Mindset

MINDSET

Hello again, and welcome to yet another of my musings

This one?

Mindset….

People have often talked with me about a variety of topics concerning fitness, training and diet. Some of these questions I’ve even been able to answer lol

The one topic that never seems to crop up, however, is mindset.

To me this is everything.

In my opinion, without the correct mindset you will never achieve anything you set out to do.

This applies to everything in life, not just exercise but, as this is me, I will be mostly aiming it at this field.

Why do most people fail at what they do? Is it because they have set their bar to high? (no pun intended) Well, maybe sometimes but, more often than not, I think it’s because they give up!

One of my favourite quotes by Bruce Lee is this…

“A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.”

Mindset!!

You can do anything you set your mind to.

If you want it bad enough you will stop at nothing.

Quitters never win & winners never quit

All cliché’s but all true. The serial dieter, never holds off the weight because they have no self discipline. The old “just one cake won’t hurt” would be fine if it was just the one. It’s never just the one though is it?

It would involve far too much discipline to eat clean and healthy every day and then just have the odd treat. So they diet like a crazy thing for short periods of time and then because the diet they’ve put themselves on is impossible, they give up.

The “I’m too tired to go to the gym” excuse… are you really, or is it because it’s actually going to take a bit of effort on your part?

If you really want something bad enough, you will find a way. If you don’t, you will find excuses.

People often say to me

“It’s ok for you, it’s easy” or

              “You must have a really fast metabolism”

Here’s some news for you my friends, neither of these statements are true

I have autoimmunity and a shit metabolism as a result. I take medication so that shit metabolism doesn’t slowly kill me. It’s not an excuse and I will never use it as such.

So I say to you … it’s not easy. It’s fucking hard work. Some days I feel like just saying “fuck it” but I never do because my end goal is always worth more to me that that one treat, going out and getting shitfaced or skipping that training session because I can’t be arsed or it hurts.

It takes determination and I’m not just talking about for a couple of weeks. I’m talking about the rest of your life.

So you have to make a choice and live with it. Don’t complain if you decide to give up because it’s too hard. You have to live with the consequences of choices you make. Laying blame or making excuses won’t change those consequences. It just means one thing … you gave up

Sound hard?, well yes, it is. That is the difference between success and failure my friends.

You’ve only failed once you give up, if you never give up, one day you will find you have succeeded

And then you will have to set yourself a new goal

So it’s been a while but hey all good things come to those who wait ha ha

Another rant...... this one has been about 5 years in the making

It’s about preconception, judgement and prejudice.

This is something that we all have to deal with in some way or another and to be fair we are all guilty of in some way or another.

This particular rant is triggered initially by a remark made to me by a lovely older gentleman in the gym this week

“You don’t look strong enough to lift that up”

Now he meant it as a compliment but it took me back to a not so lovely statement made by my then boss

“I am fed up with fluffy headed, overly emotional women trying to bully me into changing my mind”

This remark has a bit of history behind it but the long and the short of it was the company had broken employment law, in more ways that I care to mention and he got confronted about it. I’m not going into the gory details as this is not what the rant is about, Rather it is the assumption that he made about his female Gym/fitness Instructors.

That we are all fluffy headed and emotional

Now when it comes to our livelihood and working environment, everyone gets emotional. It plays a large part of our lives. So this is not an exclusive female reaction.

Fluffy headed?

Hmmmmmm

Now we come to the crux of my rant

We can all say that there are a lot of professionals out there who quite frankly a bloody waste of valuable oxygen.

It doesn’t mean they are fluffy headed! More often it means they are lazy or have no interest in what they do.

How many of us have seen a big muscular guy in the gym and just made the assumption he’s a bit thick

Or a pretty girl teaching an aerobics class and thought “bimbo”

These assumptions seem almost ingrained and don’t even get me started on the “woman! get out of the weights area” attitude that some gyms have

This is what my boss was guilty of … an assumption. When confronted he responded in the most juvenile manner possible. He resorted to prejudice.

When told that some of us have degrees, or are professionals in other fields in their own right he was truly shocked. He had no idea

He had just assumed we were all stay at home mums who just taught classes for a bit of pocket money. He had no idea about the level of work and training some of us have to put in to produce these classes.

In fairness many Fitness instructors, PT’s and gym Instructors, never go beyond their initial training and they are the ones that usually have the bad attitude toward newcomers, believe their own hype, have outdated ideas and generally give the industry a bad name.

I even know some coaches that refuse to use the term PT because of the bad name that many have given the industry

Many, however have pride in what they do, love to learn and are open to new ways of thinking, training and diet. They are happy to share information and love to help each other out

These people are our treasures. They are the ones we should be proud of. Yes they may have big muscles but they may also hold a doctorate, yes they may be pretty & blonde but they may also have a degree, brains, drive and determination.

So to drive a point home here's a couple of facts about one of my hero's that may make you reassess you're way of thinking

Sylvester Stallone, best known for his action movies & sufferer of facial nerve damage and a speech impediment 

He has an IQ Of 160

He wrote the original screen play for Rocky & refused to sell it until he got the lead role despite being broke & offered a large amount of money for the script.

It went on to win several oscars

For Rambo 3 he got down to 3% body fat... Less than Bruce Lee. This is recorded in the Guinness book of records 

Plus ...he can actually act ... 

A truly remarkable man 

Food for thought