To Succeed in Fitness, Stop Using the Word “Mistake”
What if I told you that if you dropped even one word from your vocabulary, you would instantly become better at fitness (and in life)? This word is “error”. Get rid of this word. Seriously, get rid of it from your vocabulary.
The problem with the word “mistake” is that it is deeply rooted in society. People too often define themselves by their mistakes, the supposed result of defects in their own character. Think back to the last time you said the words “I was wrong.” You probably subconsciously judged your character as soon as those words left your lips.
All people make mistakes. And while they are completely natural, this word implies a kind of dead end, not a learning opportunity that will make you better in life .
Let’s say you are on a strict diet. Your friend’s wedding is coming up, but you don’t want to break your diet. Instead, you carefully plan the meal that will be served at the wedding. You’re not entirely sure what the food listed is made of … although remember that you marked “chicken” when you answered the invitation.
You sit at your table, holding out champagne, hoping the Game of Thrones “Castamer Rain” doesn’t start when your platter arrives. You were expecting a piece of grilled chicken, but to your absolute dismay, it is breaded . Not only that, it’s drenched in more oil than Paula Dean’s kitchen pantry. You eat it anyway.
“I’ve already broken my diet,” you rationalize, looking at the wedding cake. From this point on, your memory becomes fuzzy, but a little later than a cake with a few thousand calories, closer to type II diabetes, you wake up from a sugar coma.
I made a mistake, you are going to tell yourself. But you know it’s best not to use that word.
Errors versus errors
People who are successful in fitness have one thing in common: they describe such incidents as “missteps” rather than “mistakes.”
Mistake means dead end: an embarrassing decision or moral flaw, such as a lack of willpower or discipline, led to an undesirable (and final) outcome. Instead, the word “wrong step” reminds you that the decision is part of the overall path, and that you always have the opportunity to correct your course.
By reimagining the experience as an oversight – a simple speeding ticket on the way to your destination – you can show compassion for yourself, which makes it less likely that you will make the same wrong decision again . (After all, you will most likely be invited to more weddings.)
Let’s go back to our example. Now that we know we made a mistake (a solution that you can avoid in the future) and not a mistake (the result of a potential character flaw), we can now learn from this lesson using what I created called Exercise with time machine “. “
Imagine you have a Time Machine and you can go back on your wedding day. What could you do to get the best results? (Apart from buying Apple stock.)
In this exercise, you are not allowed to simply say “show more discipline” or “I could not do anything.” Of course, sometimes these are correct answers, but more often than not, if you don’t use these default answers, it gets in the way of your learning.
Instead, perhaps you could have planned a failure by giving yourself a day off or creating a calorie buffer. You could also practice mindfulness after the first mistake and save yourself from further harm. Doing this exercise will help you make better decisions in future situations.
A word of caution: Don’t be fooled, because this is not an easy exercise. Every bone in your body, every cell in your brain, even all your friends who “ love who you are ” will fight against change. You’ll try to convince yourself that this exercise is stupid or that you knew what you should have done — just don’t eat the damn chicken. It’s even harder to allow yourself to change. But here’s a rarely discussed prerequisite for changing physical form: you must create an inner transformation before creating an outer one.
Many people start with the outside and ignore the inside. You see it all the time on shows like Biggest Loser. They rub themselves into the ground and give everything to it just to “eat less and move more,” not realizing that their biology dooms them to death from the very beginning .
This is why most participants (and dieters) end up putting on their original weight . As we said earlier: fitness is a skill . To truly progress, you need to get the word ” error” out of your vocabulary so you can transform internally. After all, you are not your mistakes.