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I have been thinking all week long about last week's episode on goal setting and Avoiding negativity and thinking about that episode and just things in my own life and experiences I've had. And then I actually listened to a different podcast on, ironically, basketball and it got me thinking about my experiences playing basketball and I realized that I wanted to a little bit hand on last week's episode. If you haven't listened, it's amazing. It's with Amanda Hilton. It's on reaching your goals without Negativity.
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But I wanted to expand on that episode and talk about a couple of things. When it comes to our goals or things we want to develop, our talents or journeys in our life, I want to kind of point out a couple of things that hold us back and then a couple of things that propel us forward. So if you haven't listened to last week's, make sure you go back and listen and then listen to this week's because hopefully they can be like Batman and Robin and push you towards whatever goals or whatever things you are working on. And before we get into today's episode, if part of what you are working on or you are trying to focus on with goals is fitness, I'm going to highly suggest making sure you are getting enough protein in your diet. Obviously, having foods as protein is going to be the best.
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But sometimes having a digestible protein is very, very helpful. And there are so many on the market. I know it's really confusing. I have tried literally tons and tons of brands and about a year and a half ago I stumbled upon just ingredients and I absolutely adore her protein. I know the owner, Carlyn, she's been on the episode before.
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She is amazing. She cares about the quality, she cares about what goes in, and she is so knowledgeable. And the reason she developed her brand in the first place was because she felt like she couldn't find a clean protein powder on the market. So she said, fine, I'm going to make my own. Her flavors are amazing.
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I've had vanilla protein before. I have never had vanilla protein, which is vanilla bean. Her flavor like that before. I've tried strawberry before, but her strawberry and cream protein is phenomenal. I remember when I was drinking the first time, I literally yelled at Paul and I was like, Paul, you have got to try this.
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It tastes just like strawberries. And the reason is because she uses real Madagascar vanilla in her vanilla. She uses dried strawberries in her strawberry. It's not just food flavorings. I love all the kinds she has.
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She has Snickerdoodle, she has chocolate, chocolate, coconut, and even in the fall she has chocolate, peppermint and all these other holiday flavors. So if you're looking for a solid protein company, something you can drink quickly after your workouts for snacks, if you're trying to make sure you're keeping a strong metabolism, you're keeping muscle on your body, you're staying full. It's a nice addition that you can have on the go and just ingredients is going to be a winner if you use the code. Andrea d FH. It's all one word.
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So Andrea A-N-D-R-E-A-D-F-H. You get 10% off everything on her site. She obviously has some other products as well. I love all of them, but I'm telling you, you will not go wrong with her protein. So try it out.
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Justingredients.com code Andrea DFH. And a quick shout out for the review to Hboher Ten. It's titled So Thankful. I'm so thankful for Andrea and her team. After struggling for over a decade with disorderly eating, Andrea's nutrition, coaching and podcasts have begun to help me change my mindset about my body and heal my relationship with food.
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I'm incredibly thankful to be on this journey with Andrea. No, thank you. Yes, this is one of my coaching clients and I love coaching clients. I love working through mindset. It's one of the reasons I'm recording this podcast now to help with mindset, because I know how much mindset about our body and how we view food makes such a difference even within the app that we're working on.
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One of the reasons we're having a resource section with other experts is because as I was thinking about the workouts and the things I wanted to share, I was telling my coworker who does business management, but fun story, she was actually also a client who now works on the staff. And I said, you can't really help someone by just throwing a workout at them. You have to help them with their mindset, with their form, with their hormones, with the kinetic chain, with how they view things. It's not always just about a workout, but health is a holistic approach. So I wanted to cover all of them in the app and that's one of the reasons I do cover mindset.
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So if you find this episode helpful, don't forget to write a review. It makes such a difference for the podcast. And don't forget, if you're wanting to hear about the app launching and be a founder member with a little bit of a deeper price, we're going to offer that only privately for those founding members. There is a link in the show notes where you can enter your email and we'll let you know ahead of time before it goes public when the app is ready, so you can be a founding member for a little bit of a better price. All right, let's get into today's episode and talk a little bit more extensively about whatever your goals and journeys are, and two things that are holding you back and two things to help propel you forward.
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So, as I mentioned, this episode was actually born out of me thinking about the last episode about goals, but then also thinking about my experience playing basketball. Now ironically, I played lacrosse in college. I did not play basketball, but I played basketball all growing up. And as I was thinking about my journey with basketball, I thought of how similar it is to anybody's journey in trying to develop a talent, a skill, an ability. A couple of things that people assume when it comes to trying to develop a skill or even a habit, is we want to be good at all of it.
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We want to master all of it. When I played basketball, I was not a good shooter. I was not good at dribling. I remembered plays pretty well. I have a good memory, but I wasn't even great at three pointers or honestly, juking people or any of that.
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But I was amazing at boxing people out. Like, I mean, not to toot my own horn, but I was phenomenal. I would be on the bench and the other team would have a couple of girls that just kept boxing out. Our really tall girls. And I'm decently tall, I'm almost five eight.
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But we had three girls on our team that were taller than me. So I didn't start, but I always got playing time because I could box people out. I had one skill that really, really mattered, and it helped carry me through. So the coach would put me in when a player was getting all of the rebounds, and I would box her out and I would stop her. And then our taller girls could grab the ball and shoot.
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I tell you this story because a lot of times when we are working on a skill, we think in order to succeed, in order to keep up, we have to be good at all of it. I actually wasn't good at any of it besides boxing out, if I'm honest. I could keep up, but I wasn't the best at any of it. I was very average, very, very average, but I was good at boxing people out. So as you work on whatever goal you're shooting for, I want you to take note of what you are good at.
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I was not great at everything by any means, but I kept going. And because I focused on what I was good at, the other skills did develop over time and they improved and I kept going. So as you are working on whatever your goals or journey is, I want you to focus on not letting being good at everything hold you back. You do not need to be good at all the pieces to succeed. Don't let that thought process hold you back.
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Focus on the one thing you are good at and then keep slowly working on the other ones. I could have quit basketball because I was like, listen, I'm like an underneath shooter, and I can't even make like a simple layup or something like that. Or I wasn't great at it, but I didn't. I just kept going. Those skills slowly developed, and I focused in on what I was good at, and I just took pride in that.
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So maybe you are excellent at working out regularly, but you don't feel like you eat very balanced or you don't eat enough food. That's okay. Keep going. Keep working at it, and keep developing that skill. It doesn't mean you're failing and it doesn't mean your journey is not improving.
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Maybe you are excellent at drinking water, but you're not really great at making sure you're getting a variety of vegetables and you're not really great at working out consistently. That's okay. Focus on the fact that you are good at drinking water and slowly develop the other ones. It doesn't mean you need to quit your journey simply because you can't do everything perfectly. So don't allow that thought process of needing to be good at everything hold you back.
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You can still move forward, not being great at a lot of things, focusing in on the few things that you can do, and it will still push you in the right direction. And I can honestly say I never became the best at all those skills, but I did improve. You may not ever be the best at eating healthy or the best at drinking water or the best at lifting heavier weights, but it will improve, and that's all that matters. Just don't let those things you're not great at hold you back. The next thing I want to talk about for this experience playing basketball is when I was in middle school, I had a terrible coach.
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I even want to say his name, but it's probably not appropriate because he was rough. He was a really rough coach. And every time I shot, he would yell at me. Every time. I missed, every single time.
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And I even had an experience one time with him in a game where halfway through the game, he told me I had to get dressed and I couldn't play the rest of the game. And the problem is, I didn't respond to that style of coaching. I didn't respond to threats and meanness and yelling and embarrassment, as most people don't. And everyone has had an experience, probably with a coach or someone who has treated them like that. And it was rough, and I stopped shooting and I stopped wanting to play.
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And my parents worked with me and encouraged me and kept me playing. And after that, I had really great coaches. And what I learned from that experience is sometimes in our journeys, sometimes with our goals, we have bad experiences. My point in telling you about this terrible coach I had that made me scared to shoot, and me continuing to play and getting good coaches after that is sometimes in our journey and with our goals, we have really bad experiences, experiences that we remember literally. I think that I had that coach when I was 13, and I'm like in my late 30s.
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So like almost 25 years later, those things happen and they're hard, but it doesn't mean that you shouldn't keep going with that coach. If I had quit, because he was brutal every time I missed a shot or brutal every time I made a mistake. I would never have been able to continue to develop the love for moving my body and the love for being active and the love for basketball and camaraderie, because I would have let him dampen out my ability to learn and to play a sport. So I am sure you have had experiences in your journey, especially with fitness and health, where you've had a bad experience. Maybe you've had a fitness coach who has treated you poorly or said really harsh things.
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Maybe you even have had a friend or a family member who made really intense statements or harsh statements that you have never forgotten. And that could have happened when you were younger, when you were 13, 1415, and were really impressionable at a young age. And those thoughts have stayed with you 10, 20, 30 years later, and they still haunt you because in some ways they do. I want you to know that you can have a better experience with it. It doesn't have to put a dark cloud over your journey of health and fitness.
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It can be positive. Even if you feel like you have failed before and that's your bad experience. It's not a one and done situation. It's not a one time label. This isn't a race where it's like, okay, you tried to be healthy that one time in 2015 and it didn't work out for you, so never try again.
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You failed. Sounds ridiculous, right? But we do it all the time. So if you've had a bad experience or you feel like you failed, that's okay. You need to keep going because you will find a nicer coach.
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You will find more supportive people, you will find a different way that fits your lifestyle. You can continue to develop that skill, which is actually going to bring you a lot of positivity once you're in a good situation with it. But don't let a previous bad experience hold you back. Your health is so much more important than that. To let something like that and let that situation or that person or anything win in the past when you can pick to have a more positive experience with it and give yourself time to adjust in the way that you view it.
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So do not let previous experiences with whatever your goal is or your health journey hold you back. That's the second thing because I see that a lot people are scared to try something new because they had a bad experience before. I might have been scared shooting for a couple of years, but guess what? By the time I was a sophomore, junior, senior, I was not scared to shoot anymore. I had a fantastic coach.
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I had a fantastic team, and I was no longer scared and I was happy to play. And I'm so glad I didn't quit just because I had that bad experience. So I'm going to encourage you not to quit, even if you have a bad experience with whatever your goal is. So those are two things that I find hold people back, feeling like they have to be good at everything or they just can't keep up, or having a previous bad experience and being scared to try. So let's now talk about two things that are going to help propel you forward with your goals or your fitness journey.
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Because this is a fitness podcast, so we're going to kind of lean into that. The first one is making tiny adjustments. In last week's episode with Amanda, she talked about tiny steps. And tiny steps means breaking down big goals and making them tiny and stepping along the way. I kind of want to piggyback on that, but I want to talk about tiny adjustments.
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Adjustments isn't just like a step moving, but it sometimes means we have to tweak what we're already doing. Oftentimes with fitness, I see people doing the same thing over and over and over and over again, and then they're wondering why they're not having changes. For example, I have seen women, especially when I taught classes in person, they would come to class and I worked at one of the gyms I worked at for about seven years, and they would pick up the exact same size weight every single class, every class. And I would push and push and push. And I'd say, don't forget to push your weights.
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Don't forget to try to increase. And I would notice they would always pick up the same weight. And it didn't matter how much I encouraged them, they didn't make that tiny tweak. It's different than a step. Their step was showing up every week, which is great, but they didn't make that tweak to see changes.
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And then they would wonder why they weren't getting stronger or weren't seeing more muscle definition. Sometimes it's not just about those tiny steps, but about taking those tiny steps in the direction we want, but not being scared to make tiny tweaks within those steps. That is a tiny adjustment. So when I played basketball, as I mentioned, I wasn't a great shooter. I struggled and struggled and struggled with shooting.
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And after that rough coach, I ended up not improving and being scared to shoot. My mom, bless her heart, hired me a shooting coach. And we didn't have tons of money, so we couldn't obviously have a coach for long, but she did it for just a couple of rounds. And he taught me very tiny tweaks of how I was lifting the ball off my hand and my other hand was touching the ball and even like the flick of the wrist. And very, very tiny adjustments.
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And guess what? No one would have noticed these adjustments, but I got better at shooting from these tiny little tweaks. So if you are doing the same thing over and over again, if you are running the same miles, if you are lifting the same weights, if you are doing the same style of nutrition, where maybe you are like, you know what, I'm trying to lose weight. I'm just going to eat as little as possible. And you're working hard, you're taking those steps, but you're still doing the same thing over and over again.
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You can get stuck. You can get stuck. And then it becomes discouraging, and then it becomes a bad experience, which we know can hold us back, and we don't want that. So I need you to think about tiny tweaks, whether that is hiring a coach, that's great. Whether that is doing research and learning how to make an adjustment, that's great.
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You can do that in a lot of different ways. And the best thing is, there's no one track. I was talking with my good friend Angie, her account is Angie's FitFix and we've been friends for years and years and used to teach together at a gym. And we were talking the other day about how fitness is not black and white, there's so much gray in the middle because things work differently for different people. And truly, if you've done the research, if you're learning, if you just feel like you're banging your head against a wall or you're spinning your wheels, a coach is not a bad idea.
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Having an outsider look at what you're doing, no matter the goal, whether you need help with finances or fitness or nutrition or even a relationship, having that outsider makes a difference. I can look at clients food intake and instantly be like, you're not having enough protein, or you're not having enough fat, or you're not even eating enough, or you're having too much of this. And we can just balance it out quickly. So if you're in a situation where you can do that, go for it. And even I bounce ideas off other people when I'm thinking about myself.
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I often call my head coach Allen, and though we coach the same, I will often bounce ideas off her for me. So don't be scared to do that, even if you're going just once. I even tell people when they're trying to learn how to connect to their pelvic floor, if you can't afford to go to physical therapy regularly, that's okay, I get that. Go like two to three times max, learn the skill and then practice on your own. And that can be the same for a coach, but you truly can also just make those tiny tweaks on your own.
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With research and using trusted sources and talking to friends, giving the whole situation to a friend and laying it out for someone who is educated in that area can make a huge difference as well. Because the truth is, those tiny steps like we talked about last week, and then mixing that with tiny adjustments when you're feeling stuck can truly create a compound effect and can really help propel you forward in a really positive way. My next tip that's really going to help propel you forward and as we mentioned in last week's episode, we talked about embracing imperfection and then reflecting on our progress is simply to take joy in the journey. Notice the good along the way. Yes, I had some very bad experiences with coaches.
00:19:28
Yes, I did not have an amazing skill set in all of the aspects of basketball. I wasn't amazing at dribling, as I mentioned. I wasn't an amazing shooter, but I had a really positive experience overall. I loved learning a skill. I loved boxing people out, I loved working with my team, I loved doing drills.
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I actually loved the feeling of getting my heart rate up. I loved playing competitively in a game. And though sometimes we lost and I would put my heart into it, I loved in general, playing sports. That feeling and that rush of giving my all and knowing I left it on the field and knowing or the court and knowing it was there. So as you work towards your goal, you have to take joy in the journey.
00:20:17
You can't just grind and grind and grind and grind. You do need to reflect on your progress, as we talked about last week, but not only reflecting on the progress, you need to reflect on the positive joys along the way that have nothing to do with progress, that just have to do with something you enjoy. Like, I was happy playing basketball. It was fun. I was with my friends, I had something to do.
00:20:41
It kept me busy, it helped me keep my grades up. And I think that it gave me a lifelong skill of learning to cooperate with other people and learning to try things that were hard and learning to sometimes accept failure and to figure out how to work around it. And those are key pieces for your fitness journey and for your goals as well. So no matter what you're working on, remember, do not let being good at everything hold you back. You're not going to be good at everything.
00:21:11
You just need to keep going, working on the small things, and focus on what you are good at. Do not let past experiences that are negative hold you back. We all have negative experiences. Some of them are brutal. But it doesn't have to define us.
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We can move forward and we can have a ton of positive experiences and learn so much in that journey. And do allow yourself to make tiny adjustments and take joy in the journey to propel you forward with your journey and with your goals. All right, that's it for today. You're doing awesome. I promise.
00:21:45
You are doing so much better than you think you are. I mean it from the bottom of my heart. It's why say it every week. And I'll say it again. You are doing so much better than you think you are.
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We'll chat next week.