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Hey guys, this is Cori from Redefining Strength. Welcome to the Fitness X Podcast. This is the show where I share all my free workout and nutrition tips. I’m not going to ever fill this episode with sponsorships or ask you to buy anything. All I ask in return is if you’re enjoying the podcast to leave a

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Review or leave a five

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Star rating or even better share it with somebody you think it might help. This will only take a few minutes and would mean the world to me and possibly change the life of someone. So let’s jump right in.

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This is not the last donut I will ever see. You might be like, what the heck are you talking about, Cori? But I want to go into 20 different sayings, quotes, mantras that I found really helpful in guiding me on my journey, things that my coaches have found helpful for them, and even things that you guys commented on my story and shared, which was one of them being this is not the last Don I’ll ever see. And I wanted to start with this one because it really ties into probably the most motivational, meaningful saying for me. But these things are really helpful to have these phrases in our mind to help us stay on track, to help us navigate the hard to help pick us back up. And the more we can have those little concise sayings, the more it’ll remind us of all the other snowball things we need to do.

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So number one, and this is where this ties in. It’s your choice. I think for me, this was the overall statement that changed everything the most and really impacts every other thing that I’m going to talk about today because ultimately we are choosing everything we’re doing. For the longest time when I was making dietary changes, trying to work towards specific goals, I was like, well, I can’t cut that out. I can’t restrict this. Oh my goodness, I feel so deprived, right? All the changes feel so hard and we almost act as if someone else is forcing us to do them, but it’s our choice. If I choose not to go out and have a cocktail tonight, or if I choose not to have the food at the party, if I choose not to eat the way I’ve always eaten on weekends, it’s my choice. Yet we act like it’s being forced on us.

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It’s restriction, it’s bad, but there are sacrifices that come with reaching any goal and we have to recognize, Hey, this is my choice and I can make a different choice tomorrow. I could have made a different choice today. So I really love that someone wrote in, this is not the last donut I’ll ever see because I think that’s such an important point. Hey, skipping dessert tonight. Hey, not doing this thing today. Hey, going to my workout instead of going to this other thing. This is my choice, and this is not the last time I’ll be presented with this choice and I can make a different decision later, but this right now is in line with my goals and it doesn’t mean it’ll feel easy, but recognizing that it is our choice and we can make a different choice at a different point is so key.

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That’s number one. Number two is take ownership. So maybe it’s the control freak in me, but taking ownership was very relieving for me. It helped me reduce a lot of the stress associated with making changes and lasting changes because it also gave me back agency. I think a lot of times just the choice thing. We give away our power, we say that it’s something else being inflicted on us. We blame our failures and other things and it’s hard to accept fault, but the more we can take ownership, the more we realize that there’s a lot within our power to control. You can’t change your genetics. You can’t always shift your priorities, but you can work within these things and take ownership to control what you can control to move forward. So I think that reminding yourself that you can take ownership of your journey and that ultimately you need to put in the work to achieve results, that there’s nobody else that can do it for you, is really empowering.

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It’s also intimidating, but really empowering so that we can truly move forward at any stage or phase of life. Sure, the goal that we reach the exact outcome might not look exactly how we expected it, but we can always move forward by taking ownership. Number three, your expectations make or break you. So a lot of times we come into a new plan program, we start a new journey having an outcome that we really want. I want to lose weight, I want to gain muscle, I want to achieve X. Well, just because you work hard, it doesn’t mean you’re going to get to that exact vision, especially in the way you envisioned it, but the more we come into something just saying, Hey, my expectation is to learn what I can to empower myself to be better so that I can keep moving forward towards this outcome so I can keep improving.

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Because I can tell you I’ve done different coaching programs, different plans where I didn’t achieve the exact outcome, but I learned a whole heck of a lot even from things I didn’t like that ultimately did move forward towards my goals. So we can’t see it as this linear progress or process. So the more we say, Hey, how can I manage my expectations to always seek to learn, to implement new habits, to become more self-aware, the more we’re going to get out of everything we do to ultimately move forward towards our goal a lot faster and see a lot better results than we even expected. I can tell you sometimes I’ve surpassed what I really thought was the outcome I could achieve because I’ve now managed my expectations to learn from everything instead of just saying, Hey, it’s only a success if I hit X goal, otherwise it’s a failure because it’s not.

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If you learn. Number four is oversell the negative. I’m not saying that you want to just doom yourself a doubt, say everything’s not going to work out. Be really pessimistic with this. But I think a lot of times we go into a new plan, like our friend tells us that keto really worked for them and it was so easy and such a lifestyle and so sustainable and so wonderful. And then we go in thinking it’s going to be this easy thing and change never is. And then when it’s not this easy thing, we think there’s something wrong with us. So I think the more we can say, Hey, this is a new plan, what are going to be the pitfalls? What have I struggled with in the past? What are my priorities and how are they going to hold me back from achieving this goal or implementing these things?

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The more we can oversell the potential negative things that might happen, the setbacks that might occur, even just being aware that setbacks will occur, the more we can plan for those things and often the less they do pop up, not to mention the more where we’re readily able to navigate them because we’re in the mindset of this won’t be easy, so I’m going to have things pop up. So when you do encounter the hard, you’re like, ah, this wasn’t that bad. So the more you can oversell that negative, be prepared for things to come up for failures to happen, the better off you’re going to be. Number five, regress progress. So along our journey when things pop up, there are going to be things that set us back. We’re going to have to take sometimes two steps back to take one step forward. And this is not only with our workouts, regressing moves to progress and honestly, often modifying moves makes them harder because we’re meeting ourselves where we’re at to move forward.

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But in so many areas we might say, Hey, I’ve tracked macros in the past. I’m really good at it. But maybe right now you can’t do that full ratio because of the way life is going, the priorities you have, the schedule you have, so you go back to doing the minimum. We have to regress or take that step back sometimes in a lot of different areas. And the more we embrace this and don’t see it as we’re failing, we’re moving backwards but more say, Hey, how can I use this to now build up stronger? Right? You get an injury, go back to the drawing more, take it back to basics. You come back even stronger. When I got injured, deadlifting more weight than I’d ever deadlift, I thought that was my max that I could achieve. I was all of a sudden realized all the different recruitment pattern issues I had.

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I went back to the drawing board, took things back to basics, really dropped my weights and I ended up becoming even stronger than I thought possible originally just because of doing that. So sometimes we need to regress and progress and move forward faster and we got to take our ego out of it. So regressive progress is one of those phrases I love to always return to those boring basics, take the ego out of it. Number six is effort doesn’t guarantee outcome. A lot of times we will feel like we are working really hard and we deserve a result because of it, but effort does not equal outcome. Just because we are putting in the daily work does not mean the scale is going to show the weight we want at the end of the week. It doesn’t mean we’re not doing all the right things and then we won’t see weight loss occurring over time, but it just doesn’t guarantee an outcome.

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And the more this goes back to managing expectations that we just see it as I am implementing these habits that is success in and of itself and I’m learning what I need to move forward, the better off we’re going to be. Because also being caught in defining success in only one way is the scale changing. It can make us miss out on the fact that our performance is getting better, we’re getting stronger, we’re actually seeing that body recomp and we can sabotage our own consistency because we don’t see that desired outcome. It also, the reason I wanted to bring someone up effort doesn’t equal or doesn’t guarantee outcome is because I think a lot of times we get caught up in the feeling of working hard and the feeling of working hard just comes from making a hard change, doing something we’re uncomfortable with. So simply tracking what you’re currently doing right now and tracking alone could be really hard.

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And so you might feel like you deserve results and you deserve weight loss just because you’re tracking what you’re doing. But technically, yes, you’ve made a habit change, you’re tracking, but if you haven’t changed the food portions you’re eating, you haven’t made a change that might be moving you forward towards your goal. You set that first stage, but that might feel really hard. And so then you’re going to feel like you deserve an outcome when you haven’t actually made a change. So we have to diagnose where is this feeling of I deserve results, this effort coming from, and then even realize that sometimes maybe we are doing a lot of changes that are moving us forward and the effort doesn’t feel worth it to get the outcome we’ve so far gotten. So that means that we have to sort of change the pain of change because the pain of staying stuck, the pain of where we’re at right now has to outweigh the pain of change in order to get us to move forward and want to do all the uncomfortable things we really have to do.

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And if that pain isn’t outweighing the pain of change, sometimes you have to change the pain of change. So we have to make the habits a little bit less so that we don’t feel like we’re giving so much effort so we’re more willing to stick with them to let that snowball occur. And this is sort of where number seven comes in, weigh the pain. So as I just mentioned, you have to consider the pain of staying stuck. So what is the discomfort in your situation? Why do you want this change? What is motivating you to move forward? What are the changes you have to make and does what you’re dealing with feel worth making those changes feel worth the sacrifices you have to make? There really is that fast to sustainable continuum. When we talk about making habit changes and sometimes we’re willing to make more sacrifices to get results faster, sometimes we’re not.

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So this is where if you’re motivated to move forward but those changes don’t feel worth it and you don’t feel like you can be consistent with them, how can you break those changes down so that they do feel worth it so that the effort feels worth the outcome you’re achieving and you can celebrate those habits as win. We have to weigh the pain to see what’s really worth it for ourselves to implement new habit changes in a way that feels sustainable to get us to move forward. Because what might feel small could be what we need to inch forward right now to get that momentum going. And often the more we do, the more we do. Number eight, you can’t outwork time. I know we all want results yesterday, but we cannot outwork time. And I like this reminder because anytime I’m feeling like results aren’t happening fast enough, I have a tendency to want to do more.

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And I see this in the way people comment when I’ll share photos of results or different things like that, they’ll say That’s a lot of hard work right there. That’s a lot of grind, that’s a lot of mental intensity off the willpower, and I think we’ve so valued hard work, so valued willpower, so valued doing more that we put such an emphasis on what we can accomplish short-term that we don’t really see how that’s holding us back from the longterm snowball. So I want you to think, am I trying to outwork time? Am I trying to do more now to see faster results? And will this ultimately sabotage me because I’ll get burned out because I am trying to will out my way through and that these things aren’t sustainable and I’m not truly learning what I need? How can I value the slow build a little bit more?

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And I’m not saying you won’t be willing to make more sacrifices, but even in making more sacrifices, knowing you’re making those sacrifices for a short-term outcome, how can you have an exit strategy? How can you have that plan be in place so that you can transition into more sustainable habits? But I think that reminder, we can’t outwork time can get us sometimes to slow down. Also to recognize how long it actually took results to build to get into your situation. It usually wasn’t a couple weeks. Usually it was years of us not doing the things we should or improper dining practices or snowballs of different things, overload occurring and injury occurring that we didn’t even recognize until it was too late. But just think about that time and then give yourself time to correct those patterns to make those changes, and I think that will also allow us to give us more grace when we do make mistakes.

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Number six is stop lone wolfing it. So I found myself especially guilty of this having a lot of ego saying, I can do it on my own, feeling like I was somehow inadequate or not motivated enough or not knowledgeable enough if I couldn’t do it on my own. And I realized that this was kind of a bonehead move because I was holding myself back from learning from other people’s mistakes standing on their shoulders to leap forward faster and you can’t know what you don’t know. That’s a simple fact. No matter how much we try and step outside our perspective and lens, we’re still looking for a critical opinion, a different opinion through our own lens, and the more we try and loan will foot and value doing it on our own or see coaching only as cheerleading, not as that outside perspective. The more we hold ourselves back sort of repeating the same loop and I see it with the change loop especially, which is where we get really excited about a new program.

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Do all these new habits ultimately fall off these habits and then look for a new program because we never really assessed why something worked or what we need to double down on to move forward. So if you’re lone wolfing it and you’re feeling like you’re staying stuck working really hard, consider that you’re holding yourself back by not embracing another perspective and by thinking that coaching or another plan is just you admitting somehow you’re not motivated or knowledgeable enough. You can know a lot and not know what you need because you can’t give yourself that perspective. Number 10, love your failures. Failing is just learning with frustration. The more you can love your failures, the more you can learn from every failure, the more you can pause. When you fail to assess what happened, the more you’re going to grow. The more we try and brush past things, try and ignore that they happened, not log that unplanned eating, that emotional eating.

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Pretend like the missed workout didn’t happen. The more we don’t own what happened, the more we keep ourselves feeling bad about those deviations when we shouldn’t, but the more we also don’t learn to avoid or plan for them in the future. So love your failures. They are chances to learn and often move us forward faster because we don’t want to repeat them. Number 11, something is better than nothing. It’s not fun to not feel like you can’t do the perfect thing, but you have to remember that a 1% improvement over what you would’ve done in the situation is better than nothing and going to move you forward. I think so often we compare what we can do during ideal times. What we’re motivated to do during January to what we really feel motivated to do during the holidays or the summer or a time that’s not as perfect usually for reaching the goals we want.

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But if instead of comparing to a perfect time, we compare this time to the same time even last year, it’s thinking about how can I make these habits 1% better? Hey, during the holidays I want to have more holiday cookies and more holiday events. I’m not going to skip things or be as consistent and meal prep the same way as I was during January, but how can I make the holiday season a better holiday season? How can I be a little bit more consistent the more we compare and make those 1% improvements and think, how can I do something? Hey, usually on a day like today, I would skip my workout, so I’m going to do one minute of mobility work. That is something and that’s going to make you feel successful and that success mindset is going to make you want to do more.

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This goes with number 12, which is do the minimum. So I see do something as different than doing the minimum because when we do the minimum, we’re planning for the minimum. We’re embracing that times of year other priorities are going to take precedent and that we’re going to have to shift how we’re addressing our workouts and our nutrition. Going to three workouts a week because work is busier or family life is busier, doing a minimum with just tracking our food, but not necessarily setting a strict macro breakdown and focusing just on protein or even trying to get more meals at home. But sometimes we have to plan to do the minimum over just even having that plan be for when our day gets sabotaged and we do something over nothing. Number 13, sustainable doesn’t mean easy or comfortable when you are making habit changes, you do want to be creating a sustainable lifestyle, but what feels sustainable is what you’ve always done.

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Change is never going to feel easy. Think about how many times you’ve even made a change and look back and be like, why didn’t I do this sooner? And it’s because it felt hard to start because it felt different than what you’ve always done because you’re unlearning old habits as you’re trying to learn new ones. So when we’re thinking about creating something sustainable, it’s just more about acknowledging that we’re trying to learn the basics. We’re trying to learn about macros to understand how our portions impact us. We’re trying to learn about workouts and how our body feels. We’re trying to build a self-awareness of what we prioritize in life, how we respond to different situations. By all this learning, we can really find our lifestyle balance and constantly tweak it, but that’s where the sustainable comes in. You’re going to do things that are making sacrifices that you do not want to make longterm.

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What you do to reach a goal is not what you do to maintain it, but this is why we’re thinking about how can I learn more about myself to understand what feels sustainable for me at the most fundamental level and then implement different habits? Even embracing that sustainability is going to be different at each time of year. During January, you’re not traveling. You’re really motivated to get extra lean for that beach vacation coming up in the spring or whatever else, so you do more, but hey, during the holidays you don’t have that same motivation. Sustainable is something different. So embracing that sustainable doesn’t always mean easier or comfortable too, and that there are still going to be sacrifices even as you make a lifestyle. I don’t want to wake up with an alarm every day. There’s days that I want to track my food, but I also know the value of it.

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The more we can embrace some of those habits too and just say, Hey, this is a downside to the upside. Number 14, when you want to quit, keep going. When you want to quit, keep going. I’m going to repeat that one more time. When you want to quit, keep going. I can tell you that often it isn’t someone doesn’t have a good plan that they’re not doing the right things with their macros, that they’re not working hard enough that anything is even off. They just want to quit. Think about how many times we’ve done those 30 day challenges and we feel like, Ugh, I haven’t gotten the results I want. This goes back to weighing the pain because the pain of staying stuck may not outweigh the pain of change. We have to shift our habits at that time, but we have to remember that a lot of times we just haven’t seen the results.

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We want snowball because we’ve quit. We have not embraced that. We just need more time doing those things and we’re going to hit dead zones, we’re going to hit plateaus, we’re going to hit times. We’re not motivated, but we’ve got to find ways to then do the minimum change. Our strategies change what’s sustainable to keep moving forward, but too often we just quit. We go back to old habits, which are definitely not going to move us forward. Number 15, suck it up buttercup. I probably say this to myself once a day. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing, but I do. This one for me is just a reminder of almost all the things I’ve already talked about and all the things I’m going to go over. Suck it up. Buttercup just means there’s going to be hard. Life isn’t going to be easy.

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Changes aren’t always going to be easy. I’m not always going to do what I want. Even saying, suck it up buttercup, you want to embrace not doing what you should and there’s going to be consequences because of that and you’ll deal with them tomorrow. But I think the key that we remind ourselves that life is not always easy, especially in this day and age of all the social media where people are posting all these things of how easy things are for them or how good life is, and we’re seeing this highlight reel all the time, it’s really key that we remind ourselves that there are times we are going to have to say, I don’t want to do this, but it is my choice. Suck it up buttercup. Keep on going. Number 16, always question. The more we can ask ourselves why, the more we can assess why things worked or didn’t work, the more we can constantly step back to reflect and even set periods to reflect.

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The more we’re going to learn from everything, and I can tell you that building self-awareness and constantly trying to build more self-awareness is what always drives me forward and helps me constantly grow and feel like I’m improving. This doesn’t mean that if progress is linear and that every week is better, there are weeks, there are setbacks, but then I learned from those, which ultimately I do feel like helps me lead forward after, but the more we question things, the more we question, why didn’t this work and dive deep into the things or why did I have this reaction? Or Hey, I’ve been really trying to work around this, but yet still flare it up. What’s going on? The more we ask ourselves questions and separate the emotion when we can, even if we have to throw a temper tantrum first, get upset, cry, whatever else, the better off we’re going to be.

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So always question even if someone presents an opposing opinion that you’re like, no, that’s wrong, okay, even when you have that response say, wait, hang on. How could this be right? Or how could this work for them? Be curious with it. Number 17, don’t doom yourself with doubt. So I’m not telling you to go into a program saying, oh, this is going to be perfect. Everything’s going to work and not have some questions about it. I want you to question things. I want you to ask, why this macro ratio? Why would this work? Why this workout program? Questioning is good, but too often we go into something saying, this won’t work, and the second you said it won’t work, you are not going to embrace the systems or patterns or mindsets in order to make it work. It’s basically faking it till you make it and you’re not going to make it because you’re faking it.

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We’ve got to act as if. So with this, you got to not doom yourself a doubt. You got to say, okay, I am doing this. Why could it work? And if it’s not working, why might it not work? Okay, but now let’s implement all the habits and try and maximize all the habits. Go all in and then take a time to assess you have that end date, set that end date, then assess at that point. But don’t doom yourself a doubt because otherwise you’re not really going to embrace the mindsets, the true actions. You’re going to do the workouts, but you’re not going to be intentional with all the training. You’re not going to try push loads, you’re going to do the macro breakdown, but potentially not address as mealtime and making you feel good, or are you sleeping well because of this? What other tweaks can you make to the food quality to even dial it in?

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We’re not going to maximize the plan as is, and we’re going to do ourselves, so it’s almost like, why are we doing this? Don’t do yourself without. Number 18, pause and breathe. I can tell you when something is not working, when I’m getting frustrated, I instantly either want to go into extra research mode, do more mode, hard work mode, but sometimes we just have to pause and breathe. We’ve got to take that step back. That’s it, that pause, breathe. If you feel yourself pushing back against a change, even like someone’s telling you to do this, you’re in coaching, even embracing it, and you feel this instant rebellion against it, someone tells you to increase your protein. You’re like, no, I don’t want to increase my protein, and you try and find all the reasons not to do it. Be like, Hey, pause. Why am I trying to find all the reasons not to do something?

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Is it maybe that it’s really uncomfortable? And yes, it’s really easy to reach for those reasons, but could this be the one thing I’ve never tried that might actually make the difference in reaching our outcome? If we have a goal, we are not going to like all the systems, processes, things we have to do to get there, and so often we say, if it doesn’t have this feature, it’s not worth it. We look for a plan that has x, y, and Z thing that has follow alongs, that has specific macro breakdowns. Then we don’t have to track in, but we want an outcome. What’s more important, having to track and that little pain or the outcome. Every upside has a downside, so sometimes we have to pause to breathe to assess. Number 19, you’re never above the boring basics period. No matter how advanced you are, you’re going to go back to them and the more advanced you are, probably the more you’ve done those basics over and over again.

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I can’t tell you how much I’ve read on macros at this point. I’ve written a ton of macros. I look at studies all the time, but when I start a new nutrition course, even though every nutrition course starts with proteins are this, carbs are this, fats are this. I read through that stuff and I never skip it. I used to skip it and I realized that I was holding myself back from hearing something said in a new way that potentially even would make something in the program connect in a different way. For me, sometimes we need to hear something said in a different way at a different time to get a new interpretation. So don’t skip stuff that seems like, Ugh, I know this already. That’s the most important stuff to do because a lot of times it’s reminders that we need that we’ve forgotten as we’ve tried to learn more advanced stuff as we’ve progressed in our journey.

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So you’re never above the boring basics, and the more you return to them, probably the more solid and faster you’re going to move forward overall and be able to implement more advanced stuff correctly and efficiently. Number 20, success is struggle. That’s it. Success is struggle. Failures are a part of success. They’re not the opposite of it. If we want success, we have to plan to see setbacks, mistakes, mishaps, plateaus, all those things, but a lot of times what we see as not moving forward ultimately does launch us forward faster. All of this to sum up, and probably the one saying I’m not including fully on here, but adding in as the bonus is act as if all of this relates back to creating the mindsets, the attitudes, the actions of someone who has the goals that you want. So to sum up all 20 sayings, it’s act as if you are becoming the person that you want to be because you’re acting as if until you’re acting as you are.

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Our personality, our lifestyles, everything in our life are constantly changing. Our body’s constantly changing, and the more we can say, Hey, where do I want to go? How can I act in a way that is in line with where I want to be? The more we’re acting as if we’re implementing these different things, we’re believing these different things, the more we’re going to see those results snowball. We can’t fake things. We can’t just say, oh, I want to do these things. You got to actually work the plan if you want the plan to work. So acting as if it’s super key and creating those mindset sayings for yourself to remind yourself of the things that you need to do at the times you least want to do them is going to help you keep moving forward, shifting that identity and growing into the person you want to be because that’s a great part about life. We can constantly evolve and we should be constantly evolving. We’re actually changing whether or not we want to be. We just want to control the direction of the change and how it’s happening. I’d love to hear sayings that really motivate you, all that help remind you guys of the different things that you’re doing and which of these 20 sayings was most helpful for you, so please share in the comments. Hopefully this was really helpful, guys, so that you can keep rocking those results.

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Thanks for listening to the Fitness Hacks podcast. Again, this is the place where I share all my free work out of nutrition tips. I’m never going to run sponsorships or ask you to buy anything. All I ask in return is if you’re enjoying the podcast to leave a rating, review or share it with someone you think it might help. This will only take a few minutes and it would mean the world to me and possibly change the life of someone 

*Please Note: this transcript is auto-generated and there may be some errors in the transcript