"Expectation is the root of all heartache." — William Shakespeare
One of the women in my group coaching program jokingly refers to herself as "the turtle".
She's on a journey to lose weight, but is in no rush to hit her goal.
She prefers to tackle one small change at a time and fully adopt it into her life before moving on to something else.
While her pace may be slow, it's also consistent. Which has lead to her reaching (and maintaining) the lowest weight she's been at in years.
The "turtle" reference comes up so often during our calls that now other women in the group are declaring their desire to be more "turtle-y" themselves.
And it's not because they are lazy, or "don't want it bad enough",
But rather that they realized the primary reason they have struggled with losing weight in the past is because they continued to place unrealistic expectations on themselves.
Expectations that they'll never get sick or have to work late.
That they'll won't go to a party or on vacation.
That they'll eat exactly 1500 calories and 100 grams of protein everyday.
But we all know that isn't reality.
And it's the mismatch of expectations and reality that is a recipe for failure.
But if you are HONEST with yourself about what you are and are not ready, willing and able to commit to right now,
You can get REAL about the outcomes you can likely expect.
So that you can stop the cycle of:
setting ridiculously high expectations for yourself
not living up to them (because only a robot could)
and then not getting the outcome(s) you wanted
so then you feel like a failure...again
and spend days/weeks/months in the "F*** it" mentality, eating and drinking with reckless abandon
then you feel like crap as a result
and vow that THIS TIME you're going to "get your s*** together"
so you set the same ridiculously high expectations for yourself
Getting HONEST with yourself might mean accepting that right now, for whatever reason, you might need to be more "turtle-y" in your approach. THAT'S OK. This isn't a race. There is no hare on the track. BUT if you are going to take the "slow and steady" approach,
👉 You'll need to adjust your expectations.
You probably won't lose 20lbs in 10 days, Or run a marathon next month. But you will probably ENJOY the process a whole lot more. And I don't know about you, but when I like doing something... I tend to keep doing it. Which just so happens to be the key to getting to your goal. Shocking right? 😜
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