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Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

Uncertainty

168. Dealing With Criticism

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One of the biggest fears you face when you set out to better yourself is the fear of being criticized. You want to lose weight but you are so afraid of what people will say about you that you quit …

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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 168, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today: dealing with criticism. One of the biggest fears you face when you set out to better yourself is a fear of being criticized. You may want to lose weight, but then you’re afraid of what people will say about you.

And so you quit or you never even start in the first place. The fear of being criticized is one of the main three reasons why most people don’t succeed with losing weight, or with really accomplishing anything big for that matter. The other two are the fear of failure and the fear of success, which I talked about in the last two episodes of the podcast.

So today, I’m taking a comprehensive look at the fear of being judged and criticized and how dealing with criticism might be one of the most important things you do on your journey to becoming your best self. But first, if you’ve ever tried to lose weight and failed, you’re probably worried that you’re going to fail. Again, this is very common for most people.

Just because you’ve tried and failed in the past, though, doesn’t mean it’s going to happen again, your past does not determine your future. The real problem is that being so afraid to fail means that you don’t ever try anything new. You don’t ever try. You don’t ever start anything. And the only surefire way to actually fail is to never start in the first place. Right?

So in my coaching program, we look at failure in a whole new way. We never expect to do this stuff perfectly. Nobody does. We accept that failure is part of the process. So we fail. We learn our lessons from it, and then we move on. Every success is built upon a big ol pile of failures.

So don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t be afraid to try something new. Just start. Imagine what you could accomplish if you weren’t afraid to fail. To learn more about my unique weight loss coaching program for runners just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. All right.

So I’ve been thinking about this episode for a while now since I’ve started talking about the three big reasons why people don’t achieve their goals. So this is the third episode in that series. So the first one was the fear of success, which I talked about a couple of weeks ago. Last week, we talked about the fear of failure. And then today I’m addressing the third big reason why people don’t succeed, or don’t achieve their goals, which is a fear of being criticized.

So what is the fear of being criticized? What is this all about? Well, fear of being criticized as being afraid of what people are saying about you. So you’re afraid that people are going to think negative thoughts about you, or say negative things about you? It’s not really a fear of being criticized positively. Get out. It’s like, Oh, I’m so afraid that people are talking wonderfully about me.

No, it’s a fear of being negatively talked about negative feelings towards you negative thoughts towards you. It’s a fear of being judged, being judged unfairly. And we all judge people unfairly all the time, then you might be thinking to yourself, but, but those people shouldn’t judge me like that. They don’t know me, they don’t know my story. None of that stuff matters, people look at what they see on the outside.

Then you might say something, you might put a picture out there on social media, and you’re gonna get judged. So welcome to Reality. It’s just part of being a human being, unfortunately. But a fear of being criticized, the fear of being negatively thought about, or maybe somebody has negative feelings towards you, or says negative things to you, writes a negative comment about you.

And really, it’s a fear of being seen as well. It’s a fear of being exposed, of being vulnerable. We don’t like to put ourselves out there. We don’t like being vulnerable. And here’s why. Here’s where this fear comes from: this fear that we have about being criticized and being vulnerable and being exposed and being judged.

It all comes from, you know, this ancient ancestral fear of being kicked out of the tribe, like it’s that we, it’s that fear of being alone. And the fear of not being a part of this is really what’s at the root of all of this, okay? This is something that’s baked into our DNA. So for millions of years, it was certain death to be kicked out of the tribe, if you were shunned from the tribe, it meant that you had to go it alone.

And going in alone, in those days was pretty dangerous. You needed the safety, the safety and the protection from the people around you, to help you hunt and help you gather food and help you stave off enemies and animals and things like that. So being alone meant that you were probably going to die.

So this fear of being criticized when we get criticized, or somebody says something negatively towards us, it kind of feels like we’re being kicked out of the tribe, like we’re not a part of, we’re different. We’re being shunned. We’re being exposed for who we really are. And those people don’t like that. They don’t like who we really are. Okay. So, how this shows up for us today, you know, obviously, we’re not afraid of being kicked out of the tribe, so to speak, like literally or being eaten by saber toothed tigers, I hope that’s not an issue we have to deal with.

Most of us listening to this podcast probably don’t have to deal with that. But this could be something where you have been working to better yourself. So maybe you are working on losing weight, and you start running, and you’re feeling pretty good. And you’re feeling confident. And you know, you’re starting to feel more like oh, I’m gonna, I’m gonna share my story, I’m gonna put some pictures up there on social media and kind of talk about my journey here.

And you might get some positive comments. And you might get a lot of positive comments, and no might make you feel good, you know, but then you’ll get that one person that says something negatively, or is critical of you. And you, it makes you feel terrible, because you don’t really focus, we don’t ever focus on all the 20 or 30 positive comments we get, we focus on the one negative one, that’s the only one that really stands out where we’re like, why they’re saying something bad about me.

So people can be really, people are mean, people are idiots, and people are mean sometimes that’s the bottom line, right. And when we’re dealing with stuff online, especially, you’re dealing with a bunch of people who are, who don’t feel good about themselves, and they just want to put other people down.

And so you’re gonna get some criticism, you’re gonna get, if you put yourself out there, you’re vulnerable, you’re seen, you’re gonna get judged, whether people are judging you internally, or externally by like actually writing some sort of a negative comment. But you’re being judged, no matter what, whether you see comments from people or not, they are criticizing you internally, they are judging you. And, and we just have to accept this. We have to accept this, okay.

They’re critical of you for wanting to better yourself. I know, it’s crazy. Like I said, people are stupid. They’ll make fun of you for not eating junk food, or like not drinking alcohol. Really, really, that’s not a thing. So why do people do this to us? Like, why are people critical of us? Well, mostly, it’s because they don’t feel good about themselves. You know, so they kind of hate themselves.

They hate where they are, they hate how maybe they let themselves go. And so when you try to improve yourself, and you start losing weight, and you start looking better, and you start feeling better, then saying something negative about you, will help make them feel better about themselves. They feel bad about themselves. So they’re trying to make you feel bad too. And this doesn’t really work. And the people that do this kind of stuff are generally pretty miserable. People will talk about that in just a minute.

But the reason people do this is that they’re just trying to pull you down to where they are, right? So there’s this story, principle, whatever you want to call, it’s called crabs in a bucket. And if you’ve ever seen fishermen like catching crabs, they will put them in a bucket. And if you put one crab in that bucket, it will eventually be able to pull itself up by its little claw or whatever, and then pull itself out of the bucket.

But if you put a bunch of crabs in the bucket, as soon as one starts to pull itself up, other ones will grab it and pull it down and keep it in the bucket. So the crabs will be able to climb out of the bucket. I don’t know if this is actually true in practice or not. But let’s just use this as our analogy here today, okay.

People are just like crabs in a bucket, you know, they want to pull you down so that you don’t, you know, you don’t advance that you don’t get out of the bucket, they don’t want to see you doing well, they don’t want to see you improving yourself, they don’t want to see you losing weight, and looking better and feeling better about yourself, they just want to pull you down to where they are.

So one thing we have to understand about this is that criticism and judgment, this stuff does not happen from the top down, it happens from the bottom up, you will have people who have improved themselves and who are successful. You will not have those people criticizing other people who are trying to improve themselves and who are working on being successful, they just don’t do it.

Successful people don’t put other people down, emotionally evolved, people don’t spend any time putting other people down writing negative comments on people’s posts and things like that. Think about somebody like Oprah Winfrey, sitting behind her keyboard and writing some sort of like crappy little comments about you online, that’s just never gonna happen. It’s never gonna happen. Why? Because she doesn’t hate herself. She doesn’t need to put others down so that she feels better. She’s an emotionally evolved woman, I’m assuming.

I have a lot of respect for Oprah. And she doesn’t need to do that because she’s a successful woman, successful people, people who are working to better themselves do not spend time writing negative stuff about other people. They just don’t need to do that. Okay. And then there’s a big difference here. Now, listen, this is important because there’s a big difference between when we’re talking about randos on the internet, and then the real people in your life, people that are important to you.

For the randos, for the people that are just randomly writing negative comments about you, people that maybe you are friends with on Facebook, or that follow you on Instagram, just forget about those people, they don’t mean anything to you, right. And if you’re friends with these people, and they are doling out some criticism to you about what you’re doing, you’re trying to improve yourself, and you got people that are sending negative energy your way, then unfollow those people, unfriend those people block those people get their energy out of your life, you don’t need that, get rid of them. Okay, so let’s just start there.

For the people in your life, who you actually know, this would be spouses, partners, friends, family members, coworkers, kids, even, there will be some people in your life who are critical of you, who don’t fully support you. They may not be on board with your goals and dreams. We have to accept this, we have to accept that there will be people in our life, maybe people that are close to us who don’t support us.

Now, in this case, it’s a little bit different. We can take some of these, you know, if we’re talking about your partner, or a family or a close family member, you know, you can take some of their criticism and really say like, is this, maybe I need to work on this, this could be something that I need to improve and work on. And yeah, maybe they’re right. Maybe I am, you know, being ridiculous here or whatever, right?

So there are times when you want to take some of this criticism to heart and really look inside and see like, is there truth to this, you know, a lot of times there isn’t. A lot of times, it’s just people that are even though they love you and they’re close with you, they feel uncomfortable when you start to move ahead. I see this a lot with partners, like spouses, husbands and wives who want to better themselves and they start losing weight and they start eating better, and they start feeling better, and they’re running and they’re getting healthy and they feel great.

And their partner is not doing those things and their partners kind of feeling left behind. And they will kind of lash out at the spouse that’s doing better and want to pull them down crabs in a bucket, you know. And so sometimes we have to look at some of those relationships and decide if we want to stay in that relationship.

Now I’m not telling you to go leave your partner or anything like that, but just like sometimes we may need to find new people to hang around. If the people we’re hanging around are critical of us and they’re negative towards us, and they’re judging us, you know We can’t control what other people think or feel or what they say or what they do nothing, right. But you don’t have to hang around that and you don’t have to be a part of it. Okay?

So I forget who said it, maybe Jim Rohn said, like you’re the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. If you spend enough time with four millionaires, you’ll probably be the fifth, if you spend enough time with four criminals, you’ll probably be the fifth. Spend enough time with four people who are ultra marathoners, and you’ll probably end up running an ultra marathon at some point, right?

When I quit drinking, which was, gosh, almost 16 years ago, now, I had to get a whole new group of friends because all the friends that I had were people that I drank with, and people who drank a lot. And for me like to go and hang out with those people was very challenging. And I realized that when, when I was sober, like they weren’t that great of friends anyway. I was like, wow, we don’t have a whole lot to talk about here. We don’t have a whole lot in common.

I think I needed to start getting some new friends. And that was hard. That was a hard transition to go through, where I started, you know, have to kind of find new people to hang around with and stuff like that. But listen, here’s what I’m trying to say. If there are people in your life, who don’t support you fully, who aren’t on board with your health and fitness goals, they don’t want you to lose weight. They make fun of you for eating the way you do.

You know, you go out to dinner, and you’re like, oh, no, thanks. I’m not going to have the bread. And they’re like, what seriously? Or if you don’t drink, and they’re like making fun of you for not drinking and trying to push drinks on you or something like that? Are these people really your friends? Do you really want to spend more time with these people? Think about that.

Do you want to spend more time with those people? And if the answer is no, then don’t. Like if you can avoid it, like don’t spend time with those people. Maybe you need some new friends, new friends are great. It’s great having new friends. And then here’s a good reality check for you, just understand that people already don’t like you.

There are already lots of people out there who don’t like you who don’t like me. And you cannot make anyone like you. You certainly can’t make everyone like you. So if you think that everybody in your world, in your sphere of influence, all your friends and friends of friends and everything is going to like you, you’re mistaken, because they already don’t.

You can’t control what other people think, or say or feel or what they do. All you can control is how you think, feel and act. That’s it. So don’t worry about any of that stuff. Don’t worry about the fact that there are people who don’t like you, like those people, just there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s nothing you can do about it. Okay?

Do not let your fear of being criticized or judged, stop you from becoming the person you want to be. You know what it takes to grow, evolve and become more? It takes trying hard things, and maybe failing and risking criticism all along the way. It takes being willing to be vulnerable, because vulnerability is the cost of growth.

So how willing are you to put yourself out there and possibly be criticized to be seen maybe for the first time ever to be really seen to be judged? How willing are you to be criticized because there’s no way you’re going to do great things and become more without judgment, criticism. In fact, the more you achieve, the more you are going to be criticized.

So most people are not willing to do this. Most people just want to say stay small, they want to stay unnoticed. Because their fear of being criticized or judged is too big. So they want to stay and be criticized and judged. People already see you though, they’re already judging you whether or not you know it. They’re already criticizing you, whether they say it out loud or not. So you might as well do your thing and like kick some ass along the way. Okay.

I get criticized pretty regularly. And as I get more exposure, more people listen to this podcast and follow me on social media, whatever, I get more criticism. All throughout my weight loss journey. I’ve posted pictures and I’ve shared my story. I’ve shared a lot about myself here on this podcast too. And occasionally, I’ll get some negative comments or like a negative review on iTunes podcast, Apple podcast or whatever.

And I’m gonna go off on a little rant here because the reason I get these I’ll get a one star review and I’m like, what, really on Apple podcasts or Spotify or whatever and I’ll look at the review and it’ll say They like, oh, this guy is just, you know, talking about his coaching program on the podcast. So one star.

You know, listen, I put my heart and soul into this podcast and it takes me hours and hours every single week to do this. And I do it nonstop. I have not missed a week in like three years of doing this. And I made a decision early on in the, whatever journey of this podcast, where I wasn’t going to advertise stuff on this podcast.

So a lot of podcasts you listen to will advertise stuff like every 10 minutes, like you got another ad that pops up, right. I’ve even listened to podcasts where I had to sit through 20 minutes of them advertising different products and stuff, before they actually got into the interview or whatever it is they were going to be talking about. Right? I talk about my program. I do it for like 30 seconds. Have you ever listened to a podcast without advertising? No, there aren’t any, there aren’t any.

It’s like going to the movies and complaining about giving the movie a one star review because they advertise popcorn and coke at the beginning of the movie. Stupid, it’s stupid. I’m tired of it. Alright, so this is my little rant here. I’m in integrity with what I’m doing on this podcast. And I feel really, really good about how I do things here. Okay, so I just wanted to say that okay, I’m done with that now. So I had to be okay.

And I’m okay now with these negative reviews, because for every one like negative I get, I get like 20 or 30 positive reviews, right? So I get criticized, and it’s been one of those processes where early on it kind of stung a little bit. I was like, oh, he’s paying up someone like me, oh, my gosh, what am I doing now? It doesn’t matter.

You know, I get criticized for how I look for pictures, I have people body shaming me, I get body shaming comments from idiots on the internet, I just don’t worry about it, I just blow it off, right? Here’s the important thing. I don’t let the criticism stop me from fulfilling my mission. You know, my mission is to be an example of what’s possible and to inspire you to do the same.

My prime directive is to always become more to always improve myself to grow, evolve, become more, the more I grow. The more criticism I get, the more I put myself out there, the more I am seen, and judged and criticized. But I do not let my fear of this criticism stop me from what I’m doing. I just keep going. So do not let the fear of being seen, judged or criticized stop you from becoming more.

Do not allow your fear of critical criticism to stop you from going after your goals and your dreams. You want to lose weight, you will be criticized. You want to run a marathon, people will judge you for it. You want to stop drinking alcohol, you know, people will see that and they will call you crazy or stupid until you’re no fun anymore or whatever.

Do not let any of this get in your way. Do not let any of this stop you from doing what you know, feels good. What you know it’s right for you. Remember, emotionally evolved people don’t spend time criticizing and judging others. The people who do this are typically people who are not where they want to be. They are definitely afraid to try anything that will cause them to get criticized. They are the crabs in the bucket that will just pull you down.

So stay away from the crabs, get the crabs out of your life, do the things you want to do because they’re important to you. They’re meaningful to you. They cause you to level up, keep digging, keep taking action to fulfill your purpose. And you just have to accept all the criticism and all the judgment along the way. It’s the price you pay to become your most badass self. Cool. All right, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and 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.

115. Overcoming Weight Loss Fears and Insecurities

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When you set out to reach big goals like losing weight and getting fit, you will eventually come face-to-face with all your fears and insecurities. Even just thinking about changing your diet can …

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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 115 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today overcoming weight loss fears and insecurities.

So when it comes to reaching big goals, like losing weight and getting fit, you will eventually come face to face with a bunch of fears and insecurities it’s going to happen. Even just thinking about changing your diet can get you feeling pretty anxious, right?

You might even just say like no thanks to the whole idea. So you don’t have to deal with all the negative stuff that’s bound to come up when you engage in this process.

But I want to offer another approach, I want you to think about what it would feel like to actually deal with all those fears and insecurities instead of trying to avoid them. In this episode, I’m spending some time talking about overcoming these weight loss fears and insecurities.

This is a topic that’s been on my mind a lot lately. And it’s a very powerful thing. It’s a very powerful skill that you can learn if you’re willing to do the work and face your fears head-on.

But first, I wanted to give you a heads up about something cool that’s coming up here. Next week, I am teaching a live workshop, it’s all about how to effectively transform yourself from the inside out into a leaner, stronger, more badass runner, it’s called five simple steps to becoming a leaner, stronger runner.

This will be the most informative and one of the most comprehensive live workshops that I’ve ever taught. I don’t do this kind of thing very often. But I was feeling pretty excited about this topic, and I wanted to share it with you guys.

And I thought, you know, instead of doing a podcast about this, I wanted to teach it live, there’s this real energy when we all get together when we can ask questions, and there’s that interaction. And so it’s gonna be fun, we’re gonna have a good time doing this.

Okay, you’re going to learn how to get leaner, how to become stronger, and how to become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself yet, that is the goal. That’s what I want you to walk away from, with this workshop.

To sign up, just go to runningleancoaching.com/workshop. And it’s next Thursday, the 17th at 8 pm Eastern time. Now I’m going to be doing this a couple more times. I’ll give you more updates on that later.

I can’t really schedule those just yet just because of the whatever scheduling software that I’m using and things like that. So as soon as this one is over, I’ll let you know about that other one that’s coming up, the next one that’s coming up.

So if you can’t make it on the 17th, no worries, I’m gonna give you a couple more opportunities. Cool. If I didn’t mention it, this is free and fun. We’re gonna have fun together. Okay. So to sign up, just go to runningleancoaching.com/workshop, I hope to see you there.

Alright, let’s get into this topic of overcoming weight loss fears and insecurities. This is something that has been on my mind lately, it’s something that I really wanted to take a deep dive into.

Because it’s one of those topics that comes up for every single person, every single person that I work with has this issue come up where they have to deal with the fears and insecurities around their own weight loss journey, whether they can do it or not, you know, whether they have failed in the past or not and all this stuff comes up.

But it’s one of those things that we don’t want to talk about. It’s one of those things we just want to pretend isn’t there. And so what a lot of people do is, you know, they set out to do something like lose weight, you know, they set out to like, make a big lifestyle change like this.

And then all this stuff starts coming up and they just want to avoid it. So it kind of looks like this. Like, let’s say you make a decision that you want to lose some weight. And you embark on some sort of weight loss plan. Like you join a group program, you hire a coach, you know, whatever.

As soon as you decide to make a big change like this, then commit to making that change. That’s when things are gonna start to get all scary for you. Just thinking about changing your diet like making some permanent lifestyle changes, just thinking about it can put you into freakout mode, right?

I want you to know something. There’s nothing wrong with you if this has happened to you or if it’s happening to you right now, this is super normal. It’s just your brain, your brain doing what it does best. It’s trying to keep you safe. It’s trying to keep you comfortable. It’s trying to avoid pain and seek pleasure.

So I want you to do this experiment right now, I just want you to think about this. Think about changing your diet, think about what it would take to lose those 30 pounds or 20 pounds or 50 pounds or whatever it is.

Are you starting to freak out a little bit right now is your heart starting to race orare your palms sweating? If they are, again, this is totally normal. What’s happening here, just thinking about this is starting to put you outside of your comfort zone.

And this idea of getting outside your comfort zone in order to grow in order to become more. Your brain does not like this idea. Your brain wants to keep you safe. That’s what your brain’s job is.

Your brain is sensing something unfamiliar here. It’s sensing something uncomfortable here. It’s sensing something dangerous. It’s not really dangerous. But it feels unfamiliar and uncomfortable. And so your brain is like, get me out of here, and you go into that freakout mode.

This is why most people just don’t ever start. They never even take on the challenge of you know trying to lose weight or get stronger, get fitter, get leaner run faster, whatever it is. Because just thinking about it seems overwhelming, it seems too hard.

You start to have all these fears and insecurities come bubbling up to the surface, you go into freakout mode, and you’re like, haha, I don’t want anything to do with that. So you just stay where you are.

But when you start to make these uncomfortable changes, when you actually start to do this stuff, your brain senses the danger. And then these fears and insecurities are going to start to come up to the surface, okay? And your thoughts and your feelings are going to come up stuff like, this is going to be so hard.

‘I don’t know if I can do this. I’m going to be hungry all the time. What if this doesn’t work for me? I mean, this never worked for me in the past? Well, what’s gonna be different this time? What if I can’t make it last, right? What if I can’t sustain this? What if it’s not something I can do forever? What if I gain the weight back? I’ve never been able to do this before, it’s always been hard for me. I know I’m going to fail. People are going to judge me, I’m going to lose friends over this.’

And on and on and on. Like, we can just go into this mode of like, thinking about all the insecurities and all the fears and all the anxiety that we have around this topic of wanting to get healthy and do something good for ourselves. And all these thoughts begin to dominate your brain.

And honestly, this is why most people just won’t even start there. It’s just too much for them. There’s too much fear and insecurity there. And the funny thing is they haven’t even done anything yet they haven’t even started.

You’re just like thinking about this and all this stuff comes up. Okay, they haven’t even actually begun the work, they haven’t started changing their habits, they haven’t done anything differently other than just like had these thoughts. So you can see how detrimental this can be for you. Right.

So I’m going to talk about this in two ways. What I’m talking about right now, this is like part one of this because before you even begin the process before you even embark on your weight loss journey before you actually start making any changes, all this stuff’s gonna come up for you.

Right, just thinking about it, all this stuff’s gonna come up for you. So this is kind of like the first part of this, okay? The negative thoughts will come up to the surface, and they can just completely stop you in your tracks, they can keep you from doing anything at all keep you from taking any action keep you from making any progress keep you from ever embarking on this journey.

It’s kind of like, hey, I talk to people all the time who are like, I’d love to run a marathon someday, but I’m too afraid it’s gonna be too hard. The training’s going to be hard, I’ve never been able to run that far before. I just don’t know.

And so they just say, you know, maybe that’s just not for me, and they just don’t do it. Deep down inside, they want that for themselves. But all this stuff is coming up. Before they even get into it.

They haven’t even looked at a training plan. They haven’t started doing the work to start training for a marathon. And they’re already like, convinced they can’t do it. This is what I call pre-failing, right? You’re pre-failing, you’re failing ahead of time. Don’t do that. Don’t do that. Okay.

But this stuff just like thinking about it is going to bring up all this stuff. And you know whether or not you can lose weight, how hard it’s going to be all that. All those thoughts are going to come up. And you’ve got to be careful not to get mired down by all that stuff. It’s just a bunch of negative self-talk, right?

You have to override your brain’s natural functions, you have to override your brain’s default behavior here, right, you’re going to experience some of those thoughts, you’re going to experience some of that fear and some of those insecurities.

But that does not mean you don’t start. It doesn’t mean you can’t do it. You can. You have to feel the fear and do it anyway. You have to understand that in order to make big changes, like to your health and fitness, you’re going to get uncomfortable, it’s going to be uncomfortable, you’re going to have to embrace the suck, okay.

And this is what it means to override your brain’s default functioning, right, you’re still going to have the fears, you’re still gonna have these insecurities. But you move forward anyway. And this takes courage, and it takes determination and discipline.

But this is the work that you have to do if you want more for yourself. And remember, courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is having the fear, doing the thing anyway, and showing up. Think about a warrior going into battle.

The warrior going into battle is not lacking fear, they have the fear. But they put on their armor, they grab their shield and their sword, and they head into the melee. They embrace the discomfort, they embrace the fear, they do it anyway. It’s not a lack of fear. It’s action in the face of fear. That’s what courage is.

Okay, so part one is all the stuff that’s going to come up when you just start thinking about this right. And before you even get started.

Part two of this process is all the stuff that actually comes up when you stop using food as an emotional management tool. Because when you’re using food, to avoid feeling negative emotions, as soon as you stop doing that, all those negative emotions are going to be right there. Yay.

So all the fear and the stress and the anxiety and the anger and the frustration and all that stuff that you’ve been avoiding. By eating food, now you got to deal with all that stuff. So this is kind of part two of this when you start changing your diet, and you start and you stop using food as a way of coping with life and with stress and with feelings and sadness, and loneliness, or whatever it is you’re experiencing.

When you stop doing that, all that stuff’s gonna come up for you. Okay? All of those same, like negative self-talk, things are going to come up for you except now, you’re not using food as a way of stuffing that down. You’re not using food as a way of dealing with those difficult emotions. So now you’ve got to start feeling your feelings.

And if you’ve never done this before, I’m going to tell you right now, you are not going to like it. Isn’t that awesome? Most people do not like feeling their emotions, not the difficult ones anyway, people don’t mind feeling happy and joyful, excited and loved and stuff like that.

But the negative emotions, the ones that we label as negative like anger, sadness, grief, loneliness, hurt, stress, boredom, are all emotions that we experience, people do not like to feel those things. So what do they eat instead? You know, and some people drink.

Some people just scroll through Instagram mindlessly for hours on end. Some people drink alcohol, some people shop, we do all these things, to try to dull the feelings that we’re experiencing. So we don’t have to feel those things, right we have we are trying to do all these difficult emotions. So you eat.

Instead, you use food to feel better. And listen, it kind of works temporarily, like you get a hit of dopamine. Those pleasure centers in your brain, they get all lit up. And it feels good for a minute, and the strategy of like, eating instead of feeling your feelings, kind of works for a minute.

That doesn’t make you feel better, but only for a minute. It’s very, very brief, very temporary. Once that sugar buzz wears off, or you know, whatever you’ve been eating, all those emotions you’re trying to avoid, they just come back. Plus you get the added benefit of like feeling terrible because you went off your plan and you ate a bunch of junk food and you feel bad about that and you still have those other emotions.

And so what do you do then? You just eat more to try to make yourself feel better and it’s a vicious cycle. It’s never-ending, you’re constantly eating your feelings, trying to avoid your feelings, eating more, feeling bad about yourself, beating yourself up feeling even worse. So then you eat more, and on and on and on, rinse and repeat forever.

So what you’re doing here is you’re just postponing the whole process of actually dealing with your emotions, what you have to do is deal with the emotions, eventually, right, you have to do something about this, right? You’ve got to feel those feelings.

So you’ve set out on your weight loss journey, and you’re no longer using food as an emotional management tool. Awesome. That is good. But now, all your fears and insecurities come up. And you have to finally deal with all of that. This is when the real work begins.

Because if you can get good at handling all of the negative emotions that come up, when you stop eating your feelings, I’m telling you, you can handle just about anything, you become a total emotional badass.

By the way, we’re having some really cool conversations about this in the coaching group right now, this month, we’re talking all about overcoming emotional eating for good, and we’re taking a kind of deep dive into this topic.

And I was talking to one of my clients yesterday about this, and she was like, she didn’t realize what she was doing was emotional eating. So we have this vision in our heads of what emotional eating is.

And it’s like, you know, somebody’s like, in bed with the covers around them with a half-gallon of ice cream and a spoon crying, you know, like, that’s not really the what emotional eating looks like for most people.

And so this person was like, “I’m not an emotional eater, you know, but I’ll tell you, I had a really stressful day at work. And you know, I eat when I get stressed out like that, you know, I just go for potato chips, and you know, all these nuts and stuff, and I just can’t stop, I just, you know, it feels better.”

And I said, “Well, that’s emotional eating stress is just a feeling right?”

When you’re stress eating, it’s emotional eating, or you’re eating because you’re bored. That’s emotional, eating out of boredom, feeling bored is just a feeling. It’s an emotion. And so anytime you use food to try to dull whatever emotion you’re feeling, that’s emotional eating, okay?

So the process of overcoming your fears and insecurities around weight loss is actually dealing with your emotions. That’s what it is. That’s the process. That’s how you do it.

You actually have to embrace feeling your emotions, you have to feel your feelings, it means you have to learn how to sit with your feelings, without doing anything to change them. Without doing anything to make them go away. Just feel your feelings.

Does this sound terrible to you? It does for a lot of people. And I used to be this way too. I was like, I don’t want to feel my feelings. So ever since I was a kid, I’m very sensitive. I was a very sensitive kid, I’m still a very sensitive person.

And I used to feel things very deeply, I still do. You know, I had a very acute sense of these emotions, right? I’m just a sensitive person. So when I stopped using food, and alcohol, to numb myself to my feelings, I had to deal with that stuff, right?

I couldn’t handle feeling those negative emotions. So I would eat and drink over them, you know, I drank a lot. So I didn’t have to feel those things. I ate a lot. But then I stopped doing that at some point. And I couldn’t handle the intensity of my emotions.

And so I would freeze, I would withdraw, I would act very passive-aggressive, you could ask both of my ex-wives about this, they can attest to this. But eventually, I had to learn how to deal with all of these emotions that I was experiencing, without using food or alcohol or scrolling through Instagram or whatever.

And I did, I’ve gotten really good at sitting with my emotions and just letting them be there. And letting them sort of process through and not trying to make them go away. Not trying to change them. Not trying to squash them down. Just walking around, feeling my feelings.

And I have to tell you, my emotions are very manageable now. I don’t feel them as intensely as I used to because I’m just allowing them to be there. I’m not trying to make them go away. I’m not trying to change anything. And I don’t have to eat over them.

You know, I can still feel things intensely sometimes, but it’s not a problem for me. I don’t see like having a feeling is like an emergency that I have to fix. And I want you to know this is available for you, you just have to start practicing actually feeling your feelings, right.

Embrace the discomfort of having an emotion without doing anything to change it without eating over it. And just letting it be there. And I have to say this goes for you guys too. Like dudes are generally like, “Really, feel your feelings? Come on, bro. No thanks, don’t I just need to like man up and grow a pair?”

No, this is actually a very powerful skill that we are, none of us are taught men and women alike. We are not taught how to do this. And if you’re a dude, and you’re listening to this right now, I promise you that when you get good at just dealing with your feelings and actually experiencing them and processing them, this is a pretty badass skill.

It’s a badass skill that you have to get good at if you want to accomplish really anything in your life. Because when you do this, men and women, when you do this when you get good at handling your emotions and dealing with them. There’s like nothing you can’t do.

When you’re no longer afraid to feel your feelings, to experience your insecurities. Oh my god is what it means to be free. You have total freedom from emotional eating, you’re in control again.

And I promise you, you can lose a lot of weight this way. And you can keep it off for good. And I say this all the time – losing weight, getting healthy, getting stronger, running faster, all of it. It’s an inside job, right? You have to commit to doing this work.

Because this is how you accomplish big goals like losing weight. This is how you accomplish big goals like getting healthier, getting stronger, and making it last for life. This is how you become that badass that I know you want to be cool. And remember that if you’re ready to overcome your fears and insecurities around losing weight and make it last for life.

If you’re ready to learn the simple steps to becoming a leaner stronger runner then you have to come check out this free live workshop next week, March 17. To sign up just go to runningleancoaching.com/workshop.

I would love to see you there. I promise you’re gonna learn a lot. And we’re gonna have some fun together. Cool. All right, 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

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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 …

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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 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.

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17. Making Peace With Uncertainty

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There's a lot of uncertainty happening in our lives right now. Are we going to get sick? Will someone we know get sick? Do I still have a job? Will my 401k ever recover? How are we going to pay the …

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Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.

Well, hey there, and welcome to The Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. I’m your host and the life coach for runners. And I teach runners like you how to stop struggling and start getting the results that you want in your life. And that’s what I’m doing here on the podcast, I want to teach you how to manage your mind and take back control of your life. So you can stop overeating, or quit drinking, or stop feeling so unsure of yourself all the time.

I want to teach you how you can start achieving more and start becoming the badass runner that you were always meant to be. Listen, you get to choose, you decide who you want to be. So start making better decisions. Alright, today I’m talking about making peace with uncertainty. And this is kind of a follow up to a recent podcast that I did called how to manage your mind during uncertain times. And that’s episode number 11.

And to find that, you can just go to therunningmindpodcast.com/11. And you can actually find all the episodes that way, just go to the running mind podcast.com/ and then whatever number of the podcast. So for instance, this is podcast number 17. But anyway, in that episode, I talked about how your thoughts cause your feelings, and how you can take ownership of those thoughts so you can feel better and choose how you want to show up in your life, especially during this global pandemic during this global crisis that we are all involved in right now.

So today, I want to take a little deeper dive specifically into this issue of uncertainty because this has been coming up a lot. Lately, I hear a lot of people talking about how uncertain things are. You know, I hear people saying like, am I gonna get sick? Well, somebody I know gets sick. We don’t want our business, our business is going to have to reopen again. I gotta get my hair and my nails done, we’re gonna get back to running with my group. Will my 401k ever recover?

Well, all my races will be canceled this year. Well, I have a job. How am I gonna pay the rent? You know, what do we do about all this homeschool time? When are things gonna get back to normal? When are we gonna be able to buy toilet paper again? So there’s all this uncertainty, all these thoughts about uncertainty. And when we think all these thoughts, and think about all of this uncertainty, how is that affecting us?

Well, it’s creating a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety, stress, worry, doubt. All of these thoughts, these thoughts about the future is uncertain, are causing all of these unwanted feelings inside of us. And we’re making ourselves miserable. Why do we do this? And then what happens when we think these thoughts and we feel all this fear and stress and anxiety like we feel all these unwanted feelings? What do we do? You know, how do we behave?

What actions are we taking when we feel this way? Well, for a lot of us, we go to the fridge, you know we eat over it, we drink a lot more. We veg out in front of the TV, we just want to numb out you know, maybe we get angry, we yell at the kids, we have a fight with our husband. Or maybe for some of us we just don’t do anything at all. We just sort of check out, we avoid and ignore and just check out completely, ignore everyone and ignore everything.

So how is all this working out for you? You know if this is you, if any of this resonates with you at all, how’s this working out for you result? What results are you getting from taking these actions or not taking any action? Probably terrible results.

You know, I know a lot of people are gaining weight. They feel hungover all the time. They’re not getting enough sleep. You know, they’re not getting any work done. Their kids are afraid of them. Their husband doesn’t want to talk to them. Work sucks. Running sucks. Life sucks. And then you can say see because of all this uncertainty, my life sucks.

All this uncertainty is making me eat too much. It’s making me drink too much and making me angry all the time. This damn coronavirus lock down is making my kids and my husband hate me. You get the exact results that you are focused on. When your thinking is terrible, you feel terrible. And you take terrible actions and you get terrible results. Your results are always directly related to your thoughts.

But here’s the truth that so many of us are not seeing right now. Life is always uncertain. Your life has always been 100% uncertain, your future is always uncertain. There’s no such thing as certainty, ever. It’s a myth. Actually, that’s not entirely true. There are two things that are certain number one, you are a human being alive on the planet Earth right now. And number two, you will die. These two things are certain. But only these two things.

Everything else is uncertain. It’s unknown, everything else is up for grabs. Now think about it this way. Think back to a few months ago. Were you certain about what you’d be doing right now? My guess is you probably felt pretty certain about where you’d be right now. You are probably you’d have, if somebody asked you three, four months ago, you’re probably you know, very certain that you’d be like running your spring marathon right now, maybe even this weekend, you’d be going to work every day, you’d be making the same amount of money, you’d be paying your mortgage just like normal.

You might have been going on that vacation, or at the very least going out to dinner with friends and hanging out at Starbucks, having a coffee. But guess what? You are wrong about all that. You thought you had all this certainty, but it’s just an illusion. The truth is, life is always uncertain.

And I’ve experienced this profoundly lately, if you’d asked me five or six months ago, where I’d be today, I would have told you with 100% certainty that I’d be married, I’d still be living with my wife. I’d be running with my friends, I’d be coaching the running group, I’d be getting ready for the Flying Pig this weekend.

I’d be working my day job, I’d be going out for coffee and dinner with friends, I’d be working out at the gym. And all of that would have been dead wrong. You know, today I’m separated from my wife, I’m living alone in my own place. I’m about to get divorced. I’m not running with friends. I’m not coaching the training group, there are no training groups, there is no spring marathon.

My job, my day job has been canceled. Two, the gyms are closed, the restaurants are closed. There’s a global pandemic and I have to wear a face mask every time I go to the grocery store. I never in a million years would have predicted any of this stuff. All of this is 100% different than what I thought my life was going to be like.

I was so certain about everything, so certain about what things were gonna look like today, and I was wrong. And here’s what you have to wrap your head around, your life is always uncertain. We have no idea what’s going to happen three months from now or three weeks from now or even three days from now. And all the worrying about the future, all the fear, the anxiety, the stress, it’s making us miserable.

We need to accept the fact that life is uncertain. We need to make peace with all of this uncertainty. And we need to acknowledge and accept that there is no such thing as certainty ever. There never was, and there never will be. So stop thinking and worrying about your future. It’s not serving you. It’s making you miserable and your life sucks because of it.

Start accepting that life is uncertain and then move on. It’s like start practicing radical acceptance of everything that’s happening around you. And then get on with living your life right here and right now. Now, I’m not suggesting that you don’t plan anything for the future ever. Just give up on your dreams and goals. Not at all. Make your plans, set your goals. Keep the dream alive.

Get your training plan together, visualize the future that you want and go after that. But just know that anything could happen between now and then. And you have to be able to roll with it. So by all means, prepare, plan, schedule, but then be ready to go with the flow. Life is always uncertain, you have to make peace with the uncertainty.

If you’re constantly thinking the thought like life is uncertain, and all these terrible things might happen to me and my family. Thinking this thought over and over and over again. It’s going to cause all kinds of internal misery, misery, the fear, the anxiety, the stress, the worry, the doubt, thinking these thoughts constantly is going to cause you so much internal suffering. Because what you’re doing is you’re trying to control your future. And it doesn’t work. It never works. It just creates a lot of inner turmoil.

So how about trying on a new thought like, life is always uncertain. And no matter what it brings, I can handle it, bring it on. Damn. How do you think you’d feel if you focused on this thought over and over again? You’d probably feel a lot more secure, confident and at peace with what is you wouldn’t have all this internal suffering and be a better human to be around, you know.

You’d get more done, you’d be able to show up for your work and be able to show up for your kids for your husband, be a lot happier. Listen, when you can manage your thoughts, you create so much inner peace. All this uncertainty just becomes a part of your life, it doesn’t matter anymore. You can be at peace with all of it. You can handle any curve balls that life throws at you, you can become a real mental badass.

Lose your job, no big deal. I’ll find another one. Maybe even a better one. Wife wants a divorce. No problem, I’ll find another one. Maybe even a better one. Unsure of how you’re going to pay the rent this month? I got it. I’ll figure it out. I always do. I’m super creative. I’m tenacious, I’m driven. I got this. This is such a powerful concept.

I hope you’re grasping this. And you can apply this to everything in your life. No matter what the circumstances out there, whatever’s going on outside of you around you always know that the future is always uncertain. And if you just accept this fact, and make peace with the uncertainty, there’s nothing that you can’t do.

You know, think about this, what could you accomplish, if you just stopped trying to predict and control the future and just accepted all of it. And then you did your best, you showed up, you suit it up and you did your best no matter what. My guess is that you’d be a lot happier, your life would be a lot less stressful, you’d probably be a lot more fun to be around, you’d get more done, you’d probably sleep better.

The choice is yours. You always get to choose. You can keep trying to predict, control everything in the future, live in a state of constant worry and anxiety and fear and suffering. Or you can make peace with all of it. Make peace with the uncertainty, practice radical acceptance of all of it. And then live your life fully, show up every day more confidently knowing that no matter what happens today, tomorrow, six months from now that you got this you can handle all of it.

There’s nothing you can’t do. There’s nothing that will phase you. There’s nothing you can’t handle. Bring it on. Okay. That’s all I got for you today. I wanted to make this short and sweet. I want to leave you with that. Okay, and I’d love to hear what you think about this. Did you love it? Did you hate it? Are you confused? You have questions? Reach out anytime. hello@innerfiretribe.com. And much love to you my friends. I’ll see you soon.

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