embrace the discomfort and go all in on it.

And here’s the thing, we runners, we are pros at embracing discomfort seriously. We do it all the time training for a marathon. Come on, that is a very uncomfortable thing to go through. Running every day, maybe you’re doing a run streak and you run every single day. That’s uncomfortable. Getting up early in the morning and running in the cold, or the rain or the snow, or the ice or the heat of the summer. I mean, just getting up early every Saturday morning to run. That is uncomfortable.

We put ourselves as runners, we put ourselves through all kinds of misery on purpose, we get super uncomfortable. We willingly suffer through months and months of training, just so we can say we ran a half marathon or a full marathon or an ultra or whatever your goal is.

I remember training for 100 miler a few years back, and I put in the training, it was like a year long training now, but you could probably do it shorter. But that’s how long I chose to do it. So I trained like for a year. And at the peak of my training, I was doing 30 mile runs on Saturdays, and then 20 mile runs on Sundays.

That’s uncomfortable, to be honest with you. Runners are pros at embracing discomfort. Right? We do it all the time. We’re good at it. We actually brag about it. But here’s the crazy thing. As soon as I suggest that, maybe you stop eating sugar, so you can actually become a super healthy human being and maybe lose those extra 40 pounds you’ve been carrying around. You’re like, oh, this is too hard, Patrick, this feels uncomfortable.

And I just laugh because I’m like, this is ridiculous. You’ll happily endure 17 weeks of marathon training and all the discomfort that comes with it: the painful, long runs in the dark, the black toenails, the sore legs, the long hours out in the elements, the blisters, that chafing, GI issues, all the struggling, all the suffering. You’re all in on all of that. All that discomfort, 100%. No problem.

But when I say like, hey, maybe quit eating sugar. And you do and you experience a few moments, a day where you’re having a craving like, I could probably go for something sweet right about now. And those cravings actually go away after the first week or so by the way. But when you experience a little craving for something sweet, you’re like, Oh, my God, I can’t do this. It’s too hard. It’s too uncomfortable.

Why is there such a disconnect there? Why do we have such a cognitive dissonance when it comes to this? This is fascinating to me. I believe that it’s all about deciding what’s important to you. You know, my best guess is that you’ve made marathon training, your number one priority, which is fine. That’s an important decision. And it’s a big goal. And it takes a big commitment.

So you made a decision at one point that you’re gonna go all in, you’re gonna run a marathon. And here’s your training schedule, and you are all in on that decision, no matter what, no matter how much discomfort you are going to experience, you are crossing the finish line on this date.

You know, when you run your marathon, you decided at some point that embracing the discomfort of training and of running that race was the price that you had to pay to reach that goal to get across that finish line. What if you decided that you were going to go all in on losing that weight? What would that look like for you?

What if you committed to that goal, the same way that you commit to training for a marathon? What if you decided to go all in and actually just embrace that discomfort of losing weight? How would you show up differently? How would you show up for yourself? What would you start doing differently? Maybe what would you stop doing? Because here’s the thing, you get to decide.

My suggestion for you is that you choose discomfort, whatever that looks like for you. But my suggestion is that you choose discomfort and go for the big stuff. Because you already have all the easy stuff, all the simple stuff. I want you to go after more. I want you to go after all that stuff that lies outside of your comfort zone. Be more, do more, have more, become more, just know that there’s a price that you have to pay to get it and that price is discomfort. That’s it. It’s just discomfort.

Next weekend, I am running a marathon. And the reason that I’m telling you this and that it’s a big deal for me is because about two years ago, I decided that marathons were too hard. I had run 14 marathons, and I was like, marathons suck, right? They’re too long, it takes too long for the training. These runs are way too painful.

You know, plus, you know, you’re out there all day. I decided that I was going to stick to half marathons, you know, you get it all done, like two hours, you never have more than like a 10 or 12 mile training run. You know, after your marathon after your half marathon, you can still walk the next day, like, I could justify all these reasons why I was going to just stop doing marathons and go back to just doing halfs.

And a few months ago, I was out running with some friends. And they’re all talking about creating this marathon in the Fall here and running a full marathon. And I was like, Yeah, you guys enjoy yourselves. You’re crazy. I’m not in. No, thank you. I’m just into halves now.

But then I really started to think about what it is that I really wanted for myself. Did I want to stay comfortable and small? Or did I want to see what I was made of? Did I want to push myself? Do I want to become more?

I decided that yes, I wanted to be more, I wanted more for myself. I didn’t want to settle for the comfortable. I didn’t want to settle for the easier, softer way. I wanted to prove to myself that I can still do hard things. And that meant that I had to embrace the discomfort and go all in. So I started training for a full marathon.

This will be my first full marathon in over two years. And I’m really excited about doing this by the way. It’s going to be fun, I feel good about where I am and in all of this. But I made a decision that I was going to be an example of what’s possible when you embrace discomfort.

So I’ve done all of my runs in the fasted state. That means no food for like 12 hours or so before the run. I’ve taken zero calories, have taken in zero calories during the runs. So I’ve done several 16’s, several 18’s, 20 miles with zero calories and no problems at all, tons of energy. Because I’m fully fat-adapted. And I feel like I’m virtually bonk proof at this point.

And I’m gonna run 26.2 miles in a week. Fasted, zero calories to show you what’s possible. And I have to tell you, I’ve been feeling amazing. I’m kicking ass on my runs, even at 53 years old. That’s right. But here’s the thing.

If I chose during my life if I chose to stay comfortable. If I choose not to embrace discomfort, I would never know what I was capable of. If I had chosen to stay comfortable in my past, I wouldn’t have quit drinking. I wouldn’t have done an Ironman. I wouldn’t have run 100 miles, I wouldn’t have lost 40 pounds. I wouldn’t be running a marathon next week.

If I constantly chose comfort, I wouldn’t be here talking to you on this podcast right now. I’d be at home on the couch watching Netflix wishing that I was more wanting to be more, but instead just staying comfortable and safe instead.

So here’s my call to action for you for this week. I want you to embrace discomfort. What does that look like for you? I want you to think about that and then go all in on the discomfort. be uncomfortable. It’s okay. Please go for the hard stuff too. Don’t go for the easy stuff.

That’s simple stuff that’s like right there within your reach. That easy stuff that’s not where the growth is. Go big. Embrace all the discomfort. And I’ll leave you with this thought: discomfort is temporary, but becoming more is forever.

All right, I’ll be diving into more of these principles from the Running Lean manifesto in the upcoming episodes. So this is really fun sharing this with you guys by the way. And don’t forget next Sunday, November the first I’ve got this epic event that I really want to share with you.

It’s called Getting Lean: How To Trasnform Your Body Into a Lean Fat Burning Machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting, and develop the habits required to make it last a lifetime. I’ll be sharing my coaching framework for becoming a lean running machine.

That’s over in the Running Lean community on Facebook Sunday, November the first 4pm Eastern, just search for Running Lean on facebook and join us. That’s all I got for you today. Lots of love to each and every one of you, my friends, keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles or starving yourself and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a lien running machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and you’ll learn the three secrets to losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become lean running machine.