If you:
- find yourself bouncing from program to program or trend to trend
- feel motivated in your fitness but are somehow still very inconsistent
- struggle to find a routine that will work
- experience overwhelming guilt when you fall off track and have a hard time working through it
If so, you have come to the right place! In this blog post, I’m going to share a couple of points on how to master your mindset for long-term fitness success.
As a fitness coach, I’ve observed that many women struggle not just with the practical aspects of fitness but also with their mindset. The way we view and handle setbacks, failures, and even success can have a significant impact on our fitness journey’s sustainability.
In order to help you build on this mental fortitude yourself, we are going to talk through the highs and lows of your fitness journey: how you view failure and how you view success.
How to View Failure
Let’s say you planned your entire week’s workouts and meals, and then life happens. Work gets hectic and you miss a few workouts and make some less-than-deal food choices.
What do you think about all of that? What is the thought pattern that ensures?
If you find yourself spiraling (thoughts of judgement, shame, and despair), first stop. Instead of beating yourself up and feeling guilty, let’s try a different approach: get curious.
What could you have done differently, or better, if anything? Make specific mental notes of that.
For situations truly out of your control, where there’s perhaps nothing you could have done differently, then practice grace for yourself and power down the judgmental thoughts.
In situations that seem to be derailing you, first pause and take a bird’s eye view of what is going on before falling right into the familiar old pattern of “I can’t do this/I never can stick to anything/life makes my goals too hard” etc. Ask yourself:
How do I want to respond to this?
What is the most beneficial reaction here that keeps me on track?
Is there a perspective on what just happened that I am not seeing? What is another way to look at this?
When you reflect on past failures, choose to do so in a way that fosters change and improvement instead of facilitating a moment of bitterness and discouragement. When you try to see things from a different perspective, it helps to reframe the situation as an opportunity for growth and improvement.
Stay in control of your reactions and your thought patterns and choose the path that provides grace, positive construction, and better future opportunities.
How to View Success
Pause for a moment and think about this – how do you define success in your fitness journey? Do you think you need to be 100% compliant with everything, including workouts, meals, and sleep, in order to be “on track?” And if you aren’t, you’re by default “off track?”
So what happens if you grab dinner with some friends? Immediately off track.
You go on vacation and enjoy resting and trying new foods? Definitely off track.
Dinner at Grandma’s? It’s giving off track.
If everything has to be perfect in order to be on track, then how realistic is it to consistently be on track? Is this mindset actually helping you (“100% compliance OR ELSE”) or is it making everything harder for long-term consistency and compliance to your fitness journey?
Instead, try reframing success to sticking to specific goals or targets as opposed to following an all-or-nothing mentality. If your goal is working out 5x a week and hitting your daily protein goal, then that creates freedom to live your life outside of those two specific goals. It also allows room for seeing friends and family and not feeling bad or like you are doing something wrong by going out to dinner.
By doing so:
- you create room to experience “success” much more often
- it clearly defines what “success” is
- you also clearly define other elements that you enjoy in your life that you now don’t have to worry about affecting your success
- you can concisely track how compliant you are being to your specific goals (as opposed to a vague “on track” feeling)
Conclusion:
By reframing how you view failure and success, you can become more resilient, confident, and sure of our fitness journey. Instead of spiraling into judgment and shame when you face setbacks, begin practicing grace and reflecting on what you could have done differently in a constructive way. Rather than holding yourself to an all-or-nothing mentality when defining success, practice focusing on following your goals and creating room for enjoyment in your life – you only have one, so don’t miss out on living it well.
And as always, if you need help implementing this into your life and applying it in a way so that it will stick for years down the road, you can apply here to work with me.
Sending you love and strength today!
