Fitness Journey Mindset: Here’s what to do if you feel like you’ve failed
We all get those feelings of failure every now and then, whether it’s at work, in our relationships, or on your fitness journey. But, if you miss a workout, or you decide to go out partying and feel rubbish the next day because you’re not as productive as you want to be, the chances are you can recover from this.
First and foremost: you need to own the mistake. Retired Navy SEAL Jocko Willink talks about the O.L.D Mistake - own it, learn from it, don’t do it again. Your instinct might be to avoid the situation, because you’ve already messed up anyway. In the long term, this mindset will only put you in a tougher position leaving you feeling guilty, annoyed, and frustrated. If you try to hide the mistakes from yourself, your partner, your coach, you’re only going to be avoiding the truth when you can just get it resolved.
“Take ownership of the problem. Report that you made a mistake, how you’re going to fix the mistake and how you’re going to prevent that mistake from happening in the future,” Jocko Willink.
The sooner you take responsibility, the better. The way you can move forwards with this is by learning from an OLD mistake. Here’s how it goes below:
Own it
We all make mistakes, they happen. Own the decisions you made from a place of awareness, rationale, instead of guilt, shame and judgement. Take responsibility for the choices you make rather than blaming circumstances.
Learn from it
Get pen to paper, or how you best reflect and ask yourself the following: What could I do better? Why didn’t that work? How would I approach it differently next time?
Don’t let it happen again
Fool me once, fool me twice. We’re always in a place of self-reflection, introspection. We can see the cycles repeating themselves. It gets easier to recognise over time. Don’t let things happen again and again if they aren’t aligning with what you want and need
The worst thing you can do after making a mistake is blame your coworkers, friends, coach, or the circumstances. Think about it from the perspective of the coach, would you rather them work with someone who takes ownership of their decisions or just blames others for being misled into a situation they don’t actually want to do.
“The answer is perfectly clear. Everybody knows it. Yet, when it comes to those situations, we allow our ego to start playing into that game and we don’t want to tell the boss that it was our fault, so we blame everyone else. We end up looking horrible,’ Jocko Willink.
Not only does avoidance leave a bad impression, either. If you don’t address your error, “the solutions to the problems don’t come,” he says. “So, take ownership of the problem. Report that you made a mistake, how you’re going to fix the mistake and how you’re going to prevent that mistake from happening in the future.”
We are only human at the end of the day, but it is time to raise your standards. Moving forwards to progress always comes down to self-awareness and taking ownership of the decisions you’re making.
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