Here’s an important lesson I’ve learned from helping clients deal with setbacks:
Every setback you face and successfully overcome makes you more confident in your ability to overcome the next one.
Many beginners experience setbacks early in the training process.
Injury, illness, busy periods at work and international travel can all disrupt your training.
For those with an all-or-nothing mindset, this can be a problem.
When their unbroken streak comes to an end, they interpret it as evidence that they’ve failed. They become demotivated and often times, they quit.
Quitting in the face of challenges can reinforce the belief that they’ll never get in shape – because they’re incapable of sticking to a programme.
Over time, this undermines their belief in their ability to succeed.
The antidote is to this problem is surprisingly simple:
Change the way you think about setbacks.
Instead of treating setbacks as something that shouldn’t happen, expect them to be part of the process.
When you expect setbacks, you can prepare yourself for them. And when they happen, you can focus on getting back to training rather than dwelling on the fact that you’ve missed it.
Each time you successfully bounce back from a setback, your confidence grows.
You begin to realise that whatever happens, you can get back on track and continue making progress towards your goals.
Sometimes experience is the best teacher.
And by overcoming setbacks you’ll learn that the real goal of consistency isn’t to never fall off.
It’s to always get back on.