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110. Battling The Resistance

February 4, 2022 By Patrick McGilvray

Oftentimes, when you set out to improve your health and fitness, you find yourself feeling all of this negative stuff. Just thinking about changing your diet will bring up all of these thoughts and …

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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 110 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today: Battling the Resistance. Oftentimes, when you set out to improve your health and fitness, you find yourself feeling all this negative stuff. Just thinking about changing your diet can bring up all these negative thoughts and feelings like this is just going to be too hard. What if I fail, these things never work for me, and on and on and on. Right?

This is called the resistance. And it shows up in the form of fear, worry, self-doubt, excuses, procrastination. It can absolutely stop you from ever achieving your goals. It can actually even keep you from ever starting anything.

So today on the podcast, I’m going to show you how to recognize when the resistance starts to show up for you and what to do about it. Because it’s all about battling the resistance, not getting into it.

But first, if you like this podcast, if you’re a fan of the Running Lean podcast, then you got to come and check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook. This is a group of like-minded runners who all share similar goals. We post inspirational posts, we encourage each other, we support each other on our goals. And it’s a very positive place to hang out if you do social media. If you want to find a fun group to kind of be a part of and feel like you’re included in this awesome positive community, then please come check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook, just search for Running Lean Podcast Community and join us. It’ll be fun, it’s fun.

And listen, I understand that I talk a lot about losing weight, about changing your nutrition about becoming this future version of yourself this, you know, healthiest and most badass version of yourself. And I also understand that it can be confusing, it can feel frustrating or overwhelming sometimes, and trying to figure it all out on your own can be very challenging.

So if you’re one of those people that’s like, you know what, I just want to hit the easy button on this, you know, I just want somebody to show me what to do. I want somebody there that can hold me accountable, and to offer encouragement, and just give you that support that you need to reach your goals, then I absolutely have your back.

Hiring me as your coach will give you all of those things, you’ll learn exactly how to become that future version of yourself, whatever that looks like for you. Because we’re all different, we all have different goals, we all have different needs. We all have different desires. We all have different likes and dislikes. So we’re going to put together a plan that works for you, that feels good for you that feels like something you can do for the rest of your life.

This is about long-term health and fitness. If you’re interested in some kind of short-term, I just want to lose, you know, some weight really fast. That’s not what this is about. This is about making changes at the core of who you are. It’s like changing your habits. It’s changing your identity. It’s making this big shift in how you think and feel about food and exercise and nutrition, all that stuff.

So who is it that you want to become and if you want some help getting there? Let me know. I gotcha. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply. And you can apply for coaching, you get to fill out a short little application, you and I need to jump on a call and have a conversation and see if this is a good fit for you. And if it is, boom, let’s do it. Let’s go battle the resistance together. Cool. All right.

So I love this topic today. I was talking with my personal trainer Chris Wissman recently, and I started talking about this stuff that comes up for people. These things that come up when people start to want to change something.

So you know I work with a lot of people who are changing their diet, they’re changing their workout routines, and I get get a lot of excuses and reasons why they can’t do it or why it’s too hard. And he and I were having this conversation. He said oh yeah, that’s the resistance. And I was like boom. Yes, that’s exactly what it is.

And it reminded me of this book by Steven Pressfield called The War of Art, in it he talks about the resistance, and he’s talking about how he shows up for creative types, people who are, you know, writers, and people who are creating, you know, written content and things like that, and how when they set out to, you know, create something, they get all this self-doubt and worry, and all these things kind of come up for them, right.

But it’s the same thing. It’s that resistance that comes in whenever we want to change something whenever we want to do something that’s bigger than us, or that maybe we haven’t done before. So many people I talk to want more for themselves, they want to become more, they have that picture in their head of who they want to become. But when it comes to taking action, there’s something that comes up. And there are these excuses. And these reasons why it’s not going to work. And these stories, they keep telling themselves. There’s something that’s like pushing against them.

And whatever it is, they’re trying to do whatever they want to accomplish for themselves, there’s, resistance there, okay. And this resistance can come in a lot of different forms. It can come in the form of excuses and stories and reasons why it’s not going to work.

It can come from things you’ve done or not been able to do in the past, it can come in the form of fear, a lot of it is fear, fear of the unknown, fear of failure, self-doubt, worry, anxiety, it can come in the form of self-sabotage or procrastination. Or I’m going to wait to do this because maybe it’s just not the right time.

And so we procrastinate, right. So why do we do this? Why? Why do we have this resistance? Where’s it coming from? Because it’s counterintuitive, right? It’s counterintuitive to what you want for yourself. You want to lose weight, but you’re telling yourself, you’re probably just going to fail, like all the other times, you want to get stronger, but you keep putting off going to the gym, I’ll go tomorrow, or next week or things at work are a little crazy right now.

So once things calm down and work, then I’ll start going to the gym. So when is this showing up for you like, the resistance shows up in a lot of different times and a lot of different places. But one place it shows up a lot is just when it’s time to start something.

You know, I talk to people every day who want to become that future badass version of themselves, and they want it so badly for themselves. And they tell me like, “Oh, I just want this so bad.” And they tell me why it’s so important to them. You know, they want to be there for their kids, they want to be a good example to their sons or daughters. They want to inspire other people to get healthy. They want to live their life feeling good about themselves for a change.

You know, they tell me they’re ready to go all-in on themselves and they’re ready to get started. I say, Okay, let’s do this. Let’s start and then that resistance comes in and they say “I don’t know, maybe, maybe I’m not ready for this. I’m afraid I’m gonna fail. Like all the other times that failed. I just, it may be too hard.”

So people tell me this stuff all the time. And I, I kind of just cock my head and look at them sideways and be like, you know, like, let’s fight this resistance together. You know, think about when you decided the first time, let’s say you ran a marathon before, like the first time you decided to run a marathon. That was a big deal. There’s probably all these thoughts and feelings that came up for you all this resistance that came up for you. But you did it anyway.

I talk to people all the time who say like, “Oh, I’d love to run a marathon someday.” I’m like, Cool, let’s do it, pick a race. Let’s get you signed up. And then boom here comes the resistance. I’m afraid I’ve never run that far before. I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know, if I’ll have time to train, it’s a lot of training. It just almost seems too hard. Maybe I’m just not cut out to be a marathon runner.

And all this resistance comes in and just puts this big dark cloud over what they really want for themselves. If you want to be a fit, healthy, strong person, and you got to start something new to get there, it’s gonna feel scary, it’s gonna feel uncomfortable, you might think you might not be able to do it. That’s okay. That’s all the resistance okay.

The resistance also shows up anytime you face an obstacle, or you experience some sort of setback. So first you have to understand that failure is part of the process. You have to accept this principle, okay?

Most people do not accept failure at all and when things don’t go as planned, and by the way, they never do. When things don’t go as planned, then the doubt and the fear and the worry and the resistance all comes up in just pushes against them. And then they just quit.

Like, if you’ve ever changed your diet and you start losing weight, and you start making progress, and you’re feeling good, you’re feeling kind of amazing. But then things kind of slow down or stall for a few days or a week and you start to freak out. And in reality, this doesn’t really mean anything, your weight fluctuates up and down all the time.

But we make it mean, it’s not working, we make it mean that we can’t do it. See, I told you these things never worked for me. All this hard work and no results, screw it, I’m just gonna eat cake for dinner tonight. Why bother? This is all just the resistance, showing up, you got to recognize when this comes up for you. And just knowing what it is, knowing that it’s just your brain kind of freaking out. This is a powerful first step in battling against it, you have to see that this is what this is, and this is coming up for you.

Resistance also shows up when you start comparing yourself to others. Do you ever do this? I don’t do that I don’t compare myself to others. Not true. I do. And it’s something that I have to like, think about and work on constantly. But this is kind of a sneaky way that resistance will show up for you.

So you’ll see what other people are doing. You’ll see what other people look like, you’ll see where other people are on their health and fitness journey. Maybe they’ve lost a bunch of weight in a short amount of time, or they’ve gotten a lot faster, you know, they can run a faster marathon than you or whatever, and you start comparing yourself.

You start comparing yourself to these other people. And for whatever reason, whenever we compare ourselves to others, we always come out on the losing end of that comparison. Isn’t that interesting? I think that’s very interesting. Why don’t we always compare ourselves to others and come out ahead like, “Oh, look, I’m so amazing compared to all these other people!”

No, we don’t do it that way. We look at other people and we say, “Oh, I’m not as fast, I’m not as healthy. I’m not as strong, not as fit. I’m not as lean. Oh, look, she can run a lot faster than me, it must mean that she’s special. And I’m not.”

So for me, this came up when I was, you know, before I kind of got fit again, a couple of years ago, I’d kind of let myself go, I did gain a lot of weight. And I compare myself to these young fit dudes with these big muscles in the six-pack abs. And I would tell myself stories like I could never look like that. I’m too old, I’m a lot older.

And these guys, I don’t have their genes, you know, they’ve got some kind of genetic, you know, thing that helps them to become like ripped like that. And I just don’t have that I don’t have that same determination. I don’t have what it takes, I can never do it. This is for them, but not me. And when I recognize that all of this was just noise, this resistance was just my brain freaking out about all this stuff. I stood up to it, I’m going to battle against resistance.

And I was like, why not? Me? Why not? Maybe I can look like that. Or get close to that. So instead of comparing myself to other people, I don’t do that anymore. I compare myself to my former self, I compare myself to where I was a year ago, six months ago, a couple of years ago, whatever.

I always want to improve myself over where I used to be. And I really work on not comparing myself to where other people are. Sometimes I catch myself I see people I’m just like, dang, you know, I’ll never look like that. And then I’m I recognize that all there’s the resistance. There’s the resistance, it’s just my brain, looking for problems and finding them. When you start looking for problems. You will find them everywhere I promise you. But here’s the thing, the resistance is keeping you stuck if you’re feeling stuck.

If you’re feeling like you’re not making any progress or you’re not making any changes or you just can’t get motivated to do something. It’s probably resistance is showing up for you. It’s what’s keeping you in this loop of wanting more for yourself but never actually doing anything about it.

And keep in mind resistance this resistance is powerful stuff. It’s so powerful can stop you from making any progress and it can keep you stuck for a long time years, decades. And the resistance will try to convince you that you’re not good enough that you can’t do it that you always fail. You’ll never amount anything. You can’t be that badass person you want to be. You’ve always failed. You’re doomed to be a failure.

We’ve got to like fight against these thoughts and feelings that come up, we got to fight against this resistance. Because that’s all they are is just thoughts and feelings. And when you start to notice this, you start to notice these are just your thoughts and feelings.

You’ve got to recognize that you’re embarking on something that’s out of your comfort zone. stuff you’ve never done is outside your comfort zone, you know, things that are challenging or outside your comfort zone, everything you want for yourself, but don’t already have is outside your comfort zone. If it was in your comfort zone, you’d already have it. If it was easy and comfortable for you, you’d have it already. But it’s not, it’s hard.

It’s something you’ve never done before. It’s something that you may have tried and failed at in the past, all that stuff is out of your comfort zone. And when you get outside your comfort zone, even thinking about getting outside your comfort zone will bring up the resistance. So you have to understand something, that the resistance is not something that is out there. It’s within you, it’s you, it’s your mindset.

The resistance is not how things are. It’s just your perception of how things are in this moment. I’m going to repeat that because I think it’s so important for you to understand the resistance is not how things are. It’s just how you perceive things are in this moment.

So this is both good and bad news. Okay, the bad news is that it’s all you. You can’t blame anybody else. You can’t blame anyone or anything else on this, the resistance is you, sorry, you create it, you’re perpetuating it. You’re making yourself stuck in this loop. It’s all you. Okay, that’s the bad news.

The good news is, it’s all you. Because it’s just you, it’s just your mind, it’s your brain, and you have the power to change it. If it was somebody else, you couldn’t change it, if it was something, doing something to you, you wouldn’t have the power to change it. But it is just you, it’s your thoughts and feelings. And you can change all of that stuff.

You can decide if you want to, you know, listen to the resistance and give into it and let it consume you. Let it overwhelm you, and let it keep you stuck. And let it keep you feeling like you’ll never be good enough. Or you can start battling against it.

You’ve got to start working on that mindset, you’ve got to develop an empowered mindset. And whatever it is you want for yourself, you have to understand that battling the resistance is going to be part of the process, it is required for you to become the person that you want to become, it’s the price you pay, it’s the cost of becoming that amazing, healthiest version of yourself that badass, lean, strong runner that you want to be.

So you have to stand up against the resistance, recognize it, and then take action, despite the resistance coming up for you, you’re going to feel the resistance, it’s going to be there, those thoughts and feelings are going to be there. You’ve got to take action despite thinking and feeling these things, awareness, and then taking action. That’s how you battle against the resistance. Not today, resistance. I’m gonna get out there and do what I have to do.

I did this today, I’m back to running again. It’s been a couple of months since I’ve ran and you know, it’s okay. It’s it feels actually pretty good. But I can’t do a whole lot I’m supposed to, you know, take it easy. So today I had about 15 minutes on the schedule to run.

And we’re having this crazy ice and snowstorm here in Cincinnati right now. And I was like, I do not want to go out there and fall on my butt and like hurt my shoulder again or something like that. So all this resistance came up for me. I was like, I’m just not going to do it. I don’t want to do it.

And I have in my building here I have a gym and I have access to several treadmills and stuff. And I was like, I just don’t like running on the treadmill. But you know what I was like, Okay, I’m just gonna do it. So I put on my shorts and my running shirt, laced up my running shoes, and I headed down to the treadmill, I turn that thing on and I started running.

And the whole time I was like, I hate this. Max resistance was coming up for me and I was just like, I don’t run on the treadmill. I just don’t ever do it. I’ll run outside despite the weather, but I was just trying to be safe today and not wipe out. Normally I would go outside and run and whatever. But because I’m still recovering from this, I got to be careful.

So I had to battle that resistance that came up for me and I was like yeah, this is exactly what I’m going to be talking about today on this podcast, because it’s so prevalent, it’s always going to be there in some form.

So recognize when it shows up for you. Okay? And then, you know, take action despite feeling the resistance. Okay? Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to think about that future version of yourself. That strong, lean, healthiest, badass version of yourself. How did you get there? Did you get there by giving into the resistance and staying stuck? And not taking action? And being full of fear and worry, and having excuses and self-doubt and self-sabotaging and procrastination? Is that how you got there?

No, no, that’s not how you got there. You got there by fighting against that resistance. It was still there, but you fought against it. And that’s how you became that future version of yourself. Yeah, I love this idea. I love this idea of going into the future and thinking about who you want to be. And thinking about how did I get there? That is powerful stuff right there, my friends. All right.

And if you ever want a little help with all this I got you just go over to runningleanpodcast.com/apply, and let’s go to battle against that resistance together. Cool. All right, love you all. Keep on Running Lean. We’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.

109. Who Are You Becoming?

January 28, 2022 By Patrick McGilvray

Who are you becoming? It’s a good question, right? The thing is, most people don’t ever ask themselves this. They don’t spend any time thinking about who they really want to become. This …

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Podcast Transcript

Hey there, and welcome to episode 109 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners today, who are you becoming? Who are you becoming? It’s a good question, right? The thing is, most people don’t ever ask themselves this question. They don’t spend any time thinking about who they really want to become. This is a problem.

If you don’t know where you’re going, how are you supposed to get there? If you don’t know who you want to become in the future, chances are pretty good that you’re going to stay stuck, right where you are right now. So in this episode, I’m going to talk about the importance of contemplating this powerful question, Who am I becoming, and then I’m going to talk about how to start working toward becoming that exact version of yourself. Cool, this will be fun, I think it’s gonna be a good one.

First, if you like this podcast, come check out the Running Lean Podcast community on Facebook. This is a group of like-minded people who come to share their experience,to share their encouragement, to share their inspiration, and to post selfies of them running. And it’s a lot of fun, we have a lot of fun in the community, I post challenges in there, sometimes, I’ll occasionally do a training or a coaching session in there. And it’s all designed to be a positive encouraging place to go. People say they love the Facebook community, we’d love to have you over there. So just search for Running Lean Community on Facebook, and come join us.

And then listen, all this talk about nutrition and weight loss and fueling for running and becoming the best version of yourself. All this stuff can be confusing, it can feel overwhelming, can feel frustrating. There’s a lot of conflicting information out there. figuring it all out on your own can be very challenging.

But listen, if you want to hit the easy button, one on one coaching with me might be just the thing for you. With coaching, you get the knowledge, the expert guidance, the support, the encouragement, the accountability, you get someone there, who knows what you’re going through, who knows how to get you to your goals, somebody that’s there to give you feedback, to help you figure out what’s working, what’s not what to do next, someone in your corner who’s always there for you who’s always got your back.

This is like you and I working closely together to help you become that badass future version of yourself. You know, the one who’s lean and strong, the one who feels good about yourself. The best part is all helped you develop the mindset to make all this something that you do for life. It’s one thing to like lose weight or hit a running goal. It’s another thing to be healthy to be a healthy, strong human being and make it last for life. That’s the work we do together. So who are you becoming? And let’s get you there together. You can apply for coaching over at runningleanpodcast.com/apply. Let’s make 2022 the year that you changed your life for good.
Cool. All right, I am so excited about talking about this today. I’ve been thinking about this topic for a while now. And I’ve touched on this in several different ways in the past, but I really want to put this together in a way that really is simple and makes sense for you. Okay.

And so there’s this question of who are you becoming? And the reason I’m talking about this today is because most people seem to feel like they’re stuck where they are. They don’t feel like they have any direction. Right? They don’t really have an idea of who they want to become.

Even people that are like, Oh yeah, I want to be healthier, like what does that mean for you? And sometimes they’re like, I don’t know. I just want to feel healthier. Well, you got to know what that means. But if you don’t know who you want to become, if you don’t have a clear vision of who it is you want to become, how are you going to get there? I’m telling you right now, you’re not going to get there because You’re a boat without a rudder, you’re just like going aimlessly right? Through your life.

You’re not going to get anywhere and nothing is ever going to work for you, you’re not going to experience the growth and the change that you really want for yourself. And you’re just going to kind of stay stuck where you are right now. And there’s nothing wrong with any of this if that’s what you want for yourself.

If you’re cool with where you are right now, and you’re like, I’m good, Patrick, I don’t, I don’t want to like be better. I don’t want to be healthier. I don’t want to get stronger, or leaner or run faster, or like do my first ultra-marathon or push myself and see what I’m capable of.

If you’re fine with where you are right now. That’s amazing. You do you. But I know you. I know the people that listen to this podcast are like, ‘No, Patrick, I’m on board with this, I want more for myself, I want to see what I’m capable of, I want to become more.’ But you have to have a very clear vision of what that means for you.

Okay, so most people just don’t have that vision, they don’t have the direction, they don’t really know what they want for themselves. So you got to have that very clear vision of who it is you want to become okay. Another reason I’m talking about this is that I get asked questions all the time from people on social media, in the Facebook group, and they’ll ask me questions, like, ‘What foods should I eat? What foods should I not eat? How do I fuel for running? How many carbs should I eat? How often should I be running? How many times a week? Should I lift weights? How should I structure these workouts? What should my macros look like?’

And on and on and on? Right? All these questions and they’re good questions. And we do want to, you know, focus on those at some point. You know that is part of the equation here. But I think from the get-go, you’re kind of focusing on the wrong things.

First, well, first of all, I have to say this, that the answer to all those questions is always it depends. Nobody likes to hear that answer either. I’m like, ‘Well, it depends. Like, what are your goals? What’s your lifestyle look like? What are your likes and dislikes? What do you what are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to lose weight? Are you trying to change your body composition? Are you trying to get stronger? Are you trying to run your first ultra-marathon?’

Like what is it that you want for yourself? It ultimately comes down to answering that question, Who are you becoming? And most people are just not focused on this. They just want me to tell them what to do. They just want somebody to say, do this and not that. And I’m telling you right now that unless you have this other deeper, more powerful question figured out, who do you want to become; what you’re doing isn’t going to make a lot of sense.

When you can answer that question, oh, this is who I want to become in the future. This is what I want for myself. This is what I want my life to look like, this is what I want my body to look like, this is how and where I want my running to be. When you can answer those questions very clearly, then what you do becomes much more obvious. It’s much more obvious, much easier to answer those questions for yourself.

Okay. Here’s another reason why I want to talk about this today. Most coaches and I’ve talked to a lot of people who have had other types of coaches, either dieticians, they’ve worked with nutrition coaches, personal trainers, running coaches, and almost every person I talked to tells me that their coaches always focus on what to do.

So they’re just like, here’s your plan, this is what you need to do. Don’t do this, do this over here, boom, done. And they may talk about goals, they may say like, ‘Oh, you want to run faster? Okay, well, here’s what you’re going to do.’ And that’s about it. That’s about as deep as it goes.

But I have to tell you, that there’s this much deeper and much more powerful force at work within you. And I want to help you to tap into that force. When you ignore this powerful force within you. You kind of leave a lot on the table.

And so with me and my clients and the people that I coach and the people that I work with, we work very closely together on creating a vision for who they want to become we really focus on this because here’s the thing, this powerful force within you. This powerful force that is driving you forward, is this it’s that as a human being, you must act consistently with how you define yourself.

And when I say how you define yourself, I’m saying how you define yourself now and how you define who you are becoming in the future. Most people do not spend any time on this at all, most coaches don’t spend any time on this at all. They just said, ‘Oh, you want to run faster, here’s what you need to do.’ And they’re not looking at that internal driving force that’s really powering, whether you’re going to accomplish these goals or not.

So we spend a lot of time working on that vision that we have for ourselves. And everything we do, is focused on getting you closer and closer to that version of yourself. Because when you have a very clear picture of who you want to become, you know, like I said earlier, like, knowing what to do becomes much easier, it’s much easier to stick with it, it’s much easier to see if you’re making progress towards that goal, because you have it all well defined, right?

Most people just never do this work of defining who they are, who they want to become. So most people are operating from what they’ve done in the past. Most people are focused on how things have gone for them in the past, whether they’ve been able to do something or not. And they kind of focus all of this on whether they are able to do this today.

For example, one thing I talk to people about all the time is like, ‘Hey, when you’ve tried in the past to, you know, lose weight, let’s say, what’s not worked for you?’ And they’ll say, ‘Oh, this and this and that. And that’s why it never works for me. And that’s why I can’t do this today. And that’s why I’m stuck here today is because, you know, I’ve tried this in the past, I’ve tried all these different diets, I’ve never been able to stick with anything. I always gained the weight back. Nothing is ever worked for me.’

And they’re stuck in this loop of repeating that exact past, today. Can you relate to this? I think we all can to some degree, where we’ve said, ‘Well, I’ve never been able to make this work in the past. What’s different about today? How can I possibly do anything differently? If it’s never worked for me in the past, I’ve never been able to run faster than this speed for a half marathon, how can I possibly run faster than that? I’ve tried, it’s never worked.’

And all of that stuff in your past, all the experiences, all the failures, all the even all the good stuff like this is just where you were, this is what got you to where you are today. But if you keep focused on your past, that’s where you’re going to stay. If you can’t think feel or behave differently than the way you’ve done things in the past, this is your only frame of reference, then you are going to keep repeating all those same things, those same behaviors, the same thought and feeling patterns, and you’re just going to stay stuck doing the same things over and over again. You’re never going to grow, you’re never going to become anything more than what you’ve already done.

Now, I talked about this in-depth in Episode 91, called Breaking the Habit of Being You. So this is a similar concept here. Okay. So definitely go check out that episode. It really goes into this concept with a lot more detail. But if you can’t think past what you’ve already accomplished, that’s all you’re ever going to accomplish. That’s all you’re ever going to be.

If you can’t think bigger than your past, you’re never going to be bigger than your past. And it’s kind of depressing when you think about it, right? It’s like, oh my god, I better start thinking about my future. Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying here. You’ve got to start thinking about who you want to become. This is such a huge, powerful, amazing, life-changing, transformational question that you have to answer for yourself.

So the better way to do this is to approach your life from the perspective of the future you. You’ve got to ask yourself who you want to become. You have to spend time on this. You have to spend time answering this question in great detail for yourself.

What do you really want for yourself? Do you want to be where you are a year from now? Because that’s an option for you? Or do you want to be stronger, leaner? More fit, healthier? Do you want running to be easier? Or do you want to just be where you are today? The choice is yours. It really is. The first step is defining who you want to be in the future. Who are you becoming? So spend some time on this question. Answer this question in great detail.

Okay. What does that future version of you look like? What have you accomplished? How do you feel about yourself? What are those changes that you want to make to your health and fitness? You know, how do you look in those clothes? How do you look in that bikini, you get to decide, you get to decide, isn’t that awesome? I think that’s amazing. How empowering is that?

So make a decision, have a crystal clear vision of who you are becoming so that you know where you’re going. And every day you make decisions that move you closer and closer to that version of yourself. And I talk about this concept called remembering your future. We remember our past, we’re good at that we can remember all the stuff we’ve done. And all the times we screwed up and all the failures we’ve ever, you know, done in the past. Like, we’re good at remembering our past.

I want you to start remembering your future, you’ve got to know where you’re going. You’ve got to know who you’re becoming. So that you can start doing things today that are in alignment with that future version of yourself. So instead of operating from your past, remembering everything from your past, and repeating all that over and over and over again, start remembering your future, start remembering that future version of yourself that awesome, healthy, badass version of yourself. Start remembering that, spend some time thinking about it.

That’s what it really means to remember, to spend time thinking about it. What does it feel like to be that future version of yourself? And remember that who you are becoming is just, it’s completely up to you, you get to decide, and you get to work towards that every single day. And then it just becomes a series of decisions that you’re making each day.

Am I moving closer to that vision of myself? That future? That person I’m becoming? Or am I moving further away? is usually a pretty cut and dry picture of that, right? It’s usually very clear is this decision I’m making? If I shove these donuts in my mouth right now, is that moving me closer to my goal? Or is it kind of further away? It’s pretty obvious, right?

It’s the difference between just keep repeating what you’ve done in the past and only getting where you’ve gotten to and staying stuck where you are, versus creating this new version of yourself, reinventing yourself transforming yourself based on who you want to become in the future.

Okay. Like I said, my clients and I, we spend a lot of time on this, we talk about it all the time, it’s so important to be future-focused, we don’t really dwell on the past. In fact, the past is just done, it’s over with you can’t change it. So just put it behind you.

It doesn’t matter what you’ve not been able to do in the past, it doesn’t matter that you’ve tried every diet and they’ve never worked for you. We’re going to try something different. You know, and we’re going to get you there. There’s no reason why we can’t make something work going forward. No reason. Unless you’re focused on what you’ve not been able to do in the past.

So everything we do, we want to focus on becoming that amazing, badass version of ourselves, right? Spend time on this, spend time thinking about this. Spend time, like thinking about who it is you want to become but really how that how you want to feel? How do you want to feel in the future? What does that future version of you feel like?

This is one of the most important questions you can ask yourself some of the most important work you can do for yourself. It really sets the foundation for everything that you do. If you don’t have this question figured out if you don’t have a clear picture of who you want to become – you’re just kind of like going through the motions. You’re sort of aimless, right, a rudderless ship, we don’t want to be a rudderless ship, we want to want to have that rudder going, keeping us moving in the right direction, okay?

You’ve got to get you got to practice this. But when you practice it and you keep living into that future version of yourself, you get good at it, just like anything else that you practice you the more you practice it, the more it becomes the reality that you want for yourself. But you’ve got to start thinking about it and start feeling it and really living into who you’re becoming.

And then it just becomes inevitable. Getting there is just like, ‘Oh, of course, I’m going to get there because it’s just this is who I am and this is what I do.’ Remember, you always get what you focus on. You always get more and more of what you focus on. So focus on who it is that you really want to become. Cool. You got this, my friends.

And listen if you ever want a little help out with this just go over to runningleanpodcast.com/apply and let’s talk about hitting that easy button on all this for you. Alright 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.

106. A Powerful Way to Start Your Day

January 7, 2022 By Patrick McGilvray

It’s a new year and there’s all this talk of goals and dreams and what you want to accomplish in the year ahead. But without the right mindset, it’s extremely difficult to create the kind of big, …

Continue Reading about 106. A Powerful Way to Start Your Day →

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 106 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today, I’ve got a powerful way to start your day. I love how that rhymes. So it’s a new year. And there’s all this talk of goals and dreams and what it is you want to accomplish in the year ahead. But without the right mindset, it’s extremely difficult to create the kind of big permanent changes that you want for yourself.

Whether you want to lose weight, become a faster runner gets stronger, or just become the healthiest you yet I want to help you to develop the right mindset, the mindset that is absolutely required to get you there. So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to share a very simple mindset exercise that when done consistently, when done every day can be an incredibly powerful way to start your day and help you achieve all your goals.

But first, if you like this podcast, you got to come check out the Facebook community. This is the Running Lean Community on Facebook. We do some weekly coaching and training in there, we get tons of encouragement and support from runners that are just like you, we have fun. We just finished up our running through the holidays challenge and everybody had an amazing experience with that. Lots and lots and lots of great feedback from that. So definitely come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook.

And then listen, the most powerful way to hit all of your health and fitness goals is to really have someone there guiding you every step of the way, helping you to overcome your struggles, showing you things about yourself that you just don’t see holding you accountable, and keeping you on the right track. This is what I do as your coach. And I’d love to work with you here in the new year and help you absolutely crush all of your health and fitness goals in 2022. I want to encourage you to take action.

If this is something you’ve been thinking about for a while, I want you to stop thinking about it and just do it. Take action on yourself, invest in yourself in 2022 and make this the year that you finally become that lean, strong, badass runner that you’ve always wanted to be.

You can apply for coaching over at runningleanpodcast.com/apply and I’d love to see over there. And then in the Running Lean coaching group this month, this is another way to get some coaching – in my group program we’re doing a weight loss is our focus for January. So we’re doing the eight pounds down challenge. And so we’re into week number one people are having some great experiences. It’s not too late to join, we’re going to show you exactly how to become a fat-adapted runner and lose weight and hopefully get to eight pounds down by the end of the month. That’s the goal. That’s kind of what we’re challenging and pushing each other to do this month over there.

Okay, this is a good time to get started with this thing because we’re, you know, not quite in a marathon training season yet we’re still kind of in the offseason we’re just getting started with that. So it’s a good time to get fat-adapted and be able to crush your spring marathons. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join if you want to learn more.

Alright, so let’s get into this topic today. This is something that one of my coaches shared with me and I wanted to pass it along to you guys because I thought it was so powerful. I’ve been getting a lot of good results by practicing this little daily mindset exercise and I want to share it with you guys.

So first of all, why do we need to work on our mindset? Like why is this something we actually have to do? Aren’t you just supposed to have the right mindset? And listen, no, no. Mindset is not something you have or don’t have. It’s something you learn it’s a skill. If it’s a skill, that means you got to practice it right. That means you can get better at it.

And if you don’t practice it you’ll probably not have a good mindset and so in order to just like building muscle at the gym, right if you want to get stronger muscles you got to go lift heavy things at the gym right? Getting a stronger mindset requires a similar approach. You have to work on it.

You have to, you know, work on your thoughts, your feelings and things that you believe about yourself and believe about the world, you have to challenge yourself, you have to push yourself mentally, emotionally, just the same way that you do have to push yourself physically if you want to, you know, become a faster runner or build bigger muscles, right? So we have to work on our mindset, okay.

One of the most powerful ways of working on your mindset, in my opinion, is journaling. And some people think that journaling is just stupid, and it serves no purpose, and it’s pointless, and they feel stupid doing it. And that’s okay if you think it’s dumb. You don’t have to do it. Okay.

But I just have to tell you, the people that do this on a regular basis, are achieving at a higher level. They’re building mental toughness, they have a much more sort o well thought out and more powerful mindset. They got a mindset game going on. Okay.

So I just want to encourage you, if you’re one of those people that thinks journaling is pointless, I want to encourage you to kind of reconsider that and give it a go. And listen, journaling doesn’t have to be, you know, like, oh, dear diary, you know, here’s what Billy said to me today. No, it can be, it can be very specific and done in a very specific way, right?

I’ve talked about this before, we can do things like thought downloads, where you just get everything that’s going on in your head, all the thoughts in your head, and just get them out on the page. That right there can be a powerful way to start your day, that can be a powerful way to just get the junk out of your head and see it on the page and see what you’re actually thinking about.

Like what are the big thoughts that are just kind of swirling around in your head, we can become very overwhelmed with our thoughts. You know, I think we think something like 60,000 thoughts a day, 60,000 thoughts a day. And what if you just put some of those down on paper, and you could actually see what’s going on up there.

It’s kind of like a little snapshot of what’s going on in your brain. I love the thought download. And I kind of do this every single day. That’s kind of the way I start my day. There are other types of journaling you can do, which is you know, doing like a training log, you could do a training log for running, or resistance training, I highly recommend this, you know, to keep track of your runs, how you felt, timing, pacing, how you felt before and after, the weather. You can just like record all kinds of things, heart rate data, that kind of stuff.

And in resistance training, obviously, you need to log your resistance training, see how you’re feeling during those workouts, and keep track of your weights and reps. So you can see that you’re making progress, okay. But journaling can also be just like writing down daily goals and objectives. Okay?

So it can be like a food journal where you’re writing down things you’re eating just to keep track and create some awareness around that. It could be an exercise journal, where you’re creating awareness and helping you to make good progress then in that way, but it can just be whatever you want. Okay. Now, I’m not talking about journaling in general today, but I just wanted to mention that journaling can be a very, very powerful mindset tool. Okay.

So, right, just writing in general, is one of the best ways to build a stronger mindset. Okay. Some of the benefits of journaling, and doing some writing every day. It helps you to review your past and be honest. So it helps you to kind of, you know, you can recap the past day or the past week, and you can say, like, here’s what actually happened.

Journaling actually helps to reduce stress and anxiety, it’s been shown that people that do journaling, have less stress and anxiety, which is awesome. It creates a massive amount of self-awareness because like I said, you’re starting to create, you’re creating self-awareness by looking at what you’re thinking about, right? You’re sort of like, it’s kind of meta, you’re kind of thinking about what you’re thinking about. But it’s important to write it down, not just like, think about it in your head because when you write it down, you start to see things in a much different way. And it starts to really bring things into your consciousness that you may not be aware of.

Journaling can help you to make progress towards your goals. It can help you identify weak areas so that you can improve them. Journaling helps to boost motivation, helps you to stay motivated, helps you to stay on track, with whatever goals that you have. It’s been shown to help improve focus and concentration. And it just helps you to kind of see the bigger picture and get some perspective on what’s going on. Okay. There are no real rules around journaling. And you can do it any way that you want, but I just want to encourage you to get into some sort of daily journaling, practice okay.

Now I have a very specific little exercise a journaling exercise that you can begin to do to kind of add to your daily journaling practice if you’re already doing it, or if you’re not doing any journaling at all, you can start with this because it’s super, super simple and very powerful. So there aren’t really any rules about what to do or how to journal, okay? But having a purpose, and having an intention for your writing for what it is that you’re actually putting down on the page can really make this daily act of writing much more impactful.

Okay, we’re talking about creating a mindset and working on your mindset and improving your mindset. And it requires daily practice, just like lifting weights, if you want to get stronger lifting weights is your daily practice. Journaling can be your daily practice to work on your mindset, okay.

And so what I’m going to share with you today is one very simple writing exercise that you can do every single day, it’s going to give you one thing to focus on every day. One simple mindset exercise that can help you to create powerful results in every area of your life. Okay. And this little exercise is called the word of the day.

So it basically works like this is so simple it’s not even funny. Okay, you just pick a word each day, you write it down. And then you write about that word, you write about what you might do today, to embody that word. And that’s it. It’s super simple. I love simple things. It’s very powerful.

Two words can be life-changing, right? How many big events in your life could be summed up with just one word? Words like divorce, cancer, or injury or illness or failure or disappointment? All of these words describe powerful times of pain and suffering and despair in your life. Right?

And, and when you hear one of these words, or you say one of these words out loud, it sort of brings all those emotions from that time from that event, from the past that brings it all right back into the present, right?

What about positive words, positive words that describe good times, where it’s like marriage, birth and promotion, and PR, and it’s not a word, but close enough vacation, joy, accomplishment; these positive words can bring those good memories and those good times right back into your consciousness right back into the forefront of your mind. And they can help you to kind of get through some of the tough times in the present. Okay?

So words are very, very powerful, right? And so what we want to do is we want to sort of hack into this little process of using words in a powerful, positive way. So you’re going to pick a word each day, you’re just gonna write about it.

So how do you pick the right word? How do you know you’re picking the right word, there’s no right or wrong way to do this, okay? And if you’re doing this every day, let’s say you, you decide you’re going to do this for a month, or you can do it for a year or a week, whatever you want to do is fine.

But you’re going to have a whole bunch, there are so many words out there, there’s a lot of words out there like you’re not gonna really need to worry about not finding a word, okay? But I just want you to focus on whatever sort of comes to mind or whatever you might need in the moment. So for me, when I’m sitting there, and I’m thinking about like, what word should I make my word of the day here?

I might be like, so I listen to a lot of books and podcasts, and I read a lot. And sometimes I see a word or hear a word over and over again. Or maybe when I’m talking with my clients, I’ll hear a word and I’ll hear the same word like three or four times in a row or three or four times in just a couple of days. And that’s like a little alarm for me.

It’s like a little sign that I need to pay attention to that word, okay? So, there’s no real right or wrong way to pick a word and there’s no right or wrong words here. Okay? We do want to pick words that inspire action, like sit.

So here’s a couple of guidelines for you pick a word that inspires action, because you’re going to be using your word, to inspire some sort of action, some sort of change in your behavior, something that you’re going to do differently. Or something that you’re going to do today.

So even a word like rest can inspire action if resting is what you need today, maybe you need to rest physically, mentally, emotionally, that’s a great word. And it could be just like, I’m just going to rest, you know, I’m going to spend some time not doing anything, that would be a great word of the day for you if that’s what you need in the moment. Okay?

The other thing is you don’t have to pick a different word each day, you can reuse words. You know, I’ve got some examples that I’m going to share with you guys where I’ve, you know, basically, I’ve been doing this for a few weeks now. And I just wanted to share with you some of the words that I chose.

So you can like reuse words, you don’t have to use the same one every single day. But just pick something that you want to focus on for that day. Okay, so let me give you my examples. And this might help to clarify all of this for you. This is a really fun and really simple exercise, and I think you’re gonna get a lot out of it, I just want you to try it, I want to encourage you to give it a go.

So here are some words that I wrote down. And I’ll give you a little bit of a little, you know, I’ll explain each one a little bit and just tell you kind of like what I did each day, or how I wanted to embody that word each day.

So the first word was strength. So this for me meant that, okay, so I, you know, started this after my shoulder surgery. And so strength for me was like, showing strength in the face of pain, showing strength in the face of like being tired, feeling weak, to do what I needed to do to do my physical therapy exercises, which hurt to build a little bit of strength every single day. So that was kind of like a word that I needed in that moment. And I embodied that word in that day. So I did things that day, that embodied the word strength, and to build a little bit of strength, that data was really helpful for me.

Another word I chose was action. Like just getting into action and getting things done. I wrote this down, because I had a lot to do over the holidays, I had a lot of work to do. And I was feeling like, Man, I need to get all this stuff done. How am I going to get all this done? And it was just like, the word that popped into my mind was action. And so I just got into action, you know. And it’s one of those things where, for me, I am all about, like, you got to take action, even when you don’t feel like it. And maybe I just wasn’t feeling it at the time. So writing this word down really got that ingrained in my brain, I was just like, I need to just take action, get all this stuff done. And I did, which was awesome.

Another word I picked was vulnerable. So for me, asking for help putting myself out there, you know, telling people how I’m feeling, even though I may not be feeling very supportive makes me feel very vulnerable. You know, I’ve had some bad moments over the last month or so I’ve had some tough days, you know, and sometimes it’s hard for me to, like, share that with people and say that I’m having a hard time, or to ask for help, like, I need help doing things sometimes. But I’ve just been sort of embracing that and being able to ask for help and being vulnerable. And it’s very powerful to do that. Right.

Another word I picked was heal, like just to, you know, to give my body the rest that it needs to heal properly. To slow down. I think I wrote this down, because, you know, I started to get into some action. And I started to like, you know, do more exercising and taking more walks and things like that I can’t do a whole lot still.

But I think I may have overdone a little bit. And I was, you know, creating some stress in my body, you know, and the stress that I was creating was kind of making things worse for me, you know, I needed to slow down I need to rest a take care of myself. And I needed to give myself a chance to heal this long process of this recovery from this rotator cuff surgery, right? So it’s going to take a while. And I have to give myself the time and the space to heal. So I spent the whole weekend just like resting last weekend, which was amazing.

Another word I picked was clarity. So for me, this is one of those words that I heard over and over again. I just kept hearing it. I heard it on a podcast. I heard it from clients. And I was like, ‘Well, I think I need to write this word down. So what does this mean for me?’ I was like, ‘What is clarity?’ What do I need clarity around and really for me, it was like, I needed clarity around this vision.

I need a clear and focused vision of who it is I want to become. It’s being able to see and feel very clearly my future self. It’s like having this sharp and focused image of who I’m becoming. That’s what that meant for me. You know, so I spent some time getting clear on my goals getting clear on who I want to become in 2022.

Another word I picked was discipline. So for me, discipline is like suiting up and showing up to do what needs to be done. Even though I don’t feel like it, right? Motivation is great. But discipline will beat motivation every single time. You know, motivation is a feeling. So you got to have that feeling in order to like, take action. But discipline is doing it despite feeling motivated, right.

So for me, discipline was like, I need to do some things that are going to move me towards that future version of myself, right? It means I need to do what needs to be done here, not what I feel like doing. And I think at the time, I didn’t want to go outside. It’s like, I don’t want to go outside and take my walks, it was cold. I wrote this a few days ago, it was like 21 degrees outside. And I just didn’t feel like it.

But I was like, dude, discipline is what you need here. So I put on my coat, put on my hat, and just went outside and took my walk. And I was still in pain. And it was still, you know, cold and whatever. But I enjoyed it. And I showed myself that I can do it and was practicing discipline which got me out the door. Okay.

And then the last word like I’ve been doing this every day. And I’m just picked a few words for you guys here. But the last word I’m going to share with you today is impact. And this is this was my word for the day. And it’s also my word for this year like impact is the word that I’m choosing to embody for 2022.

And I have had to think about this recently, like, what is the impact that I want to create in the world? You know, what am I doing today to create that impact? Am I doing something today that’s helping to create that impact? Right? So how can I make a bigger and more powerful impact in this world, that’s my goal.

You know, my mission is to be an example of what’s possible and to inspire those around me to do the same. And that’s what I mean by impact. I’m being an example of what’s possible, and I’m inspiring you to be an example of what’s possible, and then you’re gonna inspire others.

And it’s a ripple effect. It’s a ripple effect of positivity. It’s a ripple effect of health. And feeling good. That’s the impact that I want to make. And so it’s very easy for me to see like, what am I doing today, to make that kind of an impact? Okay.

So I want you to take action on so I want you to like, get into action with this little simple mindset exercise. Try it for a week, try for a month tried for the year. My goal is to do this every day for this year, right every day. So I do some writing every day. And I’m just adding this into my journaling practice every single day. doesn’t take any extra time.

But for me, it’s just like, I look forward to this every day and like, ‘Ooh, what, what word can I sort of embody today? What area of my life do I need to improve today? What do I need to focus on today?’ And all I feel like I’m just starting each day with more purpose and more direction, and more intention and more focus.

And I’m going to tell you this right now, that if you do this every single day, you know, over time, it is going to dramatically alter the direction of your life. Because you’re treating each day as an opportunity to move a little closer to your goals. You’re treating each day as an opportunity for you to become that future version of yourself. And when you practice this every single day, and when every day you’re moving just a little bit closer to who you want to become. Little by little, you will eventually get there. Try this I think you’ll love it. All right, you guys love you all keep on Running Lean. 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.

101. What to Do When Life Throws You Curveballs

December 3, 2021 By Patrick McGilvray

Sometimes things just don't go your way. You might have to deal with a running-related injury, loss of job, divorce, another COVID lockdown, or some other unexpected setback in your life. What …

Continue Reading about 101. What to Do When Life Throws You Curveballs →

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 101, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, what to do when life throws you curveballs. Sometimes things just don’t go your way, you might have to deal with a running-related injury, loss of a job divorce, another COVID lockdown, or some other unexpected setback in your life.

What you do in these situations, and how you respond to them, can have a profound impact on your life, for the good or for the bat. Now, recently, I’ve been thrown a big curveball, and I’m going to talk more about that in this episode.

But instead of sitting around feeling sorry for myself, I’ve decided that I’m going to do everything that I can to get through this tough period, feeling good about myself and being as positive and productive as possible.

So this episode of the podcast is all about what to do when life throws you curveballs because you will always have a choice in how you respond to every single one of these events in your life, even when it feels like you don’t.

But first, if you like this podcast, you have to come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. And all this month, all through the holidays between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, we’re doing the running through the holidays challenge.

This is where we are challenging ourselves to run outside at least a mile every single day between Thanksgiving Day and New Year’s Day, I think it’s a total of 38 total days of running. So 38 days in a row.

And the reason we’re doing this is because this is a tough time of the year for a lot of people. It’s a time where a lot of people feel like they don’t want to go outside because it’s cold and it’s dark. And the weather is always kind of iffy.

But doing this challenge forces us to get outside every day, which is super good for you. It helps us to get through this challenging time of the year. Feeling good about ourselves, we get a sense of accomplishment. We get all the good endorphins and adrenaline going because we’re out there exercising every day. And we are all having a lot of fun doing this.

So if you’re interested in joining the challenge, it’s not too late. Just come and join us anytime you want. Just search for Running Lean community on Facebook and join us.

And then people always ask how they can work with me. And there are two ways you can do that. There’s the Running Lean coaching group. And then there’s one on one coaching and the Running Lean coaching group.

So the month of December, we’re talking all about building mental toughness. Last month, we focused on ending self-sabotage. And so the next step is once you understand how to avoid and end self-sabotage for good, the next step is to build the Mental Toughness that’s required to get you through hard times; to get you through the tough runs to get you through challenging situations like the holidays, maybe.

So come and join us in the Running Lean coaching group for December, learn how to train your mind to tough it out when the going gets tough because it will always get tough, I promise you. And whether you want to lose weight, run a marathon, run an ultra marathon, or just develop the habits to be able to make a plan and stick with it.

All of this stuff, it all requires mental toughness. You know, there’s going to be times when you don’t feel like working out, you don’t feel like sticking to your diet, or you just want to quit because it’s hard. But when you have mental toughness, you’ll get through all of it. If you’re interested, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join and you can join the group any time.

And then the one-on-one coaching. If you’re ever looking for a little extra help, and you want to basically guarantee your success, I can offer you the expert guidance, support, encouragement, experience accountability that you need to make this work for you no matter what it is, no matter what your goals no matter what your lifestyle.

The best way to reach your goals is to have a coach guiding you and holding you accountable. Really, it’s just the most powerful thing that you can do for yourself. It’s the most powerfully powerful thing I’ve done for myself. I have several coaches that I work with. And it has made all the difference in my life. So if you’re interested in one on one coaching, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply, and we’ll see if coaching is a good fit for you.

Okay, so I wanted to come on here and talk about this subject today because I’ve had a pretty big curveball thrown my way. And I’ll talk more about that in a second.

But listen, we all get curveballs thrown at us, okay, life is never going to go as you plan it like things just don’t go as planned 100% of the time, right. But when they don’t go as planned, what do you do?

You know, sometimes we really have to step up our game, in order to develop the right mindset to be able to deal with whatever tough things are going on in our lives, whatever curveballs are thrown our way.

You know, so just understand that you know, I may be talking about something that’s going on with me here today. But I want you to be thinking about the kinds of curveballs that you have faced recently or maybe facing in the near future.

And the nature of curveballs is that we don’t know what they are, we don’t know that these things are going to happen. And we don’t know that we have to plan and sort of like build the mental toughness in order to get through these kinds of times, right.

So this is very much on my mind right now, because I’ve had a big curveball thrown my way, I have developed some tears in my rotator cuff. And so I’m having rotator cuff surgery in just a couple of days.

So just for those of you who are interested in knowing the mechanics here, so I have a torn supraspinous muscle in a torn subscapularis muscle. And I have biceps tendinitis. So I have a biceps tendon that should be long and skinny, like a spaghetti noodle. But instead, it’s all like frayed in the middle. And it’s all messed up. And it’s supposed to be in this groove. And it’s not in the groove, or it’s supposed to be, and I have not been able to lift weights for a while now.

And this has been something that’s been bugging me for a long, long time. So kind of the backstory here is that I did some sort of trauma to my shoulder. And I’m pretty sure this happened a few years back running on some trails falling down, catching myself, and jamming my shoulder.

And I probably did some sort of damage at that point. Because since then, for several years now my shoulder has not been right. And it’s been okay like I’ve been able to run, it’s been okay, I’ve been able to lift weights to a certain degree.

But about 14 months ago, 15 months ago, I started getting into heavier weights and started lifting more. And you know, it’s a gradual progression. But at some point during weightlifting, I noticed things starting to like really hurt and my shoulder. And so I’ve just been pushing through the pain, you know. I’ve just been sort of, like, that’s fine.

I went and saw a physical therapist, and they made an assessment. And they thought that you know, it would probably just heal up on its own because shoulder tears can heal up on their own, you know, and it didn’t heal up on its own.

And, and I’ve just been pushing through the pain, and I’ve been, you know, doing a lot of weightlifting. And it’s been okay, you know, there are things I can’t do, some overhead stuff, and there’s their stuff that’s more painful than others. But I’ve been able to pretty much do what I want to do.

I’ve run, you know, a couple of marathons this year, and it’s it’s been okay. But in the past few months, it’s gotten progressively worse. And so I started seeing another physical therapist, and we started doing all kinds of other stuff. And then we just decided at some point that whatever we were doing was not helping.

And my condition was actually getting worse. And so just to find out exactly what was going on, I had an MRI, and that MRI showed the torn rotator cuff muscles and the biceps tendon that’s all jacked up.

So, you know, the surgeon came in and he said, I got some bad news for you. You know, the only way you’re going to get better. The only way we’re going to fix this is surgery. And he’s a guy that’s like he’s not even told me he’s like, I don’t recommend surgery for most people, especially with tears like this, a lot of times we can fix you know, they’ll fix themselves they’ll get better on their own.

What you have is not going to get better on its own. What you have is going to get continually worse. And if you tear through this muscle it’s like hanging by a thread at this point and if you tear completely through it, the repairs gonna be much more difficult and it may not ever be the same. Like you may never be able to use your muscles properly again like they’re you they could atrophy so I was like, Oh my gosh, this is like terrible.

So I’m like, well, let’s do it, let’s, let’s have this surgery. So the surgery is scheduled for a couple of days from now. So my first reaction to all of this was, like, you know, this is just something that I have to deal with I, but I was a little bit pissed off about the whole thing, to be honest with you, okay?

And, and I had some choices about how I wanted to react, so I could be defeated, pissed off, I could be in denial, I could feel really resentful, and just beat myself up, you know, blame myself for not doing something sooner and on and on and on, right? I could do that.

Or I could do something else, right? I decided that I did not want to wallow in self-pity and be pissed off and defeated. That instead, I wanted to use this experience as a way of learning about myself. And being able to use this as a teaching experience so that I could share my experience with you, and put all these practical principles that I practice, and that I teach you guys, I’m going to put all this stuff into place.

I have all these awesome tools that I use in my coaching and all these principles that I teach, and all the mental and emotional tools that I have to build a deal with whatever. And so I’m bringing it all, I’m gonna bring everything I’ve got to this experience.

And because I don’t want to just like get through it, I don’t want to just muddle through it, I want to come out of this experience, I want to come out the other side of this experience, mentally, emotionally, and physically stronger than before.

And, for me, this is like such an important thing for me to do for myself, not just to, you know, prove to myself that I can get through this and feel good and get stronger. But I don’t want to sit around feeling sorry for myself and wallowing in misery. That is not how I want to spend the next few weeks or a few months or whatever it’s gonna take to recover from this thing.

So I’ve decided I’m going to, you know, take this opportunity to, you know, do this in a way that’s more badass. Okay, so for this first situation that I’m in, so I’ve got the surgery in a couple of days, right? And I had some thoughts about this.

And there were some things that were kind of swirling around in my brain. And I was having some concerns and some stress and some anxiety about all this. And I started to think about, okay, what are the thoughts that are causing all these feelings? Right? Our thoughts always cause our feelings, right.

So I decided to write down everything that I was thinking just the good, the bad, the crazy, everything, some of this stuff, and I’m going to share this with you guys here, I’m going to share some of my thoughts with you guys here. And then share, like what I’m doing with these thoughts and how I’m changing them.

But I started writing this stuff down, and I didn’t censor it. I just like wrote down everything I was thinking and feeling. And some of this is ridiculous, but whatever. That’s just the way our brains work. You know, sometimes we think ridiculous thoughts, you know.

But for me, I wanted to get control of how I was going into this whole thing, right? Even before I have my surgery, I wanted to make sure that I have the right mindset going into it. Okay.

So I did what’s called a thought download this is where we just write down everything that’s in our brains, get it on a piece of paper so that we can see it. And then we can look at these thoughts, and maybe challenge some of them because you don’t have to believe everything you think, right? I don’t have to believe everything. I think just because I’m thinking of thought does not mean that it’s true.

So I wrote down everything. And then I challenged all these thoughts. And I want to share this with you guys because I think it’ll be very helpful for you. And you can do this exact same thing for some situation that might be going on in your life, you might have your own curveball that’s been thrown your way. You know, there’s always something right.

There’s always something going on that in our lives that are not going as planned. It may be you know, work transitions, it may be relationship stuff, it may be stuff with our kids, or with school, or whatever. And and we get to choose how we want to approach these things. We don’t have to just react to them the way that everybody else does.

Because the way that everybody else reacts to these things typically is pretty crappy, and they just feel terrible. And they get stressed out and they you know, throw up their arms and just say like, everything sucks and like, I don’t want to do that. That’s not who I am.

So I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’m going to do some work. And so when I say do some work, I mean I’m going to sit down and really get in touch with what I’m thinking and feeling about this stuff. Okay.

So the first thing I’m going to share with you guys is just a list of a bunch of thoughts that I’ve had about this. Thoughts that are kind of causing me some emotional distress. Okay, so I’m going to give you my kind of thought download here and just share some of the stuff with you. And then I’ll talk about what we do from there.

So here are some of the thoughts that I wrote down about this upcoming surgery and in the recovery, and this whole situation. So the first one was that this isn’t gonna work, like the surgeries just not gonna work, it’s not gonna, it’s not going to heal me, I’m not going to get better.

Another thought is I’m going to lose my fitness, you know, I’ve worked really hard to get fit, and I’m going to lose fitness.

The next one is I won’t be able to handle the pain, the pain is gonna be too much. My business will suffer, I won’t be able to do simple things like, you know, tie my shoes or put on a shirt or fold laundry, you know, I’m going to get all soft and mushy physically get all doughy, I don’t want to be doughy.

Again, I used to be doughy and I don’t want to be doing that again. I’ll fall behind on my work, I’ll be in a bad mood all the time since I won’t be able to run and workout like I’m used to, it’s going to take a really long time to recover, I’m going to get fat.

Again, my whole routine in my whole schedule is going to be thrown off. I won’t ever be as fit as I was before surgery, people are gonna think I’m lazy, no one’s gonna want to help me, I’m going to be stuck inside my apartment, I won’t get to go outside, I’d love being outside every day, and I won’t be able to go outside.

I won’t be able to, you know, complete the running through the holidays challenge, which is important to me. I love doing this every year and I won’t be able to do that. I’m going to lose my mind just sitting around doing nothing all day. There are a lot of unknowns, like how long is the recovery going to take? When can I start my physical therapy? When can I start running again? When can I start lifting weights? Again? Like I don’t know, nobody can tell me any of these things right now.

So in some of these things I may not know the answer to for a long time. So these are a lot of the thoughts that I’m having about this. And I don’t know if you guys can probably relate to some of these things like some of this stuff is kind of crazy. Some of it is legit, you know?

So then I asked myself, like, how do I feel, thinking these thoughts? When I just read all those thoughts to you, I started to feel worried and anxious and full of fear and really stressed out. That’s how these thoughts make me feel they make me feel very anxious and very stressed out. Is this how I want to go through all this? Do I want to be worried and fearful and stressed out? No, I don’t.

And here’s the thing, though. We think that we are worried and anxious and full of fear and stressed out because of the situation. Because I have to have surgery and I’m going to be you know, it’s going to take me a while to recover. I’m automatically going to be worried and anxious and full of fear and stressed out. That is not true.

The truth is, it’s all those thoughts that I just rattled off to you – those are the things that are making me feel that way. It’s not the shoulder surgery, it’s making me feel that way it is all this stuff that I just said. So I’m having all these thoughts that are making me feel stressed out.

So what do we do when we feel stressed out? What would I do? Typically, when I’m feeling this way, our thoughts cause us to feel emotions. And the emotions I just went through were anxious fear, fearful, worried, stressed out. When you know, when you feel a certain way you take action, so your emotions drive your actions.

So what actions would I be taking or not taking based on how I feel? Well, I might start eating my feelings, I might start overeating and trying to eat to feel better. I might just sit around all day not doing anything just feeling sorry for myself wallowing in my own misery. Just even saying that out loud, feels terrible.

I might just be like worrying and being stressed out all day long. I just may just walk around being stressed and not do work and just like not feel productive and not want to do anything, not want to move just to sit around and stagnate. Like this is this is how I’m thinking I might show up these are some of the behaviors that I might partake in or avoid because of the way I’m feeling.

So this is just one scenario. This is like an option like I can choose to think all these thoughts I can choose to feel this way and I can choose to do these things. I can choose to feel anxious and stressed out and eat my feelings and be stressed and be and not feel like doing anything and just sit around and stagnate. That’s an option. Like I could do that if I wanted to. But that’s not what I’m going to do.

Okay, so what I’ve done is for each of these thoughts, I’ve reframed each one of these thoughts. And this is I think the part of this process that you can do this too, right? So I’m going to give you each of these thoughts that I had and give you an alternative thought that I’ve decided I want to think on purpose. And I wrote all these things down so that I would remember them and I could go through and read them.

Again and again, if I start to feel some of these things again, or if I start to think some of these thoughts again. So the first one is that the surgery is not going to work. Well, there’s no reason whatsoever for me to think that this is not going to work. Right?

Well, where’s this even coming from? Right? It’s very routine. There’s a very high success rate. The surgeon is awesome. He already told me this is gonna work. He’s super confident. So it’s gonna work. Like there’s no doubt about it. Okay, so that one, is gone, right. I’m feeling very confident. This is all gonna work. Okay.

My next thought is I’m going to lose fitness. Yes, this is true, like, I might lose some fitness, but I’m not going to become a couch potato. I’m not going to like lose all my fitness, I’ll get it back. And it’s only going to be for a few weeks, a few months, whatever it is, you know, I’m not going to be starting from scratch. I’m already very fit right now. I feel amazing right now. So the chances of me like, you know, becoming just super out of shape, it’s just not going to happen. Okay.

The next thought is I won’t be able to handle the pain, like, okay, first of all, I have all sorts of tools, I have meds. I have this Iceman, which is like a device that circulates cold, ice-cold water through a pad that you put around your shoulder. So it keeps your shoulder nice and cold to help with the pain and the inflammation and stuff like that post-surgery.

I have supplements, I even have narcotics that they’ve prescribed to me if necessary, I’m gonna try not to take those but you know that that’s an option if I need to, I have all these tools at my you know, that I can use if I need them.

And also, I have a pretty high tolerance for pain, you know, I’m able to handle quite a bit of pain without using any kind of medications and things like that. So, I’ve had many other surgeries that are way more invasive than what they’re going to be doing. This is arthroscopic surgery, so it’s not going to be as invasive as if they had to just like slice me all open or whatever.

So I’ve had these other surgeries that have been way more invasive, and I’ve been fine. So I’ll be able to handle the pain. Next thought my business will suffer, you know what my business will be fine, I’m only taking a couple of days off work, I can still work while I’m recovering. It’s not like I’m going to be an invalid here. I’m just going to have you know, my arm in a sling, and deal with pain and things like that. But I’ll be able to do most things, right.

Next thought, I won’t be able to do simple things like you know, fold laundry, tie my shoes, things like that. This is true, like these things may be tougher for me. But all kinds of people learn how to do these things, like get themselves dressed, tie their shoes, whatever with one hand. And it’s a skill that I can learn.

And it may be difficult and it may be tough to put a shirt on. Or something like that may be sort of painful to move my arm in that position or whatever. But I can make it work, it’s just something I can learn. Just have to learn how to do it, you know, do a lot of things left-handed.

So it’s my right shoulder that I’m getting repaired. So I’m right-handed. So I’m gonna have to deal with like the left-handed stuff, I’ve already been practicing a lot of stuff left hand like I can drive with my left hand perfectly.

So next thought is I’ll fall behind on my work, you know what, here’s a way of reframing that, like, I’m gonna have a lot of downtime. So I can actually get caught up on my work since I won’t be, you know, out running and working out as much as I was before.

Another thought I’m going to be in a bad mood since I can run a workout. Well, listen, my mood is not determined by how often I run or work out, my mood is determined by my thoughts. So whether I work out or not, that is just a circumstance. And I get to choose what I make it mean.

So I can make it mean that I’m going to be in a bad mood, or I can choose to make it mean that it doesn’t affect me at all. And then I can still be in a good mood. Listen, our mood is not determined by you know, when we you know how far we run or how often we work out. It does help. Those things do make us feel happier at times.

They kind of release some good hormones, we get the adrenaline going, we get the serotonin going, we get you know, these happy hormones going. But at the same time, we can still feel good about ourselves without that, right.

Alright, another thought is that it’s going to take a really long time to recover. And here’s the thing, I don’t know how long it’s gonna take. You know, they told me three to four months before I’m back to normal. So recovery time, just it is what it is. But I’m going to do everything that I can to make this go as fast as possible.

I’m going to hit all my PT appointments, I’m going to go as soon as that they’re allowed me to go, which is right away, they said, you know, they want to get me moving right away, I’m going to do all the at-home exercises.

I’ve got access to a gym, so I can go and do everything that I need to there. I’m going to be the ideal patient, you know. And I’m going to do everything that I’m told to do. And I’m going to get better as fast as possible. I want to blow their minds with how quickly I heal up and get better.

Okay, next thought I’ll get fat again. Well, now this one is one of those silly thoughts. This is just ridiculous, right? Me getting fat, again, would require me to dramatically change my diet. And that’s just not going to happen. Okay, so I’m going to continue to plan ahead and stick to my plan, I’m going to continue to weigh myself every day so that I can react, if the weight starts creeping up, I’ll probably need to cut back on how much I’m eating just because I’m not working out as much.

So when we work out and we run a lot and we’re you know, working out several times a week and things like that, you may need more calories, because you are, you’re burning off some of these calories and your body naturally will require more energy.

As we back off from some of these things and become a little more sedentary, we don’t require as much energy coming in. So we have to be mindful of that. So I’m going to be very mindful of that and just practice a little more restraint and just you know, not eat as much really.

You can use you know, you can get good at this and use your own intuition and your biological the way you feel like your, your body’s internal sort of hunger and satiety signals to determine how much you need to eat. And so I’m going to be practicing that. I won’t get that, again, I’m not worried about that.

Next thought my whole routine in my schedule is gonna be thrown off. Yeah, my typical schedule will be different, that’s okay. But here’s what I’m gonna do, I’m going to create as much structure as possible so that even though my routine and my schedule are different, it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

I can change things up and create sort of a new routine and new structure, and changing things up every now and then is actually a good thing, right? It changes your perspective and gets you focused on different things. So I’m not too worried about that one.

Let’s see the next thought, I won’t be I won’t ever be as fit as I was pre-surgery. So I have this goal to become the fittest, strongest, most badass version of myself yet. And this to me, this period of time is just a setback. And it’s not going to deter me from achieving that goal, it’s not going to make me give up, or quit. This time is very brief in the big picture. This is just a blip on the radar right.

Now, I’ve already decided that 2022 is going to be the year when I improved my fitness like I never had before. You know, I might be doing a little bit less running, I might be doing a lot more weight training. But this is actually getting me feeling good is getting me feeling very excited.

Next thought I’m going to be seen as lazy, okay, this is just one of those fleeting thoughts, I wrote it down because it came up in my head, nobody’s gonna think I’m lazy, I’m not lazy, I’ve never been lazy.

And if somebody thinks I’m being lazy, there is nothing I can do about the way that they think that’s just their thoughts, their opinions of me. And there’s nothing I can do about that. So that one is just sort of ridiculous.

The next thought was no one’s going to want to help me. And this thought has already been put to rest because I’ve already received an outpouring of support and offers of help from my friends and my family. People want to bring me food and get me groceries and just come and hang out with me and watch movies and stuff like that. So I’ve already got all the help and support that I need. And then some. So this is super fun. So I’m feeling good about that.

My next thought was that I’m going to be stuck inside my apartment, I won’t get to go outside. I love being outside. I really do especially this time of the year. And I’ve kind of thought about this and I don’t think it’s going to be that big of a deal.

I suspect I won’t get outside for a few days maybe. But as soon as I can, I’m going to make getting outside of priority like even if it’s just to go sit outside and get a little bit of sunshine on my face or whatever. If we have some sunshine in the Midwest here.

So it might be a few days but that’s about it. You know, as soon as I’m able to I’m gonna try to get outside maybe go for a short walk or something like that and try to get outside every day.

Next thought I won’t be able to complete the running through the holidays challenge and this is true, right? I probably won’t be able to do every day of the challenge, but I’m doing what I can up until the day of my surgery. I’ll even run on the morning of the surgery and the surgery is until like noon or so on Thursday so I’ll be able to run in the morning, but then who knows.

Maybe towards the end of the month, towards the end of December, I can get back into running a mile at a time. I don’t know, it depends on what they tell me I’m allowed to do. I might be, I might be a little too optimistic about that. But either way is fine.

My goal through this challenge then is to be here to help encourage you and support every one of you as you keep up with your running streak, and you are participating in this challenge. And listen, I’m looking at this, this whole thing is for surgery in this recovery as my challenge. This is my, you know, running through the holidays challenge, this is my equivalent of that. My challenge is to get myself through this period and slide into 2022 feeling amazing. Okay.

My next thought is I’m gonna lose my mind sitting around doing nothing all day. Well, first of all, I’m not going to be sitting around doing nothing all day, there are lots of things I’m going to be doing lots of things I’m focused on.

And just because I can’t run, just because I can’t lift weights doesn’t mean I’m going to lose my mind, right? And it doesn’t mean I’m going to sit around all day. So I don’t know that that was just one of those fleeting thoughts that sort of came through my head. So I wrote it down.

My last thought about all this was that there’s a lot of unknowns, right? How long is the recovery? When do I start PT? Where can I start running again? When can I start lifting again, when will I be pain-free? All these things are unknown. There are a lot of unknowns. And this is true, right?

But this is the nature of life itself. Nothing is really ever known for certain. And worrying about all of the unknowns does not make them known. It doesn’t make you feel any better. All it does is it get me super stressed out and anxious right here now. So worrying about the future just destroys this moment right here.

And listen, each thing that I just mentioned, each of these unknowns will eventually become known. And this will give me a chance to practice patience and practice acceptance and practice staying in the present moment, right here now. So these are all my reframes of all the thoughts that I had. Okay?

How do these thoughts make me feel? Well, this list of thoughts that I just went over with you, make me feel motivated, they make me feel encouraged, I feel hopeful. I’m even excited. I’m excited about who I’m going to be when I get through this surgery and the recovery process and all that, I’m excited.

And then what do I do when I feel this way I get into action, I’m going to use this downtime to work on projects. Like I’m writing a book, I’m working to work on them, just give me some time to work on my book, I’m going to move as much as I can.

I’m going to develop more time to pour into the Running Lean coaching group and devote more time to pouring into the Running Lean Facebook community. I’m going to get moving as soon as I can. And I’m going to use this time to better myself.

Instead of suffering and feeling sorry for myself. And wallowing in misery and stagnating. I’m going to focus on growing and becoming more. Even when life throws us curveballs, we can focus on growing and becoming more.

I saw this quote today and it was just so perfect. It’s this: “Fear, uncertainty, and discomfort are your compasses toward growth.”

So I want you to think about that – fear, uncertainty, and discomfort are your compasses towards growth. So for me, this is all about growth. The fear, the uncertainty, the discomfort that I’m about to face here is all about growth, it’s going to point me in the direction of growth.

So this work, I did this thought work that I did, where I listed all my thoughts and then reframe them. This is the first work that I’m doing to get into the right mindset about this whole surgery and recovery thing. So the surgeries a couple of days.

And this podcast has actually come out if you’re listening to this on Friday, then I had my surgery yesterday. So the hard part, hopefully for me will be over by the time you’re listening to this. But my goal is to continue to share my experiences with you and to share my thoughts and feelings about this journey of recovery with you because I think there’s a lot to learn here.

There’s a lot that we can all learn here. There are a lot of lessons in this stuff like when life throws us curveballs. There are things that we can learn and there are things that we can start to practice so that we can build the mental toughness that we need to get through them. Right.

And you may not be going through the same thing as me, but we all have curveballs. You know, it’s up to you to decide how you want to respond to them. Remember, you always have a choice and how to respond.

You get to choose how you want to think and feel about everything that happens in your life. And for me I’m choosing to respond with positivity with motivation and with excitement, right? It’s not easy. It’s tough.

It’s hard to look at these circumstances in our lives, some of these curveballs, and see the good that can come from that. It’s hard to do that most people don’t do this, but this is the work that we all have to do. Alright, you guys, you got this. I got this. Love you all keep on Running Lean. We’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.

99. Overcoming Your Limiting Beliefs

November 19, 2021 By Patrick McGilvray

One of the biggest problems I see with people who attempt to make big changes in their life is a total lack of belief in themselves. If you set out to accomplish a big goal like losing weight or …

Continue Reading about 99. Overcoming Your Limiting Beliefs →

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 99 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. I can’t believe we’re at 99 episodes already, how fun is that I got something special coming for episode 100. So be sure to check that one out.

Today I’m talking about overcoming your limiting beliefs. One of the biggest problems I see with people who go and attempt to make some big changes in their life is a total lack of belief in themselves, they just don’t think they can do it.

So if you’re one of these people, and you’re setting out to accomplish some big goal, like losing weight or running a faster marathon, whatever it is, it’s going to require you to believe that you can do it.

Instead, what most people do is they have all these beliefs about why they can’t do it. They say things like, Oh, it’s too hard for me, I always fail, I can never do something like that. And these are called limiting beliefs, their beliefs that absolutely limit your ability to reach your goals.

So in this episode, I’m going to take a deep dive into limiting beliefs, I’m going to explain what they are, how they’re keeping you stuck. And I’ll offer up some practical tips on overcoming your limiting beliefs.

But first, if you like this podcast, you have to come check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook. And just a heads up beginning on Thanksgiving Day, I believe that is the 25th of November, we are going to start the running through the holidays challenge we did this last couple of years. And it’s a lot of fun.

And basically what it is is a challenge for you to run every day between Thanksgiving Day and New Year’s Day. So I believe this year, it’s going to be a total of like 38 straight days of running. And I’ll talk all about the sort of rules around this. There’s not really rules.

But you know, there are some guidelines that I want you to follow. And I’m going to do a Facebook Live in the Facebook group this Sunday at 4pm. Eastern Time, and I’m going to give you a rundown on what this challenge is all about and invite you to join in the fun. Okay, so just search for Running Lean community on facebook and join us and definitely join us for the running through the holidays challenge. It’s a lot of fun.

And then here’s a message I received a while back from Kathy, I just wanted to share this with you guys. She said, “I found your podcast and Facebook group a little over a month ago and absolutely love them decided to watch your training video. And I think it is such a great breakdown of what we all need to hear and do to become fit and healthy in our body and mind. That is what I love so much about your podcast and your training is that you address the state of mind as well as what we need to do. Physically. Thank you again, I feel like you’re talking directly to me, every time I listen to you. Cheers, Kathy.”

Thank you, Kathy, you’re very, very sweet for for sharing that. And I love getting messages like this because it helps me to see that the message is resonating with you guys. And I love doing this, I’m having a lot of fun.

And then people ask how they can get more how they can work with me. And there’s two ways to do that. There’s the Running Lean coaching group. And this is a group that meets once a week, we do a group Zoom call where you can ask questions, you can you know get support, get help get guidance.

And then of course you get access to all my online training materials. I have the weight loss training course for runners, I have a new course I just created called Getting It All Done. It’s all about planning everything in your life so that you accomplish all of your goals. Achieving the impossible is another course that I have in there. That is all about setting big, huge impossible goals for yourself and then how to accomplish them. So there’s tons of learning material in the group.

And the really the aspect that everybody loves most about it is the the group calls where we get to do a little coaching and teaching but we get to support each other here, what’s working, what’s not working, what did we do to overcome issues and things like that.

So the Running Lean coaching group is a great way to get through and accomplish these big goals that you want for yourself. So if you’re interested in learning more, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join.

And then if you’re looking for a little more help, a little more one on one coaching. That’s what I do. I can offer you the expert guidance, support, encouragement, accountability, tough love to help you reach whatever health and fitness goals that you want for yourself.

Whether it’s losing a bunch of weight, or running a faster marathon, or just becoming the most badass version of yourself, I can help you get there. So just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply, you can apply for coaching you and I will jump on a Zoom call.
We’ll talk about the coaching program and just see if this is a good fit for you. Cool.

Alright, let’s get into this topic today overcoming your limiting beliefs. So first of all, what are beliefs, what are beliefs? In general beliefs are just thoughts that you keep thinking over and over again. So beliefs are just things that you have been thinking in your mind over and over again, for years or decades that this is just what a belief is, okay?

When we talk about the beliefs, I need you to understand something, because people fight me on this all the time. And I have to tell you, your beliefs are true for you. They’re not necessarily true for everyone.

So your beliefs come from your model of the world. Your model of the world is your past experiences, your upbringing, your family of origin, has an influence on your model of the world, the culture that you live in the geographic location that you live in, all of these things combine to create the way that you see the world. Your reality is created by the way you see the world.

I want you to understand this, I’m going to say this, again, because this is very, very important. Your reality is created by you. Your reality, the way you see things, is not necessarily the way other people see things, the way you see things is unique to you based on your past experiences, your upbringing, your geographical location, your model, your upbringing, your family of origin, all those things, your model of the world determines your reality, and your model of the world determines what you believe.

Alright, so now that we understand that, you have to understand that you are creating your own set of beliefs, okay, they’re not necessarily true for everyone. So I just want to make sure that we are both, we are both on the same page, you and me are both on the same page with this concept, okay.

So there are basically two types of beliefs. And the two that I’m going to talk about here today would be empowering beliefs. These are beliefs that help you, they’re what we would consider to be positive beliefs, they help you to become more they help you, you know, reach your goals.

They help to give you agency over your own life. And these could be things you believe about yourself about others about the world. These are beliefs that give you power.

And then we have limiting beliefs. limiting beliefs are things that you believe that hold you back, that prevent you from reaching your goals that prevent you from moving forward that prevents you from growing and learning. These are beliefs that keep you stuck and move you further away from your goals.

Okay, empowering beliefs. We want more of those limiting beliefs, we need to address these and this is what I’m talking about today, here. Okay. And then I found this quote that I super love from Henry Ford, you guys have probably heard this before. He says, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.”

And I’m going to paraphrase this a little bit and say whether you believe you can or believe you can’t, you’re right. Same thing. So you get to believe what you want. If you believe you can do something, you most likely can do that. If you absolutely believe you can’t, you’re going to be right in that instance as well. Okay.

Now, there are three kind of areas where we have limiting beliefs. So we have limiting beliefs about other people, what we believe about other people. We have limiting beliefs about the world in general. And then we have limiting beliefs about ourselves.

So let me let me talk about these a little bit here. So limiting beliefs about other people. What you believe about other people can affect you negatively. And this, this goes to the topic of like comparing ourselves to others when we’re comparing ourselves to others.

And we’re coming out on the losing end of that comparison, which happens very, very often, then we are choosing to believe something that is limiting us limiting our potential limiting our growth, you know, and limiting how we see ourselves.

So if you’re, if you’re looking at other people and thinking, Oh, they’re better than me, they run faster than me. They can do things that I can’t do, they’re thinner than me, or prettier than me or more fit than me, they make more money than me, they’re more successful than me, like, all of these things are just limiting your beliefs about yourself, that you’re putting yourself down with all of these comparisons, right?

So you have these limiting beliefs about others, that really affect you negatively, okay, we also do the same thing about the world in general, you know, you might think, like, you may change your diet and start eating, you know, you stop eating sugar. Let’s give that example.

Okay, so let’s say you stop eating sugar. And you’re getting this feedback that this is not normal, according to the world, right? This is not the way you’re supposed to do things. Right? Or, you know, maybe it’s, it’s in a relationship, and you’re just thinking, like, Oh, I’m supposed to find an amazing partner, fall madly in love, get married, have kids, blah, blah, blah, but I’m finding myself single. So I’m not doing things the way I’m supposed to, according to the world.

You know, you’re basing your life on what you believe, is true about the world in general about what the world wants for you. I want to have this perfect body according to what you’re, you know, you’re seeing on social media.

And I have to tell you, this one sort of breaks my heart because there’s this, like barrage of stereotypes that we’re being forced fed, you scroll through Instagram, and all you see is, you know, quote, unquote, like perfect bodies.

And we compare ourselves to that and think that we don’t live up to that ideal, and that you know, what other people in the world are doing, and the way they look is good. And what we’re doing and the way we look is bad.

And so we do this thing, where we look at the societal norms, and we compare ourselves and we come out on the losing end of that. These are beliefs that you’re choosing about the world, about what’s normal. And this can be very limiting and very damaging to our mental well being, and really holds you back from becoming the person that you want to become.

And then we have limiting beliefs about ourselves. I hear these all the time, when I’m working with people, you know, I hear people say, you know, I’m just not I’m not a real runner. I could never do that I could never run a marathon, I could never run an ultra marathon. I can never lose weight, every time I try to lose weight, I fail. This never works for me. I’ll never be that way again. You know, I’m too old. I love that one. I’m in the best shape of my life. And I consider myself to be kind of an old guy, you know, 55 years old now.

And then you know things about relationships, I’ll never find a partner, I’ll always be alone. You know, whatever it is that you’re saying about yourself. These limiting beliefs that you have about yourself are absolutely keeping you stuck. And they’re keeping you from achieving your goals. And they’re keeping you feeling terrible about yourself and about your abilities.

And I know there’s things that you want for yourself, there’s goals that you have for yourself, maybe you want to lose some weight, maybe you want to run a faster marathon, maybe you want to find the love of your life, whatever it is, whatever you want for yourself. These beliefs that you have are just keeping you stuck and holding you back. That’s why they call it limiting beliefs because they’re limiting your potential.

So why do we have these limiting beliefs? Why do we even do this? If it’s not good for us? If it moves us away from our goals and keeps us stuck and feeling terrible, why do we do this? Why do we have these limiting beliefs?

And really, this is just you just goes back to your brain wanting to protect you. You know, your human brain wants you to be safe and happy and wants you to experience pleasure and to avoid pain once to keep you comfortable and avoid any kind of discomfort.

And limiting beliefs can be a way that you sort of protect yourself from pain from hurt from disappointment from failure from feelings of unworthiness. Limiting beliefs can keep you from trying, so that you don’t have to worry about failing.

Because if you don’t try, if you just say, I could never run a marathon. And, and so that’s a limiting belief that you have. And so you don’t even have to try, then you don’t have to worry about failing.

So limiting beliefs that can give you an instant out, you can just say like, you know what, I’ve tried to lose weight before it never works for me. So boom, I don’t even have to try. It’s more comfortable. Because trying something, experiencing that discomfort of trying something. And then what if you fail? Hmm.

So when you limit yourself, you don’t even have to try. Or you know we’re talking about relationships a little bit to here. So let’s say you’re like, I’ll never find a partner who loves me unconditionally. Nobody ever accepts me the way I am. Why even bother?

In reality, what you’re doing here is you’re just, you’re you want to avoid the pain of being hurt. If you never make yourself vulnerable in a relationship, you’ll never have to experience rejection, you’ll never have to experience hurt feelings. You know saying that you could never run a marathon, you know, is just a way of avoiding all the pain of like training, and the possibility of failing.

Because when you train for a marathon, there’s a lot of pain and discomfort involved, right? Got to get up early, you got to do these long runs, you know, maybe your knees hurt, maybe you got to run in the cold, and wind in the rain. And if you just say, you know what, I could never do that, then you don’t have to experience any of that discomfort, you can just avoid all of that by just telling yourself, you know, it’s too hard. I could never do that.

But is that what you want for yourself? Is that really what you want for yourself? Because the beliefs that you have about what you can and can’t do, might be holding you back from doing the things that you really, really want for yourself.

I want you to ask yourself this question like, what is it that you really want for yourself? And how are your limiting beliefs keeping you from achieving that or even starting?

Now, I want to say this, because I’ve kind of get some pushback on this sometimes from people they’re like, well, I don’t really have a desire to run a marathon, okay, fine, then, you know, if you don’t have any desire to do that, then, you know, telling yourself you could never do that isn’t really a limiting belief. This has to be around things that you actually want for yourself, okay.

For example, I have no desire to go bungee jumping. I have no desire to sing opera on stage. So for me, to avoid these things, it’s really not a limiting belief. You know, I can say to myself, like, I don’t believe I’ll ever be an opera singer. And that’s not a limiting belief, because I don’t want to be an opera singer. And trust me, you don’t want me to be an opera singer, either, okay? You really don’t. Nobody wants that.

But for this thing to be a limiting belief, I would have to want that for myself. So let’s say I really wanted to, and I was, you know, this is my dream is to sing opera on stage, or to jump off a bridge, you know, bungee jump, or whatever. I have no desire to bungee jump, you guys.

So I just want you to know that no desire, you know, the fear that’s involved with that is just a little too overwhelming for me. I just don’t want to do it. And so I might say, like, you know, what, I just don’t want to do that I’m afraid or, you know, scary and fine, no big deal. It’s not a limiting belief.

So just understand that, you know, these are things that you want for yourself that you’re choosing to believe, that are holding you back, and you’re choosing these beliefs that are keeping you stuck there choosing beliefs that are keeping you from starting, those are the kinds of things I’m talking about here, okay.

And listen, I’ve had my share of limiting beliefs. I believed at one point that running 100 miles was impossible for me, I couldn’t do it. There’s no way I could do it. I even was doing some ultra marathons. I was doing a bunch of 50K’s and I even ran a 50 miler, and after that 50 miler, I was like there’s no freaking way that I will ever be able to run 100 miles, it’s just too far. It’s too hard.

50 was almost impossible and I’m just too old, this training would be too much. I don’t have the time, blah, blah, blah. And, and then one day for whatever reason, I don’t even know why.

But I just asked myself a different question. I was like, what if I could run 100 miles? What if I wasn’t too old? What if I made the time for the training? And just making this little mental shift of like, what if I created a shift within myself, and I started to believe, some different things.

I started to believe that maybe I could do this, maybe I could make the time for the training, maybe I could, you know, show up and do the work. And I could actually accomplish something huge like this, something that seems absolutely impossible.

For me, something that has seemed impossible for me for years. And now I’m starting to think maybe, just maybe I could, that little shift in my belief about my potential changed everything for me. And I did.

I set out to do the training. And I put in the work, and I had to believe in myself in order to accomplish that. And I want this for you, too. When it comes to overcoming your limiting beliefs, that takes a bit of work.

The beliefs that you have about yourself, especially when you’re like, you know, I’ve tried, it just doesn’t work for me. These kinds of beliefs are hardwired into your brain. These are things that are deeply rooted, they’re things that you absolutely believe to be true about yourself.

Because you’ve been thinking these thoughts over and over and over and over for years and decades. And you’ve probably never questioned them before, you’ve just always said, I can’t do it. I’m not good enough. I’m not capable. It never works for me.

But here’s the thing, I want you to start questioning all of these beliefs, your beliefs about the world, your beliefs about other people, and especially the things that you’re choosing to believe about yourself, because you get to choose what you believe about everything.

You choose your beliefs, they’re not thrust upon you. THis is probably something you’ve never thought about before. But I want you to know that this is absolutely available to you to choose what you believe. You’re doing it anyway, you’re choosing all these beliefs about yourself.

Anyway, everything you believe, is a choice. And you’ve probably never, like really thought about this before. And that’s fine. But listen, your beliefs, our decisions, everything you believe, is something that you are choosing to believe.

So with each belief that you have, there’s probably some moment in time where you made a decision to believe it, you know, could have been when you were a kid, maybe you got bullied, and you decided you would never speak up again, you want to stay small, and it’s safer that way. And so there’s no risk involved. And, you know, that’s just one example. Right?

So even today, you know, you’ve been believing this your whole life, it’s just better to stay small and don’t speak up. Because it’s safer. One of my coaches used to say, whenever I’d say something like, oh, here’s what I believe this is the truth. This person would say, when did you decide that?

And I always was like, I hate it when you say that. But it’s the truth. When did you decide that? When did you decide to start believing that you get to decide what you want for yourself?

And so I want you I want to encourage you to start making better decisions about everything about what you’re choosing to believe. So these limiting beliefs that we have, have been decisions that we’ve been making over and over and over again, okay.

And here’s, here’s another way of saying this, I love this little quote that I read in a book once and it was like, “You have to believe it to see it, not the other way around.”

So you have to believe in yourself, you have to believe you can accomplish your goal in order to accomplish your goal. But we think it’s the other way around. We think oh, as soon as I accomplish this goal, then I’ll know that I can do it, then you know, I need to see the evidence. I need to see the result in order to believe that I can do something like that.

And we got that backwards. Right? You don’t see it to believe that you believe it and then you’ll see it. You’ve got to believe in yourself, and then you can accomplish your goals. You have to change the belief first.

You can’t expect to accomplish some big goal like this, you want to lose a bunch of weight or run an ultra marathon or PR or you know, run Boston qualifying time, you’re not going to accomplish something like that.

If you have all these limiting beliefs, like it’s too hard, I can’t do this. This has never worked for me, those kinds of beliefs will not get you there, I promise you, they will not get you there. You have to believe in yourself first.

So I want you to think about this. What beliefs are holding you back? How are the things that you believe about yourself, limiting your potential? Or how are the things that you’re believing about others or the world, like, start looking at all of the things that you believe, and I want you to challenge all of them. Every single one.

You get to believe whatever you want, you can choose to believe that you’ll never lose weight, that this will never work for you that this is too hard that you can’t do it, you’re not good enough. But what good is that doing you? It’s terrible.

It’s a terrible thing to believe about yourself. It doesn’t do you any good at all. It’s keeping you stuck. It’s keeping you small. It’s keeping you from reaching your goals keeping you from achieving big things that you want for yourself.

So, since you get to choose your beliefs, why not choose the beliefs that help you, but choose beliefs that will get you to your goals, choose whatever you want for yourself, choose a belief like I will absolutely get to my goal weight, no matter how long it takes. Damn, that’s an empowering belief right there that will get you to your goal, that kind of belief in yourself will get you to that goal.

I am going to PR my next marathon, I’m going to put in the work and get there no matter what. When you believe that you’ll get there. I want you to practice this. And you know like everything else, it takes practice, right?

You can’t just like say at one time, like I’m going to run this marathon and then you’re going to do it. No, you’ve got to practice these things daily. So what is it that you want for yourself?

You want to get leaner, you want to get stronger? You want to run a faster marathon, you want to run 100 miles? What is it that you want for yourself? Do you want to change your relationship with food? Do you want to change your relationship with alcohol? Do you want to have an amazing relationship with a human being?

Do you want to experience deep meaningful love and passion and connection with somebody? Whatever it is you want for yourself? Choose to believe that you can do it. And question all the beliefs you have around this thing.

Ask yourself why you think you can’t do it? This is a good question. Why do I think I can’t do this? What’s holding you back? Why won’t this work for me? What’s stacked against me, these are these are going to start to identify your limiting beliefs, and then start choosing better thoughts. Your beliefs are just thoughts that you think over and over again.

So start choosing better ones. Start with the opposite of these, you know, you have a belief that you know, what’s holding me back, oh, this never works for me, what’s the opposite of that? This will absolutely work for me. You know, like, just start looking at reframing your negative beliefs into positive beliefs.

And practice this, you’ver got to practice this on a daily basis. This is not a one and done, this is ongoing work that we have to do. And these beliefs will come up that it’s you know, in surprising ways. And you’ll you’ll find yourself saying things to yourself like, oh, you know, I don’t know, this just never works for me. So why bother?

Like, oh, wait, wait a minute, what does that look at that question that confront those limiting beliefs and start changing them, okay. The only limits you have in your life are the ones you choose to believe.

I want you to choose to become limitless instead. Okay. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all keep on Running Lean. I will 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.

91. Breaking the Habit of Being You

September 24, 2021 By Patrick McGilvray

One of the most important principles that I teach here on the podcast, and work on with my clients is the principle of becoming the best, healthiest, most badass version of yourself. This is not …

Continue Reading about 91. Breaking the Habit of Being You →

Podcast Transcript

Hey there, and welcome to episode 91 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today we’re talking about breaking the habit of being you. One of the most important principles that I teach here on the podcast and one of the most important principles that I work on with my clients is the idea of becoming the best, the healthiest the most badass version of yourself.

And this is not meant to imply that there’s anything wrong with who you are right now, it just means that you have the desire to become more. That means that who you are right now is not the finish line, that you’re not done learning and growing and evolving. So in this episode, I’m going to show you how more than anything else your habits are responsible for who you have become up to this point in your life.

And if you want to change who you become in the future, it requires breaking the habit of being you strap in for this one, because it’s going to challenge you to think about yourself in a whole new way.

But first, if you like this podcast, please come check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook. This is a community of like-minded people who share their experience, their expertise at times their strength, their encouragement, their motivation, their positivity. And it gives you a voice. It’s a place where you can ask questions and get answers.

So the podcast and the Facebook group go hand in hand, just search for Running Lean community on Facebook and come over there and join in the fun, I do some weekly trainings over there. On Sunday afternoons, we do a little live and we have a lot of fun doing it. Love to see you over there.

And then here’s another five-star review of the Running Lean podcast. This one’s from Apple’s mama who says, “Continual and incremental steps for real results. This is my go-to podcast to listen to while running. Patrick teaches not only mindset but also actionable and incremental steps for continual health improvement. Thank you, Patrick.”

Well, thank you Apple’s mama for sharing that I really do appreciate it. And the reason I read these reviews and I encourage you to leave a review is because it helps me to know that I’m on track with the message that I’m sharing with you guys. So I so so appreciate that.

And then if you’re interested in digging a little bit deeper and getting a little bit more people asking how they can work with me. And one way of doing that is by joining the Running Lean coaching group. And so each week we do a different each week, we have a weekly group Zoom call where you can ask questions and get answers and, and on those calls. I do some teaching and training and coaching.

And each month we have a different focus in this month of September, we’ve been doing fat- and how to become a fat-adapted runner. And next month in October, we’re talking all about strength and flexibility. So that’s going to be the focus of our coaching and training for the month of October, building strength becoming more flexible as a runner.

Running injuries are so common upwards of like 56% of recreational runners experienced some sort of an injury every year. So injuries are very preventable though. Okay, so I’ve got some special guests coming in. I’m going to be doing some teaching and coaching on this topic. But I got some special guests coming in to share their thoughts and ideas and teach you how to get stronger, how to become more flexible.

We’re going to talk about exercises, different modalities that you can use for strength and flexibility so that you can become a stronger more powerful runner and keep running injury-free. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join and we’ll see you over there in the Running Lean coaching group. We have a lot of fun over there by the way.

And then you can always work with me one on one I’m a coach, this is what I do. Working with me one on one is probably the best way to get the results that you’re looking for. You know what we’ll look at your goals we’ll set actionable steps to help you get to those goals. And I can help you become the most badass version of yourself.

This is what I do. I love doing this I really do. And it kind of goes along with what I’m talking about today which is becoming a different version of you. You know if who you are up to this point is not where you want to stop like if you think there’s more than you want for yourself have one on one coaching is probably the best way to help get you there. And to apply for coaching, just go to runningleanpodcast,com/apply, you and I will jump on a Zoom together, we’ll talk about the coaching program and see if this is a good fit for you.

Alright, let’s get into this topic today because I’m so excited about this. So one of the most influential books I’ve ever read is a book by Dr. Joe Dispenza. And the book is titled breaking the habit of being yourself. And so that’s kind of where I got the title of this episode from.

So I’m going to take some of the things that he talks about in the book and sort of, I’ve kind of like, tweaked this over the years to kind of fit in with my coaching style and with the principles that I teach.

But these are concepts that have been around for a while. And I first read this book several years ago, and the book just had a profound impact on me, it really changed my life, it really showed me that who I am today is just a result of habitual thinking and habitual emotional responses and habitual behaviors. Okay?

And that if you want to create a different version of you’ve got to start, firstly, you have to understand, like what you’ve become up to this point and how you got here, then you can start to kind of dismantle that and break those old habits and start becoming the new version of yourself, okay. But more than just about any other book I’ve ever read, this thing has helped me to become who I am today. And so I’m going to be sharing my thoughts about today, what it means to break the habit of being you. Okay?

So we humans, we’re creatures of habit. Like we love doing the same things over and over and over again. And if you’re an older adult, you know, not old, but if you are an experienced adult, let’s put it that way. If you have some experience being an adult, then you’ve probably been doing the same things for decades, right? You’ve got the same routines, the same work, you’ve been doing the same relationships, the same way you interact with your family, like, we approach everything the way that we just have. And this is just what we do, right? This is who we are now, this is what we believe this is how we think this is how we feel.

And so our habits make up the majority of what we do, how we think how we feel. And so we’ve basically become our habits. Who we are today is just a set of repeated thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. And most of these things we do unconsciously, we’re not even aware that we’re thinking, feeling, and doing what we think, feel, and do on a regular basis, okay.

But here’s the thing, if you want to change who you are, like if you want to become somebody else, if you want to become a different version of yourself in the future, if you want to make positive changes in your life, if you want to lose weight, if you want to run a faster marathon, if you want to run an ultra marathon, you want to run your first 5k, you want to become a runner, whatever it is that you want for yourself, whatever is challenging you could be you wanting a new relationship, or you want a better career, you want to start your own business, whatever big thing you want for yourself, you have to change who you are today to get there.

You have to break the old habit of being you that you’ve become up to this point, you have to start creating a whole new version of yourself. So don’t worry, I’m going to break down kind of how we do this and what this looks like. Okay, I know this might sound a little out there right now.

So what is a habit? A habit is just a redundant set of automatic and unconscious thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that you’ve acquired through repetition. It’s just stuff you’ve been doing over and over and over again, it’s the way you’ve been thinking and feeling and responding emotionally to events and the behaviors you’ve been doing.

It’s gotten to the point where you’re not even consciously aware that this is happening right your body does it like you’re doing things and you don’t know when really consciously aware, kind of like when you’re you know, taking a shower, brushing your teeth or something like that, right? It’s sort of an unconscious habit, your body does it better than your mind.

So an example of what this looks like. So a lot of people live their life in the past. And here’s what I mean by that. People wake up and they start thinking about their problems. Right? Your problems are just memories of like past situations, past issues, past stressors, past trauma. So you start each day living in the past. You’re thinking about oh, this thing that happened to me a while back, you know. And we call these things problems, or memories, whatever it is, you’re consciously back there in the past. So you start each day just like living in the past. And each one of these past memories has an emotion tied to it.

So you immediately begin your day feeling. Maybe you’re really feeling the unhappiness or the hurt or their unworthiness or the stress or the anger that you experienced in the past, just thinking about that situation now brings up the same emotional response, right? How you think and feel, creates your present state of being who you are, in this moment, is a result of how you’re thinking and feeling right now.

And most people start their day feeling all these negative emotions from the past. And so they’re just living in the past, your familiar past, the thing that you know, that you keep repeating over and over and over again, in your mind becomes who you are today. And it just goes on and on. And your familiar past becomes your predictable future.

So who you were in the past, you’re just going to continue to create more and more of that. You just become more and more of who you already are. You can’t go beyond who you used to be. You can’t get beyond who you are up to this point. Because that’s all you know. And that’s what you’re ruminating on. And that’s what you’re thinking about. And that’s the emotions that you’re experiencing right now. So your emotional state right now is the past.

And all you can think about is the future for your future is how you’re feeling right now. When all your feelings and all of your thoughts and your whole being is focused on who you used to be in the past like that’s who you are right now, that’s just going to be what you keep creating more and more and more for yourself, okay? This is what it looks like to be stuck in the habit of being you.

Now listen, there’s nothing wrong with this, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, or you’re doing something wrong. This is the way most of us have just kind of conditioned ourselves to operate in, it’s okay. But if you want something more for yourself, if you want to continue to learn and grow and evolve and become that badass version of yourself that I always like to say that phrase, I love it, becoming the most badass version of yourself. If that’s what you want for yourself, then you’ve got to break this habit of being who you are today, you got to get out of being who you are so that you can become more.

I told you, you’re gonna have to strap in for this one because it’s mind-blowing, right? Here’s a crazy stat – 95% of who you are, by the time you’re 35 years old, it’s just a memorized set of repeated thoughts, emotional reactions, beliefs, behaviors, attitudes, actions. 95% of who you are.

So you might be saying to yourself, you know, well, I want to lose weight. So I’m gonna change once and for all, but you’re like, only 5% of you is sort of onboard with making this change. Because 95% of you is still stuck on the repeated unconscious habits of who you believe yourself to be today. You’ve become your habits, you’ve become your habitual thinking and feeling. Here’s what this looks like, you have an emotional reaction to something, let’s say you get angry about something. And you allow that emotional reaction to last for hours or sometimes days. And you call this a mood, right? Oh, I’m in a mood. Yeah, this thing happened five days ago. So I’m still in a bad mood about it. I’m still angry about it.

It’s just like one long drawn-out emotional response to an event. And if you keep this up, if you keep up this mood for weeks or months, then it becomes your temperament. Oh, yeah, he’s got a temperament. You know he’s just in that mood most of the time. But when it goes on for years, it just becomes your personality, like, oh, yeah, that person, they’re their personality. They’re just an angry person. Right?

And this is because you just keep replaying these past experiences. Why would you keep reliving negative past experiences? Why do you keep doing this? One of the reasons we do it is that you’re kind of addicted to it, you’re addicted to the chemicals released in the response, the emotions you’re feeling.

So when you have an emotional response to something, let’s say you get really resentful about something. Okay. Let’s say you have a super stressful event happen in your life. Like, your husband says he’s leaving you for his secretary. Okay, this is a huge stressful event. And you release you know, you get very emotional about it. And when you get very emotional there’s going to be emotions like anger and hurt, and, you know, resentment. And, you know, you’re gonna want to don’t want to hurt somebody, you know, like you get all fired up about this right?

Well with that emotional response comes this release of hormones and chemicals in your brain like cortisol and adrenaline it gives you this like rush of chemicals, okay? So every time you relive this experience in your mind, it’s just like it’s happening all over again. So you have the same emotional response, just by thinking about, you know, your husband, with that secretary will get you all fired up again, it gets you all angry again, it gets you all resentful again.

And to your brain, it feels like it’s happening right now all over again. And so you get the same chemical response that happens, the same chemicals get released. And you get that rush that you get from the adrenaline and the cortisol and all these other things, right? Your mind doesn’t know that the situation happened years ago. It just thinks it’s happening right now.

When you imagine something really vividly, and you really feel it emotionally. It’s like it’s happening right now, your brain doesn’t know the difference. So you’d think it really makes sense to release the anger and resentment don’t hold on to that stuff, right? But we do we keep replaying these situations in our minds, even though they make us feel terrible, but we do it because we’re sort of, we’ve sort of programmed ourselves to want that chemical reaction.

We want to feel the chemicals, even though it’s a negative experience, we still want that chemical response. Okay, this is kind of why we keep reliving these past negative emotional experiences, all right. And I hope you’re not thinking that this is all super depressing right now. Because it’s not meant to be, I just want you to see how your brain and your body work together, I want you to see mostly how your brain is sort of keeping you stuck where you are, and how you might feel like you can never get anywhere.

Or maybe you feel like you can’t make any progress toward a goal, I just want you to understand that it’s not necessarily like your fault, or you don’t have any willpower, or it’s too hard for you, and you can’t do it, it’s never gonna work for you. It’s nothing like that at all.

It’s just your brain doing what it does, you sort of conditioned yourself, you know, to become this certain version of you, and no matter how much you think about wanting to break out of that, you know, you just can’t seem to do it.

Okay, in order to break that habit of being you. It’s important that you understand how you got here in the first place. So that’s why I’m sort of breaking this down this way. Okay. You have to start looking at all the habitual things that you’ve been thinking, feeling, and doing for years. So that when you put all these things together, you have what we call you, like you’ve become what we call the person that is you today, right?

So there’s bad news and good news. The bad news is that you’ve been living a familiar past. And if you keep doing it, you’re just going to create the same predictable future, who you are today is who you’re going to be tomorrow. And not much will ever change for you.

The good news is now you understand what’s happening, and you can do something about it. Right? It’s like seeing the matrix, once you take the red pill, you can never go back. Now you can make a conscious choice to do something about it. You don’t have to be stuck here. That’s the good news. Right, you can do something to change.

So what do we do to change is how do we begin to break the habit of being ourselves in the moment, right? How do we become that different version of ourselves? And this is a great question. And in the book, Dr. Joe Dispenza talks about a daily meditation practice, okay, where you practice, being in the present moment, and you practice imagining the future that you want for yourself, you imagine the person that you want to become that you might be thinking, I don’t know about this? Hoo, ha, hokey, meditation stuff, whatever.

But listen, when you imagined something really vividly like I was saying earlier, your brain doesn’t know that it’s just something you imagined, you subconsciously believe that this is happening to you right now. Visualization exercises are super powerful and a lot of professional athletes practice some sort of mental imagery or visualization before any sort of big event.

And they’ve done these experiments with athletes and this one that I found to be very fascinating was the free-throw experiment. So there was an Australian psychologist named Alan Richardson. And he wanted to prove that mental imagery or visualization was beneficial in improving athletic performance. So he did this study, and he took three different groups of college students.

And they were going to practice free throws, you know, to show how they could improve their free-throw shooting on the basketball court. So the first group practice basketball, free throws for 20 minutes a day, for 20 straight days. And then the second and third groups only shot free throws on the first day and the last day of the 20 day period.

However, the second group spent 20 minutes a day, visualizing shooting, free throws, so they didn’t actually pick up a basketball except for the first and last day. But they spent each day visualizing themselves shooting free throws. And the results were fascinating.

So the first group, the people who actually practiced shooting, the free throws for 20 minutes a day for 20 days, improved by 24%, from the first day to the last day. The third group, you know, this is the so the first group improved 24% over the third group who did nothing, they did not practice at all, they just shot on the first day in the last day, and they didn’t make any improvements at all.

But the second group, the mental imagery group, the one that’s like just did the visualization for 20 minutes a day improved 23%, almost the exact same amount as the ones that actually shot the free throws. This is fascinating to me. So it just goes to show you that your brain can actually you can create new neural pathways by just visualizing doing something.

And they’ve done other experiments with people doing like piano drills, like people that don’t know how to play the piano. And they found that just visualizing themselves, like practicing piano drills, fingering drills, like they can actually get as good as people that actually practice every day.

So anyway, very fascinating stuff. So an example of visualization is to imagine yourself like crossing the finish line of your marathon and hitting your PR, like, let’s say, this is a goal for you, like you want to hit, you know, you want to break a four-hour marathon or something like that, right?

You have to visualize that that is really happening for you right now in this moment. And to do it, you need to do it in vivid detail, right, you need to use all your senses. So you know, the way you could do this, is you kind of close your eyes and spend a little bit of time just kind of relaxing, and then all of a sudden you are approaching the finish line and you’re in your body, you’re seeing this through your eyes, you see the crowd, you see the time on the clock.

You see the photographers up ahead of you, you hear the crowd cheering, you hear them calling your name, you hear the loud rock music playing, you can smell and taste the sweat on your lips, and you feel the soreness in your body and the rush of adrenaline. And then you feel this flood of emotions you feel accomplishment, pride and relief, and joy and ecstasy.

And this vivid visceral mental imagery exercise is going to wire your brain to think like this is happening for you right now. And it’s going to help you to hit that goal. And this is something that elite athletes do because it gives them an edge. And most runners, they just don’t do this kind of stuff. They’re like yeah, whatever.

But you know what, what I just taught you right there, this can be your secret weapon, this can give you a competitive advantage. Especially if you’re trying to, you know, you’re trying to PR by just a couple of minutes or something like that. This can be the thing that helps you get over the edge. Okay? So don’t dismiss this, do it.

Another way to start breaking the habit of being you is is through journaling exercises and I know what you’re thinking like journaling writing, like a dear diary, and whatever. Patrick a lot of people have a bias against writing and I don’t understand why but I think maybe they just are not used to it right and so maybe they just think it’s hokey or weird or, or just doesn’t work or I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you don’t think it works. I think you should try it anyway.

And writing about your own thoughts and feelings is a very powerful way to make changes in your life. Okay? If done properly, right. And there are two ways that I can think of that you can benefit from a daily writing practice. And listen, these things I’m talking about here, like the visualization and the writing, it’s got to be done daily, like, it’s something you have to do for a while, you can’t just do it once and think, well, I’m good, no, you got to, you got to do it.

So that you’re sort of rewiring those neural pathways in your brain, okay, so it’s something you have to get into the practice of doing on a regular basis. And I promise you, it’s gonna help you it’s going to make changes, it’s going to help you to become a different version of yourself.

Okay. So one way I can think of that writing will help you is to just get all the junk out of your head and onto the page. So you can just start to get all these crazy negative thoughts that are swirling around your head, get them out of your head and onto the piece of paper, right, you can begin to identify thought patterns that are keeping you stuck, you can start to sort out all the habits you’ve created over the years because you can see it, you can see it on the page, right?

Without this self-awareness, it’s really hard to make changes, like without knowing what habits you want to change, you first have to have the self-awareness of what your habits are in the first place. And the easiest way to do this is something I’ve talked about before here, and it’s called the thought download.

So just get everything out of your head and get it onto the page, write it all down, no filter, no analyzing, just do a brain dump, write all the random thoughts that you have, get them on a piece of paper, keep asking yourself, what else? What else? What else as many times as necessary.

And then once you feel like you’ve got it all out of your head, and you can see all your thoughts in front of you on the page, just look over it. Look over what you just wrote, what patterns do you see? What thoughts are like limiting you, holding you back, keeping you stuck? And when you’re armed with this information, you can actually start making changes to break those old habits and start working on who it is you really want to become.

Which leads me to the second way writing can benefit you. So besides just dumping out all of your thoughts, start writing about who it is that you want to become. So this is similar to the visualization exercise, you know, but you’re going to do it by writing about it instead of like just closing your eyes and imagining it. They’re both very powerful. And if you do both of them, it’s even more powerful.

So write about like, who do you want to become? What does she look like? How does she act? How does she feel about herself? What has she accomplished this future version of you? How does she show up for others? What big goals is she focused on? What fears and obstacles has she overcome?

How is this future version of you more motivated? How is she more confident? How is she more excited about her life? What is she more excited about? Write it all out, get it in as much vivid detail as you can, and really feel what it would feel like to be that future version of yourself to be the healthiest, the best, the most badass version of yourself and write it all down.

And by the way, when we talk about doing writing exercises like this, this is just for you, you don’t have to share them with anyone else. And if you’re concerned about somebody seeing this stuff, just throw away the page when you’re done, burn it, shred it, type it into a document and then delete the document, whatever you need to do, you don’t have to like keep the stuff around.

I just happen to do all my writing in these notebooks. And I just throw them in a drawer when I’m done. And eventually, my drawers get full of these notebooks and I just pitch them like it’s no big deal. I live alone too. So it doesn’t matter. Nobody’s reading any of my stuff.

So when it comes to breaking the habit of being you, some of the best things you can do to change that. Number one is you have to have the awareness of how you’ve become you. You want to understand the habits, the emotional responses, the living in the past, the feelings, the thoughts, the repeated behaviors that all add up to become who you are today.

And then doing this, this meditation or visualization, mental imagery exercises, the journaling exercises, these are amazing ways to start deconditioning yourself of becoming who you are and helping you to condition yourself to become someone else to break out of the habit of being the past version of you. That version of you that feels stuck here. And to start creating a better, more badass future version of you. I want to encourage you guys to try this. I think it would be an incredibly powerful thing for you to do.

Alright, remember October is strength and flexibility month over in the Running Lean coaching group. We’re going to be talking about building strength and becoming more flexible. I’ve got some special guests I’m going to be bringing into the group to share some stuff with you. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join. And I hope you got something out of this episode today. If you did, please consider sharing it with a friend. And as always, I love you all. Keep on Running Lean. 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.

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Self-Awareness

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Podcast Transcript