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Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

Negative Thinking

120. How to Fail Properly

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Failure. It’s such a negative word, isn’t it? What do you think of when you hear the word “failure”? If you’re like most people, you probably think of something you tried but were not …

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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 120 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today how to fail properly. Failure. It’s such a negative word, isn’t it? What do you think of when you hear the word failure?

If you’re anything like most people, you probably think of something you tried, but then were not successful. It didn’t work, you failed. And then it brings up all these feelings like disappointment, regret, and defeat. failure means you’ve been defeated, you lost it’s over the end, right?

But what if there was a totally different way to think about failure? What would it look like if you learned how to fail properly. And that’s what I’m talking about here on the podcast today. So get ready to learn a whole new way to look at failure, what failing means and how to fail properly.

And before I get into this topic, today, I wanted to share a quick story about someone I’m working with. This person came to me as a runner, wanting to lose weight around 20 pounds or so. And he had tried everything on his own and just couldn’t do it. And in the five weeks that we’ve been working together, he’s lost over 14 pounds. And that’s a lot of weight. And it’s not really uncommon.

Okay, it’s well, within the range of average weight loss of like one to three pounds per week seems to be pretty average for most people that I work with. The reason I bring this up is because of something he said to me on our call the other day. And I’m paraphrasing here, I didn’t you know, write down everything exactly, as he said.

But he basically said, ‘You know, I’m super happy with this weight loss, I haven’t been this weight and over 30 years, I feel so good. I’m getting stronger running is getting easier every day. But the thing that surprised me the most is all the stuff I’m learning about myself. I’ve really changed my mindset about food and exercise and running and everything. And I’m feeling so much better about myself, I don’t have all those intense cravings to eat junk food anymore, I’m feeling much more confident, I’m standing taller and carrying myself better.’

And I just want to say that I’m so proud of this person for doing the work. Because this is not easy stuff to do. Not everyone is willing to commit, not everyone is willing to put in the effort and actually show up and do this work every day. Not everybody sticks to their plan. But when you do, that’s when the good stuff happens. It does work if you show up and do the work.

So if you’d like to experience the same kind of results, then I want to invite you to apply for coaching with me. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. When you get on that page, you can fill out a short application and then schedule a free zoom call with me and we’ll talk about your goals.

And we’ll talk about how coaching works and how coaching can help you reach those goals. I would love for you to experience these same kinds of changes for yourself. If you’re ready for some realistic lifestyle changes for mindset shifts, and you’re ready to get some sustainable results. Then I think you’re ready for coaching. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply to get started.

Alright, let’s talk about how to fail properly. So why am I bringing this up today? Well, I work with a lot of people and sometimes I see people that experience a failure of some sort and then give up. I’ve seen some examples of this lately, where someone has embarked on their weight loss journey and maybe experienced some sort of a failure or a setback.

You know, maybe they hit a stall like so their weight. They were losing weight pretty steadily but then their weight loss sort of stalled out. They hit what’s called a plateau which is super common. In fact, I’ve almost never seen it not happen or maybe they’ve gained a couple of pounds back.

And so they start slipping back into old behaviors. And the reason people do this is because they get frustrated. And when you get frustrated, what do you do, you want to go eat some food to feel better, right? But what happens internally is these, some people like they tell themselves, I have failed, I am a failure, this program, this diet, this food plan, whatever it is, isn’t working. So they quit. They give up, they see failure as the end.

And this is not some fringe thing. I see this all the time, mostly not from my clients, to be honest with you. Because if you’re one of my clients, if you’re one of the members of my program, you’re not allowed to quit. And I’ll talk more about this later. But I see it’s super common in the weight loss industry in general, in the health and fitness industry in general.

My training coach, and I, my weightlifting coach, and I were talking about this the other day, he sees a lot of times with people who are, you know, wanting to get fit. And so they start lifting weights, and they start getting healthier. And then, you know, maybe they just kind of stall out or they have a bad workout, or they’ve experienced some sort of a setback, maybe they get sick, and then they just quit, they just stopped coming back to the gym, they just give up.

So I’m going to go so far as to say that here in the Western world, this is kind of an epidemic. All right, I think that we’re taught at an early age, that the worst possible thing that we can do is to fail at something, you know, you better do well, in third grade, or you’ll fail, and we’re gonna hold you back. And this means that you don’t measure up, you’re not good enough, you are a failure.

And a little sidebar here, I think we need to do a better job of teaching kids that failure is not the end, it’s just part of the process of learning. I don’t think this whole grading system and failing kids and things like that is really working very well, I think it just puts a lot of pressure on kids, kids are filled with fear and anxiety about failure, and I think there’s a better way to do it. But that’s for another topic.

But we as adults need to understand the same thing. We need to understand that failure is just part of how we learn and how we grow, how we evolve, and how we become more. But we get it in our heads that failure is the end. So even as old wise adults, we need to learn how to fail properly because we never have. So that’s what we’re talking about here today.

So let’s get into this a little bit like what is failure? Exactly. If you look up the dictionary definition of failure, it says: an act or instance of failing or proving unsuccessful, lack of success, that’s all it means is lack of success. And I always add the phrase “for now” at the end of that. So failure to me is a lack of success right now.

Doesn’t mean lack of success forever, it just means that whatever you’re doing didn’t work big up. Notice it doesn’t say a lack of success forever. And it’s the end of your journey. It’s not the end. One story I love about failure is the story of Stephen King.

So Stephen King is one of my favorite authors. And I remember in high school and after high school reading, just like every one of his books, you know, I was kind of hooked on Stephen King at the time. And I love that kind of writing. Now you may not enjoy his particular style of writing or his subject matter, you know, kind of gruesome and horror-type stuff, but I enjoy it.

I think it’s really fun to just get lost in these crazy, supernatural stories. But anyway, the first manuscript that he wrote was Carrie, and he submitted this to publishers trying to get this book published, right. And he took it to like 30 different publishers and was rejected every time he was rejected over 30 times for this manuscript of Carrie.

One of the rejection letters that he received said, we are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias, they do not sell. And he eventually took that manuscript and threw it in the garbage. He was like, this is the end screw it. I’m not going to keep trying. I’ve tried 30 times and failed 30 times.

But his wife convinced him to try again and she like, dug it out of the garbage, I guess. And he was, you know, he resigned himself to just keep trying. And he did. And of course, he eventually sold it. And he’s become one of the most popular and successful writers of our time. To date, he’s the only author to have over 30 books become number one bestsellers. That’s crazy.

But what if he gave up? What if, after one of those failures, or 9 or 21 of those failures, he just said, you know, screw it, I’m not doing this anymore, and just quit writing, he would never experience the kind of success he did. So I love that story of failure, it does not mean it’s the end, it just means it’s the end for now.

And I like to use this analogy of failure as like, imagine yourself being an airplane pilot, and you’re flying a commercial airliner from LA to New York. So you plot your course and you take off and everything’s looking good. And you’re flying through the air, everything’s like smooth sailing, but then you like, realize there’s this big storm ahead, you know, a huge storm.

And you’d have to make a decision of what you’re gonna do. Do you just quit? Do you like land the plane and say, sorry, there’s a storm in our way. There’s a big obstacle in our path we just can’t go on? Or do you go around it? You know, it’s going to take longer, you know, it’s not the way it was supposed to go. Things are not going according to plan, but you’re going to make it work, right?

Obviously, you’re going to make it work. You’re just gonna go around the storm, you keep going, right. But what if there was like a mechanical issue with the plane, you had to land it? Okay, now, you’re really off track, you had to actually take the time, you have to land somewhere, you got to sit there and wait for them to check it out. You know? So do you just quit? Do you just give up in that moment?

No, you just keep going. Obviously, as long as there’s nothing terribly wrong, you know, as long as the mechanics check it out, and the plane looks good. Then you get back on it, right, you just get back on track. These failures along the way, though, we look at our own failures as the end like it’s an excuse to give up.

And if you were that pilot, you would never give up, you would just continue, you got a plane full of people, you got to get them safely to their destination, right? Think about your health and fitness journey, your weight loss journey, you want to get to that destination. And so you have to experience a little bit of turbulence, a little bit of rough weather, just expect that on the path. It’s okay. It doesn’t mean it’s the end, it just means that it’s a setback. It’s a detour. All right.

So one thing I love about runners is that they’re already really good at doing this, like you guys, you guys are amazing at experiencing failures in your training. When you’re training for a marathon, you know, you got this 16,18, 20 weeks of training. And I see people all the time experience failures and setbacks and disappointments, you know, you might get injured, and you have to take some time off of running to nurse an injury.

Or maybe you have to travel for work or vacation. And it’s the same week, you’re supposed to be doing like a 20 miler. And so what do you do in those situations? Or maybe you get sick, this has been happening a lot, right? Over the last couple of years, you get sick, and you have to take time off? You know, do you quit?

No, you don’t you keep going and you like you get back at it. As soon as you can you get just pick up where you left off with your training plan, right? You keep training because you have this goal, and it’s important to you to finish that marathon, that’s a priority. And whether you’re traveling or if you’re sick or injured, none of these things are going to derail you from accomplishing that goal, right?

You probably paid for the race. So you have some skin in the game, which helps to drive you forward as well. Right? You’re focused, you’re determined, and you’re not going to allow these failures to stop you. You’re laser-focused on hitting this goal of finishing this marathon, you’re gonna finish that no matter what. Right, that’s amazing, you know, character trait, to have that sort of tenacity to just keep going no matter what.

And it’s really the same with your weight loss journey. But here’s the thing, I see runners all the time who can do this with their running plan, they might get injured, and they just, they do all their physical therapy and they, you know, get back on track, and then they finish that marathon like they are focused on completing that task and that goal.

But when it comes to losing weight, I see people experience some minor setbacks like hey, their weight stayed the same for a couple of weeks in a row and then give up. Like, what if you were as laser-focused on your weight loss as you know, health and fitness goals as you were on finishing that marathon?

What if you never let some little failures along the way stop you from continuing on? What if you took that same all-in attitude about your marathon training, and applied it to losing weight and becoming the most badass version of yourself? What would that look like for you? Would you look at failure differently? What would you do the next time you experienced that weight loss stall or plateau?

Or maybe you gave into a temptation to eat some junk food? Would this mean you can’t do it? And you give up and you just declare this doesn’t work and go back to doing whatever you’ve been doing? Which already, you know, that doesn’t work? I know, it sounds kind of crazy. The way I’m explaining it here, you’re probably thinking to yourself, like, oh, no, of course, I wouldn’t do that.

But this is exactly the thing I see people do all the time. You know, I’ve even talked to people who said they had their diet all dialed in years ago. Like they never felt better. I was at my goal weight. Running was awesome. Everything was amazing. I was eating all this amazing food. But then something happened, something seemed like it wasn’t working. And they gave up.

They experienced some sort of a setback, some sort of a failure, and they quit. And they went back to doing whatever they were used to doing before, which got them kind of overweight in the first place, and blah, blah, blah. I really wished this was an uncommon story. I really wish this was like the exception, but it’s not a people tell me this all the time.

So instead of avoiding failure at all costs, instead of giving up when you experience failure, you have to expect failure. What would that look like for you? Like ehat would it look like if you just expected to fail? I know it sounds like a kind of a crazy concept, right? What if you just expected there to be some turbulence along the way?

What if you just expected to have to, you know, lay in the plane to fix a stabilizer flap. I clearly don’t know much about airplanes. But whatever thing you would need to fix on a plane. Like what if you expected a weight-loss stall or a plateau? And what if you just expected your weight loss journey to take a little bit longer?

Failure is not to be avoided, failure is inevitable, you will fail. So why not embrace it, deal with it, learn from it, and then keep going. You cannot spend all your time trying to avoid failure. If you do, you will never try anything hard, you will never push yourself to accomplish anything more. You won’t ever get out of your comfort zone.

Because when you avoid failure, it keeps you in that comfort zone. But it also keeps you stuck and keeps you small and keeps you from growing and becoming more expected and embracing failure has the opposite effect. It gets you out of your comfort zone and drives you forward toward your goals. It’s how you evolve and grow and become more it’s how you accomplish hard things like losing 20, 30, 50 pounds.

You have to look at failures as stepping stones along your path. If when you fail, it is not the end, every one of these failures you experience is just one more step on the path to your eventual success. So each time you fail, it becomes one more step closer to your goal. And each failure is a chance to learn something. This is the important part of failing you have to learn the lesson from the failure.

You have to learn what works and what doesn’t. And the only way you learn this is by failing because success doesn’t teach you anything. So each failure actually becomes necessary in order to reach your goal. Each failure is one step closer to that goal. So you try something you fail. You learn something, you course correct, then you try again. Boom. Now you’re one step closer to your goal.

Every success is built upon a pile of failures. And no one does anything challenging perfectly. There’s no such thing as success without setbacks and failures along the way. So just expect them to be there. Embrace the failures. If you look at failures, in the end you’re gonna be quitting a lot. You’re gonna be quitting everything you ever start.

Are you the kind of person that quits things a lot? it’s probably because you look at failures, the end, failure is never the end, it’s just another step closer to becoming who you really want to be. So when you embrace failure, this means that you’re going to try things that might not work. And this is a scary thing for a lot of people.

Well, what if it doesn’t work? Who cares? A lot of people just use this as an excuse to quit or not even start something, because what they’re gonna do, you know, what they’re setting out to do is hard, it’s uncomfortable. And I get that doing this work. Like if you’re losing weight, if you want to lose weight and become a leaner, stronger runner, this is not an easy thing to do.

This takes some time, it takes some time to build new habits, it takes some time to learn what works for you. If it was easy, none of us would be overweight, none of us would need help with staying on track. You know, nobody would ever slip into old habits, again, like this would be simple, but it’s not. It’s, it’s it takes some work, I get that right.

In order to change your habits, you have to do things that feel uncomfortable, right? At least at first, once you do things for a while, it gets more comfortable, it gets easier, and all that. But at first, especially it doesn’t feel good. And so a lot of people just use failure as an excuse to quit. So they’re just chasing, they’re chasing after comfort and security, at the cost of their goals, they really want for themselves.

They don’t want to feel uncomfortable. They don’t want to do anything hard. They want more for themselves. But they don’t want to put the time and effort into reaching some people like they don’t want to put the actual effort into doing it. They don’t want to experience the discomfort that is required to reach that goal.

So it’s way easier to just say, you know, this failed, and go back to being comfortable and safe and small and doing all the stuff you used to do. And that’s fine if that’s what you want for yourself. But you’re listening to this podcast right now, I don’t think that’s what you want for yourself.

The people that listen to this podcast, I know you want more for yourself. Like I was saying earlier, this whole idea of like staying small and comfortable, and not wanting to get uncomfortable. I think this is an epidemic. This is like the disease of modern society, at least in the Western world.

Chasing after comfort. Avoiding discomfort at all costs, and avoiding failure at all costs has caused us to become weak and soft and small. And staying safe, and uncomfortable just keeps us from evolving, right? If you want to become badass, you got to embrace discomfort, you got to embrace failure as often as you can, and you got to do stuff that might not work.

Change your diet, sign up for an ultra marathon, start lifting some heavy-ass weights, guess what, you’re gonna try these things. And you might fail, you probably will fail, Big whoop. Learn from it. Try something else and try it again. Do not give up on yourself just to be comfortable. Because I know you’re capable of so much more.

You may not believe that about yourself. But I know that about you, you’re capable of so much more than you give yourself credit for. Most of us are only living up to about 40% of our actual potential increase that goes beyond 40%.

And the last thing I want to say about all this is probably one of the most important things that I want you to take away from this episode. And that is that any time you fail, and if you’re following my lead here, and you’re kind of doing what I’m suggesting here, you will fail maybe a lot.

Anytime you fail, it does not mean anything about you, it does not mean that you are a failure. When you try something and fail, it’s really easy to fall into that trap of thinking that you are a failure. feeling like a failure is really caused by a lot of negative thinking. And if you feel like you’re a failure, that’s an internal state caused by your thoughts about what this failure means about you.

So feeling like a failure is just an emotional state that you’re in. And emotional states are just caused by your thoughts. Okay. So just know that you are never a failure. The reason you feel this way is just you’re projecting that onto yourself. You are an amazing human being. You’re capable of greatness. You are perfect just the way you are right now. Yeah, you can still work to change yourself but that does not mean that you are a failure just because you tried something and it didn’t work does not mean that you are a failure.

You analyze your results. You try something else. And you see if that works, but you are never a failure. Do things that are hard, try things that may not work, fail, fail often fail fast. But none of this means anything about you as a person, it does not mean that you are a failure. You’re amazing.

So, your call to action this week, what I want you to do, is I want you to allow failure. Allow it to become part of your health and fitness journey. Allow it to become part of your weight loss journey. Try things that may not work. Get out of your comfort zone. Stop expecting your life to be failure-free and there’s no such thing as a failure-free life. So embrace failure.

Try something hard fail, learn from it course correct, then keep going. Rinse and repeat until you hit your goal. Cool. And remember, if you’re ready to make realistic lifestyle changes, mindset shifts and get sustainable results. Then you’re ready for coaching. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply to get started. Love you all keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

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

116. The One Big Mindset Shift You Have to Make

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If you want to lose weight and be able to keep it off for good, you have to shift your mindset. I think you probably know this by now since I talk about it all the time. But there’s a reason why …

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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 116 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, the one big mindset shift you have to make. If you want to lose weight and be able to keep it off for good, you have to shift your mindset. I think you probably know this by now since I talk about it all the time here on the podcast.

But there’s a reason why I spend so much time on this subject. It’s because it’s one of the most important factors in whether or not you keep the weight off permanently, getting leaner and stronger. It’s mostly an inside job, right? So today I’m going to share with you perhaps the biggest mindset shift you have to make if you want to create healthy new habits that last for life.

But first, I want to give you guys a quick little FYI. So you may have heard a short little podcast episode that I released accidentally. A couple of days ago, this was a message I was sending to my private coaching clients. So I have another private podcast feed that’s just for my private coaching clients.

And I record trainings and I record group coaching calls, and I released those on a private podcast so that my coaching clients can listen to those things after the fact. You know, maybe they weren’t able to make a group coaching call live. And so they can listen to the replays.

Well, the way that I do my podcasts is I have this program that I use that basically has two boxes that are right next to each other and one of them is for this live public podcast that goes out to the whole world. And then right next to it, there’s another box that’s like for just my private coaching clients.

And every time I put out an episode for my private clients, I’m always like, Okay, did I do this right? Am I in the right box? Because I know one of these days, I’m going to make a mistake. And sure enough, I was just in a hurry yesterday, or whatever I did this couple of days ago. And I was like, cool. it’s all good, publish it.

And I started getting these emails from people like, Hey, I hear you’re, you’re going away with this podcast like you’re not going to be doing it anymore. Where’s it going to be? I didn’t get an email. Because in this in this message I send out I’m changing my platform for the private podcast because I don’t want to make these kinds of mistakes in the future, right?

Anyway, I totally screwed up, I put it out in the wrong place. So if you received that podcast where I was like, hey, this is going away, you got to check your email to find out where to get the new podcast. That was all just a mistake, it was intended to just go out to my coaching clients, so you can just disregard it.

Nothing’s changing here on the Running Lean podcast at all. It’s still gonna be right here while you normally listen, you don’t have to do anything differently. Nothing’s changing. And I apologize for any of the confusion. But technology, am I right?

And then I wanted to give you guys a quick heads up that I’ve got a live workshop coming up again next week. So it’s five simple steps to becoming a leaner, stronger runner. And listen, you may have already tried everything to lose weight. But what you’ve already tried probably doesn’t work. And it’s not that you’re a bad person or you lack willpower. You’ve just been given a lot of bad advice, right? So using willpower doesn’t work. Fad diets don’t work. Counting calories doesn’t work.

You’ve heard me talk about all this stuff before, right? Deprivation and starvation don’t work, running more miles doesn’t work. So what does work well? Understanding how habits actually work in the science of making habit change permanent that works.

A personalized approach to support both your weight loss and your running goals – that works. And what you need is a comprehensive plan of action that works on the mental emotional and physical changes required so you can absolutely lose weight and keep it off for good. You just need the right information.

And that’s exactly what you’re going to learn in this free workshop. You’re going to learn how to get leaner become stronger and transform yourself into the healthiest and most badass version of yourself yet. To sign up for this free workshop just go to runningleancoaching.com/workshop.

And I’m going to give you guys a couple more opportunities, I’m doing this three times. So the first one was March 17. And that would be yesterday if you’re listening to this podcast today, the day that it comes out. The next one is going to be Thursday, March 24. And then I’ll do another one the following Thursday. So if you can’t make it, this one time, that’s fine. Look, go for the next one.

And listen, we’re gonna have fun together, okay, it’s live. It’s interactive, you get to ask questions. And we’re going to try to have some fun doing this stuff. This, this topic of like, getting healthier and getting stronger and losing weight. It doesn’t have to be like suffer-fest. We don’t have to take ourselves too seriously. We can have fun doing this. Right? Cool. All right.

So today, the one big mindset shift that you have to make. So let me ask you this question. How is your mindset different? Think about that. Do you ever spend any time thinking about how your mindset is actually determining everything that you get in your life? No. Okay, that’s cool. That’s why I’m talking about this here today.

The truth is, most people do not spend any time thinking about this. Most people just think that the way that they think is like their thoughts, the way they feel their emotional state, all this stuff is just fixed. And it cannot be changed. Like you’ve been programmed like an android, to have certain thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about yourself, and that they are just permanently fixed. And there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s it. This is who you are. This is what you think. These are the things that you believe, good luck with your semi-human existence robot.

You are not a robot, your mindset is not fixed. You can absolutely change your mindset at any time, then this is the first thing I want you to understand here today, that your mindset is not fixed, it is changeable. Now, it may feel like it’s not changeable. Because you’ve been thinking the same thoughts, your whole life, maybe over and over again. For decades, you’ve been believing the same things. For those decades, you’ve been feeling the same way.

And so in a way, I mean, you’ve sort of programmed yourself with this current mindset that you have.

And just a little like sidebar here, like what if we are actually all just androids and we’ve programmed ourselves? Hmm. This is like, eerily close to a Philip K. Dick sci-fi story. And if you’re not familiar with Philip K, Dick and who he is, and his work, check out, Blade Runner, The Man in the High Castle, Total Recall, Minority Report, and so on. Awesome, awesome sci-fi writer right here. He talks a lot about androids.

And whether or not, you know, androids can think, and are they actually humans? Are we actually androids? Hmm? Of course, we’re not androids, right? We’re not robots, but we can get ourselves stuck in a fixed mindset. And I want you to know this, that you have the power to change your mindset, always. It may not feel like it, but you do. We have to understand this thing.

Okay, so first of all got to understand that your mindset, the way you think and feel about yourself is changeable. And listen, the reason I talk so much about mindset here on the podcast is that if you want to make big changes in your life like if you want to lose weight and keep it off for good, it’s all about your mindset, right? I’ve talked about this before, what you do, you know, your diet and exercise and things like that. It’s like 20% of the equation, the other 80% is your mindset.

Losing weight, initially is mostly about what you do, like you’ve got to change your diet, right? Keeping it off for good. That’s almost entirely about your mindset because you’ve already figured out what to do you know what to do. It’s all about mindset. And this word, mindset. It’s a huge, huge word. It means so much.

It’s like, all of your thoughts, all of your feelings, all of the things you believe about yourself in the world. It’s your values. It’s your whole attitude, and outlook on life. It’s really how you feel about yourself, how you feel about other people, and how you feel about society. And like it’s huge, right? It’s a huge, huge topic.

And this is why I talked so much about it here on the podcast because there’s so much to it. And I can’t possibly tell you in one podcast episode like everything you need to know about mindset. Okay, so, you know, it would be a really long podcast episode. Maybe I’ll do it someday. Be fun with you guys like that would be fun.

So today, what I want to do is I want to focus on one specific part of your mindset. And this is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful parts of your mindset. And it’s the one part of your mindset that basically drives everything else. Okay? And this one part of your mindset, we call this your identity.

So your identity is who you are, at your core. It’s everything you say, after the words, I am. Like, for me, here are some parts of my identity – I am a man, I am a runner, I am a coach. These are all parts of my identity. This is all part of who I am at my core, how I see myself.

When Darth Vader says to Luke, “I am your father.” He’s speaking from his identity, right? This is who he is at his core, Darth Vader is a father. You know, we think of him as just this evil, you know, villain with no feelings at all. But we have to acknowledge this because his identity is driving his behavior.

And later on, right, he defies the emperor, he saves his son, because, at his core, he’s a father, he can’t kill his own son. You know, and we have, like, empathy for him at the end, sorry, if that’s a spoiler alert if you haven’t seen the Star Wars series already, whatever. And I hope you don’t mind my sci-fi references today. I’m just feeling very sci-fi-ey this morning for some reason.

But listen, your identity, it’s like the root of who you are. Okay. But here’s the thing. And this is the part I mean, that you got to understand, like, you can still change it, you can still change it, even though it’s your identity, and you feel like it’s like fixed and unchangeable, you can still change it.

Think about this, if you’re a mother, and you have kids, like being a mother is part of your identity, right? And it’s probably always going to be part of your identity. And you, you probably wouldn’t want to change that you would want to always be a mother. But even this, which seems like something that is completely fixed can be changed.

So there are some women who, you know, have kids and they give them up for adoption, because they don’t want to be mothers, okay, or whatever reason, right? And that’s okay. So this is even this, like deep-seated part of your identity of like, being a mother can be changed, okay. I just want you to understand this, that your identity is very, very powerful, and changeable, you can change it. And if you want things to be different in your life, then you need to step into a new identity to get there.

You need to assume the identity of someone who is leaner, stronger, and faster, if that’s what you want for yourself. You have to let go of the parts of your identity that are holding you back and keeping you overweight and keeping you stuck there.

So here’s a little bit of a story about me and a big shift that I had to make in my identity. So for a long time there for many years, part of my identity was I am a vegan. And nothing could change that for me.

I had programmed myself with this identity. So everything I did was filtered through the lens of I am a vegan I eat a plant-based diet. Like how I fueled you know how I ate, you know, obviously, but how I feel about running, how I felt about eating animals, what I thought of other people who ate me what restaurants I ate at. The people I spent time with books, I read blogs, I read podcasts, I listened to movies I watched where I shop for food, what kinds of food about everything in my life was driven by this huge part of my identity.

You can see how, what a powerful part of my mindset this was, right? This was who I was at my core, I’m a vegan, this is who I was okay. And I held on to this identity for dear life. For like 10 years, I held on to this part of my identity. I did not waver.

Now, even though at that time, I was not super healthy. I was steadily gaining weight. You know, I couldn’t put muscle on no matter how much I was lifting weights. And this identity that I had and I didn’t realize it at the time. I can see it now but I didn’t realize at the time this identity that I was holding onto so tightly was kind of keeping me stuck. It was keeping me from getting healthier and getting stronger.

That identity was not serving me, it was actually detrimental to my health and my athletic performance, but I would not let go of it. Because at my core, I was like, this is who I am.

So you can see how powerful your identity is how it drives your thoughts, it drives your beliefs, it drives your feelings, it drives your behavior. And ultimately, it drives and determines all the results that you get in your life.

So for me, I had to make a big change. I was getting overweight, I gained like 40 pounds during this process, right. But I just held on to this identity with a death grip, I was like not letting go of it.

And at some point a few years ago, I had to let go of that identity, I had to change my identity from I’m a vegan to I’m a meat-eater. And this was not an easy thing for me to do, you can imagine the internal struggle that I had with this decision. And if you want to learn more about this, I did a whole podcast on this. It’s episode number 32. It’s called Why I Changed My Mind About Eating Meat.

And I want to say this, I have to say this because I know that I’m going to get emails from people about this. But there’s nothing wrong with being vegan. There’s nothing wrong with being plant-based.

If this is you, and you identify this way, and this is part of your identity, and it’s working for you, that’s amazing. It did not work for me, my experience was I was eating a ton of sugar, I was eating a ton of refined carbohydrates, I wasn’t getting enough protein, I wasn’t doing it right.

And today, I have a different attitude about all this, I work with a lot of people who are vegan or vegetarian, and they do amazing, they lose weight, they get stronger, they get healthier. So I know how to do this differently now. But I’ve sort of just let go of that identity of being plant-based and being a vegan, right.

But today, I can help people that have this as part of their identity and as part of their beliefs. And as part of like what they feel is right for them. And that’s totally awesome. I love it. Like whatever diet you choose is fine, as long as it’s working for you.

If you’re slowly gaining weight and becoming unhealthy, and you know, you can’t get strong and things like that we got to change some things, we can still do it, you know, plant-based or vegan, vegetarian, whatever you’d like to do, okay, but what I was doing was not working for me. So I had to make that decision to change for myself and I decided to start eating meat again. And I started to change. And it made a big difference for me, and I got off to sugar and the refined carbs and all that other junk, okay.

But I want you to understand the incredible power of this one mindset to shift your identity, it’s driving all of your thoughts, all of your feelings, it’s driving your values and your beliefs. It’s driving, how you think about yourself, how you feel about yourself, and how you think and feel about the world around you.

Your identity is driving your actions, your behaviors, what you do each day is largely determined by who you are at your core. And all the results that you’re getting in your life are not getting determined by your identity. So everything you say after the words “I am” is going to help to determine what you get in your life. The results you’re getting in your life are mostly determined by your identity, we have to understand this.

So I want to challenge you, I want to challenge you to change those parts of your identity that are not serving you. I want to challenge you to take a look at all the different parts of your identity. And ask yourself, Is this really something that I want to hang on to or not?

Look at who you are and all the deep-seated thoughts and beliefs that you have about yourself? Which of these do you want to keep? Which do you think you want to change? So you might have this deeply held belief that you cannot lose weight? No matter what you do?

Your identity might be “I’m hopeless”, and that’s who you see yourself. And that’s who you are at your core. But is that working for you? Is that serving you? Is this helping you or hurting you? Is it helping you to make progress? Or is it keeping you stuck? “I’m hopeless.” This is probably going to just keep you stuck.

Other identities that you have that you might want to change. “I’m a failure. I never stick to a diet. I’m weak. I have no discipline. I’m not a real runner. I’m too old. I’m too slow. I’m too weak.”

What if all of this was just BS? Like what if all the things you’ve always thought about yourself are wrong? Think about this. The truth is you’re deciding what you believe about yourself. Nobody’s programming you from the outside like you’re doing it yourself.

You get to decide who you are. You get to decide what identity you take on for yourself. So your challenge is to get honest with yourself. And really take a hard look at those identities and how they’re affecting every area of your life. And then be willing to change them be willing to make different decisions.

Changing our identity, it’s not easy. It takes courage, takes determination, it takes some time. But mostly it takes you making the decision that you want to change, that you want something more for yourself, that you’re no longer going to be driven by an old identity that’s just keeping you stuck, and miserable. Okay, that’s your challenge. Look at all of this stuff, the core of who you are, and challenge all of it.

Okay, you can do this, you’ve got this, my friends. And remember, if you’re ready to step into your new identity and make healthy habits last for good, then you have to check out my free live workshop. It’s coming up Thursday, March 24.

To sign up just go to runningleancoaching.com/workshop, I would love to see you there. You’re gonna learn a lot. We’re gonna have some fun together. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

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

113. Getting Out of the Gap and Into the Gain

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Have you ever found yourself wishing your life was somehow “better”, that there was some future version of yourself that was leaner, stronger, and healthier? Of course you have, we all think about …

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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 113, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today getting out of the gap and into the gain. Have you ever found yourself wishing that your life was somehow better, that maybe there was some future version of yourself that was leaner, stronger, and healthier? Of course, you have. We all think about stuff like this, I teach you to think about stuff like this, there’s nothing inherently wrong with doing this.

The problem is when you’re so focused on what you don’t have, that it completely consumed you. When you’re obsessed about where you’re not, that’s when things begin to break down for you. So today I’m talking about the difference between being in the gap. And being in the gain.

When you’re in the gap, you only see the negative, you never feel like you measure up, you never feel like you’re making progress towards your goals. In fact, making any progress toward your goals feels virtually impossible.

There’s a better way to do this, there’s a better way to think about all of this, and it’s called being in the gain. When you’re in the gain, you’re focused on the positive, you feel more energized, you feel more motivated, and you begin to make significant progress.

I’m going to talk all about this today, I’m going to break down why getting out of the gap and getting into the gain is so important for your long-term health and fitness goals. Cool. This is exciting. I’m excited about this one.

But first, if you’re ready to do this inner work, you know, this stuff that I talked about here, like getting out of the gap and into the gain, this is the inner work, you got to shift your mindset. If you want to become that healthy, badass version of yourself, right?

You have to take action, that action involves doing a lot of this inner work, your outer results are just a reflection of whether or not you’re doing the inner work, okay? The mistake most people make is that they focus on the outer stuff, tell me what to eat, Patrick, just tell me how many times I should lift weights each week, just tell me how many carbs I should eat whatever.

Instead, let’s focus on changing our mindset. Because when you do that, your chances of success go up dramatically. I’m going to talk about this today, I’m going to talk about how when we’re focused on the negative and when we’re focused on what we don’t have, it can affect us profoundly.

But when we start to focus on the positive, the progress we made, it can affect us profoundly in a different way, in a positive way. So if you’re ready to do this inner work with me, then maybe coaching is a good fit for you! Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply, apply for coaching with me, we’ll get on a Zoom call, we’ll have a short conversation. But I want you to take that step, take that first step of becoming that future badass version of yourself. Cool. runningleanpodcast.com/apply. And let’s have a conversation.

And then I wanted to give you guys a heads up about something, something very cool. That’s coming soon. So in just a few weeks, I’m going to be teaching a live workshop, all about how to effectively transform yourself from the inside out into a leaner, stronger, more badass runner.

This is going to be probably the most informative and most comprehensive live workshop that I’ve ever taught. And I don’t do this kind of thing very often. In fact, I don’t know that I’ve ever really done this exact same kind of thing before. I like to teach here on the podcast.

But sometimes, sometimes I’m just so excited about the topic that I want to teach it live. There’s a real energy when we get together for a live workshop like this, you know, I get the feedback from you. Are you enjoying this? Are you getting something out of it?

You get to ask questions you get to you get your questions answered, I get the feedback. We all have a lot more fun doing this. It’s very interactive. So I just want to put this on your radar. That’s all I’m gonna say about this right now. This is a little teaser, I know.

But I’m going to keep you updated on dates and times when this thing is coming. It’s a few weeks out yet, but I’m just I’m so excited. I can’t wait for you guys to take part in this. I can’t wait to share more about this with you.

And if I didn’t mention it’s going to be free, it’s going to be a free live training to help you understand the fundamentals of becoming a healthy, badass human being. That’s all. That’s all. Just that. So more is coming soon on this I promise I’m so excited about this is going to be super fun. So just keep your ears peeled for that. I’ll be talking about it. More on the podcast here, don’t worry, you’ll know when it’s coming.

Okay, let’s talk about this today getting out of the gap and in the gain. So I talk to clients every single day who are working towards goals, right? They want to lose weight, they want to get stronger, they want to improve their body composition, they want to run faster.

And every time we get on a call, and my clients will attest to this, I always ask, tell me what’s good. Let’s talk about something positive share a win from this past week, big or small, doesn’t matter, some victory, some win around your health and fitness, maybe you lost a pound or maybe running felt better or easier, or you’re sleeping better. Or you realize for the first time in a long time that you just weren’t hungry all day long.

Like these are all little wins that we want to talk about and celebrate. Whatever it is, maybe it’s an “aha” moment, like, you know, I just realized that I can run perfectly fine without eating a bunch of sugar. Or when I make a plan ahead of time, and it’s a lot easier to just stick with it. What an aha moment, you know.

So this is the kind of stuff I always like to talk about, I always want to start out our conversations with wins, right? I want to give equal airtime to the good stuff to the positive to the wins, and to the negative to the problems to the obstacles to the struggles.

But sometimes when I ask people, “Hey, tell me something different this past week”, they just sit there and stare off into space. And they’re like, “I don’t know, I can’t think of anything, just crickets. Nothing positive from this whole past week.”

But then I’ll go like, “Hey, okay, well, let’s talk about what’s going on, like, what’s wrong, what issues you’re having, what’s the problem?” and then the floodgates open, there are all kinds of stuff they talk about, they can go on for days telling me what’s wrong, why things aren’t working, the stress thrown at work, the kids are driving them crazy, blah, blah, blah, right?

So there’s a real issue here, right, you’re consumed by the negative, when you’re consumed by all the negative stuff that’s going on in your life when you can’t even articulate one positive thing that has happened for you this past week. You’re in this constant state of like, inner turmoil. It’s a very negative state to be in, by the way.

It has a compound effect on your life. And I’ll talk more about that in a minute. But there’s a real issue here, there’s a bigger issue here because this is a negative state to be in. Right?

This is a place where you are constantly in your whole mental, emotional, physical being is a state of negativity. All right. And I was talking about this recently with my coach, and I was saying, “Listen, I have these clients, and they have a hard time articulating what’s good, and how can I help them?”

You know, why do we have this negativity bias? You know, how can we can’t see the good things in our life. And she started telling me about the gap. And being in the gap. I’d never heard of this concept before.

And so she recommended a book to me. And the book is called The Gap And The Gain by Dan Sullivan. And Dan Sullivan is a coach. He’s awesome. I love him. I read the book. It’s a very simple concept. I’m going to break it all down for you here. I just felt compelled to share with you sort of this concept from this book.

It’s a very simple concept, but very powerful. It explains why we’re so focused on the negative, why it’s so hard to see the good things in our lives. And how we can change our mindset so we can start getting better results.

So what are we talking about here? What is this gap? What’s the gap? So the gap is the space between where you are right now, and where you want to be in the future. So this is awesome. Like I said earlier, if you have a goal of wanting to get leaner, stronger, and faster, that’s awesome. I encourage you to create a very detailed, very compelling future version of yourself. Create that vision of where you want to be that’s important to do you got to know where you’re going if you want to get there, right.

But when you’re not there yet, it can be very easy to focus all of your attention on that gap between where you are today. And where you want to be. There’s a gap you’re not there. And you can focus on the fact that you’re not there.

You can focus on the gap between where you want to be and where you are right now and where you want to be in the future and this can start to feel very terrible, right? You’re focusing on the fact that you’re not there. This is what I don’t have, I am not this person yet.

When you’re in the gap, you start to feel this inner conflict is inner turmoil. So let’s say you want to lose 30 pounds, and you’ve lost 20. So far, right? But you’re so focused on those last 10 pounds that you haven’t, that you haven’t quite lost it that you’re in the gap.

Or let’s say you want to improve your running performance, you want to go from 10-minute miles for half marathon to 9-minute miles, and you’ve made some progress. you’ve increased your speed to 9:39:30 per mile. But you still got like 30 seconds per mile more to go. When you’re just focused on that you’re, you’re in the gap here again, okay.

You may not be in control of your food choices, you’re still binging you’re feeling completely out of control, sometimes, you know, you’re not acknowledging that all the other times that you didn’t binge eat ice cream, that like you used to do. So you’ve made some progress here. But you’re only focused on the gap, you’re only focused on what’s wrong.

Maybe you look in the mirror, and every time you look in the mirror, you just see your flaws. You see the flab, and the wrinkles and the sagging skin, but you don’t see that you’ve already lost inches, your clothes fit better, you’re sleeping better at night, you have a ton more energy throughout the day.

But you don’t see any of that stuff, you just see where you’re not you just see what’s wrong, you are in the gap.

So what happens to us when we’re in the gap? Like when you’re in the gap, you’ll never measure up, you’re not going to see the progress you’ve made, you’re not going to see the good stuff, you’re not going to see the incremental improvements in your health and your well being you’re only going to see what’s wrong. Being in the gap creates this state of inner conflict.

When you’re constantly focused on what’s wrong, and how you’re not where you want to be, you are going to feel pretty miserable, like all the time. And you may not even know why you’re feeling so miserable.

But you’re constantly comparing yourself to some arbitrary place that you’re not there, right. And this conflict, I want to be there. And I’m not, this is what’s going to make it very hard for you to keep going. Alright.

So being in the gap creates this state of inner conflict. It’s also very demotivating. Why the hell would you want to go out there and run faster? Or why would you want to stick to your food plan when all you do is ruminate about how crappy everything in your life is.

Being in the gap will destroy your motivation. Even if you’ve had a little bit of motivation, it’s going to just break it down.

In order to feel motivated, you have to focus on the progress you’ve made, right? motivation comes from within. And focusing on how you’ve been making slow and steady progress can help create this feeling of motivation within you.

Being in the gap, though, has the opposite effect, you feel less motivated, you feel frustrated, you feel like why bother trying, you’re just like tired and frustrated. And you just want to give up.

I talked to a lot of people who have a decent amount of weight to lose, like let’s say you’ve, you know, I’m talking to someone who’s got like 50 pounds to lose, right? And they start making some progress.

So they might lose one or two pounds a week. But they get super frustrated because they’re consumed by this idea of they’ve got like 45 more pounds to go. And it all just feels so overwhelming. I’m never going to get there. Why should I even bother? They just want to throw in the towel.

And I want to just encourage them to stop doing this stop being in the gap. You’re in the gap when you’re getting frustrated and focused on where you’re not.

And it creates these feelings of unworthiness within you, you might know you’re in the gap when you compare yourself to others. Have you ever done this before?

Everybody’s hand should be going up right now. We have all done this. We all compare ourselves to others. But is this ever a good idea? Do you ever come out on the winning end of this comparison? No, never.

Other people are losing weight faster than me. Other people are running faster than me. Other people are making progress, more progress than me. It’s easier for other people. It’s harder for me like this is all the stuff we tell ourselves. When you get caught up in these comparisons. When you’re comparing yourselves to others. You are deeply into the gap.

Alright, you start to feel less than you don’t measure up. And again, you’re like, it leads to frustration and these feelings of just unworthiness, and you feel like a failure. Because you’re like, this isn’t working for me, look at how it’s working for everybody else.

Right. And in this just your perception, the truth is, we all have our own journey, and it looks different for everyone. You have to stop comparing yourself to others because that’s being solidly into the gap. When you’re doing that you’re comparing yourself to others, you are absolutely deep into the gap, okay?

Also, when you’re in the gap, you’re going to have a very hard time making progress, because all of your thoughts and feelings are consumed by where you’re not. And this is demotivating. So you’re demotivated, you experienced this inner conflict, you feel unworthy, you feel like a failure.

Do you think you’re going to feel like you want to stick to your food plan when this is your mental and emotional state? Do you think you’re going to want to stick to your workout schedule when you’re feeling like this? No. Most people just give up, they quit. They can’t see past the gap.

So what about this idea, Patrick, of creating a clear vision of your future self, I mean, should we not be doing that? And, and like I said earlier like I teach people to do this, I think it’s important that we do this, we have to know where we’re going, we have to create this vision of ourselves.

So I want you to, this isn’t about not having a future vision for yourself, okay? You can’t make progress towards your goals if you don’t know what you want for yourself if you don’t know where you’re going. Right?

So I strongly encourage you and I work with all my clients on this to create a vision for their future self, right? Who do you want to become? How do you want to feel? What do you want your life to look like? What do you want your body to look like? What do you want running to look like for you?

These are all things that it’s important to know. Got to know where you’re going, right?

So when I talk about being in the gap, I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a vision for your future, what I’m saying is stop obsessing about not being there. That’s the part where we’re in the gap.

Okay, it’s important to have that future version of yourself that future vision for yourself. But we have to be, we have to approach this in a different way. We can’t be focused on “Oh, I’m not there yet.” Okay, so there’s a, there’s a difference there. Okay.

So at this point, I think we can all relate to being in the gap, right? We’ve all been there happens to all of us, it’s okay. I don’t want you to freak out about it. It doesn’t mean you’re a failure, you’re broken, or you’re a negative person, or you’ll never reach your goals.

If you find yourself in the gap, even regularly, it just means that you’re normal, okay? Just means that you’re a normal, healthy human being with a normal human brain. That’s it. Nothing wrong at all.

And I see this all the time with clients, we all do it. This is normal. As humans, we have this bias towards negativity, this is how we have evolved. We’ve evolved as humans to recognize dangers, right?

We are really good at spotting the problem. “Oh, this other human creature that’s coming towards me does not look like one, one of the human creatures that I know, danger, danger.” Or “This plant that I’m about to eat looks just like the one that Grok ate last week. And now he’s dead. Danger Danger!” Like spotting danger is hardcoded into our DNA.

Now, you know, if everything’s cool and safe, it doesn’t set off any alarms in our brain, right? Everything’s just copacetic or everything’s cool, no big deal. But as soon as something seems dangerous, we go on high alert.

And the funny thing is that there’s no real danger for us these days, right? There’s no other human that’s trying to murder us, I hope not really. We shop at Whole Foods. So we really don’t need to worry about eating poisonous plants.

You know, we see things like, “Oh, I’m not at my goal weight yet.” That’s the danger we see in our lives, right? That’s the problems that we experience in our lives or our half marathon time doesn’t measure up to other people we run with. This is what we perceive as being a threat to us or dangerous. So just know that your brain is normal. It’s doing what it’s been conditioned to do. It’s not your fault.

But there’s a different way of seeing things, there’s a better way to experience everything in your life. And this is called being in the gain. So when you’re in the gain, you’re focused on the progress you’ve made up to this point. Being in the gain, means you’re no longer obsessed about where you’re not instead, your focus is on how far you’ve already come.

Being in the gain means you have a bias towards positivity, not negativity. Your focus is on positivity is on progress, not on the gap between where you are and where you wish you were.

So what does it look like to be in the gain? Well, let’s go back to that example, if you want to lose 30 pounds, and you’ve lost 20 stuff tend to go. So being pissed off about why those last 10 pounds are taking so dang long, you celebrate the fact that you’ve lost 20 pounds already, you focus on the progress you’ve already made.

You see now that you’ve got your sugar cravings under control, maybe for the first time in your life, you feel better, you’re sleeping better, you have a ton more energy running is getting so much easier.

Or maybe you’ve improved your running pace by that 30 seconds per mile, you still have you know, another 30 seconds more to go by, instead of getting all worked up about it like “Oh, I’m not as fast as I want to be.”

You can see how your running is improved, your running form has improved, your running efficiency has improved, you keep increasing your lactate threshold, your heart rate is going down even when you’re running faster, all of the signs that you’re becoming a total running badass, right.

But when you’re in the gap, you don’t see any of this, you’re just focused on where you’re not. I have this goal, and I’m not there. Right.

Instead, we want to focus on the gain, we want to focus on the progress we made. Here’s the cool part about this: when you’re in the game, things will begin to shift for you internally, you’re going to begin to create a whole new mindset for yourself.

When you’re focused on the gap, this is very demotivating, right. But when you’re focused on the gains you’ve made, it has the opposite effect. Being in the gain means you’re focused on progress.

And when you track progress, and you see you’ve made progress, and you’re always moving a little bit closer to your goals, this is very motivating. This builds motivation, it builds confidence, it builds your self-esteem, it creates momentum, making little itty bitty bits of progress creates a little bit more momentum and a little bit more and a little bit more. And this momentum keeps you feeling even more motivated, which keeps you making even more and more progress, right.

So the more you focus on the gain, the more gains you make. And the more you focus on the gain, the more games you play, it’s a cycle. It’s a beautiful little cycle that continues to repeat, creating more momentum and more positive results.

So the secret really to making any kind of big changes in your life, especially when it comes to things like long-term health and fitness. The big secret is consistency, right? I guess it’s not a secret, really. But like, you’ve got to stick with it, you’ve got to stick with it for the long haul. Like these are changes we make for life. And you’ve got to be committed to being a healthy human being as a way of life.

But if you’re in the gap, this is going to be incredibly frustrating and super, super hard to do. I’m just going to tell you right now, it’s going to be almost impossible.

On the other hand, if you’re in the gain, this is how you do it. This is how you become the healthy badass runner that you want to be and how you make it last for life. Being in the gain feels light, it feels energizing, it feels free.

You build confidence and trust in yourself you create momentum towards your goals, you create these feelings of motivation. And then you just want to keep going.

So if you’re at someplace in your life here, where you’re experiencing the gap. I’m going to just give you a couple of tips on how to get out of that. Okay. So I want to give you an example. Like, let’s say you’re at a point in your weight loss journey where you’ve experienced a stall. So maybe you’ve hit a plateau in your weight loss and you’re you’ve lost some weight, but it hasn’t changed for like four or five weeks and you’re getting super frustrated. You just want to give up right?

Do this one thing. Make this one change and see what happens. Stop being in the gap and start being in the gain. Start focusing on incremental progress. start focusing on all the little things that are good. Start focusing on all the tiny little bits of progress you’ve made, and see how that doesn’t feel for you.

Start celebrating all that progress is going to create momentum and motivation within you and you’ll want to keep going and you know what, I have a feeling that scale just might start to move again.

Or maybe you want to run faster and you say, can’t seem to get past that 9:30 pace, right? Start really tracking your progress, celebrate all the metrics that are improving: heart rate, VO to Max, you know, speed, overall pace, you know, splits, you know, interval paces, all that stuff, start to track all of that.

And start to celebrate the progress that you’re making. And I have a feeling you’re going to see your times improve because you’re going to feel more motivated, you’re going to want to keep going.

Slow and steady progress is how we win the game, right? Slow and steady progress, track it, and celebrate it, all of it.

And I talked to people all the time about how long it takes to lose weight. And the truth is that first some people, it just takes a while, right? It just takes what it takes.

So let’s say you want to, you know, lose those last 10 pounds. And it’s super frustrating. It’s taking forever, cording to you.

And you’re like, “Oh, this is just taking so long.” I’m like, “How long is it supposed to take?” So let’s just say for S’s and G’s like to lose the last 10 pounds, let’s say took a year.

Now when I just said that, did you freak out a little bit like, “Oh my god, it shouldn’t take that long.” Whatever. Let’s just say it took a year.

Think about this a year from now, would you rather be at your goal weight? Or would you rather be upset because you gave up because you got frustrated? Because you quit on yourself.

If you are feeling like it’s just taking too long, and you say screw it and you give up this is what most people do. They just say you know what? Why bother.

But even though you’re making progress, even though you’re on track to lose a pound a month, or whatever it is, when you’re in the gap, you cannot see this progress, you can’t see that you’re making changes, and it’s incremental, slow and steady. And you’ll get there eventually, but you can’t see it.

And so you just end up, most people just end up getting frustrated and quitting. throwing in the towel. Do not do this.

Here’s your call to action for this week, I want you to identify one area of your life where you’re in the gap. I know you know what this is you’ve probably already been thinking about this, right? Where are you focused on where you’re not. Alright.

And then I want you to stop doing that. Okay, stop being in the gap and start being in the gain instead. Don’t be obsessed about where you’re not, start being obsessed about all the tiny little incremental progress that you’re making.

And when you start focusing on that, you’re going to start to feel energized about that progress. And then you’re going to start to feel more confident. And you’re going to start to feel more self-esteem, right? And you’re going to start to make slow and steady progress and you’re going to start to create this unstoppable momentum for yourself. You’re going to feel more motivated to keep going.

So that’s your work for this week. Stop being in the gap. Find one place in your life where you’re, you know, you’re in the gap, and start being in the gain. Start being obsessed about progress. Cool, I think this is super fun, and life-changing. Do this this week. Don’t put this off. Do this for sure.

And remember, if you’re ready to get out of the gap for good and stop comparing yourself to where you’re not, and start focusing on the real progress you’re making towards your goals. You might want to see if coaching is right for you. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply. Let’s have that conversation. Let’s get you out of the gap and into the gain. Cool? Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

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

110. Battling The Resistance

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

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Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

97. Eliminating Expectations

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We all have expectations, every single one of us. You expect things to go a certain way and when they do, it’s amazing and you feel great! When things don’t go the way you expect them to, you …

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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 97 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today I’m talking about eliminating expectations.

Listen, we all have expectations, every single one of us, you expect things to go a certain way. And when they do, it’s amazing and you feel great. But when things don’t go the way you expect them to, you get frustrated and you feel terrible.

But this is just the way life is right? Not necessarily. What if there was a different way to do things? What if you simply eliminated all of these expectations? How would that change things for you? This is exactly what I’m talking about here today.

So in this episode, I’m going to explain why having expectations just might be the cause of most of your frustrations, and how eliminating all of these expectations just might be the answer to achieving everything good that you want in your life. It’s going to be a fun one, stick around.

And hey, if you like this podcast, you have to come check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook. This is a place where you can come and ask questions and feel supported, and feel encouraged and get some positive motivation and inspiration from fellow runners just like you.

It’s a group that I created to go hand in hand with this podcast, it extends the conversation from here to there and vice versa. But it gives you a voice it gives you a chance to share Hey, this is what’s going on with me. What do you guys think?

So just come join us and check it out. And it’s fun. We do have fun in there too. I do a little bit of coaching and training there every week. Just search for Running Lean community on Facebook.

And then I just want to let you guys know that this month in the Running Lean coaching group just in time for the holidays, mind you, we are talking about self-sabotage, yay.

How to recognize self-sabotage. Self-sabotage comes in many very hidden and sort of insidious forms. And we’re talking about how we recognize when it’s happening, how we can stop it before it gets too crazy before things get out of hand. And by the end of the month, we’re going to talk about how we eliminate self-sabotage from our lives for good, guys.

So join the Running Lean coaching group and come and be a part of our discussion this month on eliminating self-sabotage. And this is a great time of the year to learn about this and start practicing these skills.

So that we can slide through the holidays feeling good about ourselves, and not totally blowing it. So just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join, and hope to see you over there in the group.

Alright, so today I want to talk about eliminating expectations. And this is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. And I finally was like, you know, we just need to get this conversation out there. Because it’s one that is a little bit misunderstood. And I’ll get into that in a minute.

But some people don’t understand what I mean, when I talk about just eliminating all your expectations, just getting rid of them. And so hopefully by the end of this conversation, you will have a very good understanding of what I mean by expectations, how to get rid of them, and what to do instead.

So first of all, what are expectations? Well, expectations are when we expect things to go a certain way. When we want things to go a certain way we have thoughts about the way they should go.

Okay, whenever you have a preconceived notion of how things should be, that is an expectation, when you have strong beliefs about how things should be or how things should not be. These are expectations and they could go either way. Expectations could be things, how you expect things to be or how you expect things not to be.

So how this might play out. I’m going to use an example of somebody let’s say you’re trying to lose weight, okay? So you make a decision, okay, I’m going to lose weight and you change your diet you start exercising, and you start to feel a little bit better.

A few weeks go by, you’re really sticking to your plan. You know, you’re exercising like crazy, you’re feeling hungry all the time, you may be tired, you may be cranky. But the real kicker is you’ve been putting in all this hard work and you haven’t lost a single pound, all his hard work, and the weight is just not coming off.

So you get frustrated, you get angry, you say this is stupid, you end up quitting, it’s not working the way it’s supposed to work. So why should I even bother? You had an expectation here, you had an expectation of the way you thought this was supposed to go, I’m gonna just change my diet and start exercising and the weights gonna just melt off. Okay.

But it didn’t go that way, did it? So this is not uncommon. Okay, the reason? The reason you’re getting upset, and the reason you’re quitting isn’t that the diet isn’t working, it’s because you had an expectation about what was supposed to happen.

And that expectation was not met. That’s what’s causing the anger, and the bitterness and the frustration, and that’s why you’re quitting. And if you had no expectations, if you had no preconceived notions about how this thing should go, would you be upset at all? Probably not. Okay.

So I just want you to see that this is a very common thing that we all do in all kinds of different areas of our life. Right, not just when we’re talking about losing weight, but it definitely does show up when we’re engaging in a weight loss plan or changing our diet, or maybe we want to, you know, improve our running or something like that.

So here are some examples of the way that expectations show up. So for weight loss, you know, I should be further along by now, that’s an expectation, I should have made more progress at this point of my weight loss journey. That’s an expectation.

It’s not working the way it should be working, how should it be working? Right? It shouldn’t take this long, you should go faster, it shouldn’t be this hard, it should be easier.

An example, for running like, I should be faster by now. You know, I’ve been doing speed work, I should be faster by now. Running should be easier. That’s what I think of all the time, especially around mile 20 of a marathon, I’m like running, you should just feel easier. Or, you know, I shouldn’t be injured. These are all expectations, you know, I should never get injured. That’s an expectation, okay.

Another area of your life where this shows up very blatantly is in relationships, like my spouse, my partner, whatever, shouldn’t do this, or they should do that, instead, they shouldn’t act this way, they should treat me differently, they should respond to my needs better.

I shouldn’t have to tell him to pick up his socks, she should be a better communicator. These are all different ways that we expect things to go a certain way. These are all different examples of how we have expectations. Some of these are very obvious, you know, some of these are sort of hidden, we’re not really aware of these, because a lot of these expectations that we have, will show up.

And we’re not even like consciously aware that we have these expectations, right. So they’re happening more at the subconscious level, you’re not actually saying like, I expect you to act this way. And if you don’t, I’m going to be upset, or I expect that I should be losing weight faster. And since I’m not, I’m going to be very frustrated.

Like we don’t say these things out loud. You don’t realize that you have these expectations until someone says something or does something and you get all bent out of shape about it. Or when things don’t go your way. And you find yourself incredibly frustrated and wanting to quit then you kind of like can see what’s going on at the subconscious level. Okay.

So maybe like, you know, for example, we’re talking about relationships, maybe your partner doesn’t go all out for you on your birthday, and you’re acting like a little passive-aggressive about it like you don’t really know why. It’s kind of like, beneath the surface.

You may have expected him to do something big for you something special and he didn’t and let you down. The thing is, you weren’t even aware that you had this expectation, but you did. And of course, he didn’t know anything about this expectation. And but now everybody’s aware of it because you’re upset about it.

Okay, this is a way that this shows up for us in all kinds of ways. And speaking of relationships, when I got divorced a couple of years ago, I had all kinds of expectations of the way things should have gone, oh, she should have been a better communicator, she shouldn’t have done this, she shouldn’t have acted this way.

The only person upset in that situation was me, it was very frustrating for me because I had all these unmet expectations of how I thought the way things should be. So there are all kinds of ways that this shows up in our lives, okay.

And here’s the thing, we are all just going by what we know. So when you set out a big goal for yourself like maybe you want to lose some weight, you’re operating from what you know, you can only go by what you know, your own past experiences, what you’ve read about what you’ve heard about.

Maybe you’re working with a coach, which your coach has been telling you, you have an idea of what this should look like, you know, I should lose 2-3 pounds every week for 12 weeks straight. And I should be at my goal weight in exactly 90 days.

Like this is like an idea that may be very obvious to you. And maybe something you’ve said out loud or told other people or maybe this is something that’s just in the back of your mind. But either way, you have this expectation of how this whole weight loss journey should go for you.

Or maybe you’re trying to qualify for Boston. And I’ve been following this Boston qualifier training plan and at my next marathon, I will run a BQ time. And of course, I’ll make the cut. And so everything’s going to go exactly according to plan.

These are ideas of how we think things should go. And it’s all based on what we know, or what we think we know. What about the stuff we don’t know, what about the things that are unforeseen? What about setbacks and failures and injuries and cheat days and stressful occurrences?

Like when we have this vision of a perfectly executed plan from start to finish, you’re really creating a lot of hidden expectations. It might seem like you’re just making a good plan. Like, you know, you’ve got this good idea, this good plan is a good vision of how things should go.

But what you’re really doing is you’re setting yourself up for disappointment and frustration. Because I’ve never seen a weight loss plan or a Boston qualifier plan go perfectly, there are always bumps in the road.

Nothing ever goes as planned in these situations, almost never, maybe sometimes. With all these, like hidden expectations, there’s a guarantee that you’re going to experience some sort of negative emotions along the way, right? Because you don’t even know you have these hidden expectations. But then you start to get frustrated, you start to feel like a failure, you feel disappointed, you feel angry, bitter resentment.

These things can really throw you off your game, by the way. And the reason you’re feeling all these things is because there’s this gap between your hidden expectations. And then reality the things that are actually happening. And the greater the gap, the worse you feel.

So the more perfect you think things should be, and the less perfect they appear to be happening, the worse you feel. And when you’re operating from this place this like negative emotional state, how do you act?

Well, typically, you just say, eff it and eat whatever you want. You give up on trying. You just like stop trying to run faster, because you know, nothing’s going according to the plan. Right?

So having unmet expectations leads to all sorts of negative outcomes. Goals never become achieved. You give up on your dreams, you stay stuck where you are. You never make any forward progress. Because things are just not going according to plan.

If everything would just go as planned, then I’d be happy, then I’d feel good, then I’d make more progress, right? Have you ever found yourself saying this to yourself, like if everything would just go as planned, then I’d be happy?

Or if things didn’t go as I planned, I’m going to be upset. This is a recipe for a lifetime of disappointment. A lifetime of just feeling let down, being frustrated, being angry feeling the bitterness feeling the resentment. Why? Because things almost never go as planned.

And so I’ve talked about this before, and people have said to me, Well, what am I supposed to do? Do I just lower my expectations? I’m not supposed to have low expectations. Aren’t I supposed to have high hopes are supposed to want for the best?

Yes, of course, you should want for the best. Of course, you should expect the best. But here’s the thing. I think that having expectations is a huge, huge problem. I think you should just eliminate any expectations at all.

Are you still with me? Or if you just turned this off by now, here’s what I want you to do. Instead, what I want you to do instead is practice something that I call radical acceptance.

So when we eliminate the perfect scenario, the way things should be, then we got to do something. Instead, we have to practice something called radical acceptance, which means that you just accept everything. And I mean, every single thing in your life for exactly as it is, because, well, that’s the way it is.

Radical acceptance means you’re no longer expecting things to go a certain way. You’re accepting the way things are, you’re accepting the fact that things will go the way they go. Radical acceptance means accepting that your weight loss journey will take a while. That’s okay.

It means that you know, you didn’t Boston qualify this go around, no big deal. It means that you accept that your husband doesn’t do big things on your birthday. You just accept that fact. That’s the way he is.

It means accepting that everything in your life is exactly the way it should be. Because that’s the way it is. How do you know something was supposed to go a certain way? Because that’s the way it went. Does that make sense? How do you tell if something was supposed to go a certain way? Because it happened that way.

People tell me all the time, like, ah, you know, it wasn’t supposed to happen that way. I’m like, but that’s the way it happened. You know, maybe you can wish it didn’t happen that way all you want, but it’s not going to change anything, except the way things are in every area of your life.

There’s a lot of freedom in this. Now, before you start sending me emails, what radical acceptance is not I don’t want you to think that you know, radical acceptance means that you’re just content with the way everything is, and you let people walk all over you or you never achieve anything greater in your life.

That is not what I’m saying at all. Radical acceptance means you accept everything exactly as it is, you’re not fighting against reality anymore, okay? It’s not agreeing with everything, though.

It’s not saying that everything is good, or I’m not going to work to change anything. It simply means you accept the way things are because that’s the way they are.

You can absolutely want to change things, and you should. You can start making changes to your diet to get the scale moving. It’s not like you have to accept the fact that things are the way they are, that you are, where you are on your weight loss journey.

And you can make changes to get the scale moving again. You can figure out what went wrong on your last marathon race day, and you can try something different next time. So you can get to that Boston qualifying time that you’ve been working for.

I’m not saying give up on your dreams. I’m not saying just you know, let people do whatever they want. Maybe you have that conversation with your husband about how you’d like your birthday to go in the future. Let everybody in on your little secret about what you really want for yourself. Okay?

So radical acceptance doesn’t mean you are content with everything exactly the way it is. It just means you’re no longer fighting against reality. It means you’ve let go of all of your preconceived notions about how things should be.

It shouldn’t be this, it should be this. This should be different, that should be this way. It means you stopped shooting all over yourself. I love saying that. I think it’s so funny.

When you eliminate expectations, when you start practicing radical acceptance, you are no longer fighting against the way things are. You are accepting reality exactly as it is. You’re no longer thinking that there’s something wrong in every situation in your life. You can begin to go through your life with a sense of calmness and inner peace that maybe you’ve never really experienced before.

I think this is life-changing. It’s like you’ve been standing in a river trying to hold back the water fighting and struggling against the current and then you just let it all go. You let the flow of water flow around. Without all the struggle without wishing it was different, and it just feels easy, and it just feels good.

There’s no longer anything wrong. There’s no longer internal conflict. There’s no longer negativity. There’s just you accepting that this is the way things are. You’re expecting nothing. You don’t have expectations, you’re accepting everything.

And you’re getting to work, learning, growing and changing, and becoming more. You’re accepting everything the way it is, you have zero expectations, and you’re working to become that badass that you’ve always wanted to be.

I hope you got something out of this episode today. It’s a little bit of a shorter one. But I really wanted to share this information with you. I thought it was so important. It’s been one of the most powerful concepts I have put into practice in my life, accepting everyone and everything for exactly the way it is, and working to change the things that you can. Cool.

Alright, if you’re ever looking for a little help with all this stuff, that’s what I do. I’m a coach. I can offer you the expert guidance, support, encouragement, and accountability that you need to make this work for you. No matter what your goals no matter what your tastes, no matter what your lifestyle.

Let’s get to work in and create that badass that you’ve always wanted to be. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply, and we’ll see if coaching is a good fit for you. Alright, love you all. Keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

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