Taking Ownership and Living for Yourself

Good Afternoon Interweb friends.

Today’s post is going to be on the more philosophical side. What I am going to talk about in this post, in my opinion, is the #1 most important thing to overcome when it comes to behaviour change: Taking ownership for yourself and only yourself, while defining what’s important to you, and in doing so, living and achieving your goals successfully!

So why do you want to look or act a certain way? Well, it’s not a secret by now that we all have a bagillion messages being jammed down our throats telling us what we should do, how we ought to act, and what our values should be….essentially how we should live. These messages come not only from society/mass media/the government, but more importantly (and usually more influentially) from our families and friends. It can be confusing and frustrating to say the least.

In the world of health and “fitness”, we humans put a lot of pressure on how we should live. This is portrayed over and over again in fitness and health marketing (and marketing in general), and we soak it like up like sponges and regurgitate it to anyone in spraying distance (including ourselves). Fitness professionals are often the biggest perpetrators of this crime against awesomeness. 

For women, we need to be lean, have the right amount of muscle, and maybe be vegetarian/vegan, animal loving, yoga zen goddesses. Further, we need to be strong, even minded, emotionally and financially stable, beautiful, well dressed elegant flowers, who can handle anything life throws at them with stride.

For men, the situation isn’t much better. Men are told they must be strong, providing, muscular, smooth, funny, gentleman, with hair in all the right places, the right car, and have the right friends and pass time activities.

What do all these messages do to us? How do they affect the way we live and feel about ourselves? Well, first, they tell us that the unless we meet the afore mentioned states, we will NEVER be happy….  and that message can be quite powerful. 

As a “health advocate” (that’s what I’m calling myself these days) I have seen and been asked many many times how people can achieve these idealized qualities in themselves. I’ve also spent the majority of my life seeking out how to become the “ideal woman”. Sure, the specifics change between people to people, but they usually follow the general socialized patterns I talked about above.

And you know what, as I get older, how unachievable and transparent these ideal images are is becoming exceedingly apparent to me and, even more worrisome, how many of us continue to be a slave to them (Hell I’ve been a slave to them almost my entire life). 

So this post is for those who can relate to my ranting. For you, I’m going to give some tips that have helped me overcome the “you should be” and focus on “I want to be” over the years. If you don’t think this is of importance to you, but have come to my blog seeking fitness and health tips… oh boy are they ever important to you. Read on.

Define what you want. Period: 

So many people live their lives trying to please others. I’m not saying it’s a good idea to go out and deliberately do the opposite to what someone wants (for more on that click here), but rather, if you have a health/fitness goal (or any goal in general), is it really your goal, or is it someone else’s?'

Why this is of utmost importance is because if you are trying to change your life for someone else’s sake, you will fail and/or be miserable doing it. If you don’t –really- want to eat vegetables, do yoga, run, drink water…etc, then don’t do it. I’m not saying living a healthy lifestyle isn’t important (I believe it’s one of the most important things in life personally), what I’m saying is, if it isn’t important to you then why would you force yourself to do it? 

This premise is also important for goals within fitness itself. If you want a six pack, but like to go out and have beer with friends on a regular basis, you have to decide which one is more important to you? If it’s friends and beer every weekend, only –you- can decide that for yourself and you have to accept that you probably won’t have a six pack. Alternatively, if it's a six pack you and only you can make that happen. This pertains to taking ownership, which will be discussed below.

The point of this…..point…. is that we’re only here for a short time, so why live your life by someone else’s rules and opinions? Sure, you’re always going to get haters who disagree with your lifestyle and choices (some may even be close friends and family!). However, even if you were “perfect” you’d still have haters grumbling about how “perfect” you are. But you know what, there’s a million people out there that think like you, and when it comes down to it, you have to live with yourself, not those other people, so it’s best to accept who you are and why you do what you do (when it comes to spouses it obviously gets more complicated!).

My philosophy is, as long as you’re not hurting yourself, people, or animals just for the sake of it, who cares? (Ironically, if you live your life based on what I’m saying are you living for you or for me?!!! Ahhhhhhhh!!)

Take Ownership

This is also very very important when it comes to not only health and fitness goals, but life in general. Every choice we make in life is going to have both positive and negative outcomes; it’s just the way life works. However, when we don’t take ownership for those negative outcomes and blame external circumstances we are treading water psychologically (I call this the “poor me” phenomena).

I’ll use a common example that a lot of fitness professionals deal with on a regular basis. Chico* (made up name) comes to see you and wants to get shredded like you. He’s finally willing to do it this time, but currently smokes two packs a day, works night shift, and eats fast food. 

When you tell Chico what it takes to achieve his goals (i.e., working out, eating right, basically how you live your life), he’s all for it and ready to go. Except when push comes to shove he doesn’t think he can eat vegetables, he hates them, and he can’t give up his pop because he believes he needs it to function.

Chico continues to do behaviours that are counterintuitive to his lifestyle change goals (I’m not saying he’s a bad person for doing these behaviours, they just won’t help him get “shredded”), and thus gets frustrated. He blames the fact he works too much so cannot follow your program, and he just hates vegetables…so he ultimately gives up, and complains to his girlfriend he’s “destined” (I here this a lot) to be a fat slob.

Chico is not taking ownership for his life. If looking and living a certain way was really important to him over everything else, he would do whatever it takes to achieve those goals (maybe even quit his job and become a personal trainer). Instead, he blames his job, his tastes, and habits he just “can’t” give up. 

For a lack of a better word… that thinking is bullshit. I don’t care who you are, where you came from, or how much money you have, if you want something, and find the right way to do it (that’s where a lot of people mess up) then you cannot fail. 

How do I know this? Because I have done it myself. I’m not to saying “hey look at me I’m awesome” (even though I am, ha), but as soon as I stopped blaming everyone else and my past “circumstances” for why I was acting and thinking the way I was, and acknowledged that every action I make equals the consequences of my life, I started achieving my goals (with some bumps along the way).

Embrace Failure

To achieve your goals you need to not only accept, but embrace failure. This is because you will have a lot of set-backs if you are living the life you want to live. Now, these set backs can be big (e.g., not getting into the school you wanted to) or smaller (e.g., your dad doesn’t think it’s a good idea). However, the gravity of the set-back is not important, it is how you deal with them that will lead to your ultimate success. 

Now, overcoming failure is easier said than done, my husband can attest to my lack of grace in this domain.  Some people deal with failure with the perspective of “everything happens for a reason”, this has helped me in certain contexts, but what do you do when you fail, you tried your best, and it is directly in line with your goals that you know you want for you, and you are taking ownership for your life?

You embrace them. The only advice I can give here from my own experience is to give yourself a couple of days to be pissed off/disappointed/sad (however you feel after failing) then move on, and most importantly forward.  In moving on, taking a very close look of why you failed is very important.

This is the hardest part because it involves taking complete owenership for your actions and basically putting your ego aside (and I have a fucking huge ego). Was there something, anything, you could of done to prevent the undesired outcome. If so, learn from it and move on (in 99% of circumstances there is something you could have done differently). 

However, in doing this exercise it’s important not to beat yourself up over your short comings. This will usually emerge as negative self talk such as “I’m so lazy, if I only did this” or “I’m such a stupid loser, I can’t believe I didn’t do that”. No, you are not… you are trying to live your life for you… and you know what, you’ll make mistakes and things won’t work out, and that’s ok.

I think I’ll leave it there. Hopefully this helps someone. 

As always please leave comments, ask questions, or e-mail me if you’d like to talk about this stuff privately at byntraining@gmail.com.

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Stay strong my friends!

~Byn