Are you the type of person who lets self-perceived failures and setbacks ruin your process? Perhaps you decided to skip one day at the gym. But now you feel like you blew it. Well, might as well abort the gym for the rest of the week!
Well, what if we could re-frame setbacks into mini self-discoveries? Rather than perceiving the missed gym attempt as a failure, analyze the moment so you can learn more about yourself.
Here’s a simple exercise. It involves asking yourself the following questions:
Why did I do that?
Where else in my life do I do that?
How am I resilient in other aspects of my life?
How do I apply my resilience to this part of my life next time?
But also, don’t forget to reflect on whether it was worth it as well. Perhaps it was totally worth it. Did instead you spent time catching up with old friends that you otherwise couldn’t catch up with on another day? Then give yourself some slack and enjoy the next moment you go to the gym.
It took me a while to realize that failures end up being the most important part of the weight loss journey. They end up being the only sign we get to let us know that something needs to be tweaked or changed.
I mean, did you really think you would nail weight loss to perfection on your first try?
Setbacks also don’t mean that what you’ve been doing is wrong. It just means that you need to do something different now. Otherwise, we let the obstacle grow into a larger obstacle (e.g. wasting money on a one-year gym membership), rather than getting the chance to nip it in the butt now. I think we can agree that we don’t want to waste any more time or effort going in the wrong direction.
