We’ve all heard “you can’t expect to lose weight that took you a decade to put on in 21 days”. Whether it’s excess weight, or some other mess we need to clean up, the same holds true. Big messes require big clean ups, but small starts work fine.
I’ve had the opportunity to learn from having hundreds of conversations with prospective clients as we make a plan for them to lose weight, eat better, and find their strength. I’ve never talked to anyone I viewed as hopeless, but occasionally I encounter someone that has a big mess on their hands.
What do I mean by that? I mean that while we are there to talk about working out more and eating better, I can see that without fixing several other major things in their life, it will be almost impossible for them to do much more than damage control.
A “no excuses” attitude is helpful, but can only go so far sometimes. Human beings are complicated and sometimes we make tangled knots of our lives that make it really hard to make any progress anywhere. A tangle in one area of your life prevents you from loosening a knot in another area. You want to workout more but you work 12 hours a day in a high stress job, have an hour commute, and 3 kids who each play 2 sports. What little social time you have revolves around alcohol and you rarely sleep well. You’d like to eat better but any time you’ve tried your entire family revolts, a new sport season starts, and you are right back to grabbing junky convenience food all the time.
If thats you, you have some MAJOR projects on your hands. This is about much more than trying to “exercise more and drop a couple pounds”. Your relationship with your spouse, your kids, your work, your finances, and time management are ALL working against you and it’s killing you. It’s a mess!
Whats the good news? You can start small. If you have a “storage” room that looks like an episode of Hoarders, taking a couple minutes to fill one bag with trash instantly makes you feel better. 99% of the mess is still there, but 1% is gone and that alone melts away stress about it. 5 minutes of cleaning up a day, and within a week or two that room is looking pretty good!
More good news? You have no idea how much can change in a couple of short years if you keep at it. Progress starts to snowball very quickly in the grand scheme of things.
My big mess: About a year after opening my gym I was freshly divorced, broke, and on the verge of losing the gym. I was totally burned out and overworked and I drank too much. I hated where I had to move when my wife left me and I couldn’t afford anything else. I was totally depressed. Holy $h!t did I have a lot of work to do!
I started by going to the VA and talking to a therapist. From there, I got a business coach. I slowly stopped being a slave to the business and started to make it serve a lifestyle that I wanted. With time, the gym started doing well enough that I could afford to pay myself, save a little, and start getting out of debt. Now, I live on my awesome houseboat, I am rapidly paying off debt, saving, traveling, LOVING my work at the gym, and the gym community is thriving and I am winning business awards! Its a dream come true and its only TWO YEARS after the worst of my big mess. Thats crazy!
It all has to start somewhere. I recommend starting wherever you think might be easiest and then branch out from there. What is the knot that is least tangled that you could untie the quickest? It could start with working out. It could also start with instituting a family meeting routine. I had a client who had been doing okay. A few months into her membership she was suddenly in a WAY better mood and was getting way better results. I asked her what changed and she said “We have a family meeting once a week and we are really carefully about not overcommitting”. Simply, effective, I love it!
Start somewhere. Start today.
Alec I just wanted to say . Thank you for your service to Our Country ! Also you are super inspiring and super cute ! Thank you