Maintaining a healthy lifestyle requires consistent discipline. It requires going to the gym when you don’t want to, cooking when you would rather not, and waking up early when you’d rather sleep in.
Over the past four years of working with people, I have been exuberantly curious as to why one person makes these changes, and another person does not?
What is the defining characteristic of someone who dramatically changes their life, and someone who doesn’t?
As I continue to wrestle with this question, I keep coming back to this phrase: People who truly change their life take themselves seriously.
What does it mean to take yourself seriously?
Personally, taking myself seriously means to believe I am capable of making and sustaining drastic change (for good) in my own life. What is even more important is what lives underneath this: Believing that it is necessary for my own sake.
Every single person who has had a transformative fitness/health journey has come to terms with this truth. They have looked at themselves and said, “I must change because I am worth investing in. I must change because I long deeply to have a good life, and having a healthy body/mind is a part of that life.”
When we give up on making changes, it is often coupled with a personal belief such as: “This was never for me anyways, I am never really going to change, or this works for others but not for me.”
The lie we tell ourselves
A lie we tell ourselves is: it isn’t that hard for people who make significant changes to do so. We project some divine temperament onto them and say, “Well they are just incredible, they have a higher capacity than me, or they are just special.” (This is spoken in a way that indirectly addresses the speaker as someone who is not “incredible or special.” If we had any personal belief before this, once we start thinking this way, it begins to break down.)
This is a lie because we weren’t paying attention when they were struggling. When someone loses 100lbs, we don’t see them deny themselves comfort food at home. We don’t see them wake up early to move their bodies before going to work. We don’t see the day in, day out commitment to the work. All we see is the result; we were not even paying attention beforehand.
Personal anecdote
I began writing seven years ago. I wrote alone in my room; over and over again I wrote to answer hard questions. I wrote to discover what I really thought about a subject. I wrote to express myself. No one will ever see that work; and that’s the way it should be.
The only reason I committed to doing this was because I took writing to be a calling upon my life. I took myself seriously; it didn’t matter if anyone ever saw it. I made a commitment to myself. This is precisely what it means to take yourself seriously. It means making a personal promise to do the work necessary whether you get any praise for it or not. You make this promise because you believe that your life is worth taking seriously.
It doesn’t mean you won’t ever waiver in your belief, you most certainly will. If you are trying to implement significant change in your life, you will become frustrated at the lack of results. You will become frustrated because no one will truly see how much hard work it takes.
And yet, you cannot continue for results sake. You cannot continue for the sake of praise. You continue because you believe you are the kind of person who follows through with what you say. (This is a practice!)
This is what it means to take yourself seriously, and this is the defining characteristic, (As far as I understand it) that people who truly change embody.
Three questions to ask yourself:
• Do I believe all of my actions matter?
• Do I see myself as someone who follows through?
• Do I see myself capable of Mmking big changes?
Lee Ramsey has a passion for fitness as a way to help people grow and change into more adaptable, capable and resilient versions of themselves. He is owner of Sanctify Fitness in Covington and a regular fitness columnist for the NKyTribune.