Hey Team,

With the challenge approaching the end, it’s all the time when the emails and messages start coming through.  They usually start with “I don’t know what happened, but…” and finish with the “so, I’m going to fail the challenge this year…I’m just not going to finish – I feel like I’ve failed again”.

Honestly, every time we run a challenge this happens.  And it also happens to people who have started memberships FULL of hope and good intentions, but then ‘something’ has gone awry and within 6-months they are giving up with a promise to try again next year…

Now – I don’t totally blame them for the negative mind-set…but I do think you can control the narrative by controlling the stories that you tell to yourself.  And these are the stories you tell “in the moment” and the ones you tell “upon reflection”.  

I’m going to try and start with a general ‘Non-Gym’ example and then try and drag this back on track.  To do that, I first want you to imagine something ‘NEGATIVE’ (I would say ‘BAD’ but apparently that can cause people to go a bit ‘dark’ according to this new ‘style’ ai tool I am trialing!!) that is both negative and unexpected.  Like what?  Maybe a job you had been planning for and counting on at work was offered to someone else, maybe your performance in an athletic competition was below par, maybe you got laid off from work or – or worse yet, lost a loved one or suffered some other horrible tragedy. Why is it that some people are seemingly able to bounce back whilst others get ‘stuck’? 

First up, it’s OK to acknowledge that when things in our lives ‘Go SOUTH’, most people feel broken/hurt/completely overwhelmed.  Yet some people are able to constructively integrate the “event” – whatever it was – into their personal story…and the research (try this one on for size:  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20450085/ – “Storytelling: an approach that can help to develop resilience”) really supports this approach.  Once you have CONSTRUCTIVELY integrated the story into your personal narrative – that ongoing story you tell yourself about yourself, about who you are and what you do – you will be able to feel better and move forward more quickly.

Now – why do I keep highlighting constructively?.  Well, is emphasized because it’s easy to tell ourselves very different stories about the same event. For example:

“I didn’t get the job – I guess I’m on a losing streak – what will it be next??” versus;

“I didn’t get the job, but I learned a lot of things during the process and I’ll be so much better off NEXT time.”  Though this example only rings true on the proviso that you are specific here about the A/B/C of what you learned during the process!

I suppose it’s time to add in a couple of caveats.  I don’t want to compare personal TRAGEDY like losing a loved one with missing out on a job – not only are they not in the same ball-park but they aren’t even the same sport.  But what I am trying to do is talk about the personal narrative each of us tell-ourselves when things in our life go wrong.  Secondly, this isn’t me saying you should “Lie to yourself” or engage in delusional thinking – having an overly sunny outlook doesn’t really help when it comes to actually improving…and I mean, it’s OK to be sad.  When life takes a turn for the worst you absolutely should feel hurt and grief…and it’s OK for those feelings to linger.

What I am trying to say though is that you need to make a CONSCIOUS choice about the way you position events in your story.  I guess for me I see a heap of positive examples from this in my ‘Footy’ life (players battling back after injury, missing out on being drafted, missing team selection only to fight past the adversity and turn it around) but instead I wanted to drag it back to the gym and in particular, the challenge (just one week to go).

I had a long chat with a newish member (probably 18-months in the gym) when I got back from Melbourne last week.  It’s their first ever challenge and they had a bit of a disaster that previous weekend – essentially 4x days in a row with no training and zero calorie control (and a bit of alcohol!) and had reached that “what’s the point, it’s too hard, I’m just going to quit now” stage.  The problem wasn’t the 4x day ‘bender’ (and by the way, it wasn’t even THAT BAD!!).  The problem was the story they had created around their perception of success and failure.  See, to me the simple fact that they had gotten through two-weeks was PROOF they both knew what to do and had the discipline to do it.  Further, the fact that they ‘fell off the wagon’ so to speak was a great learning opportunity – rather than being a reason to give up, what actually happened was a series of events that can easily be “learned” from and contribute to future success…PLUS, there was still 2-weeks to go!  It was (to me) a pretty simple equation – you now know a LOT more about yourself than you did at the start of the challenge…acknowledge (and be HONEST) what went wrong and jump back on the bike – and next time you are threatened with calamity, think back to your learnings and forge forward!

The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are incredibly powerful and will have a significant impact on our lives.  When you hit a bump in the road, be sure to craft your story in such a way that you are able to take on board the LEARNINGS yet understand there is a positive road ahead!

See you in the gym,

Michael.