Fitness Motivation: Failure is Temporary

In this mantra I say “failure is not final – unless you give up” but in reality, failure isn’t final until your dead.

If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you know that I tend to be brutally honest. In a world filled with diet and fitness companies promising the sun, moon and stars, I feel people are in desperate need for honesty – and that’s not just with fitness. Make-up companies promise to make your skin look flawless (yeah, right!), clothing brands lead you to believe you NEED their clothes to feel great about yourself, and food products make you think you will bite your way into happiness if you can just taste their newest creation.

The Truth 

Out of all the advertisers in the world, fitness brands are absolutely the WORST. They will do anything it takes (lie, cheat & steal) to convince you that their gimmick will work for you and it will be easy to succeed – and that’s why I think it is SO important to be honest with people. You need to know the truth. You need to have realistic expectations. Sometimes the truth is encouraging, and sometimes is may be discouraging. In this case, it’s a little of both. The discouraging truth is: You Will Fail. The encouraging truth is: You can try as many times as you want. There’s no limit to the number of attempts you can make – AND the more you try, (like the LOTTO) the more chances you have to succeed. Except with fitness, the odds of success are in your favor.

Quitting Doesn’t Have To Be Forever

OK, so we all fail. But, if you really think about it, we have all been quitters too. Even if we wouldn’t call ourself a “quitter”, we are all quitters at some point and time. Most of us have tried something and quit something. Does that mean you won’t try again and give it another shot? No, it just means you quit for a period of time. Your success just depends on how long you decide to quit for, and how long it takes you to recover from each failure. Some people fail and immediately try again the next day. Others stay down for weeks, month and sometimes years before they try and get back up again.

In the diet and fitness world, failure is going to happen. BUT, as SOON as you try again, you are no longer a failure or a quitter.

Quit Quitting?

You may be sitting in front of the computer reading this as a quitter. Maybe you tried the latest diet and it didn’t work for you. Or, you didn’t workout this week, or eat as well as you wanted to. Maybe you have already called it quits (at least for this week) – or, maybe you haven’t purposefully quit, but you just quit trying.

Maybe you tried all week (and failed), so you are “quitting” this weekend. Meaning, you didn’t quite do what you set out to do this week, so you are not even going to try to workout or diet over the weekend because you plan to start over Monday. Even though you haven’t quit for good, you are quitting for the weekend.

Quit Quitting! You still have 3 days left – today, tomorrow and Sunday to make this week a success – and not a failure. Decide today to allow less time to lapse in between failures and to keep trying over and over and over again. Because, as long as you don’t quit trying, you will never be a failure no matter how many times you fail.