by Tom Venuto
We all fail. Everyone fails. Here's a statistic I don't like, but it's the truth: At least 75% of all people who enter a body transformation contest drop out. The difference in people who succeed in the long run is not whether they failed - they did. The difference is they got up after they fell and got back in the game. They knew failure isn't final.
The difference also is, the successful don't let failures define them. They know they're not failures - they had a failure. Failure is not a person, it's an event.
Life is full of ups and downs of all kinds, and nowhere do we see it more than in the health and fitness corner of our lives. Sometimes there are so many falls off the wagon in a single year, it seems like you'll never get to your goal. But the amazing thing is, you can, and you will get there, if you just get back up.
If you fall off, get back on. If you stray, come back. If you stop, restart.
It is that simple. But it's not easy, especially if you were off the path a long time. The longer you wait to take that first step back, the harder it is when you do. Momentum is lost. Inertia takes over and must be overcome.
Here's a true success secret: The more you shorten the time it takes to get back on track after a slip up, the less these failures will set you back in the bigger scheme of things.
It doesn't matter if you failed before.
It doesn't matter if you crashed so hard off your fitness program you blew up in a ball of frames.
It doesn't matter if you lost but then regained weight - or even ended up heavier than you started.
It doesn't matter if you fell back into emotional overeating, even though you thought you finally had it whipped.
It doesn't matter if you stopped lifting and lost muscle.
It doesn't matter if you got injured or had surgery and the doc forced you to stop training and you never got started again.
It doesn't matter if you made that “I’m really going to do it this time” decision and tanked in a month, entered a fitness challenge or contest and dropped out - even multiple times.
Do you want to know why it doesn't matter? Because you can get back up and get back in the game AT ANY TIME. You have the power to make that decision, always.
Even if you can't train much because of physical limitations, you still have to eat every day, and every time you sit down to a meal is an opportunity to make the right choice. Changing direction can happen that fast - it can start with a decision about your next meal.
Eventually, you reach the point where you've trained yourself to never have long "off streaks." What was weeks or months or years of languishing between rare spurts of motivation, is now reduced to only days or even hours - because you learned from your past mistakes and you now live by these affirmations:
"I'm only one meal away from being back on my eating plan."... "I'm only one workout away from being back on my training plan." That's why a great new meme we see in health, fitness and body transformation today is: NEVER MISS (a workout or a healthy meal) TWICE.
Too many people take a mistake that is really just a hiccup, and blow it up (in their minds) into a huge failure. If you miss once and interpret it as absolute failure, you really are in trouble, because we're all going to miss the mark at times. If you believe that missing once is nothing at all in the bigger scheme of things and pledge to never miss twice, you've GOT IT! (And if you do miss twice, then get back with fiery urgency).
What great freedom that is, to have those little slip ups and they don't even bother you anymore because you know you're getting back on and it's what you do most of the time that counts, not what happens once in a while. This one little mindset shift alone can make all the difference.
That's a goal to strive for in your future: Give up the all or nothing, perfectionist mindset and let yourself fail a little... but nip it in the bud fast, when you recognize you're off, and get back on. Work on doing it faster and faster. Never fall into the "I'll start on the 1st" trap. Don't give in to the "I'll start again on Monday" mistake. Forget about even starting over tomorrow, if there is action you can take today, or even right now, that puts you back on track.
But what if you've been off a long time? What if inertia already has its hold on you? An object at rest tends to stay at rest. Yep, including your body. I know, it's tough to get started again. It's almost like fighting a law of physics.
Some people get back on track completely with their own will. We all have that power. More often, if we're really down, we do it with a little help, incentive, or external motivation. Either way, something triggers us and ignites a spark in our engine.
That's why I'm here, still sending out these messages after all these years for you (1999 was my first e-newsletter). I know people reading this are in many different places in life. Some people are at a peak phase, some just cruising along slowly trying to maintain, and some are in a down place.
Life is full of ups and downs of all kinds, and nowhere do we see it more than in the health and fitness corner of our lives. Sometimes there are so many falls off the wagon in a single year, it seems like you'll never get to your goal. But the amazing thing is, you can, and you will get there, if you just get back up.
If you fall off, get back on. If you stray, come back. If you stop, restart.
It is that simple. But it's not easy, especially if you were off the path a long time. The longer you wait to take that first step back, the harder it is when you do. Momentum is lost. Inertia takes over and must be overcome.
Here's a true success secret: The more you shorten the time it takes to get back on track after a slip up, the less these failures will set you back in the bigger scheme of things. I want you to know that even if you're at a low point in health and fitness, you can always, always come to back to it.
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