EPISODE 15

TRANSCRIPT

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Hey guys, welcome to A Lifelong Habit of Exercise, I'm Coach Kendra, and this is episode 15. Today we're going to talk about giving credit where credit is due. And the way that we're going to talk about this today is in the form of attitude. I was thinking earlier this week about how when I was playing basketball, and in athletics, a lot of times we talk about how the two main things that you can always control as an athlete, our effort and attitude. And so I really want to dig into attitude today, because like I said, these are something that in athletics and as coaches as athletes, we always talk about those two things that you can control: effort, and attitude. So when we talk about attitude, I like to think of attitude as one an awesome indicator of who we are giving credit to. And the reason I say this is because depending on what our attitude is toward something, it helps you to understand if you are giving credit to you, yourself, or to anything outside of you. That could be somebody else, that could be something that happened, that could be anything, anything that's outside of you. So I think attitude is a good reflection, and an awesome indicator of who we are really giving our credit to. 

 

So how I want to really talk about this, what attitude is, I like to think about it in the way of, I think of it as a collision at the intersection of our emotions, and our actions. It's really just the way we act from an emotion, the manner in which we do something, right? So that's the way we act from an emotion. But again, I like to think of it as kind of a collision at the intersection of your emotions and your actions. Because the reason I like to think of it as a collision, and not just the intersection, is because with attitude, it's almost like something that happens when we're not looking. And that's the way a lot of us kind of like to think about it, I think is because it just happens, the attitude just is right? The attitude, just it had to be that way because of whatever it is right. And again, that goes back to our attitude being an awesome indicator of who we are giving our credit to. And so that's why I like to think of it as a collision at that intersection. Really, what attitude is, like I said, is the way that we act from an emotion. So not the actual actions that we are taking, but kind of the manner in which we do those actions. 

 

I've talked to you guys about before previously about how our thoughts cause our emotions and our emotions then lead to the actions that we do, and we don't do. And so when we put that in context of this, it is your attitude is really that intersection, it's right there at that intersection of where that emotion meets that action. But it's really the way that we do things. 

 

So when we talk about attitude, I want to kind of look at why is it that we approach things with what some people would say is bad attitudes. And we approach different things as if sometimes we're forced to do them. And that takes us back again, to that awesome indicator of Who are you giving credit to? Are you giving your credit to yourself, or to something outside of you. And when we approach things as if we're forced to do them, that's a lot of times when we have that attitude of, we don't want to be there, that attitude of we wish we were doing something else that attitude of it seems like we have to do it. And what's crazy is when we think about it, there's really nothing that you have to do, there is nothing that you have to do. I want you guys to just let that sink in. There are things that we choose to do, and the reason we choose to do them is because the alternative of not doing them, we don't want those consequences. But I want you guys to think and realize that that is a choice. Even if you don't want the consequences, you're choosing to do it. But when we think that there's no choice in it, that's when that bad attitude or the different type of attitude, than what we may want to approach things with comes in. When we think that it's a must when we think that we have no say in it. That's when we're giving credit to something outside of us. When we give credit to ourselves, that's when we're able to be like, no, this is what I choose to do, and when we go to things that we choose to do a lot of times we like those better, we enjoy them better. We have fun with them, we make it what it is, right? And that's all because we had to say so in it. That's all because we had a choice in the matter. But in reality, we have a choice for anything. You have a choice to not do it. 

 

So I caught myself doing this the other day, I had an exercise. So you guys remember I was telling you about the app that I got on my phone and there's a bunch of different things that you can mess with and do different settings, and so I was messing with one of the settings and I was like, I wonder what this does for my exercises. And low and behold, the next time I did my exercises, I was on track to do a two hour workout. And I didn't realize that it was a two hour workout until I was well into the two hours. And as I continued going, so it's basically half of kind of lifting some weights, and then the other half of stretching, and it was a lot of stretching.

 

For me, I am all for stretching. If I no one, I'm good with a cool down to I'm good with a stretching, if I know that like maybe that's all I'm gonna do that day or whatever it may be and it's planned, right. And like I said, you guys we've talked about previously, this is actually a really good point, because we've talked about previously how you should plan your workouts, and you should know what you're doing ahead of time in those daily questions. And when you look at your exercise, and you plan them ahead of time, what happens and this just kind of goes back to solidifying and confirming that even I should be doing this, even as comfortable as I am working out now is that looking ahead to my exercises -and what's crazy is I had been doing it, I just didn't do it that day for some reason - looking ahead to those exercises, helps to prepare your mind for what's to come. And you better believe that I have looked at my exercises every single day since then, but I was needing to prepare myself a little bit better, and I hadn't prepared. And I had a two hour workout, and what happened was I didn't like some of the exercises. I didn't like how much stretching I was having to do at that time, and what I caught myself doing was I caught myself having a really bad attitude towards the exercising. I started getting frustrated, I started getting irritated, and it was all because I was like this workout is way too long. I'm sick of it, I'm done with it, I want to be done. And as I caught myself doing that, as those thoughts started coming up, I realized that, like, why am I doing this, because when I'm approaching it with a bad attitude, I might as well not even be doing it, because I'm not doing it the way that I want to do it. If I wanted to do it, I would focus and I'd be all in my effort would be 100% there. But my attitude wasn't there. So then what I did in that moment, was I skipped him, I stopped, I finished working out, and I was done. Because to me it wasn't worth it. Having about attitude towards that wasn't worth it. And could I have easily in that moment, tried to change my attitude and figure out what it was yes, but in that moment, I was just like, you know what, it's not worth having a bad attitude, because I'm not getting anything out of it for myself. And so what I did later is I did go back and I actually started looking at those thoughts and breaking them down. But it's so interesting that my attitude was bad. And again, then not just correlates with, I wasn't getting any productivity out of it, right? 

 

So we do things when we have a bad attitude, most of the time, we end up not showing up the way that we want to show up. If you could show up in that situation in a different way, you probably would, right? If you could understand that and whatever. But the reason that you're not is because you have a bad attitude going into it. And a lot of the times it's because you're not giving yourself that credit, you're giving blame more or less instead of credit, but you're giving credit in the form of blame to somebody else or something else. Because you feel like you have to do that, like you're obligated to do whatever it is. Like for me and not example of my exercise. For me. While I was doing that. I felt like it was my apps fault, right? I was blaming my app, because my app is the one that put the exercises together. My app is the one that put the workout together. In reality, it was me having the thoughts of, "I really don't want to do this long workout, like this workout is too long. I'm over it. I'm done. What in the world? Why is this a two hour workout?" All of those thoughts are what caused me to have the attitude towards the exercises that I was doing. And the manner that I was doing it was I started doing it definitely in a way that I didn't want to do. So that's why I said that attitude is kind of that collision of that intersection. I had those thoughts, and those emotions led me to the way that I acted. The way that I was in the manner of which I acted. The actions were I was honestly doing the exercises is halfway as possible. Like it wasn't even worth it at all. Which is why I stopped. But we choose the exercise sometimes. And then, when the day comes when the time comes to exercise, we then decide that it's not our first choice. We realize that we're like, "Wait a second, I don't want to do that." And what we do is we feel obligated to continue to exercise which again, is good to kind of follow up and it's good to follow through with what your plan was. But what happens a lot of times is, then we feel like we're obligated to do it like, it's not a choice because it was on our planner, it's not a choice because this is something that I have to do. And you're blaming your schedule, you're blaming your clan, or you're blaming the time that you have there, I have to do it because it's a workout, and this is just what I have to do not that you're choosing to do it, not that you chose to do it. Not that this is something that you have control over, this is something that you get the credit for. And that's great. Because if you go into it with an attitude of somebody else, I have to do this, this is something that I must get done just because whatever your reasoning is, but it's something that you feel obligated to, then the manner in which you do it, that attitude is not going to be the way that you really want to show up. It's not going to be as productive as it could possibly be. Because you really don't want to be there. 

 

So we look at that attitude piece, I think we don't give ourselves enough credit. And understanding that we have the power to show up however, we want to show up. Understanding that in different times. Again, when we talk about exercising, we talk about how you can exercise, you can choose to exercise, and you're in for it, and then the next day, all of a sudden, maybe it's gloomy outside, we all have those days where sometimes it's gloomy, and you're like I just don't want to get out of bed. I just don't want to do anything else, I want to just relax and read a book and watch Netflix and do all the things other than exercise, right? We all have those moments. And then if you do decide to actually get to the point of exercising, because you feel like you're forcing yourself like it's a must it has to be done, then the way in which you approach that may not be 100% effort. It may not be the way that you would choose to approach it any other day or any other time or if you didn't have that. 

 

So I want you guys to start becoming more aware. And I know we talked about that a lot, too, is the awareness aspect. And I've given you different things on how you can become more aware of the thought download, writing down all of your thoughts, writing down every single thought you have about a specific thing. Those are things that will help you become more aware, the more you do that, the more you become aware and are able to watch the thoughts that come up and see the thoughts and see all that's going on. The other way is those three daily questions that we talk about those three daily questions. Again, I admitted right away at the beginning of this podcast. You know, when I did that exercise, I honestly I hadn't done the three daily questions that day, I hadn't looked at the plan. That is why it is so important. It is so important. No matter what stage of exercising you're in, no matter where you're at, no matter how long you've done it, those three daily questions can make a huge difference. Those are the things when you do that your brain opens up your brain is like, Oh, this is what I'm doing. Okay, you were able to see it ahead of time and see what exactly it is you're doing. And you can also ahead of time decide like me, I'm using an app. So when I use that app, and I go through it, I'm like, "Okay, that's good for me, I'll work with that I can do that. Nope, we're gonna rotate a different exercise and for that one, because I don't want to do that one." And we can do this, but I'm doing that ahead of time. Like I already did it. Like I said, since I did that two hour workout, and I'm like determined to never do a two hour workout ever again. Since I did that two hour workout, I have gotten right back on the horse of asking myself those questions going through my workout making sure exactly what I'm doing, not just when I'm doing it because I was trusting the app before. I don't want to trust something outside of myself, I'm going to trust me. So I was trusting the app that what I was planning for my workout was going to be exactly what I wanted to do, turns out it wasn't. So that's me taking ownership. I'm gonna make my workout work for me, not me work for my workout, right? And I go in now every single day, and I look at the app, and I look at the exercises for the next day- so I've already done it for tomorrow. And I look at it and I'm like, "yep, that's not gonna work for me. Let's switch that out. What are the other alternatives?" And again, now, like we talked about last week, I'm taking ownership of my exercise. I'm taking ownership of the things that I'm wanting to do. My goal is to move my body to keep moving to keep exercising, I want to tone up me personally, I want to tone up. I want to do all of that stuff. But it starts with actually doing. I'm not going to do any of it if I don't actually do it right if I don't actually do something. But all of this doing something starts with those three questions. It starts with the foundation, which we again we talked about, and part of that foundation, is your thoughts that lead to the manner in which you do things, which is your attitude. It leads to your emotion, it leads to that intersection of the emotion and the action - the way that you do things, your attitude. Our thoughts lead to our emotions, which right in the middle of our emotions, and our actions are, where our attitude is, and the manner in which we do things is that attitude? How are you guys going to do things this week? How are you guys going to do your exercise from now on? How are you guys going to do anything? How are you going to do your work? What is that attitude, don't let that attitude be a collision, let that attitude be an intersection. But it doesn't have to be a collision. It doesn't have to be something that just happens when we're not looking, and all of a sudden, we have an attitude. Be aware of that. Be aware of that intersection, oh, there's an intersection coming here it is. Where your emotion meets your actions. Your emotions lead to your actions, and right in between, it's your attitude. Make that attitude what you want it to be, do things that you want to do the way that you want to do them. 

 

Having an attitude, having a bad attitude, or whatever you want to call it. The attitude, one of the things that we can always control. And, and again, in sports, that's what one of the things is, is that the effort and the attitude are the things that you can always control. Again, if you've been listening to me, you know that our spectrum is a little bit wider than that, but again, going back to just athletics in the way that we've always heard it in athletics a lot is the effort and the attitude are two of the things I guess that you can control. And when you dig into attitude, like I said, it's a great indicator. So pay attention to the way that you do things. It is a great indicator of who you are giving credit to. Are you giving credit to someone outside of yourself? Are you giving credit in the form of blame to someone outside of yourself, like you have to do something, the way that you do things are probably not going to be the way that you want to show up if you feel like you have to do them. So I want you guys to really, really pay attention to your attitude for the next week. Your attitude when you do things. Notice that when you do things that you feel like you have control over you feel like you are the one that made the choice to do that, how is your attitude? Take note of that. How is your attitude when you feel like when you have those thoughts of you have to do these, you're obligated to do this. This is something this is a chore, what is your attitude towards doing those things? And I want you to take note of those and start becoming aware of that. 

 

Don't let that intersection be a collision. Let it be something you are aware of. I can't say that enough. You guys until next time.

 

Did you know that I'm doing a five day free workshop, the workout mentality workshop, women if you're ready to never stop exercising again, head over to the Facebook group Women Who Want to Work Out.