Go From Surviving To Thriving

Cori (00:00):
Welcome to the Redefining Strength Podcast. Everything you need to succeed on your health and fitness journey, even the stuff you don’t want to hear. If you’re taking pride in being able to do it all on your own, you’re actually taking pride in staying stuck. So we have this image of the lone wolf thriving on its own, but the lone wolf is actually just trying to survive. So this realization came to me that we keep ourselves stuck by trying to do it all on our own. When I was up at three 30 in the morning, and I was thinking through this conversation with this woman that I had had on email, and she was very proud of herself for I know it all, I can do this on my own, and I’ve been there. So I get that ego in feeling like you can do it on your own.

(00:49):
You are strong enough, you’ll find a way. And again, it goes back to I’m a lone wolf. Well, I actually then had this idea at three 30 in the morning, why do we have this image that the lone wolf is this strong successful thing on its own? And I was like, is it even? How did this come about? So I went and Googled it because that’s what you do when you don’t know what something is at three 30 in the morning, of course. And I realized that the lone wolf is actually trying to find a pack. It is not trying to survive on its own. It doesn’t want to. It wants that pack to really thrive. And it made me realize, do we sort of do the same thing? We go out on our own thinking, we’ll be better off thinking we’re strong enough to do it on our own and ultimately hold ourselves back because we aren’t utilizing the knowledge of others, the perspective of others.

(01:36):
And so we’re not going as far as we really can and we’re limiting ourselves and it’s ego that’s getting in the way. So if you’ve been sort of saying, I’m a lone wolf, I can do this on my own. You need to question if you’re just trying to survive or if you really want to thrive, potentially leaning on others. And it’s hard to be vulnerable in that way. This is where really showing ourselves our own strength, our own ability to be receptive to feedback is so key. So I wanted to go over some strategies to help because I think the shift from feeling like we should or need to do it on our own and getting our ego out of the way is really what ultimately leads us to see better results faster and avoid so many pitfalls. I can tell you that the more I’ve embraced help from others, the further I’ve actually seen myself go.

(02:21):
So I wanted to share some really big, important tactical ways to give yourself that perspective shift. Because accepting help, accepting support is what will ultimately get you further. And if you even think about it, and this is something that really helped me because I was like, well, I know a lot knowing isn’t doing. And also we often can’t know what we don’t know. If you think about Olympic athletes, they’re often technically more skilled, more talented, even than their coaches are. Yet they have coaches to give that perspective. Anybody who’s succeeded at something, if you look down their path, you’ll see all the mentors. They talk about having all the different perspectives they’ve done, all the different they learned from some, gave them really positive experiences and some not so positive experiences. But even the things we do that don’t feel as positive in the moment, that feel like they set us back, we can learn something from.

(03:11):
So the more experiences we have, the more perspectives we get, the more we grow. So I wanted to go over some steps to help you embrace putting that ego aside and getting help. And number one, our step number one is stop overestimating your self-awareness. We simply don’t know what we dunno. And I can tell you that even the more I seek out contradictory opinions, I will literally say, I believe in tracking macros. I want to go read everything on why you shouldn’t track macros. I still am looking for all these things that contradict what I believe from my own perspective and lens. And often in this, we miss the little nuance of things, the little tweaks that could really add up. Maybe it isn’t that I should be finding perspectives against tracking macros, but maybe it’s that I should find perspectives against my belief that X person needs higher carb or this food is important and that’s really what adds up.

(04:01):
But I can’t see some of those things because I don’t know what I don’t know. And so by having outside help to see those opportunities and the nuance, I can start to question what I believe and even improve and grow. When we think about even our movement patterns, you’re focused on what you feel working and how the movement is going. There might be one little way you can cue something differently to get yourself to have an even better result from it, or you might be able to do a little heavier weight or slower tempo in a different way if you do a slightly different posture or position. But all these different things are just things we might not have been introduced to yet. And by putting ourselves out there and asking for help and asking for perspective and looking to constantly learn and grow and be receptive to that feedback and even normalizing feedback, we’re going to ultimately move forward faster.

(04:46):
But I would really encourage you to take a step back and say, I think I’m very self-aware. I think I know all these things about myself, but in what I’m perceiving as the self-awareness, where am I actually missing strengths and where am I missing flaws? Because in that too, we think about our weaknesses just as weaknesses, but a lot of times they’re attached to our strengths as well. And we can’t necessarily change the weakness without a detrimental impact on our strength. However, we do try going to changing the weakness. But what if you just double down on the strength? Instead, all these things are perspective shifts that we might not be able to see because we don’t see where things are attached, and we need that outside perspective. That’s step back to really help. So step number two, to putting yourself out there, being more vulnerable, risking the support of others.

(05:33):
And I say risking because sometimes it can be really uncomfortable is borrowing perspectives before you break. Often we do only seek out help when we’ve really fallen down, when we feel at the lowest of low. And instead of getting to that point, instead of failing, be like, Hey, I’m making great progress. How could I make better progress? Because I think too, we hesitate, our ego pushes back against asking for help because we’re usually asking for help at an uncomfortable time, A time we don’t feel like enough. And if we instead are asking for that perspective shift when we do feel great, when we do feel like enough, we’re going to be way more receptive to it. It doesn’t feel like that negative. It doesn’t feel like that thing that’s a ding to our ego or pride, our knowledge. So instead of saying, oh, I don’t know, be like, I do know all these things, what more can I learn?

(06:21):
Or because I know, I realize all that. I don’t know. If you think about Bruce Lee’s comment about I more respect and I more fear the person that’s practiced one punch a thousand times than the person that has practiced a thousand punches one time, or it might have been kicks if I butcher the quote. But it’s that ability to recognize that the better we get at something, the more we’ll realize there’s more opportunity in it. The more we can improve upon those basics, the more we even have to take ourselves back to those basics to keep improving. And so the more receptive feedback we really get, so instead of seeking out perspective when you failed at your highest of highs, say, what more can I do? Because that’s really where you launch even further faster. So borrow perspective before you feel broken. It shifts your whole mindset.

(07:10):
And even thinking about it that way of like, oh gosh, I’m not looking for support because I don’t know. I’m looking for support because I realize all that there is to know because I know a lot in this area. The more I learn about macros, the more I realize there is to learn and the more nuance I see in the things. So there’s always more to learn. And the more we have that positive association with asking for support, the less our ego pushes back. Step three, learn to love the pushback. The more I’ve almost seen getting feedback and pushback as a good thing, the more I seek it out, the more I want to do it, and the more I realize how much it’s pushed me forward. So think about the last time you did start a new program. You did ask somebody for help and how much you learned from that experience.

(07:53):
But the more you see that pushback is a good thing, the more you’ll find opportunities that weren’t even meant by the initial feedback that you got. But if no one’s pushing you, you are not going to grow. If you really think about everything in life, it’s kind of forged out of a hard, it’s forged out of a pushed, so to speak. We don’t often succeed because we don’t have any struggles. We succeed because of those struggles. If you think about the last time you became more confident, stronger, you saw results or progress, it was often hitting a hard and pushing through anyway, legitimately. Our muscles grow because we tear them down. They hit this hard, we force them into the struggle, and that’s what makes them adapt and grow stronger. That’s how everything sort of works. And the more we see that opportunity, the more we can embrace that pushback and realize how much that pushback is why we ultimately leap forward faster.

(08:47):
So I want you to really change your perspective to recognize that it’s your ego. And I say this, having had lots of ego and trying to do it on my own, but it’s our ego that wants to keep us in the comfort, keep us in the safety, but also keeps us stuck, right? We don’t want to feel bad at something. We don’t want to feel like we failed. But support and seeing opportunity in that support in that perspective isn’t failing. It’s believing in ourselves that we can achieve so much more. We don’t want to just be the lone wolf surviving. We want to be that wolf that finds its pack and really thrives. So I would love to hear how you are stepping back and embracing support, embracing perspective, how you made that mindset shift to allow yourself to see opportunity in the different perspectives. Because again, we can’t know what we don’t know. And only through asking for help, asking for support, seeking to see other vantage points and viewpoints, can we grow and prove to ourselves what truly is possible beyond our own limitations or beliefs?

*Note: This transcript is autogenerated there may be some unintended errors.