“I never lose. I either win or learn.”
― Nelson Mandela
What do you think makes successful people successful? You might think it’s something they’re born with or that they’re really lucky or really smart.
Some people are naturally more skilled than others at certain things. And some people attract people and events into their lives that appear as if they were just lucky. And, yes, successful people are smart in their own way.
The one thing I’ve found that most successful people have in common is that they’re lifelong learners. Check out this article from Inc. that says successful people “keep a student’s mindset.” They’re always learning more about the areas they want to be successful in even if they consider themselves experts. They’re always willing and wanting to learn more. Then they take what they’ve learned and actually apply it to their life. When they start taking action they might even experience failure, which they embrace and use as a learning opportunity.
This is something of which I have a deep understanding because I’m always wanting to learn. I’m a very curious person, especially when it comes to the human body. All the successful things I’ve accomplished in my life didn’t just happen. I put in the effort to learn new skills and apply them to my life. I’m a smart woman and I’m surrounded by people are way smarter than me which also impacts my success.
A student’s mindset is what has helped me get really good at doing a proper squat safely and effectively. It’s what’s helped me develop the skillset of being in tune with my body to know when it’s time to scale back my workouts or go harder. It’s what’s helped me learn how to say no to delicious baked goods sitting right in front of me when I know I don’t actually want them. Just to be clear, I do eat baked goods on occasion. Just not every day any longer. These are habits I’ve created over the years to help me feel confident in my body.
Habit creation can be hard. It takes time to replace current habits that aren’t serving you with new ones that align with your health and wellness intentions. While creating new habits can be challenging at first, it gets easier the more curious you are throughout the process. When you set realistic expectations, have a growth mindset, and embrace failure you’ll get to a point where your old habits are old news and your new habits are second nature. It all starts with your willingness to learn.
When you walk into new habit territory, rather than viewing it as something you’ve tried over and over again with little to no success, I encourage you to get excited about the opportunities ahead. Get clear on what you want your life to look like when you have sustainable nutrition and exercise habits in place. What results do you want to get from choosing mostly whole foods over ultra-processed foods and doing a strength training routine 2-3 days a week? This is the time when you can let your imagination run wild.
Once you get clear on your vision (a.k.a. your Why), you can start learning what does and doesn’t work for you when sticking to a whole food eating style or consistent exercise routine. Maybe having Oreos in the house is too tempting for you to eat the entire package. Or not having an accountability partner for your workouts is sabotaging your consistency.
Rather than looking at these as failures, see them as learning opportunities. Put on your student hat and get to work brainstorming ideas on how you can make a habit more efficient and effective. According to this article here, successful people have fun with the failures and embrace the challenge they bring.
Learning from failures is the key to creating new habits. You learn the skill of being able to look at the problem (i.e. the failure) as a whole and come up with ideas for a solution. Then you choose an idea and implement it. If that doesn’t work, you go to the next idea on your list until you get the new habit dialed in.
According to this article on oprah.com, learning new skills is a great way to get a dopamine hit. This is the reward hormone that gets triggered when we get a new like on an Instagram post or get a text message. Getting a dopamine hit from learning a new skill is more productive than someone liking the photo of your beautifully platted meal from dinner the night before.
I notice this happens to my clients when they have an “aha” moment during a training session. If they’re struggling to gain muscle, having a simple conversation about nutrition, sleep, or any other lifestyle habit usually gets us to the root cause of the lack of muscle gain. Sometimes we need to make small changes to their strength protocol by adding weight or increasing the number sets.
One common situation a client might view as a failure is taking time off from working out or over-indulging in ultra-processed foods. If a client takes a week or two off of strength training or starts to eat more ultra-processed foods for whatever reason they usually tell me they feel low energy, a little blah with their mood, bloated or all of the above. Sometimes they know right off the bat why they feel this way and other times they have no idea. When they get back to eating whole foods and their exercise routine they start to feel better. This is when the light bulb goes on in their head and they realize how much their whole food eating style and consistent exercise routine impact how they feel overall.
This is when they realize they are successful with their nutrition and fitness routine. The ones that embrace this “failure” as a learning opportunity continue down the road of habit creation success. These are the people who understand they’re going to have ups and downs with their nutrition and fitness lifestyle habits. They understand it’s part of the journey and they’re willing to roll with the punches because they’re in it for the long haul. They’re not looking for a quick fix (even though that would be nice) so they put their student hat on and continue to learn so they can keep moving forward.
Having my student hat on at all times, embracing failure, and having fun with challenges is a skill that I’m still working on myself. What I know to be true is that when you shift your focus from quick results to quick wins you’re able to get a dopamine hit that will get you excited about the process. It will give you the patience needed to avoid discouragement so you can keep moving forward and overcoming obstacles. With consistent, focused efforts you can master the student mindset skill.
Want to learn more about how you can make healthier lifestyle habits stick? Go here to book a free discovery call with me.