WARRIOR MINDSET

I use “Never Quit” or “Never Give Up” A LOT. It’s not just a slogan I like to wear on a t-shirt. I mean it. I believe in it. 100% of the time.

I am a Coach. My brain and my heart are hardwired for helping people. They just are. I can’t help it. I have discovered this truth after years of my own training and personal journey.

This is a fairly tricky thing to balance out for me. I am a professional, I provide training, inspiration, guidance and education simultaneously I must maintain a high level of passion for helping people and so this mixture leads to personal vulnerability. It’s a tightrope that coaches walk each time we take on a new client.

If I coach you, I will give you everything I have to help you reach your goals.

As a client you need to understand that this means i’m giving you a small piece of myself. In order for this to work, you have to reciprocate. At the same time you have to have some internal motivation to get you to where you want to go. I cannot make you do the work. I can lead you, I can inspire you, I can certainly help you in just about any way you may need. But I cannot make you do it.

You have to get up and dig in. You have to persevere through it all.

However through all of this, I am a Coach. When your priorities shift or you change your focus, I can’t help but feel that you are actually giving up on your goals. Maybe you’ve shown me pictures of what you want to look like. Maybe you’ve written down your motivation. We’ve probably talked about defining your “Why”, so you know why you’re doing all this…

Yeah, you’ve worked pretty hard the past couple months. I know that the work has gotten more difficult. I know that you have other things, like your family, career, home, pets, car, hobbies, all the things that pull against your time. We all have that happen to us in life. It’s life, it’s not easy. It happens to me too.

This is why, when things gets difficult. When this happens you have to double down on the work you need to do to achieve your goals.

Here’s the part you’re not going to like hearing: 
I’ve seen you give up when things gets really hard. I’ve seen you stop giving your best effort. I’ve seen you slip and cheat the rules we setup when we first started working together. I’ve read your food journal with good healthy entries and then I’ve seen on Instagram where you’ve actually eaten a whole pizza and then missed 4 days in a row.

I was there when you weren’t there when you were supposed to be there doing the work you’re supposed to be there doing.

This is why i’m here, this is why you hired me.

To call you out on these things.

To redirect you back to the work.

Even when you don’t want to hear it. Even when you don’t want to do it.

You probably think, that in the long run, these are small things… yes they may be. But, I believe 100% that the way we do the small things is the way we do everything.

When we’re dealt a shitty situation, like an injury for example, it’s what we do after it that matters. Do you just accept it and give up on your original vision or goal?

No.

Hell no…

You don’t let anything change your vision or your goal. You adjust things, yes, but you keep getting after it.

If you can’t workout, you fix your nutrition even more.

If you can’t train, you still show up to class and watch and learn things.

You find out what you can do and you go do that.

If you really want to achieve your goals, you’ll do it, you won’t be thinking about quitting, much less talking out loud about it.

You told me once that you don’t ever want me to think that you are a quitter.

I don’t say this to insult you.

I say this because, believe me or not, I respect you. However:

“You ARE quitting. Don’t lie to yourself…”

To accept anything less than what you told me you wanted and to change your trajectory to anything less than that which you set out to achieve is just that…

Quitting… It’s intellectually dishonest to believe otherwise.

I am a Coach. I am a professional. I can handle it if you want to go somewhere else. Or if you outgrow what I can offer. Or if you don’t jive with my style. Or if you’re not getting what you want with me. I can handle that, truly.

You see; I’m left feeling that you are quitting because I challenged you to get to the next level. So i’m left feeling like it’s my fault, like I pushed you away from your goals by expecting too much out of you, maybe expecting something out of you that you didn’t really want in the first place. If your priorities shift and you want something different out of life, that’s cool. I’ve got your back, believe that.

But know that if you really want to grow, you’ve got to acknowledge what the truth is. In order for me to commit to you, I have to give you a little bit of myself. A little bit of my heart and passion. There is only so much that I can spare, so to me it is precious.

In the end though you don’t owe me anything. I understand that. This isn’t a pity party for poor old coach here.

But you do owe it to yourself to think through whatever the truth that you’re hiding from might be…

Don’t leave something undone and have regrets later in life. Especially since maybe it’s just because something became more difficult and you had to work harder at it. You’ll just grow older and always dream about what could have been.

You can get to where you want to be. You just have to really mean it.

I really hate seeing people not get what they want out of life because they can’t stick with the work long enough and can’t fight through the pain long enough to achieve it. Average people do that, they start along a path and then when it gets tough they quit. They walk away.

I believe in you. I do not believe you are average. That’s why I gave you that little bit of what I have.

If you want to get back and work on those goals, I am here. 
If you don’t want to do it with me, I respect that too.

Just please don’t give up on yourself.

Never give up.

Never Quit.

I think that saying “good luck” to someone before they take on a big challenge isn’t quite right. While I like the sentiment, something that might stick a little more is “Never Quit” or “Never Give Up”. Saying that luck has anything to do with your success just doesn’t feel right. You mean I was lucky to pass that test? Hell no, I worked hard to pass it, I earned that grade!

Thoughts lead on to purposes; purposes go forth in action; actions form habits; habits decide character; and character fixes our destiny.

Tryon Edwards

I’ve been thinking about what “defines” who I am a lot lately. As hard as I work on the physical side of myself, the more I realize I have to work just as hard on the mental.

My Sensei recently said to me that the best students are often the ones that lack that special natural physical talent, they are usually those that have to work extra hard for their success. They earn it through hard work and dedication. They forge a mental attitude through practice that drives them to achieve their goals. If he had to choose a new student between one who has the raw natural physical talent and one who has to work and scrap for everything they get, then he’d choose the latter.

I agree with him 100%.

I’ve been coaching and teaching fitness for over 2 years now professionally. I can tell you without a doubt the biggest let down’s i’ve experienced are with those that have natural talent, things come easy to them and as a result they simply don’t work as hard as those that aren’t “born with it”. They almost always stop showing up or lose interest when things eventually (and they ALWAYS will) get challenging…

What is it that makes someone seek out a goal and stick with the work long enough to reach it? Hard work creates determination in a person. Deep in my heart I believe that hard work builds character and teaches you true respect and humility.

If your goals are too easily achieved and you reach them without much effort then there really is no lesson and you can start to take it all for granted. To achieve that feeling when conquering your goals after many failed attempts and long hours of work or practice is priceless.

I’m not saying you can be given those gifts from god, have that natural built in talent, and never achieve anything. I’m not looking down on those people either. Can you just imagine what happens when natural talent meets hard work and dedication? That is beauty right there folks. What i’m saying is that I haven’t truly seen it in person yet. How I long for that day — when it comes i’ll be ready as a coach though. 🙂

I’ll share a story of something I experienced with my own training:

A couple of years back I was working on running a 12k trail run (~7.5 miles) I put in some pretty hard work for over 3 months straight. I kept going out trying to tack on an extra mile each time I ran, just trying to muscle it out. My thinking was that if I just stuck on a mile every week or so, eventually i’d add on enough to reach the 7.5 miles.

Nope.

In fact my distances got worse and for some reason my endurance suffered from that approach… It was only after I tried something new that one of my mentors told me about; visualize that long run, focus on what I was going to do before I got to the trails, get myself into a positive mental state about the distance — only then was I able to pull off a fairly quick 6 miles. (the longest i’d ever gone before was 4 miles at that time, literally the week before.) I thought about running the distance for 2–3 days beforehand. I thought about what kind of pace I would set and how I would handle breathing during different parts of the trail, planning how I would recover my wind while still running. I got to the point where I actually could feel it in my mind.

Small victory? Maybe, but it felt HUGE that day. 
(Thank you for that lesson Coach Divine!)

The lesson I learned is that the physical part of training is only a portion of what you have to do to get ready for something that is beyond your current abilities. I’ve seen people who have let themselves down by quitting in the middle of trying. I’ll be honest, i’ve done it myself as well. It’s not as simple as “mind over matter” and you can’t will yourself to push through something the moment you need it for the first time. You have to develop “Grit.” You only seem to find Grit within hard-ass work and determination.

You have to have control over yourself both mentally and physically in equal portions. You have to be able to turn it on when you need it and to do that you have to practice it all the time. It doesn’t happen overnight either. Like anything that’s worth it, it takes some time. Just like you have to practice whatever else it is you’re trying to achieve; be it a race, a Karate rank test, a college degree or some other professional assignment.

Grit is what gives you the will to win.

To dig deeper in order to keep pushing when you feel like you’re going to die.

I think It’s why we all love the underdog so much, because they’re not supposed to win. They got there through long hours of hard work and practice.

If I do have control over the things that define who I am, I want it to be that i’m known as a person who never quits, who will never give up.

I will also start telling people; “Don’t Quit” instead of “Good Luck”.

All things being equal… I would rather have grit than luck any day.