Coach Tip Tuesday: Be Honestly Aware, and Your True Goals Will be Revealed

Here it is - my Christmas gift to all of you: Coach Tip Tuesday!

We’ve talked these last two weeks about how important it is to be honest about the stressors in your life and how assessing your Physical Readiness Score can really help set you up for success.  This week, we’re expanding on these ideas:

Become honestly aware of what you do, and what you want to do will reveal itself.

I know, I know.  You’re all probably SO tired of hearing me preach at you to be honest with yourselves.  But you know the saying: Honesty is the best policy.  This extends beyond being honest with others.  Yes, being honest with others is extremely important.  But in order to be honest with others, you must first be honest with yourself.

So this week, I want to encourage you to look at your life through a lens that is as impartial as you can make it.  Take a look at what you do.  And when I say “what you do,” I mean take a look at ALL the things you do, not just the workout things.  Here are some things you can do and some questions you can ask yourself to start this process:

• How do you spend your days?
• How do you spend your evenings?
• Do you prioritize getting to bed?
• How do you consume your meals?
• Check the settings in your phone and see how many unlocks you have today as well as how much screen time you have for today.
• How much (quality) time do you spend with your friends and family?
• How much are you trying to multitask?
• When you are working on a task, what are you thinking about when you are doing it?? (i.e. Are you mentally present during your daily activities?)
• If you have unexpected free time, how do you choose to spend it?
• Write down (as in actually writing - with a pen/pencil and real paper) a list of the priorities in your life, ranked from most important to least important.
• When you’re doing a workout, are you giving that workout your full attention? Are you executing it as it was intended? (Remember, harder is not always better. Better is better; so, what I’m talking about here is what kind of quality you are putting into your workouts.)
• Do you view your training as more than just your workouts?

As always, these are just some “starter” questions and suggestions, but there are many others that you could ask yourself or that you could do to help you view your life through a different (and more impartial) lens.  When you start taking stock of what you actually are doing, this can lead to really tremendous insights.

Because here’s the rub, my friends: What you ARE doing is what you want to do, whether you want to admit that or not.  If you wanted to do something else, you’d be doing it.  So if you desire to change something in your life, to set a new goal, etc., you need to incorporate that thing into your life.  As I’ve mentioned you all before: It takes what it takes.  So you can do what it takes or not, but you can’t change what it takes.

So if you take a good, hard, honest look at what you’re doing, you’ll get a really good view on what you actually want to be doing.  Here’s the best part: If you don’t like what you see when you take that hard look, YOU have the power to change how you are spending your time.  YOU are the master of your fate and the captain of your soul.  YOU get to choose your path and where you land.

We are sentient, free beings with the power of choice.  And so each and every day, we are presented with opportunities and choices.  It’s a hard truth to admit, but what we do in our daily lives is a product of our choices.  The responsibility rests only with our own selves, not with someone else.  So when we take this close look at ourselves, what we actually want to do truly is revealed to us, warts and all.

As you close out 2020 and embark on this new year, take some time to take that honest look at what you’re doing.  And then, have the courage to ask yourself the hard questions and determine if what you’re doing is actually what you want to be doing. :)