That’s hardly an inspiring title for an article now is it? Well, it’s intentionally so. You see, I’m about to talk about what none of your personal trainers, gym buddies or fit friends who have been doing this for years will tell you. It’s something that’s almost the world’s worst kept secret if it weren’t for the fact no one likes to address it outright and prefers to give it the elephant in the room treatment. (Which would be impossible to ignore given the fact your average African elephant weighs approximately 5 metric tons and your average household room is roughly 6x6 so that’s a pretty tight and awkward situation to just breeze through)
I digress.
You’re going to fail. A whole lot.
It may seem and sound like the ultimate cliché, but you should know going into this that you can learn nothing without having failed. How do you know if what you are doing is good unless there are other things that can be done that either do nothing or do negative impact? Your only knowledge of success is based primarily on the premise of repeated failure. That’s how most humans grow from the fleshy pre-packaged predator meals they are as toddlers into 6-lane-highway-crossing-the-road-while-on-the-phone adults capable of making good judgment calls.
The only issue is, unlike life experience that happen and register in your brain on a subconscious levels, we’re almost always acutely aware of our thought process and experience during our on-and-off healthy living experiences. The issue is multiplied by the fact that the fitness industry almost promotes this whole concept as though it can be taken as a cycle or a short-term goal where you can have the body of your dreams within weeks if not hours. It doesn’t help that we’re constantly bombarded with images of superhot fitness models on magazines and websites that are a never-ending reminder of the tub of lards we are.
Failure – especially when it comes to fitness and leading a healthy lifestyle – is downright imperative. You won’t be getting very far – and certainly not maintaining your gains and success – without repeated failure. Failure is pivotal because it’s a flagging of what needs to be changed. Your nutrition might need tweaking. You might need to change the way you workout. You might need to not spend so much time sitting at your desk. You might need to improve your sleep patterns. Whatever it be, it’s of the utmost importance that you listen to your body and gauge your plateaus and setbacks as temporary educational failures.
The issue here of course is that most people quit upon being introduced to their very first experience of failure. A lot of people simply can’t handle or fathom why it is that they’re not flexing out their guns and opening beer bottle caps using their abs within weeks of starting to workout and just straight up quit the whole thing. The obvious mistake is that most people do treat it as a short-term process with no real lifelong commitment in mind.
That’s where you fucked up big time kids. Without that mental switch and belief that this is a lifestyle – note the term “life” at the beginning of the word insinuating longevity – you won’t get very far. You’ve got to know, realize and wholeheartedly believe from the bottom of your heart that while you can draw short-term goals; they ought to fall within a larger long-term plan. A plan that involves a lifestyle commitment from nutrition, general activity, exercising and more.
If it sounds like a hard concept to grasp, don’t worry, it is. It’s something that can take some time to develop internally until you are finally ready to accept – and more importantly learn – from your failures along the way. If you grab a Big Tasty in a moment of despair, if you skip working out for a week because you’ve got a big project coming up at work and just don’t have that kind of time, if you get injured and can’t workout for a while or just about anything else that can be considered a setback.
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