We all know people who consistently achieve their goals… No matter how high they aim or how hard life’s cards may be stacked against them. They just have that terminator mindset and keep going no matter what.
On the other hand we all know the people that are consistently trying to make change, to shoot for their goals, but no matter what they try it never pays off for them.
Now if you’re reading this you may be one of these two people or you might be somewhere in the middle. Sometimes you get the win, but other times you try but just can’t get over the line.
After working with hundreds of clients for the last 6 years and training for the last 12 years, the habits and mindsets of the people who are successful or stuck have become more and more clear.
This article will focus on how you can make small changes in your mindset and your responses which will have a large impact on your results.
Are You Asking The Right Questions
Ever given someone advice on how to help them fix something only to have them ask can they change two or three things in your advice and then complain when it doesn’t work?
It seems common in the training and nutrition space for people to receive a plan that will help solve their problem only to have the response come back as:
“Can I change XYZ?”
These can be a bunch of different things but range from extra cheat days, still drinking alcohol, having dessert every night or changing the exercises in the plan. After all these changes most people want to make, the plan barely resembles the original plan and as expected it rarely works as well as it was designed to.
Now if your doctor recommended you a medication for an illness you had you wouldn’t be asking to change the medications or the dosage protocol because you know it wouldn’t help get you better. Yet when it comes to training and nutrition we get so attached to our current way of life that we can become resistant to the actions we need to take to help us reach our goals.
New question: “How Can I Make This Work?”
This is one of the common questions I’ve found with people who are successful, instead of asking how to change the plan, they ask how they can change to follow the plan.
Now I’m not saying you need to learn to follow strict rigid chicken and broccoli meal plans to get results. But, there’s a reason why your current preferences and actions have only got you so far and to make it to where you want to go some of those actions are going to need to change!
Successful people realise that and ask for help of how they can change rather than asking for permission to lower the standards of their actions.
Sure you might be busy and cooking is hard after work, but instead of resorting to takeout or easy meals successful people find when they could prep their meals in advance.
Having trouble getting to the gym after work? Find a way of getting to bed earlier so you can go in the morning.
There’s always a way to make change but the first step needs to be with changing yourself, not the plan.
Peaking Too Early
One of the most common problems a lot of people struggle with is looking at things from a micro level rather than at the macro level.
The thoughts come too much on will this action help me lose weight right now rather than will this help me be at my goals in 12 months or 5 years. A great example of this is the attraction to HIIT style training classes and methods.
Yes, they can help you lose fat in the short term but in 3 months or 6 months down the track when your still following the same burn calories training style, the same short term focused dietary habits and still attached solely to the number on the scales you can become stale, you become volatile. Ready to explode back to your old habits at any minute.
Successful people place their focus on where they will be over the longer term. They set goals that are way out of reach and day after day chip away at them. There’s no guess why most of these people are doing marathons, weightlifting or mastering gymnastics skills. The single workout matters that they are present during it, but if it’s a bad day they don’t carry that into tomorrow. They just turn up, start from scratch and know that only they can be responsible for their own success.
Likewise they know yesterday’s successes don’t earn them a cheat meal or a free pass to move further away from their goals. It’s the masters of the mundane that have the most success.
Once again that’s not to mean you can never live a little but remember if you want to be successful you need to be looking at things over a little longer time frame then just a few weeks.
Dropping Anchors
How do you make sure you stay strong when the world is pulling you in every other direction?
Most of us just try to brave the conditions and wait for life to settle only for us to be pulled away from our goals and then to realise that life rarely settles down enough for you to focus on starting again. Even as I write this I’ve had 3 more things stack up on my to do list for today!
So how do we get around this and continue to get results?
Drop anchors, as many as we can find until it keeps us accountable to our goals.
Want help making it to the gym? Find a gym buddy to keep you accountable.
Find your training intensity is resembling a lazy sloth? Hire a trainer or sign up to compete in a competition to give you a deadline.
These anchors work well everywhere else in life, think about it. Want money to buy stuff? You get a job.
Don’t feel super enthused to work today? You still want to buy stuff (pay rent or insert whatever your need for money is) so you go to work anyway. Anchor 1 – You 0
Successful people use these in every aspect of their lives. They book holidays that make them save money and want to look good for it too. Sign up for competitions and hold a high standard of themselves. You can find many ways of doing this but the main thing is that you actually do it.
Changing Your Mindset
So we’ve covered three mindset shifts that can help you reach your goals. The priority now is that you take action on these steps.
One of the biggest points of resistance for people when it comes to motivation is not being clear on their big why. Check out Simon Sinek’s TED talk on this if you haven’t already seen it.
It doesn’t need to be any more complex than this next line.
Show Up, Start Again, Make It Happen