As a newly self-employed High-Performance Coach, I thought it would be a promising idea to subscribe to a couple of lead-generating websites. Test the waters per se; potentially land a new client, maybe two. As with most search tools, the filters need set to help facilitate the ideal client you would like to work with. “More is better”, I thought. A paying client IS an ideal client. Therefore, I deselected more of the filters than selected. I opened the flood gates to anything that would present the client I would like to coach, someone with a pulse. I justified the hell out of this decision by the way – a balance between my self-worth and the necessity of paying the mortgage. 
Do you know what I learned? It would be a good idea to become certified as a personal trainer. Why? BECAUSE OMG, there were a lot of people looking for a personal trainer. The demand outperformed the mindset, emotional, and high-performance coaching 4 to 1. I seriously considered giving up on this other stuff, you know the Emotional Elevation and High-Performance stuff. I’ve only spent over a dozen years and thousands of dollars in education to enhance the skillset, but what the hell, I considered it…. until the next thought came, “why is it so hard for people to commit to health?” Then the next thought “I’m in the right field, it’s the mindset that gets you there, not the actual personal training.” I shook off the fearful consideration I gave to upending my short-lived entrepreneur path and reminded myself why I set those filters the way I did. I set them that way because changing the story that isn’t working for you is where the work lies. If the inside story doesn’t change, long-lasting results won’t ever be a thing – gym, food, relationships, spending, any of it.
Spoiler alert, I’m not a certified personal trainer (yet😉), but I do know a thing or two about mindset, physical conditioning, and simply put – getting my butt to the gym consistently for the prior seven years. Therefore, I am not offering personal training today, but I will give a little coaching on mindset to get your butt to the gym consistently.
A brief history about me to simply let you know I get it. It’s not like at 40 years of age I suddenly crawled out from beneath a rock I had been hiding all those years. I knew stuff. I grew up taking part in sports; Gymnastics, basketball, bowling (yes, I’m listing it as a sport, seldom do I admit to collegiately bowling, but try practicing 10 games in a row, throwing a 15 lb. ball and tell me if it takes endurance). Or I was the first to jump up and volunteer to participate in gym class – softball, volleyball, dodgeball (the good ol’ days when we pummeled one another with a rubber ball and then ran like hell so no one across the line would hit you back). In my mid-twenties I helped start a work softball team. I took a kickboxing class. I did stuff. I was active. But, not consistent. It was hard being consistent with the workouts because I was raising 4 daughters, working full-time, and dedicating a lot of my spare time to recovery which meant service to a lot of women. I didn’t have time to get to the gym. Or did I?
The truth is something happened at age 40, an acceptance of sorts. A realization. Have you had a moment of clarity that changed your life course? For me, decade birthdays signify a start/stop sort of “check-in” with life opportunity. Forty felt as if I entered an intimidating category of aging. It wasn’t thirty. Thirty represented gratitude for being out of my twenties. Twenty represented “I’m a grown-up. Maybe”. It was forty. It was ten years from fifty, half a hundred. I know, I’m beating a drum right now. The age thing felt a little more realistic as if I should DO SOMETHING. An invisible sense of duty to my body surfaced. I wasn’t suffering from health concerns as much as from the awareness that the body I was maintaining was not going to serve me well for the next 80 years (yes, my goal was to live to be 120). I needed to do more than maintain. I needed to get busy. I had to throw out the window the lackadaisical half-ass mien I had become. That was seven and a half years ago. On December 26, 2014, I committed to my health. My gym membership represents D-day. Decision day. Since then, I have exercised no less than (taking an average) 5 days a week. How did I make the change from temporary and short-lived exercising to weekly and daily exercising? Keep reading.
Tip #1: Make a Quality-of-life statement.
What is important to you when it comes to living life? Have you rightfully named the quality of life you desire? Healthy life. Joyous life. Boisterous and loud life. Spontaneous life. Strong life. Abundant life. What is on your wish list regarding how you want to experience your sense of movement? Look through your story draft. What future experience might be expanded upon by feeling the physical enhancement you truly desire? Your statement can be visceral or tangible. You pick.
Here was mine 7 years ago.
“I want to live to be 120, but I don’t want to be weak and fragile, and full of health problems, I want to be able to walk with ease, I want to travel with ease, I want to look and feel great even at 120, I want to have strength, I want to be strong.”
That was my goal. Here’s what it wasn’t. “I want to lose 10 lbs. I want to fit into my high school pants. I need to (fill in the blank) …OR I must (fill in the blank) OR If I don’t do this “they” will leave me.” These statements might work, but like all things, those conditions are fleeting. The commitment is to health, not temporary weight loss. Not a relationship. Not your high school dress size. Yes, those things usually arrive as you upgrade your health, but they are not the here and all of living a satisfying life.
Tip #2: Make an action statement.
On December 26th, 2014, I walked into the gym and became a member. That evening I was on my way home from the mall where I had bravely confronted anxious crowds and stood amongst a sea of people witnessing the returning of PJs they didn’t like, the Tool from Sears that wasn’t what dad needed, or the Crockpot from Bed, Bath, and Beyond that wasn’t big enough. Afterward, I celebrated my perseverance with a holiday Starbucks latte, it was quite the achievement. I surprised myself by venturing out with such a task; it was out of my character to brave the post-Christmas crowd. Yet so was the next thing I did. I knew Gold’s gym was quickly encroaching on my drive home. I had told myself I needed to join at least a dozen times since making my decision to be a weightlifting 120-year-old. I was only a week shy of it being 60 days since I turned forty. Now or never, I said as I pulled into the parking lot. Once inside, I called my husband. I said “I’m at the gym. I am signing us up. If you have questions you need to call the gym or come in and ask, or if you don’t want to join tell me now.” I knew a couple of things about my husband, he doesn’t do many things without a full investigation, but he does enjoy saving a buck, and since there was a deal if we both signed up that day, he agreed to the terms. I didn’t care if he joined with me or not, I knew I needed to take definitive action that day. Thoughts and words only inspire for so long. I needed to implement my idea to get to the next phase. I’d yet to lift a weight since visioning my 120-year-old self with biceps to die for.
We don’t think our way into a new way of living, we act our way into a new way of living. I could conjure up some research article outlining the physiological benefits of putting into action an idea; I’m hoping you as the reader have some sort of understanding of neuroplasticity. Simply put, you do stuff until the body automatically remembers to do it also. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. You retrain your brain. By making a tangible action part of your return to a health plan, your brain is relearning a new way for your body to live. This brings me to Tip #3.
Tip #3: Make a doable schedule.
For me, Tips #1 and #2 only happened for me to get to Tip #3 and Tip # 4. In my opinion, tips three and four are the game-changers. You will not be consistent in your health and workout endeavors if these two tips are not solid. Most people fail because of these two things.
The third tip is scheduling your workout time. Over the years of mentoring and coaching nearly two hundred people, three people come to mind who figured this out. Two climb mountains routinely, it’s their lifestyle they love, and the other spent her time in the gym. Mostly everyone else complained about how hard it was to stick to exercise. Just an observation. Remember all those people looking for personal trainers?
If working out has been unsuccessful for you in the past, ask yourself why? Hint: look at when and where you were working out. When I returned to the gym at age 40, I had a full-time job, I was mentoring and coaching fifteen women, had three daughters 14 and younger, two stepsons, and a satisfying marriage that I wanted to keep satisfying. Hmmm… I wonder where I found the time to get to the gym? I had a mentor years prior who taught me how to squeeze time out of the day – she said “I meet with people at 6 am. I figure the only thing I would be doing is sleeping at this time, so I will sleep plenty when I’m dead.” It worked for her, and I found it worked for me. Only my gym time was 5 am. I worked at 8 am. I had an hour commute, and kids to get off to school. After work never seemed to jive with me. I was too tired after wrestling office politics all day, plus I didn’t get home till 6:30 pm. I didn’t want the kids to wait until 7:30 pm for me to spend time with them, so I worked out when they slept. Plus, in the evenings I still needed to cook dinner. Sleep wasn’t an issue because when my head hit the pillow after doing all that life business, I would be out. My husband would often comment he didn’t know how I fell asleep so fast.
That may all seem like a lot of information for me to emphasize “set the right time”, but as you can read, I considered everything. I knew I wouldn’t go after work. I knew I wouldn’t go consistently at lunch during work. I knew I couldn’t be dependent on a “gym buddy” who may or may not show up. I had to take full responsibility for a doable schedule. No one said the beginning is easy.
Tip #4: Make it a convenient location.
Becoming a woman of twenty years sober requires priority life adjustments as well. I juggled AA meetings like a circus clown juggling bowling pins. I’m sure I looked as silly as the clown. I would come into AA meetings late and leave early because I was attending lunch AA meetings by my office. This caused me to sneak longer lunches which felt out of alignment with my integrity. Then, I would ask my husband to watch the girls on a Saturday morning so I could attend the meeting which was being held by my office because I knew those people from my lunch AA meetings during the workweek, this led to feeling guilty about leaving them on my day off, let alone leaving him to handle the load since we both worked full time. Then one day around six years sober and miserable, I realized to stay sober and happy I needed to change the location of my meetings. I needed to attend an AA meeting by my house! The whole time I was trying to go to one by my office – the one with an hour commute. It didn’t work. I never saw those people in my community, scheduling a quick meeting wasn’t convenient.
I used this lesson from my sobriety and applied it to my workout regime. The location must be close by. This is how I learned to schedule my workouts for success. My gym is 5 minutes from my house. It’s not the nicest gym, but it’s convenient. And it’s cheap – $27 a month. I’m not interested in a spa and special smoothies (at least not today), but I am interested in making it as easy as possible to get there. Seven years later, I now recognize faces – especially the early morning crew. I see these people at my grocery store. I’m part of the community. If I need help with a workout, I now KNOW people who can help. It works for me.
I go to the gym for the following reasons:
- It’s cheap
- It’s covered and indoors, not weather dependent. Not daylight-dependent.
- They have a lot of equipment, weights, cardio, etc. that I don’t have to personally pay for.
- Community
- Guarantee of consistency.
Some folks like to run, some like to hike, and some like to bike. Most who are successful with these types of exercise make it a lifestyle. I knew for me I wasn’t going to hop on the bike with small kids or find time to research a mountain hike (consistently). I needed something I could easily maintain every day that didn’t require a lot of thought.
Tip #5: Make it a daily habit until you don’t need to.
I chuckle as I reflect on the numerous conversations on this topic because this suggestion has always been met with dead silence. Crickets on the other end of the phone line. Lol. I think I need a strong sales pitch. Half measures avail us nothing. This is a favorite line in recovery. Less, doing half the work isn’t going to get you to where you want to be. Think about this….do you know someone in your life that is physically fit? Now think about it, do they work out only 2-3 times a week? Nope. But for some reason when people start debating the “I’m going back to the gym” they at once start giving themselves permission to ONLY go back a few times a week. Which habit do you think is going to win out? The habit of not working out, or the habit of working out. Because you see what happens is, let’s say they plan on working on Tues Thurs, and Saturdays. Sounds innocent enough. But then what? Well, they aren’t used to committing to those days, so a few weeks in, they realize they can’t do Saturday morning because they got invited to breakfast so they say to themselves, “maybe I’ll go on Sunday”, but Sunday rolls around and they decide “it’s my only real day off.” They are down to two workouts now. So, they give it another try the following week. They might bounce back and get back on schedule. For a while. Eventually, they will stop going. The only people that have a chance of successfully working out only a few days a week and never stopping are those that in the beginning went almost all days of the week to the point of making working out a lifestyle. At that point, it’s in your blood. You’d rather die than not work out. So, you prioritize it, even if it’s a few days a week.
So, the fifth tip is to work out 5-6 days a week until you no longer dread going to the gym. You might even miss going to the gym. Go every day at your set time and your set schedule. You are either all in or you are not.
Tip #6: Make baby steps.
Now, after reading that earlier step, you might be thinking “how do I take baby steps when you are telling me to go 5-6 times a week?” Well, I’m going to explain. The baby steps are for when you get to the gym. Set reasonable expectations for yourself. I know…WHAT? “You mean, I’m not going to run 10 miles on the treadmill, and do 100 lb. chest extensions, and 25 lb. bicep curls on my first day?” Nope. Not even if that is what you recall doing in high school. Trust me.
When I walked into that gym seven years ago, I knew two things. I wanted long-term results. My gym clothes were outdated, and so was my physical body. I needed work and it wasn’t going to happen in one day. (I’m currently working on giving myself this advice with my business!). I set myself up for small wins. I did the elliptical on an easy setting for twenty minutes only. My goal was eventually to get to a high setting for thirty minutes. I observed others in the gym using weights and machines. Since I was a 5 am’er there wasn’t much of an intimidating crowd. Trust me, only the “older” of us get up that damn early to work out – there might be exceptions but only a few. After seeing others, I swallowed my pride and would gingerly sidestep my way over to a machine where yes, I read the directions. How humiliating. Who is watching me? I’m an idiot. – Yes, baby steps with my thoughts, my insecurities, and my achievements. I eventually hired a personal trainer for a half-hour a week for a year to learn the ins and outs of the gym. That cheap gym membership afforded me the personal trainer, which at the time I think ran me about $50 a session. But it changed my life. Money well spent.
Any lifestyle change can feel impossible, especially if we have been chewing on the desired change for a while. I share my best-suggested tips as a way to help guide you to better health. We all know stuff, and yet the obesity rate in the United States in 2021 is hovering around 44.8 % for middle-aged adults 40-59. Diabetes diagnosis in the United States is 28.7 million, and there is a believed undiagnosed number of 8 million. Think of that the next time you wolf down that cupcake! Just sayin.
My simple 6-tip blog is a small contribution of effort to this overwhelming pandemic of sorts.
I think I’m going to go get that certification😊.
