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Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

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73. Becoming a Lean, Fat-Burning Machine and Making It Last For Life – Part 2

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This is part two of a two-part podcast series called “Becoming a Lean, Fat-Burning Machine and Making It Last For Life”. As a Sports Nutritionist, Weight Loss Coach for Runners, and Master Life …

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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 73 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And this is part two of a two part podcast series called Becoming a Lean Fat Burning Machine and Making It Last For Life. So as a sports nutritionist, a weight loss coach for runners and master life coach, I help runners transform themselves into lean efficient fat burning machines.

So they can end all that yo yo dieting, and finally get to their ideal weight and stay there for good. And I have a vested interest in this subject matter since I struggled with gaining weight, like over 40 pounds in just a few years. While I was training for marathons while I was running ultra marathons. Well, I figured I finally figured out how to change my diet so that I was burning fat instead of storing it.

And check out part one of this series if you want all the info on how I did that. So I lost the weight pretty easily really. And I’ve been able to keep it off almost effortlessly. And honestly the hardest thing about making any kind of big change like this in your life, especially when it comes to what you’re eating, your health, your fitness – the hardest part is making it last.

Anyone can stick to a plan for a few weeks. But the real transformation happens when you feel like you can stick to it for good when it just becomes part of who you are. So in this episode, I’m devoting the whole episode two, just outlining the most important mindset shifts that you have to adopt. If you want to make becoming a lean running machine, something that you can make last for life.

Okay, so if you haven’t already done so, come check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook. This is a group of like minded runners and fellow listeners of the podcast whose support encourage and help each other with whatever it is you’re going through. So maybe you’re nursing an injury and you can’t run and you just want some other runners to tell you that they’ve been where you are that everything’s gonna eventually be okay.

Maybe you have a question about fueling properly for those long runs or a race and you want to hear how other people are doing it. whatever’s on your mind, we got you covered. We have the best group on Facebook. Somebody told me that recently and I was like, I think you’re right.

It’s pretty awesome to have this community to lean into when you need the help when you need a little encouragement. Or when you just want to share something good like a win. We love wins, come and share a win. Just search for Running Lean community on Facebook and come join in on the fun.

Here’s another five star podcast review from Joe. Joe says, “This is an awesome podcast. I’ve been listening since I decided to start running again back in June of 2020. And I’ve lost over 20 pounds with Patrick’s guidance and healthy eating teachings. Not only is he a subject matter expert, but he continues to push us to reach our goals. I highly recommend this podcast if you’re looking to get back into running or not sure where to start. Along with his podcast, Patrick’s Facebook group is an added bonus and a phenomenal group of motivators that continue to support you along the way.”

See, I told you it wasn’t just me, Joe’s telling you the same thing here. And then Joe says, “Finally, you will not be disappointed.” Thank you, Joe. That was amazing. I love reading five star reviews.

Hey, share the love if you want to. If you enjoy this podcast and you want to take a moment to leave a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify, wherever you wherever you can leave a review. I don’t even know where you can leave a review. I know you can’t on Apple.

Just I would love it if you would if you would do that. And I’ll be sure to read it here on the show. So leave a review. Tell me what you think and share the love. Thank you so much.

And you know I teach a lot about how to lose weight and the mindset required to make it last for life. I talk about this here on the podcast a lot and some people like Joe get results from just implementing the stuff that I teach here on the podcast, right?

But if you want more, if you want some expert guidance to help keep you on track. If you want someone there to show you exactly how to make all of this work for you individually, and you want somebody there to hold you accountable, to encourage you to do things you don’t want to do so that you can to become the person that you want to be, then one on one coaching might be the perfect thing for you.

I work with runners who are finally ready to stop making excuses for themselves and their start. And they’re ready to start making changes to their health and their fitness. I work with runners who are tired of losing and gaining the same 20 pounds over and over and over again, I work with people who might have these big weight loss goals, like they want to lose 100 pounds and develop the mindset skills they need to keep the weight off for the rest of their life.

Wherever you are on your weight loss journey, or your health or fitness journey, I’m here for you to help you become the most badass version of yourself yet. To learn more and apply for coaching, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply.

We’ll have a short conversation, we’ll see if this is a good fit for you. There’s no charge for this call. But you know, we can just talk about your goals and see if this is a good fit. And if so great, if not no big deal.runningleanpodcast.com/apply.

Okay, let’s, I want to recap really quickly. What I talked about in part one of this two part series. So in part one, I talked about how runners on average, you know, we carry around a little too much body fat, like we just were a little overweight in general, okay, and running alone, it’s just not a very effective weight loss strategy. Right, the key to losing weight. And being able to run all day without bonking is you’ve got to turn your body into a fat burning machine, you got to burn fat.

In order to turn yourself from a sugar burner into a fat burner, we have to get rid of the most problematic carbohydrates, right, especially the highly refined carbs like sugar and flour. So if you haven’t listened to that episode, I highly recommend it. Because what I’m talking about today is how to take all that stuff that you learned in part one, and how to apply it and make it last for life to make it something that is sustainable.

There are several mindset shifts that you have to make. If you want to make this all something that you can just do going forward, it has to become part of who you are, has to become something automatic and sustainable for you.

Okay, this is the key to any kind of long term changes in any area of your life, really. But probably when it comes to losing weight, this is the hardest thing for most people to wrap their brains around, which is how do I make this last?

Okay, so I put together in this episode, a bunch of mindset shifts that I think are absolutely required, if you want to make Running Lean last for life, okay. The first one is this, you have to ditch the whole diet mentality. It has to go. The whole idea of I’m on a diet is a temporary thing. Right? It assumes that there is an end, eventually I am on a diet, or I’m off a diet.

Have you ever been on a diet? Yeah, you like you’re on a diet for a short period of time, right? You don’t stay on a diet, right? This is the whole temporary mentality about the word diet, okay, and this mentality about diets being temporary, it’s not going to work, this is not going to work for you. So the very first thing you have to do is ditch that whole idea of this is a temporary diet because it’s not.

It’s a way of life, okay? There is not an end to this, this is very, very important. There’s no destination you’re trying to get to. And then you’re just going to go back to doing whatever you were doing before. You’re not gonna like not eat sugar, and get to your goal weight and feel amazing.

And then all of a sudden go back to eating all the sugar. Again, it does not work that way. This is not a diet, this is a way of life. And the first thing you have to do is adopt this mentality of like, this is how I’m going to live my life from here on out.

So you either commit to being healthy for life, or you’re committing to something else, you’re committing to a lifetime of struggle, of frustration of yo yo dieting, of losing and gaining those same 20 pounds over and over and over and over again. Right? Why don’t you just be done with all of that nonsense once and for all. All right.

This is my suggestion for you. You’ve got to drop the diet mentality. You have to adopt this attitude of like I’m all in forever. This is how I live my life now. Or you can just keep riding the struggle bus forever. Like that’s up to you if you want to do that, right.

And it surprises me how many people actually choose to ride the struggle bus for the rest of their lives, they continue to choose the harder, more complicated, more struggling way to do things. We don’t have to do that. Okay.

So the first thing you really have to wrap your head around is like this is not temporary, this is not a diet, there’s no destination, we’re trying to get to being healthy is not a destination, it’s a way of life. Right. So everything I’m going to talk about going forward here is going to be like how we kind of do that, okay.

And I’ve talked about a lot of these topics here on the podcast, and various episodes, you can go back and listen to some of those. But I’ve put together some, I think, the most powerful mindset shifts that you have to make. If you want to make these changes last for good, okay.

So one of the things you have to do is you have to focus on changing your identity, you have to focus on changing who you are at your core. So it kind of goes back to this idea of like, I’m in this for good, this is a way of life for me. So you have to adopt that as part of your identity. It has to become part of who you are.

So what is your identity? Your identity is how you define yourself. It’s the words, and the phrases, and the concepts and the beliefs that you have about yourself that define who you are, at your core. Think about it like this, everything you say after the words, I am is part of your identity.

So I am a runner, I’m identifying myself, as someone who is at their core a runner. I am a coach, I am a brother, I am a father. I’m a sci-fi nerd. I love sci-fi movies. And that’s part of who I am. And I can’t deny that I just have to accept that. This is part of me, this is part of who I am at my very, very core. Okay.

Now, this is the part I think is so fascinating. One of the strongest forces in every human being is that you must act consistent with how you define yourself. I’m going to say that, again, because I think this is so important. One of the strongest forces in every human being is that you must act consistent with how you define yourself.

How you define yourself determines how you act, how you act determines the results you get in your life. So the thoughts that you think, the feelings that you feel, the words you say about yourself, how you dialogue with yourself, your brain has no choice but to take all of that information and make it real for you.

To make it who you are, you will act in accordance with what you believe you are who you believe you are. Okay? So all of these things, how you think about yourself, how you feel about yourself, the words you say about yourself, this is how you define yourself, right? And all of this becomes real for you, it becomes part of who you are.

And here’s the cool thing, you can redefine yourself, or just define yourself at any time in your life. It’s not like you picked who you were when you were 12. And then that’s just who you are from going forward. Right? You get to redefine yourself anytime you want.

Now, I think I identified as a sci-fi nerd when I was like 11 or 12 years old, whenever Star Wars came out. See, I would have been 11 or 10. Yeah, cause that came out in ‘77, I believe, right? And so yeah, I was 10 years old. So I defined myself as a sci-fi nerd, pretty early on, and that’s just been a part of who I am forever. And I continue to love those kinds of movies.

And, but that’s not, you know, just who I am, like, there’s so many other parts of me, right? I’m so complex. I’m such a complex person. I mean, and so are you. You know, we all are. We have so many different ways of defining ourselves. But it’s important. This is so important.

Because what you believe about yourself determines the kind of results that you get in your life. And so if I say, I’m a coach, then I’m going to act in accordance with that. I’m going to coach people, and I’m going to help people to make big changes in their life and make big transformations in their life, encourage them to do things they don’t feel like doing so that they can become that person that they want to become.

I act in accordance with how I define myself. I watch sci-fi movies, because I’m a sci-fi nerd. I am a father. And so I do things that are important for you know, I put my kids first. So all of these things are how we define ourselves. I’m a runner. So you know what I do, I run. I run, whether I feel like it or not.

I recently made this switch to doing yoga again, it’s been a long time since I’ve done yoga, they’ve gotten so stiff. I’m like, wound up as tight as steel cables. And I decided I’m going to be somebody who does yoga all the time. And so I committed to being this different person, like, I’m going to redefine myself as a yogi, you know, somebody that does yoga regularly.

And so far, I’ve got like, 15 days in, and I feel amazing. All because I made that little mental shift of this is who I am at my core. Okay, so you need to define yourself, you need to maybe change the core beliefs you have about yourself, you might even need to sort of become a different person, which is okay.

You know, think about this, like, I’m the kind of person who sticks to her training plan, no matter what. I’m the kind of person who sticks to their diet to their nutrition plan, no matter what. Right? These are the kinds of things that are gonna help determine what you do in your life, right. So who you are, determines what you do.

Okay, the next concept is that you have to have your own back through all of this, you have to love yourself through this whole process, right? If you have a negative self talk like dialogue going on in your brain, “I can never make anything work. I’m so slow as a runner, and I’ll never lose the weight. And I’m never going to be healthy. And running is always so hard for me”, like you got to stop the negative self talk. This is not, this is not doing you any good at all. Okay?

This is not having your own back. This is like tearing yourself down. So when we talk about mindset, mindset is all about how you dialogue with yourself, the words that you say to yourself, in your own brain. And listen, your mind really believes everything that you tell it, you keep saying the same things over about yourself, keep thinking the same things over and over about yourself. Your brain will believe it, whether it’s true or not.

So if you say like I’m a failure, and nothing ever works for me, I’m never going to lose weight, you’re going to believe that it’s just going to become true for you. That becomes your reality. The things you keep telling yourself over and over and over again become your reality. Most people, most people beat themselves up like crazy about everything they speak to themselves so harshly.

“I’m so weak, I’m on discipline, I’m such a failure. I’m not good enough. I’m not worthy.” Wow. What kind of results do you think you’re gonna get if you continue to tear yourself down like that? Bad results, you’re gonna get bad results. Your mind believes everything you tell it.

Okay, so you have to start changing that dialogue, the way you talk to yourself, the way you feel, think and feel about yourself has to change. Get rid of the negative self talk, you have to love yourself through this process. I did a podcast episode awhile back on loving yourself unconditionally.

And there’s this idea of that, like you can’t hate yourself thin, you can’t hate yourself and expect to, to make positive improvements on your life. You can’t hate yourself and expect to run a faster marathon. Because you’re just going to be tearing yourself down for four hours or whatever it is, however long it takes you to run that marathon.

Instead we have to have our own back, we have to talk to ourselves positively. You know, the funny thing is like you would never talk to a friend the way you talk to yourself. You would never speak so harshly to any other human being most likely as harshly as you talk about yourself and talk to yourself.

I don’t really know why we do this as humans but we need to stop this because it’s not doing us any good. It’s not helping us at all. Okay, have your own back. Support yourself if you make a decision that.

You want to run a faster marathon? Go all in on yourself, have your own back and start talking positively about yourself. Stop the negative self talk, start positive self talk. Right? Your mindset will change when you begin dialoguing with yourself in a positive manner.

Okay, the next concept, you guys, I love this one, is that you have to embrace discomfort. You know, change is hard, change is uncomfortable. And change can be painful. We have to be willing to embrace the discomfort of change.

There’s a story of a lady running through her neighborhood, and she’s running through a neighborhood. And she hears this dog crying, howling, right? And she gets closer, she’s running through her neighborhood. She comes around a corner. And sure enough, she sees a dog sitting on a front porch. And just howling like, like crying.

She gets closer and she wants to see what’s going on. She notices a guy sitting on the front porch, reading the newspaper, drinking his coffee and just hanging out. She’s like, hey, it sounds like your dog is like in some sort of pain. And the guy says, Yeah, he is. He’s sitting on a nail. And she’s like, Oh, my gosh, why doesn’t he get up off the nail? And he goes, Oh, because it would hurt too much.

And so this, the moral of the story is like sometimes the pain of change, we have this idea that it’s going to hurt too much to change. So we’d rather just sit in the pain that we’re in, instead of doing something about it. And the story of this dog sitting on nails seems, you know, a little harsh or whatever. But this is what we do to ourselves. We’re sitting in our own pain. And we’re just, we’re crying about it.

And we’re saying, Oh, this is terrible. I hate being this way. I hate being overweight. I hate feeling this way running. But we don’t want to do anything about it. Because to change means we’re going to get uncomfortable means we’re going to get out of our comfort zone. If you want things to be different than they are in your life right now.

I’ve got some news for you, it’s gonna be uncomfortable to get there. Because everything you already have is in your comfort zone. Everything that you want, but don’t already have is outside your comfort zone. Ah, there’s the problem right there, right? Oh, well, I want to lose weight.

Okay, guess what, you’re gonna have to get uncomfortable to do it. Oh, but I don’t want to get uncomfortable. But there’s no other way around it. You have to be willing to embrace the discomfort, or else you’re not going to get it.

I did a podcast episode called embracing the suck. And as ultra runners, this is a concept that we have is like, at some point during this race, you know, you’re running 30 or 50 miles or 100 miles at some point, it’s gonna suck. You can either complain about it, and you know, cry about it, or you can just embrace it. Right, choose to embrace the suck.

Doing things like this – running an ultramarathon, losing weight, you know, changing your whole mentality around how you think and feel about food, changing your diet. This is not easy, this is hard, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, it absolutely means you should do it. But just know it’s going to be uncomfortable.

Get up off that nail, stop crying, get up off that nail, and do the hard thing, do the thing that’s going to hurt for the short term. But eventually, it’ll stop. And eventually, you’re going to get stronger and you’re going to become more. And you’ll have those things that are outside your comfort zone. And your comfort zone grows.

It’s the hard things we do that make us stronger, that make us become more. You know, you build stronger muscles by continually overloading your muscles, tearing them down and it hurts, right? It’s painful to go to the gym and lift weights. It’s painful. But there’s this adaptive response to the stress. Your muscles get bigger.

And it’s the same with becoming stronger, mentally becoming stronger emotionally. You have to do the hard things. You have to challenge yourself, push yourself to do more to become more to get out of your comfort zone more often. Because then you produce this adaptive response mentally and emotionally. And you grow and you become more.

And it’s not the fact that we don’t have challenges in our life that we can’t grow and become more, it’s because of the challenges in our life. It’s not despite them. It’s because of the challenges that we go through that we become more. When I ran 100 miles, it wasn’t easy. There was a point where I was ready to give up. And I had run at four miles. And I gotta tell you, that was a dark moment for me because I was in so much pain.

And I decided that I was going to embrace the suck in that moment, and finish this thing. And I did, and it felt amazing to finish. But I could have quit, I could have just sat there on my nail and been like, well, this hurts. I don’t want to do this. No, I got up off that nail, and I did what I needed to do to finish. And it literally changed my life. So you have to embrace discomfort.

Alright, the next mindset shift you have to adopt is you have to honor the commitments that you make to yourself. A key component to making being healthy last for life is that you have to do the things you say you’re going to do. This is not a hard concept. You guys, listen.

If you say to yourself, you know, I’m not going to eat bread at dinner tonight. Then when dinner comes tonight, don’t eat the bread. Or maybe you make a promise to yourself that you’re not going to drink alcohol this weekend. And then when the weekend rolls around, you don’t drink alcohol. That’s it. It’s not a hard concept.

Every time you do this, every time you do what you say you’re going to do, every time you honor a commitment that you make to yourself, you build trust in yourself, you build resilience, you build confidence in yourself. Now, there’s an alternative way of doing things.

Every time you say you’re not gonna eat the bread, and you find yourself face first into the sourdough at dinner. I love sourdough, by the way, so good. But every time you say you’re not gonna eat the bread, and then you just shove your face full of sourdough bread, you break that trust in yourself, you diminish your resilience, you lower your self confidence.

So every time you say I’m not gonna drink tonight, and then you find yourself like three drinks in or whatever you’re like, ah, I didn’t want to do this, like you’re breaking this trust in yourself, okay? You’re always doing one or the other, you’re either building trust and confidence in yourself, or you’re breaking it down. You get better at whatever you practice, right.

So if you practice running fast, you’re going to become a faster runner. If you practice running farther and farther, you’re going to get better at running longer distances. If you practice breaking promises to yourself, you’re going to get really good at breaking promises to yourself, I promise you. Right.

So if you do not honor the commitments that you make to yourself, you break that trust and confidence in yourself. You don’t build that resilience that you need. You just get better at giving in to the urges and the cravings that you’re having. Right, you have to honor the commitments that you make to yourself. And listen, you’re a runner, like you’ve if you’ve trained for half marathon or a marathon, I know that you know how to do this.

You put together a training schedule, and you say I’m going to run five days a week from now until six months from now, when I have this race coming up, and you stick to that training plan. I see people do this all the time. It could be snowing outside, it’s like cold and dark and raining. And you’re like I’m just gonna put on my running shoes and go run because my schedule says I gotta run, I don’t want to, I don’t want to like, you know, break this commitment I made to myself.

And you’re so good at this. Well just take that same attitude and apply it to sticking to your meal plan. Right? You’re already doing it. But then when we talk about like what you’re eating, it’s like oh, but that’s so hard. But you’re already doing it right? Copy and paste that same attitude that you have about running into sticking with your meal plan.

And I get it you guys, this is not easy to do. I know it’s uncomfortable. It doesn’t feel good, right? This is why I’m talking about all these different mindset shifts that we have to make because it’s not just one thing. It’s not just one thing that’s going to do it for you.

Sorry, but there’s a lot to it. And it’s about changing your whole way of thinking and the way you feel about yourself and about nutrition and about diets and food and exercise and running and all of it like we have to change the story. Okay.

So another mindset shift you absolutely have to make is that you just have to stop procrastinating and just start taking action already. Right, you can’t think yourself thin. You can’t think your way to better health. This is a program of action. You know, I hear people tell me that, you know, they want to change.

And you know, they really want to like lose the weight, and they’re ready right now. But then they’re like, I just need to think about it. And I’m like, No, don’t think about it, just do something. I don’t care what you do. Do something right now, whenever we say like, I’ll get to it later. I’ll just do it later, maybe later. Because you’re hoping that like, all the stars are gonna align, and everything’s gonna like, feel perfect. It could, it just never comes.

There’s never a perfect time, the perfect time is like right now. The perfect time is when you feel inspired to take action, that’s when you need to just take some action, just do something. What can you do right now, that will move you one tiny step closer to your goal.

Maybe you just cut out sugar for a day, or maybe you just say no to bread, say no to this hour, go. Go to the gym for like five minutes or run around the block, do a set of burpees. Like these are teeny tiny steps that you can do. But when you do them, they start to build motivation.

Motivation is an inside job, all motivation it’s created by you internally by your brain. You don’t, you don’t have to, like you don’t have to have motivation in order to do something either, right? A lot of times the motivation comes after you start. That’s why I’m encouraging you to go do something teeny, tiny, some teeny, tiny step and just start building upon that.

Because that’ll create the motivation for you. You know, there’s a lot of days I don’t feel like running, I’ll tell you these last 15 days of doing yoga, probably 14 of them, maybe 15. I’ve not felt like doing it. But I’m doing it anyway. Because I said I was going to. I’m honoring this commitment that I made to myself, right. But I stopped thinking about it and procrastinating and it just started, I just started doing it. Right.

And I always find it surprising how much more motivated I feel after I start doing something. So thinking about making changes to your health or being healthy. It’s not the same thing as being healthy. Like thinking about it as not doing it. You can think about it all you want. Stop procrastinating and take action, even one teeny, tiny little step, those tiny steps add up.

The journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step. That’s a quote, right? But it’s not a journey of 1000 Miles. Begin with thinking about it for a while, thinking about the journey. No, that’s not the way it goes. It begins with a single step but you’ve got to take the action. So stop procrastinating and start doing something about it. Okay.

Next concept is you have to take radical responsibility. So there are basically two ways of approaching things in our life you can be at, you can be the cause of all the results that you get in your life, the good, the bad, the in between, you’re the cause of them. Or you can be at the effect of other people and outside circumstances. That’s the cause and effect.

People are living at the effect end of the spectrum. They are at the effect of outside circumstances. These people have excuses. They have stories, they have reasons why they can’t ever do anything. Why nothing ever works for them. They have lots of reasons. You know, they play the victim, nothing is ever their fault.

You know, my boss yelled at me at work today. So that’s why I ate cake for dinner. This is people living at effect. On the other end of the spectrum, as people who are living at cause, people who are taking radical responsibility. These people, they get results. They take action and they reach their goals no matter what. They’re always becoming more.

They take radical responsibility for everything they’re getting in their life. It would look like this. My boss yelled at me at work today because I didn’t handle that situation with the customer very well. I am absolutely going to do better next time. Now where’s that chicken that I’m having for dinner tonight? Boom, much different outcome when you take radical responsibility.

You know, taking radical responsibility can look like this. I’m going to lose the 40 pounds no matter what is happening in my life, no matter how long it takes. No matter how many times I quote unquote “fail” along the way. I’m gonna make this work no matter what. Wow, that is powerful.

That is a radical concept. Most people don’t think about things this way. Right? It’s just easier to blame everybody else for your lack of results. This diet didn’t work. Oh, my life is too stressful. This isn’t a good time for me. Yeah, that’s easier, right? That’s like the easier way to go. What are you going to get? What kind of results do you get from that? Crappy results? You don’t get any results. Is that how you want live your life? No, I don’t think so.

Take radical responsibility for everything that’s happening to you, the good, the bad, and all the in between. When you do that you just cannot fail, there’s no more failure. There’s just lessons you learn along the way. So you drank two bottles of wine over the weekend, your weight loss stalls out for the next week. Okay, well, that clearly didn’t work. What am I going to do next time?

Okay, next time, I’m not going to drink two bottles of wine. You know, next time, I’m going to make better decisions, boom, lesson learned, move on. Take radical responsibility for every thing happening in your life, every result that you’re getting, it’s no, it’s nobody else’s fault. It’s all your fault. This is the good thing, because you can do something about it.

I mean, it’s bad news and good news. It’s bad news, because there’s nobody to blame. There’s no, there’s no more blaming others. But that’s also the good news that everything is your fault. That means you can control it, which is amazing.

Next concept is like you have to start thinking about who it is you want to become. Setting goals and going after them is more about who you become in the process of working towards that goal than it is about actually achieving the goal. Like when I decided to run 100 miles, I didn’t know how I was going to do that. You know, I did only run 50 miles before. And so running 100 Miles seemed impossible for me.

In order to achieve that goal, I had to become a different person. I had to become the kind of person who could run 100 miles. And that required me to change my whole identity. Huh, see where I’m going with this. I had to change my identity. This is all related. Things all overlap.

So here’s the important part. I became a different person in the training process when I was training for that 100 miler. And becoming the person that I became in that process was actually more important and more powerful than actually finishing that event. So just showing up at the starting line of that race meant that I had become the kind of person who trained for and who could run 100 miles. And everything after that was just gravy.

So if I actually finished the thing, that would have been amazing. But your showing up meant that I had transformed myself into a 100 miler runner. Now, for me, I don’t like, like, when I set out to do something like that, I’m gonna finish it. Like this is my mentality is like this is done, you know, I’m going to make this happen no matter what. And I did.

So think about who you want to become. Whenever I set big goals for myself, it’s more about who I become in the process than actually achieving the goal. I’m always working on becoming more, more fit, more healthy, more powerful as a human being. That’s my mission in life is to always become more, you know, stronger, more in control of my thoughts and feelings, more of who I meant to be.

And then I want to be the example of what’s possible, I’m going to show you that you too, can become more of who you are meant to be. So think about who it is you want to become. Set big goals and become that person in the process.

Next mindset shift is, this isn’t so much a mindset shift to something you can actually do, you need to surround yourself with people who help you become more in order to achieve anything like long term health and fitness. In order to make all of this last for life. You need three things: you need knowledge, support and accountability. So you need to know what to do and how to do it. That’s the knowledge.

You need this supportive people around you. So this is your friends, your family, your community, and you need accountability. So this is someone who can, who you can check in with who can help you to stay on track. So, you know, for example, working with a coach like me will give you all three of those things.

And this is why I believe in coaching and I have three different coaches that helped me in different areas of my life. But you don’t even have to go that route. You don’t even have to, you know, work with a coach. Plenty of people get the knowledge and the support that they need from you know, listening to a podcast like this.

In our Facebook community, like Joe said in his review. At the top of this episode, he lost 20 pounds just by listening to the podcast and kind of following along in the Facebook group, that’s amazing. Surround yourself with people who will help you become more.

So you may have to change your circle of friends. And I say this to people, sometimes they’re like, Well, I’m like, if you’re with a bunch of people who eat crap food, don’t exercise, don’t know what it’s like to want to become a better person. You know, they drink all the time, they’re just partying like they’re in college still like, is this who you want for your circle of friends? You might have to change your group of friends.

But I promise you, surrounding yourself with people who have like minded goals, and who will help to support you and encourage you to become more. Oh my gosh, it’s, it’s life changing. It’s amazing. And of course, I’m always here for you if you want personalized guidance, support and accountability, and all that good stuff.

Okay, the last thing I want to talk about you guys, and this is like something that I believe so strongly that a lot of people just don’t, is this like, you cannot suffer your way to good health. If you want to lose weight, if you want to get healthy, if you want to become more of you who you’re meant to be. It doesn’t have to suck. It doesn’t have to be a terrible process. You don’t have to suffer your way through this whole process.

Eating healthy, losing weight, building new habits around food, this can actually be kind of easy, and it can feel almost effortless. And it can even be fun. What? I know it’s crazy, right? What a crazy radical concept. Losing weight can be fun. Suffering, turmoil, hunger, deprivation, feeling like always missing out on something. These are all just mindset things.

These are all mental constructs. This is just how you’re choosing to think and feel and what you’re choosing to believe about the process. You can choose that stuff all day long, and it will be terrible, you will feel deprivation, you will feel like you’re missing out, you will suffer your way through this, you do not have to suffer your way to good health.

So instead of asking yourself, like, why does this suck so bad? Why is this so hard? Once you start asking better questions like, How can I make this easier? How can I make this more enjoyable? How can I have fun with this? How can I enjoy going out to dinner with my friends and stay on my meal plan? What’s one thing I can do today to make this easier for myself?

These are really powerful questions to ask. But the thing is, most people don’t ask those questions. They ask those really terrible questions like why is it so hard? Well, you ask yourself that question, you will find answers to that. But you do not have to suffer through this process. The people that I work with, we make this fun, and we make it enjoyable. Is there some discomfort? Of course.

It’s like saying, you know, hey, let’s make this marathon training fun. Will there be moments where it’s just uncomfortable for you? And you experienced discomfort? Yes. But can we also have fun? Yes, yes, we can. Yes, we absolutely can.

Okay, so those are my big overarching mindset shifts that you absolutely have to make. If you want to make all this, you know, last for life. I hope you’ve enjoyed this two part series. And I hope you have a much clearer sense of how you can make being healthy and being fit and becoming a lean fat burning machine.

You can make all of this last for life. And if you got something out of this series, please consider sharing it with a friend, maybe somebody who you think might also get something out of it. 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.

70. Becoming an Emotional Adult

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

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Podcast Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

52. Looking Back and Moving Forward

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

Continue Reading about 52. Looking Back and Moving Forward →

Podcast Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

38. Stop Arguing for Your Limitations

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

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Podcast Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9. What Happens When You Take Radical Responsibility

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Are you blaming someone or something else for the way you think, feel, or act? Or are you taking responsibility for all of your own thoughts, feelings, and actions? Today on the podcast, I break it …

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Podcast Transcript

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

Hey there, and welcome to The Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. I’m your host, and I’m the life coach for runners and other cool people. I help you overcome your obstacles in running and life, so you can unleash your inner badass.

And I’m really excited about an upcoming event I’m doing here. It all starts Monday, March 9, it’s a three day challenge called how to solve any problem. And the good thing about this is that it is totally free. That is correct, you will learn how to solve literally any problem that’s on your mind. Big or small, earth shattering, or maybe it’s just something that’s annoying, it might be something from your past that keeps coming up, it might be something that’s just bugging the crap out of you right now, whatever it is, show up on day one with your problem. By the end of day three, your problem will be solved. That’s right, it’s that simple.

And what you will learn here is going to stay with you. So you’ll have the tools and systems in place, you’ll be able to solve any problem that comes your way now. And in the future. You do not have to keep struggling with the same old problems, you can end the anxiety and start feeling excited about things in your life again. So whatever it is that you are struggling with, there is a solution. And I’ll show you how to do it.

This is going to be fun, I’m very excited about this, this is the best training I have ever put together. And I’m super excited to share it with you guys. So it all starts on Monday, March 9, I’ll be holding the class in a private Facebook group, you have to sign up to get in, just go to innerfiretribe.com/challenge to save your spot.

You’re gonna get live coaching and training with me, your master life and success coach, you’ll get to ask me anything. There’s probably something on your mind right now where you’re like, Patrick, I’d really love help with this, well bring it to the table, and I’ll help you. You can also access all the live trainings after the fact.

So you don’t have to actually be on the lives at the time that I do them live. You can watch them later, whenever it works for your schedule. And I got a special bonus for you guys. If you just show up. If you do the work for those three days, which is, it’s not a lot of work, okay. It’s not like training for you know, 50 miler or something like that.

All you got to do is do a little bit of work. Do your homework for those three days, and you’re going to get a free coaching session with me. I know it’s awesome. And I’m calling this a challenge, mostly because most people will not do it. Most people will not take action. Most people have a problem in their life. Most people want something to change in their life, but they’re not willing to actually take any action to do anything about it.

But I know you’re different. You want to make change happen, you’re willing to do the hard work and show up. All you have to do is show up and do the work. Do it for you. Because you deserve this. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to have more confidence, more inner peace, you deserve to feel good about yourself. Learn how to solve any problem and you can have all of that just go to innerfiretribe.com/challenge and sign up now it’s going to be super, super fun.

Okay, on to today’s topic, which is what happens when you take radical responsibility. This is, I love talking about this topic, because this is one of those concepts that has radically changed my life. I used to blame others for everything that was happening to me. And I don’t do that anymore. I take responsibility for every result that I get in my life. And you know what? My life is way better now.

So let’s talk about the difference first of all between blame and responsibility because when I talk about taking radical responsibility, you’ve got to stop blaming other people and other situations for the way you’re thinking, feeling and the things you’re doing.

Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about blame. First, what is blame? What does it mean when we blame someone? So the definition of blame is to assign the responsibility for something bad. And it doesn’t have to be bad, but this is what the definition says. You assign the responsibility for something bad to someone or something. So when you blame you assign responsibility to someone else or something else, you push that responsibility outside of yourself and you assign it to someone else. Okay?

Blaming is when you look outside yourself, usually to other people, as the cause of all of your thoughts, or your feelings or your actions. So you blame others for how you think and feel and for what you do. That’s like saying, Yeah, I threw that plate against the wall, because you yelled at me. Okay, that is blaming someone for your actions, just kind of crazy.

But when we blame, what happens is that we give all of our power away to the other person. You know, if I say, you know, I threw that plate against the wall, because you yelled at me. I’m giving the power, I’m giving all of my power to that other person, I’m saying, you know, like, you have control over me. So when you blame, it’s very disempowering.

When you blame others, there’s nothing that you can do about it, you’re like a helpless victim, you become like a pawn on someone else’s chessboard, someone else’s driving the bus. When you blame others, it means you’re living at the effect of what everyone else is doing. You know, you’re perceiving everything is like happening to you.

And people that blame, they have lots and lots of excuses, they have excuses for everything, why? They don’t have what they want. They have lots and lots of excuses. So that’s all blaming is, you know, pushing the responsibility off of you and onto someone or something else. Now, the flip side of that is taking responsibility.

What does responsibility mean? So the definition of responsibility says the opportunity or ability to act independently, and make decisions without authorizations. I love this definition. You act independently, you make decisions without authorization. So you act on your own, you have agency, over your own decisions over your own existence over everything that is happening in your life.

When you take responsibility, you accept that you are the cause of all of your thoughts, and all of your feelings and all of your actions because you are, no one can cause you to feel sad, or feel hurt or feel angry. You actually choose to feel those feelings. I know sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. Sometimes it doesn’t seem that way. But it is true. But here’s the thing that’s cool about this is that it’s very empowering.

When you are the cause of how you’re acting and what you’re doing, what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling. When you take radical responsibility for everything that’s happening in your life. It’s empowering. Because you know what? There’s something you can do about it. You’ve no longer given the control away to somebody else, you have taken back the wheel of the bus, okay, you’re back to driving the bus again.

And when you live with radical responsibility, you’re the cause for everything in your life, good and bad. Okay, which is good news. This is actually very good news. You’re responsible for all of your good results and all of your bad results too. But that means that you get to do something about it.

You can make changes to that, you’re not a victim, okay? You’re not, you know, just being you know, told by somebody else what to do or act or think. Okay, so people who take radical responsibility, they get awesome results in their life. Okay, so how do you know when you’re blaming someone else you might just think oh, you know, I’m just thinking this way.

Just because or I feel this way just because well, usually, you know, you’re blaming somebody else because when you feel that feeling inside there’s like the it feels kind of icky. It feels terrible inside you. There’s like this internal conflict inside. Do you feel helpless and disempowered? Blaming others feels very disempowering, you can feel it.

So let’s say you think something like, oh, my husband leaves his clothes all over the floor, and it drives me nuts. He makes me so angry. You, when you say that you start to, you start to feel that little disempowered like achiness inside you, you know, you feel that turmoil inside you, that’s like he’s doing this. And I’m, it’s making me angry.

I got news for you. Nobody can make you feel anger, you are choosing to feel that way. But what happens is you put your husband’s actions, you’re making his actions, be in control of your emotional state. That’s just crazy. Because we know, if you’ve been listening to this podcast, you know that your thinking causes your feelings, your thinking causes your emotions.

And the fact that he leaves his clothes on the floor, it does not cause you to feel angry, what causes you to feel angry, is what you’re thinking about him leaving his clothes on his on the floor, the clothes on the floor, this is just a neutral situation is just a pile of clothes on the floor over there, okay? There’s no magic power in the clothes. It’s not beaming anger into your heart, okay?

You have a story that you’re telling yourself about what your husband should or shouldn’t do with his clothes. And reality does not match your story. The reality is the clothes are on the floor, you don’t think it should be that way. So you are in conflict. Okay, so your husband’s clothes on the floor or him doing this thing is not causing you to feel the feeling you’re choosing that emotion based on the story you’re telling yourself.

Or maybe you are blaming the weather for your last race performance. So you didn’t do so well in your last race because it was a little too warm, or maybe it was too cold or raining or whatever. And so because of the weather, you had all this self doubt, or at least that’s what you’re saying to yourself, oh, you know, I always bonk in my marathon when it’s over 70 degrees. Or, you know, I hate running in the cold. I always do terrible when it’s cold out.

So you have an internal story about what the weather means about how you perform, okay. And this is kind of crazy, because now granted, if it’s like 90 degrees out, you are probably going to run a little bit slower in a marathon. Okay, that’s just science, okay. But to say like, oh, I won’t be able to finish or something like that, like you can, you know, adjust your training to account for slight changes in the weather.

But I have a feeling inside like, I can’t do well because it’s 70 degrees, or it’s 30 degrees, whatever it is, is kind of crazy. You’re putting your power, the power that you have to run this race in the hands of the weather gods, you know, and just FYI, I don’t like running in the cold. Okay, but I ran my marathon PR in November a few years back, but it was in November, and there was an ice storm during my marathon. It was cold.

And then I don’t know about mile 16-17 it started raining and then it turned into ice and like the last five miles of my marathon was this crazy ice storm. I still kicked ass, I felt damn good about myself. Despite the weather. I chose not to believe this thought that the cold weather would affect me negatively.

So when you take radical responsibility, you are the cause of all of your results. Only you are responsible for the way you think the way you feel and the way you act. No one or nothing outside of you can cause you to think, feel or act in a certain way. Your husband can’t do it. Your kids can’t cause you to think or feel stuff. Your training partners, your coaches can’t do it.

The weather has no effect on your thinking, your actions or your feelings, okay? And taking radical responsibility means that you know if it is 90 degrees and you ran a little bit slower than you train and you plan for that next time, that’s what tight taking radical responsibility means in that situation. Okay?

So one of the things you can do to see if you are blaming or if you’re more in the radical responsibility end of the spectrum here, which I’m hoping you are, is to start asking yourself better questions. Tony Robbins says quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions. And as a result, they get better answers. Love Tony Robbins.

So blaming people ask terrible questions, blaming people ask questions like, why does this always happen to me? Have you ever found yourself asking yourself something like this? Or how come everybody else can do this, but not me? Or how come I can never get it? Why isn’t life fair? These are the kinds of questions that blaming people, people who are living in effect of everyone and everything around them, they ask questions like that.

People who take radical responsibility for everything in their life. They ask questions like, How can I get this done? Like what do I need to do to change? What do I need to change in this situation in order to get better results? You know, what internal resources can I tap into? To make this better? How can I figure this out? What can I do better next time? What do I need to learn to make this happen for me now?

Those kinds of questions are empowering. Those kinds of questions will help you to take radical responsibility for everything that’s happening in your life. So what happens when you take radical responsibility for everything, you take back your control, you know, you, you regain agency over your own results, you take back your power, okay, you are empowered. You control your thinking. And if you want to, you can change it.

You control your emotions, you get to choose your feelings, somebody isn’t bestowing them upon you, okay? You control what you do, you control the actions that you take. And if you want to, you can always do something different, you can always take different actions. The best part though, is you control your results. Your results are not determined by others, you are in charge, you get to be the your results are determined by you alone, okay? And you have no excuses, all the excuses are gone. Okay? That’s the good and the bad news.

So, think about this, you don’t need anyone else to change anything. They don’t need to change what they’re doing at all. You have the power within you right now. To get whatever you want in your life, stop living at the effect of what others are doing or saying or poor, or thinking, stop blaming others, start taking radical responsibility, and you’re going to see some amazing changes happening in your life. Cool. That’s all I got for you today.

Remember to sign up for the three day challenge on how to solve any problem and running and in life. It all starts Monday, March 9. It’s a challenge because most people will not take action. That’s not you, though. People who take action get results. And I’m putting this out there because I want to challenge you, my runners. My people who love challenges show up and do this work for yourself. Bring your problem to the table on day one, have it solved by day three. There’s nothing to lose. It’s totally free.

The worst thing that could happen is that you learn some new tools and you could handle problems way better than you ever did in the past. Just go to innerfiretribe.com/challenge to sign up now. And always, you can reach out with questions or comments at hello@innerfiretribe.com. I would love to hear from you. I’d love to hear what your biggest takeaway was from today. And I hope you all have an amazing day. Much love to each and every one of you

Did you know that most runners fail to reach their goals? It’s not because of lack of training, lack of desire, whether it’s running faster or running farther, I believe most runners just haven’t developed the mental toughness they need to get them across the finish line. That’s why I created a step by step training called How to Build Mental Toughness and Become A Badass Runner. I want to show you how to train your mind so you can tough it out when the going gets tough. And the best part, this comprehensive training is yours absolutely free. To get it right now just go to innerfiretribe.com/badass and get started today.