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Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

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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.

41. Live Vibrantly

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If you ask most people how they feel about their life, they’ll probably tell you their life is pretty dull, pretty ordinary, maybe even dreary. Today, I'm here to tell you that this is NOT how you …

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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 41 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. If you ask most people how they feel about their life, they’ll probably tell you that their life is pretty dull, pretty ordinary, maybe even a little boring or dreary. Today, I’m here to tell you that this is not how you are supposed to live your life.

We have one very short life here on this planet. Do you really want to settle for a life that can only be described as dull and ordinary and dreary? Because here’s the thing, you get to choose. You can choose to live a dull and dreary life. Or you can choose to live a big, bold, beautiful, vibrant life. In this episode, I’m talking about choosing to live vibrantly, and why it’s such a powerful principle to live by.

But first, if you like this podcast, please come and check us out on Facebook. The Running Lean community is a positive, energetic and fun group of like minded runners. And it kind of goes hand in hand with this podcast. I do weekly live coaching in that group on a whole bunch of different topics, you know, focus around the same kinds of things we talk about here on the podcast, but it’s a chance for you to ask questions and get support of a very large, thriving growing group of runners just like you.

So just head over to Facebook, search for Running Lean community and join us over there. And then listen becoming a fat-adapted runner, breaking old habits, creating new ones, developing the mindset to make all of this stuff permanent in your life can be challenging to do on your own. That’s why I offer one-on-one coaching.

I’ll help you figure out the right nutrition plan that will get you to your goals because everybody’s different. You’ll have me holding you accountable and keeping you on track and always moving in the direction of your goals will help you to do things that you don’t want to do so that you can be the person that you ultimately want to be most importantly you’ll develop the mindset that you need to make these changes for life.

Here’s a comment from one of my coaching clients Hannah and she says, “I did another virtual half marathon today fasted again. My co-runners are really surprised that I don’t need any gel or goo and I am fine. I see no difference in my pace and energy. In fact, I had two strong finishes recently. I didn’t feel like I was tired or exhausted. Patrick, I’m still carrying lessons that I learned from you. Really gives me this jumpstart I needed to change my eating habits. My weight has been stable for six plus weeks. So glad I found this page and eventually you.”

Yes Hannah, changing your eating habits will definitely give you more energy and stronger finishes. If you’re ready to stop screwing around with your weight if you’re ready to change your eating habits if you’re ready to start living vibrantly, then apply for a one-on-one coaching with me just go to innerfiretribe.com/weightlosscoaching, one word. Do it now, I promise you it will change your life.

Okay, so several months ago, I sat down and wrote out the Running Lean Manifesto. This is just a list of the things that I wanted to live my life by a set of principles, the things that I stood for the things that are important to me. And now I’m sharing this with you guys because I think this is a great framework for living an amazing life healthy in mind and body.

And I’m calling this the Running Lean Manifesto. What is the manifesto? Well, it’s just a set of guiding principles or values and it’s like your North Star, something that you can always do that is always keeping you on track.

Why do we need a manifesto? Well a manifesto provides a blueprint to live by. Okay, it helps us to stay on track and always moving towards our goals. It’s easy to see where we are so you can say, “Am I living up to these principles yes or no?” Following these principles helps to give our lives purpose. And I believe we should all have some sort of manifesto to live by.

So here’s what the Running Lean manifesto is. Number one, eat real food. Number two, live vibrantly. Number three, 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 then number eight, be an example of what’s possible.

So over the next several podcast episodes, I’m going to be talking about each one of these separately. And remember, these are the guiding principles for what I do. And they are the guiding principles of the Running Lean community. So these can be your guiding principles too, it’s totally fine. They are our guiding principles. Okay, so these are the principles that drive us forward together.

It’s the blueprint we can all use to become the best version of ourselves. Okay, so today I’m talking about the second principle, which is to live vibrantly. And what does that mean? And what kind of an impact can living vibrantly have on your life?

Well, first, let’s look at the definition of vibrant, what does that mean? Vibrant or living vibrantly means the word vibrant means full of energy and enthusiasm. Pulsating with life. Vivid, bright, striking, strong. That all sounds pretty amazing, right? The opposite of vibrant is spiritless, listless, dull.

So when I talk about living vibrantly, it means living a vivid life full of energy and enthusiasm. Not a dull, spiritless, listless life. Okay. We all squared away with that part? So are you doing it? You say, yes, I want to live a vibrant life. But are you actually doing it?

On the surface, you’d probably agree that you don’t want a dull spiritless life. But how are you living your life? Really ask yourself that question. Go inside, what’s the answer? I think way too often, we stay stuck in our own little cocoon, our little safe, comfort zone, safe from all the scary, hard things that are out there in the world.

For example, when I started coaching entrepreneurs, so I started my coaching career as a life and success coach for entrepreneurs. And that work was fine. It was safe. But I was feeling like it was kind of dull and listless. You know, looking back on it, like it wasn’t really challenging me.

And I wasn’t really passionate about this work that I was doing. You know, I was an entrepreneur and I had some success as an entrepreneur. I was helping some people but it was like, it’s okay.

At some point, though, I decided I want to work with people I connect to at a deep level. I want to work with people who are passionate about running the way that I’m passionate about running. The kind of weirdos you know, that are like, yeah, and you know, you know who you are, the ones that are like, want to go run 20 miles on a Saturday morning.

I want to connect with those people. Because I get that, I get that mindset. I wanted to work with runners on helping them to develop that mindset, and then their nutrition and help them solve the weight problem. And this felt really scary to me. I had to put myself out there.

This topic of like helping runners lose weight, especially when I talk about hey, you know, let’s get off the carbs. And there’s another way of doing this. It’s kind of controversial, right? Not everyone agrees with me. And that’s okay. I don’t need everybody to agree with me. It’s okay that you’re wrong about me.

But here’s the thing, I could stay safe and work with my little entrepreneurs over here and make some good money and have a nice little biz. Or I could go and do something that I was really passionate about, but I was like going into uncharted 10 Atari it was. It was scary though, there were a lot of unknowns. And it felt bigger than me. But that’s what I wanted. I wanted something that was bigger than me.

I love, love, love this quote from John Shedd. And if you’re if you’ve ever been to Chicago, you know, there’s the Shedd Aquarium up in Chicago. And so he had this quote, he said, “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships were built for.”

Oh my gosh, that’s so good. A ship and harbor is safe, but that is not what ships were built for. So for me, I was not built to stay small and safe, and sit here on this shore. Doing my little entrepreneur thing over here, I was built for something bigger, something that lights me up, I was built for life so big and bright and vivid, that I blow my own mind every day.

Because the alternative to that is a comfortable life, but a very small life. It’s not what I wanted for myself. I’m not going to dull and dampen my experiences just for the sake of comfort and safety. I had to make that decision. I did that. For most of my life. I stayed small, you know, I stayed comfortable for a lot of my life.

And it got me sick and fat. I had diseases, I was you know, very unhealthy in a lot of ways. And my life was very, very small. When I gave up drinking, my life became bigger. When I gave up, you know, eating junk food. My life became bigger. My life is so big now, because I choose to live vibrantly every day.

Now, this does not mean that every day is always rainbows, rainbows and unicorn farts, okay, because it is not. Stuff gets hard sometimes. So how do you live a vibrant life, when everything is like crashing down all around you? And I get that sentiment I really do. It can feel like your life is falling apart sometimes.

But honestly, that’s just a thought in your head. That’s a thought that you are choosing to think my life is falling apart. It’s just a thought you’re choosing to think here’s the thing. Life is not supposed to be great all the time. We’re not supposed to be happy all the time. We’re just not.

If you expect yourself to be happy all the time. Or if your goal is to try to be happy all of the time, you will be gravely disappointed about half the time. Life is 50/50. 50% of the time it’s pretty good, 50% of the time, it’s not. And it’s okay. The goal is not to be happy all the time.

The goal is to have this life that’s 50/50 and be okay with all of it. You know, at the beginning of this year, I was going through a divorce, I was living alone. I had started two jobs and then lost them due to the pandemic I was delivering for Uber Eats just so I could pay my rent and make ends meet.

And I could have decided at that point that life was unfair. Everything’s crashing down around me. I’m just going into survival mode here. Go back to the shore. Stay safe. Have this safe, comfortable, dull, listless life. Or I could choose to live vibrantly. I wanted more.

I wanted to create a life so big and bold and beautiful and vibrant, that I would wake up every day and I would blow my own mind. So I worked on my business during the day, I recorded podcasts, and I was coaching people. And then at night, I was out delivering food.

You know, this was really hard for a while. It felt like I was starting over. You know, like I was in my early 20s you know, just starting out on my own again. It was really a very, it was a hard time for me. I kind of felt like a loser at times.

But I had to decide that I wanted something more. I had to decide that I wanted a life that was big and bold and vibrant. And how am I going to create that for myself? How can I live that way? Despite the fact that things around me do not seem awesome?

And the answer is, life is 50/50, we have to experience all of it. And we just have to accept all of it. And that’s the key right there is that you have to be willing to experience the good and the bad. You have to be willing to experience all the good stuff that comes your way. And all the challenging stuff that comes your way. It doesn’t mean you have to agree with everything.

You know, it doesn’t mean you have to like suffer. But you do have to learn how to experience the whole breadth of experiences and emotions that we all feel as humans, it’s all part of the human experience.

So I wasn’t trying to dull my experiences, I was willing to experience everything that life had to offer all the good, the bad, the terrible, the discomfort; the not knowing if any of this stuff was going to work. And I faced it all head on. I took on all those things with courage and determination as best I could.

I was determined to create a life that was pulsating with energy. That whole 50/50 thing life is, you know, half good half not so good. You have to accept this as truth. You have to, you have to accept everything. You can’t reject the bad stuff. You can’t reject the hard stuff. You can’t resist the uncomfortable stuff. Because that’s when you have that small, safe, dull life.

So be willing to feel that, be willing to experience the entire range of human emotions. You know, without sadness, we wouldn’t know what it feels like to be happy. Without anger and frustration, we wouldn’t know what peace feels like. Without hurt, we wouldn’t know relief. Without chaos, we wouldn’t experience calm.

If running a marathon was easy and pain free, do you think it would feel the same crossing that finish line? Do you think it would feel as amazing to cross that finish line if running a marathon was easy? No. It’s because of the struggle. It’s because of the fear and the pain and the suffering through the training that when you cross that finish line, it feels overwhelmingly joyful.

If you’ve ever run a marathon, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Or maybe it’s a 10k or a 5k or whatever that is for you. This is one of the reasons I love running so much. It’s not because it’s easy. It’s because it is hard. Because I’m willing to go out there and challenge myself and push myself and experience all of it. I’m willing to leave that safe harbor, so I can create a life that is buzzing with energy and enthusiasm.

This is what it means to live vibrantly. What would it look like for you to live vibrantly? Be honest with yourself. Are you living vibrantly right now? Or are you playing it safe? Do you have big goals and dreams for yourself? If yes, are you moving toward them? Are you taking action every day? Do you have a plan?

You know, one of the most powerful things about coaching is that working with me we create a plan for your big goals and your dreams. And then we work the plan. We take action and we move toward them every day. The power of coaching is having someone there to guide you, to hold you accountable to keep you focused to keep you on track to keep you motivated.

Now if you don’t have big goals and dreams, why the heck don’t you? Why wouldn’t you want a big, beautiful, bold, vibrant life for yourself? Seriously, ask yourself why you don’t want that. What kind of life do you want for yourself? The kind of life where you push yourself out of your comfort zone? Do more, be more, become the most amazing version of yourself yet? Or do you want the kind of life where you stay at home and stay safe and sit on the couch and binge watch Netflix all day? Because you get to decide.

Do you want the kind of life where you’re still carrying around that extra 40 pounds from now until the day you die? Do you want to constantly be struggling with your weight and your self image? Do you want to keep hating how your clothes fit or hating how you look in the mirror, or hating how you feel about yourself, or do you want something else?

Do you want something bigger? Do you want something more vibrant? Because it’s just a choice. And when you make that decision, like when you really decide when you go all in on living vibrantly, there is nothing that will stop you from getting there.

So my call to action for you is to make a decision to choose to live vibrantly, starting right now, what can you do right now, that would light you up. Now it doesn’t have to be like, oh, go jump out of an airplane or climb a mountain or, you know, this is not what I’m talking about.

You know, for me, it’s doing this right here. It’s recording this podcast. It’s teaching these principles to you. It’s encouraging you to live an amazing life. It’s motivating you to get out there and do something bigger than what you have now become more than who you are right now.

Doing this lights me up about what I do. And here’s a little secret for you guys. This is not easy. It’s still not easy for me to come on here and talk about these things. It’s uncomfortable. But I make the decision to show up every day with courage and determination. And because of that my life is pretty amazing. It’s pretty vibrant. Because I choose it.

I choose to live vibrantly every single day. I want my life to be pulsating with energy and enthusiasm. That just sounds so good to me. I want my life to be vivid, bright and meaningful. So what does it look like for you to live vibrantly? Maybe you have a big dream to get incredibly healthy, get back to your natural weight.

Maybe you want to run a 10k or a half marathon or a full marathon or maybe an ultra marathon. Maybe you want to run 10 miles a day for 100 straight days, like Andy in the Facebook group. This guy is a beast. He’s running 10 miles a day for 100 straight days. What if you just wanted to walk for 30 minutes a day for 100 days?

Maybe you want to start a business or get a new job or find your soulmate. Or maybe you want to quit eating sugar or maybe you need to cut back on your drinking. Doesn’t matter what it is, it matters that you choose to begin that you choose to live vibrantly.

Decide that you are not a ship that was built for safe harbors, and go out there and face the unknown. Face those turbulent waters with courage and determination and see what amazing, vibrant life you can create for yourself. All right, I’ll be diving into the other principles that I mentioned at the beginning from the Running Lean manifesto in upcoming episodes.

I’m so excited to be sharing this stuff with you guys. It’s super fun. And we continue this conversation over in the Running Lean community on Facebook. So just come by and check us out. Challenge yourself to live vibrantly, to get healthier, to lose weight, to become a better runner, to become the best damn version of yourself yet. 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.

38. Stop Arguing for Your Limitations

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There are basically two ways to approach any challenge. One way is to focus on all the reasons why you can’t do it. The other way is to focus on all the reasons why you can. I find it …

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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 38 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m going to be talking about why we need to stop arguing for our limitations. There are basically two ways to approach any challenge. One way that some people do it is to focus on all the reasons why you can’t do it. The other way is to focus on all the reasons why you can.

And I find it interesting that so many people choose option one, when they’re facing something challenging in their life. They spend a lot of time and a lot of energy focusing on all the reasons why they can’t do it. So today, I want to talk about why we do this, why we argue for our limitations, and how this kind of thinking is just keeping us stuck. And I do offer some suggestions on what we can do instead.

But first, if you like this podcast, please come check us out on Facebook, though – Running Lean community on Facebook, you can just search for those words, and you’ll find us. This is a positive, energetic, informative, fun group of like-minded runners just like you that share common goals like losing weight, living a vibrant life, becoming super healthy, running, making running easier.

I host a weekly live trainings in there on things like intermittent fasting, which we’re focusing on this month. Running, nutrition, weight loss, exercise, physiology, all kinds of stuff. Here’s a recent comment from one of our community members, Amy.

Amy says, “I ran a virtual 10k this morning, although it was hot and steamy, I felt great. I didn’t have to eat anything before the run, or even feel like I needed anything to fuel with but water. Thank you, Patrick and the rest of the group for the motivation and helping me change my mindset and my body these last eight weeks.”

That is awesome. Thank you, Amy. Amy’s a great example of the kind of positive, motivated people we have over in the Running Lean community on Facebook. And this month, we’ve got this intermittent fasting challenge going on right now. Intermittent Fasting is just practicing some periods of the day where you just don’t eat anything.

You can call it time restricted eating or meal spacing. But basically, you know, we talk about how to do it safely, how to incorporate this into your running, why we would want to incorporate this into our running. There’s a lot of amazing health benefits, by the way. So just check us out, come and see what it’s all about the Running Lean community on Facebook, and figuring out all this stuff.

How do we do time restricted eating? How do I lose weight and continue running? How do I make running stronger? How do I become a fat adapted runner? All these things take some time to figure out. They take awareness, they take knowledge and they take some support, so that you can create this kind of lasting change in your life.

Listen, this is not about a diet, diets are temporary, right? What I help people do, through my coaching practice, is help people create new habits. And it takes about 90 days to create a new habit. So most of the coaching I do with people is a three month or 90 Day Program. And what you get with that is the knowledge, awareness and support that you need.

So that you can accomplish those goals so that you can create the habits that you need to change your lifestyle to change your relationship with the we’re all different. We all have different dietary needs, what works for one person may not work for somebody else. You know, if one thing worked for everybody, I could just create a PDF and give it to all you guys and be like here just do this, but it doesn’t work that way you need to figure out what works for you.

So together you and I will figure out exactly what will work for you. It takes a little bit of trial and error, but eventually we get it right. I want you to make big changes in your life. I want you to get off of the carbohydrate addiction, I want you to reap all the amazing benefits of becoming a fat adapted runner.

If you’re interested in this, cool, check it out, just go to innerfiretribe.com/weightlosscoaching, that’s one word, and apply for coaching with me, we’ll get on the phone, we’ll have a little conversation, we’ll get on a Zoom call. And we’ll have a quick little conversation and see if this is a good fit for both of us. Cool.

Alright, let’s get into this topic today. So the topic today is, I titled this stop arguing for your limitations. And I have to tell you a little warning before we get started here that I’m doling out a little tough love today. I think this is an important message for all of us to hear. And listen, I need to hear this too. I’m not exempt from this message either.

So part of me talking about this is to remind myself that I need to stop arguing for my limitations too, because I do it sometimes, too. But I’m hoping this message resonates with you. I wrote a short post about this earlier in the week, and shared it on social media, and I think it touched a nerve for a few people.

And so I thought you know, I think I need to do a little deeper dive into this. Because a few people said, you know, oh, that was tough to hear, but I needed to hear it. So I’m hoping this resonates with you guys. So here’s what I’m seeing, I hear you guys tell me things like I want to do something big. I want I want to accomplish this big goal, I have this, this big dream or goal, you know, I want to lose 50 pounds, I’ve struggled for so long with this weight, I really want to lose this weight, or I want to run a full marathon, I really want to do that.

And so, you know, you say you’re all in, you want this with every bit of your soul, you’re like, I’m so focused on this goal, I’m gonna do it. You might have a plan, you start working the plan. But then you know, stuff starts to happen. Maybe you wake up in the morning, and then the weather’s not awesome, it’s raining outside, and you’re just like, I don’t really don’t feel like running today.

Or maybe you just get tired or maybe stuff like your job is stressing you out. You know, your kids are driving you crazy. Or the one that I love, you know, well COVID hit and so you know what that means as if like it was some hurricane that you know, knocked your house down or something.

But here’s what’s happening, we have all these external things that happen in our life. You know, we get an extra workload at work, you know, our boss is demanding more of us or, you know, the kids are being, they’re doing school from home, they’re doing like remote schooling, or the husband doesn’t help as much as he should be, according to you.

And you have all these external things happening. And instead of just forging on, you use these external things, as an excuse to give up to quit, you use these excuses to give up on these big goals and dreams that you said you are all in on. You wanted more than anything else. And you just use his excuse to quit.

You know, you say, I can’t focus on my health because you know, my kids are our home and they’re doing school from home now. So there’s no longer I can’t focus on my health anymore. What, really? Or I was doing fine, not eating sugar and carbs. But then I had this really stressful day at work. And, you know, my boss gave me a bunch of extra work. So I needed to eat a whole pizza and a half gallon of ice cream at one sitting.

If you’ve done that before, it’s fine. You’re normal. I’ve done that before. Or you’re just like, you know, this is just hard. It’s really hard. Training for a marathon is hard. Or losing weight is hard. So I just, that’s why I can’t do it. By the way, all this stuff I’m talking about here, this stuff is just life.

Stuff happens all the time. Life’s not supposed to be some carefree, happy existence. You know, flowers, daisies, unicorns, rainbows, it’s not like that. It’s more like 50/50 – half the time you feel pretty good. Half the time you feel not so good. That’s okay. You can either just accept this fact, or you can just fight against it with everything you’ve got.

And when you accept it, when you accept that you won’t feel happy all the time. Honestly, there’s a lot of freedom in that. What happens is we get ourselves into trouble when we have this belief. And we hold on to this belief very tightly that we have to feel happy all the time.

And I got news for you, that’s just never going to happen. This is you fighting against reality. And I see it all the time. I see it every single day. Well, I just want to feel better. Guess what, you’re not always going to feel good. And that’s okay. The inner turmoil that you feel is mostly caused by resisting these negative emotions, quote, unquote, negative emotions, unwanted emotions, like stress, like anger, like fear, like sadness.

All these emotions, we feel are just part of the human experience. We’re humans, we get to feel all kinds of amazing emotions, some of them are pretty amazing. Some of them feel so good. And some of them not so much. But to be human means we feel all these emotions. And we have to accept this fact, we will feel some positive and some negative emotion, some wanted emotions and some unwanted emotions, and it’s all good.

Life is 50/50 – be willing to accept all of it. You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to agree with it. You don’t have to accept it and say, well, that’s just the way it is. I can’t do anything about it. No. It’s like I tell my weight loss clients all the time, I’m like, you have to love yourself exactly as you are right now. Look in the mirror and love yourself exactly as you are every bit of your body.

You can’t hate yourself and expect to lose weight, I always say can’t hate yourself thin, you got to love yourself exactly as you are. And you can work to change that. But you have to accept what is. It’s when we resist what is when we resist and reject that half of our existence that we quote unquote, don’t like or, you know, don’t think is normal.

That’s what causes us the internal pain and the agony, we resist and reject any kind of unwanted emotion. Okay, that was a little a little tangent, I went off on there. But I just need you to understand that there are external circumstances that are going to happen in our lives. And those things are neither good nor bad, really, I’ll talk about that more in just a second.

But understand that you may feel some stress, you may feel some anger, you may feel some fear. And it’s okay. Don’t push it away. Don’t push it away, just accept it all. I love this quote from Henry Ford. He said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” This is perfect for what I’m talking about here today.

So like I said, at the beginning, there are basically two ways we can approach a challenge. So we have something challenging in our life, we want to lose a bunch of weight, we want to run a marathon, we can focus on why we can’t do it. Or we can focus on why we can do it. Let’s talk about these.

When you focus on why you can’t do something, here’s what happens. You find all sorts of excuses, all sorts of reasons you have stories you want to tell me about why this isn’t going to work for you want to lose weight, but stuff happened at work, you know, my husband doesn’t help as much as he should. The kids are screaming in the background.

And in your mind, these are all valid excuses. They are valid reasons why you can’t do this thing. Why you can’t stay on your protocol, why you can’t train for your marathon. But let’s look at this. Let’s look at how this works. Because here’s the thing, these are all just stories that you’re telling yourself. These are all just stories, you’re believing you’re choosing them, and you’re choosing to believe them.

So let’s look at how this works. You got stuff happening at work, the husband’s not helping the kids are demanding stuff from you. These are what we call circumstances. Circumstances in our lives are always neutral. The circumstances in our lives are facts. They don’t hold any meaning on their own. They only mean something after we have a thought about the circumstances. Okay.

Neutral circumstances are true for everyone. They’re just facts, facts that can be upheld in a court of law, let’s say. So, the kids have to attend school from home, that is a fact. My workload has increased at work, tat is a fact. These are just facts. Everyone would say, yeah, that is true.

None of this means anything, until you have thought about it, until you choose a meaning that you want to assign to this particular circumstance. You with me so far? Circumstances, always neutral. If it’s something happening outside of our thoughts, feelings and actions, it is neutral, we have no control over it.

So the kids have to attend school from home is a circumstance, millions of parents are dealing with this right now. Right? This is just a neutral fact. Kids have to attend school from home, it does not mean you can’t, you can no longer focus on your health. It doesn’t mean you can’t train for a marathon.

Those millions of parents that are dealing with this right now, you know, half of them are probably out there, focusing on their health right now. They’re probably training for their first marathon right now. They’re figuring it out. Kids doing school from home does not mean you can’t run. If that were true, it would be true for everyone. But it’s not.

You’re choosing not to focus on your health, you’re choosing not to run. And what you’re doing is you’re using your kids having to do school from home, you’re using that as an excuse. Because what you’re trying to do is hard. And you don’t want to do it. Because it’s hard, because it’s uncomfortable. Because it’s gonna take a while.

By the way, nobody said this stuff was going to be easy. It’s why it’s a challenge. But you want that thing. You want it with all of your being. But instead, you’re choosing to focus on all these reasons, you’re choosing to believe, you’re choosing these reasons. This amazing story that you’re creating in your mind about why this won’t work for you.

And then I come in as your coach and I say, listen, here’s what your mind is doing, your brain is just making up these stories about why you can’t do this. This is a choice you’re making. These are just neutral circumstances, you can figure this out, let’s figure it out together. And then that’s when I get the pushback.

I get people digging in and fighting like hell, for all the reasons why they can’t do it. Why, you know, it’s different for them. They have all these stories, all these excuses, all these reasons. They defend these things, to their dying breath. They are fighting tooth and nail for these beliefs that they have about why they can’t do it. Why? It’s too hard for them and they argue with me.

No, it’s just the way it is Patrick, there’s nothing I can do about it. But you know what, there is something you can do about it. These are just beliefs that they are choosing. They’re arguing for their limitations. They’re basically saying like, look, I have these limitations. I can’t do it. Here’s all the reasons why. And then they list them all out.

And I hear stories and stories and stories. It doesn’t make any sense. You’re basically saying I want this goal. I want this thing that I’ve wanted for so long, but I know it’s a challenge, but it’s it’s too hard. And here’s all the reasons why I can’t do it.

They’re like focusing on the reasons why they can’t, creating all the reasons, all the excuses in their mind. And choosing to believe them. That’s the scary part right there. You’re choosing to believe these reasons. You’ve got to stop doing this. Just stop it right now.

Stop arguing for your limitations. Because the more you focus on why you can’t do it, the more reasons you’ll find, the more excuses you’ll find. You look for reasons why you’re failing and you will see these reasons everywhere. When you start looking for all the excuses, you will find them everywhere.

My friend Samantha says it this way. She says, “When you argue for your limitations, they’re yours to keep.” Powerful. So there’s another approach. This is the one that I would suggest you take on. It’s up to you though.

Let’s go back to those neutral circumstances. Okay, so my boss is asking a lot of me at work right now. It’s really stressing me out. So you can choose to believe that this workload is stressing you out, you can choose to believe that this means you can’t focus on your running anymore. You can’t focus on your health, and you have to like quit running.

You can choose to believe that this extra workload means you can just sit around and watch Netflix eating a whole pizza and half gallons of ice cream. And that’s just the way it is. As if you know, it’s all happening to you. What results do you think you’re gonna get from that? From taking those actions?

I can pretty much guarantee you’re not going to be running a marathon anytime soon, I can pretty much guarantee your health will definitely not be improving anytime soon. All right, my boss is asking me to do more work right now is a neutral circumstance. So what if you thought, you know, my boss was asking more of me. And I’m up to the challenge.

Hey, I’m really good at what I do. I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve done way harder things in my life. This is no big deal. You know, I might need to adjust my training plan a little bit. But hey, I got this. Wow, that’s a little more powerful, isn’t it? or what have you tried on a thought like, nothing is more important to me than my health.

And running a marathon has been a dream of mine for way too long. Now, I’m not letting a little extra workload stop me from reaching this goal. You know, what if instead of looking for all your limitations, because when you look for them, you will find them? I promise you? What if you looked for all of the possibilities? Focus on why you can’t and you’ll find reasons why everywhere.

Also focus on why you can and you’ll find reasons why everywhere. If you get to choose what you want to believe about your circumstances, because they are neutral, why would you ever choose to believe that you can’t do it? Why would you choose to believe that this stuff means you can’t reach your goal?

Why would you ever choose failure? Because that’s what you’re doing. By the way, I don’t really believe there’s such a thing as failure. You either keep going until you succeed, or you quit. These are two choices that you get to make. And they have nothing to do with anything outside of you know, kids screaming, no workload can change that. These are choices you’re making. You either keep going until you succeed, or you quit. For me, quitting is just not an option.

These are choices you get to make based on your thoughts, your feelings and your actions. It has nothing to do with COVID. Okay. Lots of people are training for a marathon. Lots of people are building a business during this global pandemic. Lots of people are improving their health. I see it every single day. Lots of people are getting amazing coaching and changing their lives for the better. Stop using it as an excuse.

Sorry, this is where the old Tough Love is coming in. I do love you guys. I hope you know that. Everything I’m saying I’m saying with kindness and love. I’m smiling. But listen, where are you in your life with this right now? Like where are you arguing for your limitations? Think about this.

Like, let’s say you want to lose 50 pounds? It’s pretty common for a lot of people I’ve talked to. Why do you think you can’t do it? Think about that. Why do you think you can’t do it? Why? Why isn’t this going to work for you? Ask yourself that question. See what your brain comes up with for an answer.

So maybe you came up with answers like well, I’ve tried everything, nothing’s ever worked before or you know understand I’ve time to figure all this out right now I don’t even know where to begin. These are just reasons you came up with, they’re just thoughts in your head. They’re not the they’re not the truth unless you choose to believe them.

Take a look at the circumstances in your life right now. Ask yourself this question: What am I choosing to believe about this particular situation, whatever it is? You know maybe it’s the kids being home. A lot of people are talking to me about their kids being home and doing school from home and it’s posing some challenges, some unique challenges for people.

What are you choosing to believe about that situation? Are you holding on to a story or a belief about it? That means you can’t do this. You can’t succeed at your health goals or your weight loss goals or your running goals. If that’s you, like, maybe think about that, and what do you want to believe instead? You get to choose what to believe.

By the way, this is a very important question to ask your brain, what thought can I choose to believe? What thought can I choose to believe that will motivate me, that will fill me with courage and passion and excitement about this big goal? It’s so important to me. Maybe something like you know what, I’m going to lose 50 pounds, no matter how long it takes.

I’ve tried a bunch of other stuff. It didn’t work. That’s all behind me now. Now. Now is the time I’m going to figure this out. I will not stop until I figure it out. I will not quit until I succeed. This is way too important to me. I don’t want to ever feel sick and tired again.

I don’t know, I don’t really know where to begin with all this stuff. But I’m going to start today. And maybe I’ll ask for help. I’m going to seek out a coach, I’m going to get guidance, I’m going to get direction, I am going to make this work. Damn, that is a much more powerful way to approach something, right?

What if you took all that fight, all that energy that you’re putting into arguing for your limitations, and instead, put all that fight and all that energy into searching out like the possibilities and all the reasons why you’re going to succeed? I wonder what kind of results you’d get if you did that.

Remember, whether you think you can or you think you can’t. You’re right. Okay, I hope you don’t mind. This little bit of tough love for me today. So here’s what’s coming up in the Running Lean community on Facebook. Remember, I talked about doing the September intermittent fasting challenge.

We’re talking about time restricted eating, meal spacing, that kind of stuff. This week, we’re going to be talking about training in a fasted state running on empty. Why do we do this? It sounds crazy. I know. But why is this good for us? And why would we want to do this? Why would we choose to train without calories and without fuel?

So I’ll talk about that this week. So join us in the Facebook group, just go to Facebook and search for Running Lean community. That’s all I got for you today. Lots and lots of love to each and every one of you, my friends, keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.

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