Once upon a time, there was a girl named Goldilocks. She went for a walk in the park.
Pretty soon, she got bored, pulled out her phone and began scrolling Instagram. After she got caught up on the happenings and thing-a-ma-jigs her friends were posting, she went to her explore page.
A video caught her eye and she clicked it.
In the video she saw a girl demonstrating a “fat-burning” exercise. Goldilocks wanted to burn fat so she stopped and tried the exercise.
“AH! That did NOT feel good on my knees!” Goldilocks exclaimed.
So she went back to her walk and swiped back to her Explore page. She saw a picture of a beautiful plate of food so she clicked on the post.
“Wow! Berries and spinach and fish and quinoa! So many different things just to be healthy!” said Goldilocks. She drooped her head a little when she realized she didn’t eat a lot of the foods on the “good foods” list.
She thought sadly, “I didn’t realize I ate so many bad foods.”
SUDDENLY someone shouted “Goldilocks!”
Goldilocks turned to see her friend, Ursula, jogging toward her.
Ursula noticed that Goldilocks was sad and asked why.
Goldilocks responded “I keep seeing all of these super fit people doing exercises I don’t know how to do and some of them even feel bad! And there are so many different foods I should be eating that I’m not! It’s EXHAUSTING trying to keep up.”
Nodding, Ursula agreed, “I’ve been there. It was super hard to try to figure out where to start when I wanted to get more fit. There was SO much input!”
Then Goldilocks asked Ursula, “So how did you decide what to do?”
And Ursula answered “I asked myself three questions”
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Cheesy intro, but I hope you get the point. In the age of social media, we are encountering and consuming near-constant input from people we would’ve never met or heard of 15 years ago.
We are seeing dichotomies of dieting. War-zones of weightlifting. No-man’s lands of nutrition.
Instead of internal self-love and self-care, people are casting their shadows onto others. Throwing out language like “body-shaming” and “body-positivity” as if they weren’t two sides of the same coin.
So what can you do? What questions can change the course of your fitness journey if you’ll take the time to sit with them and answer them honestly?
I think everyone has a different answer to that.
There are so many different personalities and ways of processing information, organizing thoughts, setting goals. Each individual lives within a different mental and physical framework from every other person.
But it would be ridiculous of me to not offer my own opinion considering you’ve made it this far.
Three questions I regularly ask myself regarding fitness are:
- When I think of my ideal fitness, what comes to mind? Is that something I truly believe or is it what I’ve been programmed to believe? What can I do to align my perspective and my inputs with the truth of what I believe?
- In the next 3 months, what 2 habits could I create or reinforce that would move me more toward my ideal of fitness? (Write these down and be specific).
- How confident am I that I can achieve the 2 habits I’ve listed in step 2? What would make me more confident?
Question 1 addresses a critical component of a growth mindset. It invites you to fight confirmation bias – “the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories.”
Question 2 addresses a critical component of goal-setting and achievement. It invites you to set a process-oriented goal (something you can control) instead of a results-oriented goal (something you cannot control).
Question 3 addresses a critical component of being human. It invites you to take a good, long look at your own belief in yourself. This is also known as self-efficacy. If you’re honest, do you genuinely believe you have control over creating and sustaining these habits? Do you believe you can change your life for the better? If not, what is the first thing you need to do to move in that direction?
Nothing here is easy. It is hard work to be open in your heart and honest in your attention. It takes effort and intent to improve your life.
I hope this helps shine a light on some shadowed places.
Thanks for reading, friend.
Love you,
Madison
