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…not the slip-ups!
Focus on your progress, not your slip-ups. For slip-ups there will inevitably be. If there were no slip-ups, there would be no challenge, and life would be easy, and everyone would be healthy and skinny and“The Doctors” would go off the air.
Focus on the now. What can you do, say, think, feel, eat right now that will make you a better you? Just because you ate a huge dinner out last night does not ruin your diet and give you carte blanche to continue eating badly until Sunday night at midnight, at which point you will virtuously start from scratch and never slip up again. Start right now. The body is amazingly forgiving.
Think about where you are now with your fitness goals compared to one year ago, or ten. If you used to exercise never, then exercising twice a week—even when you wish you exercised four times a week—is pretty dang awesome. Focus on what you are doing right, and it will make you feel proud, and capable of doing more of it. Talking about your “failures” (really mere slip-ups) will get you nowhere. Nowhere! Even the person you’re talking to will be bored and wanting to walk away.
The little victories… Make those linger. Get invested in your progress. Be involved in your progress every moment of the day. Forgive yourself the minor setbacks and move on. You have no choice, really, anyway… you can wallow in the setback and become psychologically damaged as well as physically, or you can march on, confident that the setbacks are fewer and farther between now that you are enjoying the progress so much.
When I catch people who are working out with me saying things like, “Look at all this fat just hanging here…” I nip that damaging talk in the bud. Uh-uh, not while you are working out. Not while you are right now, at this moment working very hard to make yourself better! You are doing something about it, so you are not allowed to be down on yourself. Move on, next moment, focus on your progress. Show those slip-ups who’s boss.
