Have you ever considered the power of some of the words you use?

I know many of us have read and listened to things discussing how important the way we speak to ourselves is…

But often that even misses the little words that really change our mindset most.

Honestly the power of words is why I will always say “Act as if” and never fake it till you make it.

We don’t realize even sometimes how we are framing things until we see the changes they create.

Or realize the mindsets holding us back.

When I first started out as a trainer, I could have easily said I was faking it.

When someone asked if I could help them with (insert any countless things I hadn’t yet worked with as a newbie trainer), I always said I would find a solution.

And guess what?

I did.

I dove into the research, staying up late on a Friday night with a textbook even on the couch. Following and questioning fellow trainers till they probably felt like I was a mosquito they wanted to squash.

But I learned so much because I never turned down the opportunity.

I honestly never saw it was faking it.

Which is when I realized what I was doing…

I was acting as if.

I was embracing the habits, routines, experiences, lifestyle of someone who would be in the position I wanted to be in.

And that realization paid off in so many areas of my life.

Because as simple a tweak as it seemed to rephrase the thought this way, I realized how much more positive it was.

With “faking it” you didn’t believe you were this thing or necessarily even could become this thing. You weren’t growing into the role. Seeking to live it.

You were FAKING it.

Acting as if though is all about truly doing what is needed.

It changes your perception of your behaviors.

And this lead me to assess other areas I felt small changes to how we thought and phrased things to ourselves could really pay off.

From this, I found two 3 letter words that had oh so much more power than we recognized.

Two 3 letter words that could both detract from our success or encourage us to pursue our goals.

The first word that I found had a big impact is…

BUT

A friends says, “You look fabulous!”

You say back, “Thank you! BUT I have so much further to go.”

So often we put a BUT on accepting a compliment. We put a BUT on our success.

Part of this is in our head to not be bragging, but ultimately what this does is take away from our hard work and wins so far.

It puts us down.

It focuses only on how far we have to go.

And then we wonder why we aren’t happy with the journey. Why we can’t see our own small wins as they add up.

It’s because we always see the BUT in everything.

As tempting as it is to qualify your success, catch yourself next time you go to and just say…

“THANK YOU! I’ve worked really hard to get here!”

Recognize that you’ve put in the work to reap the rewards.

And if you choose to include BUTs when talking to yourself, only use them with your failures.

“Yes, I didn’t hit my macros this week BUT I did do all of my workouts!”

Use but to not detract from your wins but even help you recognize them.

We have to remember we can always reframe things with how we speak to ourselves.

And our thoughts become our actions….whether we realize it or not.

As cliche as the line is…whether we believe we can or we can’t, we’re right!

The other word is…YET

Guess what?

There are lots of things we all can’t do….YET!

And I’m not saying you’ll choose to or want to achieve every goal out there.

And I’m not telling you not to be realistic.

But too often we talk about a goal we want to pursue and say we “can’t” do it.

Maybe a 4 minute mile isn’t in the cards for you.

But why not at least give yourself the respect to realize you can improve!

If you catch yourself saying you can’t do something, put that positive on it. Give yourself the respect to attempt to move forward by saying YET.

I can’t do a pull up…YET.

I can’t hit my macros…YET.

I can’t fit into my fabulous black holiday dress…YET.

Because there is always room for growth. There is always room to improve.

We just haven’t gotten there YET.

But respect you can test those boundaries and prove so much possible if you give yourself the chance.

With YET we take something “concrete” and give ourselves the opportunity.

We can always improve.

Give yourself the chance to mentally by just recognizing you may not be at your goals YET!

SUMMARY:

The language we use with ourselves…well…we hear everything we say to ourselves, positive or negative.

And it makes an impact.

Those beliefs impact how we act.

Changing how we speak to ourselves can go a long way.

And if you want to see just how often we aren’t talking to ourselves like we would a friend, really listen to what your friend is saying to themselves and how you battle against their beliefs.

Really consider if you would be saying what you are to yourself if you were a friend encouraging growth.

I’d love to hear what words you realized were holding you back from embracing your greatness. I’d love to hear you tell me what goals you haven’t achieved YET but plan to while sharing a BRAG without a but about how far you’ve already come! Comment on my Fitness Hacks Blog Post or message me on Instagram or Facebook!

You woke up late. Your alarm didn’t go off. The kids took longer to get ready than usual. There was traffic.

You’re off your game and feeling a bit frustrated with running behind.

You’re late starting your workout.

And while usually you’d do 5 rounds of your circuit, you only get in 2.

You then have to rush off for the rest of your day.

But all day you’re slightly frustrated because you didn’t get in your full session.

You feel GUILTY.

And maybe even a bit grumpy about not doing what you’d ideally like to have done.

Your meal prep starts to look worse and worse to you.

It would be so easy to grab those chips, those crackers, that candy, instead.

I mean, who cares right? Your days already off. Wouldn’t it be better to just start over tomorrow anyway?

If you can’t be perfect with things…

BOOM.

That thought right there, that thought we’ve all had…this desire for perfection…is so often what holds us back.

Even just hearing this story, we all think BUT you still did SOMETHING.

Yet in the moment it is so easy to let our failure of achieving perfection with implementing of our plan completely sabotage us from still doing what we can.

While we “know” logically something is better than nothing it doesn’t always feel that way when we WANT to be perfect.

Because most of us DO want to do what we feel we should. We want to excel in those habits.

We want to do everything we can to achieve results.

But we have to recognize that while we can strive for perfection, we also have to embrace good enough at times.

While it’s hard in the moment to step back, we have to realize that if perfection is on one side and do nothing/completely sabotage ourselves/use poopy habits is on the other, good enough may be enough on that “perfect” side of the continuum to keep us moving forward.

And ANYTHING is better than not only doing nothing, but even consciously doing the habits that hold us back.

I think it’s when we really step back to see it as that continuum we can start to see that anything we can do to stay closer to that perfect side will really help us allow our results to snowball.

So sure, the workout may have only been half of what we wanted, BUT that’s good enough to be darn near perfect.

Heck sometimes we even need to think it is better than what we could have done…because we could have skipped the entire thing!

And then had we embraced that being good enough and eaten our meal plan we would have stayed even more on that perfect side of the continuum.

However, by feeling like we’d failed just because we weren’t perfect, and then NOT eating foods or macros in line with our goals we start to slide down that continuum toward poopy habits.

Because I know I’ve done this personally and I see this all or nothing attitude with clients often, I wanted to share some questions I think are key we consider.

1. Why do we fear good enough?

I say “fear” because I feel like we feel that good enough is failure. And most of us do not like to fail. There is definitely a fear of failing when we start something new.

And I think often when we aren’t perfect with something, we sabotage ourselves instead of feeling like we failed. Because when we just give up, even though we did fail, we feel a control in it. We gave up. We chose not to do it.

While often we can ultimately still feel guilty, which can lead to more self sabotage, there is an odd sense of control.

So I think we need to recognize that good enough isn’t a failure.

It’s a win.

Instead of looking at the things we didn’t do, we need to realize how much more we’ve already done than we would have at another time.

Focusing on those 1% improvements and the times we are “better than” we would have been in the same situation in the past, the more we can recognize and celebrate our growth to keep ourselves moving forward!

2. Why don’t you set a minimum?

Yes we all want results yesterday. But think about how often life really is perfect.

Think about how often a lack of time, a lack of energy, a lack of focus…basically a bazillion and 1 excuses don’t pop up?

The simple fact is…there is always something.

And honestly the more we want a perfect time, the more likely it is we will find an excuses. We are almost looking for a reason at times that things won’t work out, just because they haven’t in the past.

So often with clients I like to really recognize the fact that life doesn’t often work with us.

It often does its best to get in the way!

So instead of planning always for the ideal, sometimes it is best to plan for the worst.

Find minimums you can always return to.

Because if you set the minimum, you know you can be PERFECT with that.

Sure the perfect isn’t with your ideal.

But sometimes we need to rock being perfect with just good enough.

And that is what leads ultimately to the perfectly consistent enough that gets us results.

SUMMARY:

We are human. I know perfect isn’t in my DNA.

But I can find ways, and so you can you, to be perfectly good enough.

So today even, consider minimums for those daily habits and routines that you can do to stay on track even when a bazillion reasons not to do anything are thrown your way.

Consider ways things you can do to stay in a groove doing something…

Because small steps forward are still steps forward! And good enough keeps the momentum building!

Just tell me what to do!

I know most of us have thought this when struggling to figure out what actions to take to reach our goals.

Especially when we feel like we’ve been working really hard to not see any progress, or such up and down progress, we want to give up.

There are truly so many options out there.

We just want a set DO THIS THING AND you’ll see results.

But what if this is actually the thought that is KEEPING YOU STUCK.

This idea that there is just one thing to do, one plan we can follow forever that will get us the lasting results we want?

Because honestly this thought of just wanting everything mapped out for us, does hold us back from making sustainable changes.

And I see this most often when it comes to meal plans.

So while meal plans can be a great way to start making changes, we have to recognize their limitations.

They do give us an idea of how to hit our goals – the portions we need, recipes we can use, ways to quickly and easily meal prep.

BUT they don’t teach us to include foods we will ultimately want to eat.

Or show us how to balance our actual lifestyle with our goals.

They’re a short term fix.

They are the reason we get bored or feel restricted or eventually fall off our habit changes…

Because we don’t learn.

So if we choose to use a meal plan, we want to realize it is meant to be a short term fix.

And as we implement it, there are some strategies we can use to transition over time to fully learning how to make those sustainable changes…

We can start by tracking the meal plan to see the portions to then make swaps with other foods we enjoy.

We can tweak the recipes in the plan or even take the macros and search for other recipes we like or already use that match, even adapting our current favorites to work.

We can include meals out where they work in.

But the key is we take that framework and see how we can slowly tweak it based on what is realistic for us.

Because we need to see making changes less as us forcing ourselves to fit a mold and more as there are different ways to use the mold to also fit our needs.

We have to balance doing the “right” habits with what we can also do consistently!

And this can even mean creating our OWN meal plan…

To create your own meal plan…

1. Track a current day to see where your ratios are at and build off of the foods you love.
2. Make one small change to a recipe to adjust macros
3. Try entering in a different recipe for a meal to help you hit your ratios while having fun
4. Create leftovers and meals you can prep ahead
    1. This also allows you to use this meal plan for a few days
    2. Even say use dinner leftovers as a lunch the following day with a different dinner meal so you can see how you can reuse meals in different ways
5. Map in meals out so you can even avoid meal prep but know how those things can be planned in
6. Keep things simple by prepping protein to use in a variety of different ways over the week.

The key is planning ahead and setting meals you all know work together to repeat. And then even as your ratios change, think in terms of tweaking them.

Maybe your taco bowl becomes tacos on one ratio or a taco salad on another!

Honestly succeeding at anything in my opinion is hard. It often means doing things we don’t like.

Sticking with things even when there doesn’t seem to be progress.

Not only putting up with failures but embracing them and learning from them…

There is lots of not so fun things along the road to success…but you have to find ways to embrace these things if you want to see results and maintain them.

That’s why I wanted to share some “truths” I’ve found that I think taking ownership of is key if you want to see long-term success….

1: You’ll Always Have Doubts – Everyone Does

We will always doubt our own progress, doubt if something is working.

We will always doubt OURSELVES and our abilities.

Doubt isn’t bad.

As long as we see it as a chance to productively question and learn over dooming ourselves with doubt.

And I think the first step in embracing doubt to use it constructively is to realize that EVERYONE has doubts.

2: It’s Always A Balancing ACT

You’re never going to be perfect with your habits, with your plan.

We always will get caught in the immediate at times over the long term.

The key is realizing that there will be swings in our balance at times and that it is OK to sometimes go off track.

The key is always learning from it to see how we can keep creating something more balanced for ourselves.

Heck it is even at times realizing that a swing one way, while unbalanced, is needed to restore focus and balance.

Sometimes we need to let things slide a bit, say during the holidays, to be as dialed in as we want at other times of the year.

Embracing and learning about yourself through these ebbs and flows is key.

And realize your balance may change over time as your priorities shift!

3: There Will Always Be Steps Back

Progress is never linear. And the more successful you become at anything, the more you will realize your weak links or issues that snuck in there that you hadn’t noticed.

So the more you’ll even WANT to embrace and preemptively even take steps back.

Regress to progress is one of my favorite sayings and with good reason.

We are never above dialing in those basics.

We can always use those reminders.

We can all use at times being that beginner and taking ourselves back to that learning phase.

Sometimes we will take steps back consciously and other times we will be forced to. But the key is always seeing it as an opportunity to use these times to ultimately move forward faster.

Don’t let your ego slow you down because you’re unwilling to step back.

4: Stop The “Why Didn’t I Do This Sooner?!”

We’ve all thought this…we’ve all fought a habit because it felt overwhelming or hard to start only to finally do it and realize “Holy moly…this is the best thing ever!”

And then we’d wished we’d done it sooner.

You can’t ever fully avoid that. We don’t like change.

HOWEVER, I think knowing that what feels natural and instinctual and sustainable to start is just what we’ve always done and that no change will ever feel that way until we give it time…

We can catch and stop ourselves from avoiding doing the hard and having that thought after of why didn’t I do this sooner.

When you feel yourself wanting to shy away from the new, assess why.

Assess why something doesn’t feel sustainable and realize it may be just because it isn’t what you’ve always done.

And even if you think it won’t be sustainable long term, it is at times key you experiment with an end date! Maybe you just at least try it out because you know it will kickstart things.

Moving forward and doing a bit more at times to get the ball rolling can help you ease back to something more moderate but help you even make some changes you wouldn’t have embraced if you hadn’t done MORE to start.

5: Realize You’ll Never Be Done.

The curse of wanting more is you’ll always want more.

There will always be things to improve, to make more efficient, to make better.

However you have to find the balance of enjoying your success and being ENOUGH while still wanting to always strive to grow and learn.

Life is never standing still and we never have to say enough is enough BUT we can’t gloss over what we’ve achieved or we will always be searching for something to make us happy.

No amount of achievements will make you happy if you aren’t enjoying the learning process to some extent.

So realize it is ok to always want more but you can’t gloss over your victories along the way!

A psychology professor entered the classroom with half a glass of water in his hand. The students expected the old common question “was it half empty or half full?” But to the surprise, he asked them “How heavy is this glass of water?”

The answers given by the students ranged from 7 oz. To 25 oz. But the professor replied that the actual weight of the glass with water doesn’t always matter but how long you hold the glass is what matters.

If you hold the glass for a minute, you won’t feel much weight. But if you hold for 10 minutes, you will feel a little more weight and it gets heavier for you with hours.

If you hold it for the entire day, then your hands would go numb and pain.

That very light and small and MINOR glass of water will become increasingly heavy.

The same thing happens with our little slip ups and stresses.

The more we focus on them, the more we give them our attention and beat ourselves up over them and focus on them over just learning from them and moving forward, the bigger they become.

We need to learn to let go of the things we can’t change or control while not ignoring them. We have to recognize them, take ownership of them BUT not just dwell on what happened.

Because if we instead feel guilty, let it derail multiple days and throw us off…well the weight of that event adds up.

It gains more importance in our mind. It festers and builds to hold back progress.

It becomes WORSE than it really was.

Do not little mistakes that are mere light glasses of water become things you can barely hold up because you’ve let your mind stay focused on them.

Instead remember that those mistakes only hold weight if we allow ourselves to DWELL on them.

Basically the Moral: You should learn to let go of your stresses and setbacks. If you can do something about it, just do it. In the other case, just leave it and work towards your goals or else it just kills your productivity.

Now What Can You Do To Help Yourself Move Forward:

Consider WHY This Situation Impacts You So Much

Have you ever been in a situation that makes you feel guilty or dwell on it more than you feel you should?

Many of us have.

And at those times, try to step back and consider, even reflecting in hindsight weeks later if needed, as to why it had such an impact.

– Is it something you’re insecure about and it hit a nerve?
– Is it something that had far reaching impact?
– Is it something really outside your comfort zone?
– Did it come out of left field?

Take time to assess why this situation impacted you even more to see what you can change for next time or even use to seek out new guidance or knowledge.

Often when we feel guilty or dwell more on specific things, there is something ELSE going on we could address outside of what actually happened.

There may be an insecurity we haven’t addressed.

There may be outside issues we haven’t recognized.

By taking time to assess these things, we may be able to avoid other similar situations because of this increased self awareness.

Write Down 3 Things You Could Do Differently Next Time

Things happen outside of our control. All we can do is ultimately control our perspective and response.

So even if you reflect and there was nothing you could do to change or prevent the situation from happening, list out 3 things you’ve learned about how to better respond next time.

If you do think you could prevent the situation or reduce the impact in the future, list out those ideas.

The key is to focus on the actions or improvements you could make over the negative things you couldn’t control.

This will help you move forward but also improve.

This is embracing failures as the positive learning experiences they truly are.

They often teach us the most partly because of the EMOTION or PAIN they cause that we don’t want to repeat.

But use that as a chance to reflect over just brushing past them.

SUMMARY:

Failures, stresses, set backs WILL happen. The key is to learn from them and not let our attention be diverted to them longer than needed.

We don’t want to build them up and make them something that actually holds us back.

So focus on assessing why these things may have bothered you and then how you can learn from these experiences.

We have to recognize that not dwelling doesn’t mean IGNORING what happened either!

One of the hardest things for me personally to do is PAUSE. Pause and assess. Pause and learn. Pause and reflect.

I like action.

Honestly I’m prone to working harder wasting effort to just DO something over slowing down to learn and assess.

But the secret to the best results in as short a time as possible isn’t hard work…

It’s efficiency of work.

And efficiency comes from constantly learning, constantly honing your skills. Constantly perfecting your tools and building your resources.

It doesn’t come from simply trying to do more.

Because too often when we try to just do more and work harder, we don’t find the best way to do something.

And we end up wasting a ton of effort.

A perfect example of this is the tale of two woodcutters.

Woodcutter A cuts wood all day, never pausing to rest.

Woodcutter B, on the other hand, at times throughout the day stops and sits down.

At the end of the day, Woodcutter B has cut 3 times more wood than Woodcutter A.

Woodcutter A incredulously asks, “How the heck have you cut so much more wood than me? You rested far more!”

Woodcutter B says, “I wasn’t resting, I was sharpening my saw.”

All too often we don’t want to take that step back to improve.

We don’t want to regress to progress.

We don’t want to slow down and learn something new.

It feels like we’re wasting time. Or slowing our momentum. Or taking a “break.”

But often that step back can lead to a huge leap forward.

Stop trying to rush results by just working harder.

Be willing to pause and sharpen your skills (hehe) and build your resources and knowledge to be more productive.

It will save you a ton of time, wasted effort and ultimately help you move forward faster in the end!

So how can you get yourself to pause at times and do the learning that is necessary to stop working harder and instead learn to be more efficient?

#1: Schedule it.

How often do you actually SCHEDULE that forced step back? Take a look at your workout logs, your food logs, your progress pictures and honestly make notes and compare?

How often do you take that step back and take that bird’s eye view of your habits and changes over the last month, last few months, heck last year?

Too often we don’t step back.

We get caught up in doing.

So schedule it. Every week schedule that weekly assessment.

Put it on your calendar for a specific time each month.

But force yourself to take that pause to assess so you can then make adjustments if they’re needed. Adjustments not out of emotion even but based on what the data is telling you.

#2: Force non-linear progression.

Sometimes it isn’t bad to do something preemptively. And forcing that pause can help you be more efficient.

If you know a time at work is busy, why not take that conscious step back before you’re forced to or before you become so overwhelmed you end up doing nothing?

If you’re starting to show the signs of overload occurring, why not do that de-load week before things truly accumulate and you end up injured?

Or if you’re finding mentally that you’re not as motivated, why not embrace the change of a new macro or going to minimums.

Often less is more.

And sometimes forcing ourselves to pause, even when we don’t feel we fully yet need to or want to, can actually help us jump forward faster. It can help us waste less effort because we just preemptively do something.

It can help us even learn where are weak points are to make them stronger. It can help us learn more about ourselves.

You don’t want to wait till you’re having to do more swings of the axe before sharpening it. You may want to even sharpen it before it fully gets dull.

Same thing goes for our healthy habits. Sometimes we may want to even take that step back before we’re fully “needing” that diet break or new workout progression or rehab. Sometimes we want to do something at the first signs or even potential signs so we can keep moving forward over getting to the point we’re frustrated or want to give up or even in a bad situation.

#3: Learn while doing.

If you’re finding things aren’t progressing like you’d like, why not take the time to learn as you stay consistent over just jumping ship and starting the first program you find?

Too often we get frustrated we aren’t where we want to be and we either just start adding in more, working harder or even completely jump ship to something new, over learning as we’re going to see if there are tweaks we can make or small adjustments.

Sometimes we need to slow down the rate at which we want to do more or put in more effort and instead stay the course as we simply assess.

Then we want to think “How can we exert the minimal amount of effort, make the smallest change, and see the biggest result?

The more we are constantly assessing and seeking to learn as we are doing, the more we can take little chances to adjust small things we’re doing to get a big outcome without having to work harder or work without a break!

SUMMARY:

Working harder can lead to a lot of wasted effort. And while action can feel good and make us feel like we are moving forward faster, sometimes that pause to assess can actually lead to us leaping ahead.

As hard as it can be to stop doing and embrace a bit of learning which can feel like we’re doing NOTHING, that may just be exactly what we need to see better results faster and with a routine that is actually sustainable and doesn’t wear us out!