Mindset Matters: Versions of Self, Presence & Goals
As a coach and someone on a personal journey, I have to admit that some lessons still surprise me.
Some of the stuck points that I find in myself or while working with others… still surprise me.
Truthfully, I have been struggling.
I couldn’t figure out why, where, or how until I had the chance to reflect after doing a podcast interview on The Strength Kitchen.
What has tripped me up is understanding, accepting, and letting go (but also celebrating) of different versions of myself or different times of my life, AND still being motivated and disciplined to push forward.
I mean…
- How did I get here? Because there are things that I have done that probably should not have gotten me to this point, but they did.
- Where am I going? I reached my goal of weight loss. I did a C25K training & did an ultramarathon. I learned strength training & did a bodybuilding show. What now? What am I striving for? Where am I going? Do I even know? Do I have to know?
- What about myself do I like? What about myself do I not like? Is that OK? Should I be looking at these things right now? Should I not be in this full-blown state of acceptance? Like if you’re on a self-love journey, can you have things about yourself that you don’t like?
- OK, but now if I do that, does that mean that I’ve gone soft? Can you still be disciplined and controlled in your goal achievement and push, if you accept those things?
Yes, those are the thoughts in my head… as I guide others through their journeys with goals that they have.
But what I wanna say… this is normal.
That is the one thing that I can say for certain. We all have questions about timelines, expectations, and how we feel. We are human. We are messy. And it’s beautiful.
We have so many thoughts and so many questions. But if we can take it down to just the present, past, and future… We might find areas where we can breathe a little bit better. Maybe we can quiet the noise.
So here’s what I have come to terms with.
- The present is about knowing where your feet are. Letting yourself feel the sensation of your toes on the ground. Breathing deep and being here. Taking a moment to know what is possible right here and right now.
- The future is about stretching. Allowing yourself to dream big. Being playfully curious about your capability like a child. We are only limited in the stretching that we do by the choices that we make. We choose our own limitations.
- The past is about knowing where you have been. Taking stock of what you’ve been through and what it built in your life now. There might be something there that can lay the foundation for something new.
All three of these different places in time (past, present & future) give us something that we need, but we also don’t want to sit in any one place for too long either. And therein lies one of the challenges in the process… where your mind sits longer.
Excellence can be achieved only today—not yesterday or tomorrow, because they do not exist in the present moment. Today is the only day you have to flex your talents and maximize your enjoyment. Your challenge is to win in all aspects of life. To reach that goal, you need to set yourself up for success by winning one day at a time. Procrastination is no match for a champion.
Jim Afremow, PhD
The Past
There’s a lot of valuable information in your past. It has made you you.
There might not have always been the best of situations or the best scenarios taking place. You might not have always made the best choices for you. But everything that you’ve done throughout your past has created you today.
And there are so many different times that I hear people who are sick of their own shit, but also tear down who they once were while they are also shooting for a different version of who once were.
It’s kind of crazy to be truthful.
You may want who you are in high school, your wedding day, your early 20s…
But who you were directly after that was a version of yourself that had to cope with a problem that that version of you was plagued with. They did the best that they knew how to and that is also what brought you to this moment.
I am not saying that we need to sit in a place of complete and total acceptance because that doesn’t necessarily work when you’re sick of your own shit… but you can have a dual thought.
You can accept the version of yourself that followed as doing the best that they could in the situation that they had with the knowledge that they had.
And you could be ready to freaking end this chapter because you’re done with it and those things no longer serve you.
We are in a constant state of becoming and unbecoming.
We are constantly moving away from who we were and moving towards who we will be tomorrow. All of those things are OK. We can take stock. We can accept. We can let go. It’s all a choice.
The Present
This matters. This is where your feet are.
This is your current situation filled with all of your opportunities and all of your constraints. This is the current playground to work through for change & goal achievement.
Sure, the past can give us a lot of insight to what is possible and what may not be possible, but like I said above you are not the same person you were then that you are now.
The past only gives us a little bit of guidance into what you were previously capable of.
Maybe it might help us structure something brand new by using that previous capability as the foundation, but it is not what limits you in this current place.
We are only limited by the choices that we make in each and every situation.
You are not your past self.
You are your present self.
What you choose today might be influenced by what you’ve done in the past, but I promise you you always have a choice.
And that choice sometimes might just be to enjoy this present moment. This is the only time that this moment is going to happen. And that is OK too.
The Future
The stretching.
The sketching.
With goal setting, sometimes I ask people to paint me a picture of what it is that they would ideally want, but every bit of instruction needs a little bit more context.
Because trying to paint a full picture of what it is that you truly desire down to the details is extremely freaking hard. Maybe you can’t paint the picture fully… maybe you can’t fully visualize it. Maybe that’s just too overwhelming.
Can you draw the lines at least?
That’s really all I want anyone to do when we’re looking at goalsetting because if you paint me the entire picture, does that leave room for your choices?
Probably not.
It puts you into this box of personal expectations of where you need to be, and when you need to be there. And as cliché as it sounds, this is usually when you miss out on the joy in the journey. Not to mention the moment that could possibly happen when life decides to life and takes you off course of your timeline.
There are so many times when I speak with people who are just annihilating themselves mentally for situations that they truly and honestly handled in the best way that they possibly could but they drop the ball on several other aspects of life. But we only have what we have to give in each day.
One of my favorite references with this is from one of my best friends who is also a coach, Colt. In these different moments, we are basically juggling all aspects and the biggest importance is to simply not drop the balls that matter the most. We can let some others go. It’s OK. We can pick them back up later on. There is a lot of self-compassion in that process that helps us get moving forward again when we can. And that is what is insanely important.
We can learn to move through certain things when we can and we learn to pull back and give ourselves some grace when we need it. There is no right or wrong here. There is only a right or wrong for you.
The less we paint and the more that we sketch, The more we stay open to all of the possibilities that we can grow into because truthfully… 
You may grow into a person that the old you would have never even imagined possible.
Where we sit…
Where we sit matters. Ideally, we want to be a visitor of each of these, but not stay too long.
We’re in constant motion.
We’re moving through life.
Taking stock. Knowing where our feet are. And stretching.
Self-Awareness & Acceptance. Self-Compassion & Discipline. Self-Love & Exploration.
Questions that sparked this…
I want to leave you with what inspired my reflection. It came from Sahil Bloom’s newsletter. This is the condensed version of 7 Questions That Changed My Life.
One of my most strongly held beliefs:
The greatest discoveries in life come not from finding the right answers, but from asking the right questions.
The right question at the right time has the potential to change your life:
- See the world through a different lens.
- Evaluate your dilemma from a new angle.
- Uncover your blind spots and incorrect assumptions.
- Expose your self-limiting beliefs.
- If I repeated this day for 100 days, would my life be better or worse?
- If someone observed my actions for a week, what would they say my priorities are?
- If I were the main character in a movie of my life, what would the audience be screaming at me to do right now?
- What are the Boat Anchors in my life? As you push for growth in your life, there will be people, actions, behaviors, and things that stand ready to inhibit your progress. These are the “boat anchors”.
- Am I allowing more information to get in the way of more action? We need to find a balance between information and action. When in doubt, it’s safe to assume the balance is found with more action. Dopamine from information gathering is a dangerous drug. Get your dopamine from the action.
- What lie have I repeated to myself so many times that it feels like the truth?
- If I knew I would die in 10 years, what would I do today?
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