Don’t get caught up in the comparison trap.

If you didn’t know this about me already, I’ve been in the Todd Durkin Mastermind Group for several years now collaborating and coaching with other fitness business professionals from around the world. It’s been a life changing experience and have built relationships with amazing fire breathing dragons who I call my family.

And right now we are all in a friendly MyZone competition. MyZone is a heart rate monitoring device that connects to your phone, allows you to see other people’s stats on heart rate, calories burned and MEPS earned (MyZone effort points, rewarding effort rather than fitness). You can also form challenges and section them off into teams which is what we’re doing right now.  

The majority of these people are machines! I used to be a machine! When I was at my day job, my nicknames varied between “machine,” “Becca the board killer,” “workhorse,” “the boss,” etc. If you know my recent aliments, I certainly don’t feel like a machine but very happy with my improvements.

Here’s the message I want to deliver. It’s YOU vs. YOU.

I am not the same person I used to be physically. Nobody is really. Some people make a radical shift in their mindset and change their appearance and strength and that is always awesome to see. It’s important for me to address this because there seems to be an almost depressive state people get into when they think back of what they “used to do” to the point that they give up completely.

I’m going to do my Al Bundy reflection for a moment. I used to be a nationally ranked BMX competitor, state champion in my age group, figure competitor, and even competed in a triathlon not knowing how to swim and obstacle course Spartan Races. I would pride myself of how hard I could work at my day job then come home and kill it in my workouts and then the back yard. There is nothing greater than that sense of accomplishment.

BUT!! Here’s the lesson from the message. It’s one of my core values and that’s to keep climbing. We have to keep moving that needle 2mm each day to the direction we want to go. And we have to keep celebrating the small wins! We have to keep getting up and doing even the smallest movements, any movements even if we don’t feel like it. Some days we have to get up and recommit to ourselves every single day. Maybe it’s because we’re tired, or sore, or not feeling well, or even if we just don’t want to and have become disenchanted with moving our bodies. Some days it’s easy and some days it can feel like a never ending battle to just get moving. I get it. I seriously do.

I know I physically cannot do what I used to do and I’m totally ok with that and accept it fully. What I would not accept of myself is if I just gave up. If I stopped finding ways that my body could still benefit from and feel good with. We are our own test subjects and if something isn’t working we need to keep going until we find something that does. 

I get told almost on a daily basis from my students that I make things look easy. I take this as a compliment but also remind my students it’s my job to show the correct form so they know what to look for, feel and expect and to modify if needed. If I had trouble showing the correct form and couldn’t do it, it would be very unprofessional of me to expect my students to do it correctly if I couldn’t.

So if you’re having that negative self-talk about comparing yourself to someone else or to what you used to be, take a breath and ask yourself what are the small steps you can do to keep moving forward? Focusing on those small imperfect wins add up and create a compound effect. Trust me, I’m also a recovering perfectionist. Imperfection action beats perfect inaction. As my coach Todd says, “Ready, fire, aim. If you wait to aim you’ll never fire.”

What can you do to Recommit to YOU?

Nourish your purpose now,
Rebecca

P.S.
If you’re ready to recommit to you, I have a few open times for virtual training. Since COVID entered out lives, I have been training all online!! It has been wonderful to be able to continue to provide exercise, nutrition and mindset work for my students in this platform. Send me a message if this sounds like something you’re ready for!