If you're a driven individual who's trying to either get in shape or stay in shape and you never feel like you've arrived, you never feel like the fit person. You never feel like you're quite lean enough, strong enough, or doing enough that it all feels just a little bit much, a little bit overwhelming. It might impact either just simply your enjoyment of the stuff that you're already doing. Or it might be causing a little bit of a yo-yo in regards to your drive, your motivation, and your consistency to really stay on track. I'm going to walk you through a really, really crucial training that's embedded much deeper into body reset beyond simple nutrition and training frameworks to really make sure things last long term. And something that I've been obsessed about since the start is not just a before and after, but before after, right? What does this look like 12 or 24 months from now? To really make sure that you're still really happy with the momentum and the progress that you're making, regardless of all of the undulations and obstacles and things that will inevitably happen in your busy life with kids and work and travel and whatever else that's going on, aging parents, sickness, all the stuff that we all have to tackle and we never get to bed at 9:00 p.m. and we never hit our perfect protein or macro targets every single day, right? being able to highlight the psychological aspect of consistency, self-care, and what we're going to cover today, self-love or self-compassion being a really, really important part of that whole progress. So, I'm going to share this from recent mindset call that we did with our clients and and a highly rated one that came up. So, this little concept was brought up from a bodybuilding show I did six, seven years ago, 2019, and it was a really good example of one of those times where I simply I did everything I possibly could for an event. I took out the entire show. It was the took out my class, I took out the open and in two different categories. Couldn't have asked for a better result from that particular event. And as you can see from that photo, I didn't even smile. I just said thank you. Job done. Moved on to the next one. And this balance between the gap and the gain, right? The progress that you've made and the next phase for you sometimes and certainly in my case, there is the space of we focus on the next thing before we appreciate where we are. And I think from a health perspective where nutritionally we'll never be perfect or training wise will never be perfect and there's all this stuff that we need to do that a lot of this game is about the psychological component of how we talk to ourselves along the way and as I noticed you know 6 months 12 months after that particular event I noticed how much I just focus on the next thing and never allowed myself to be in that particular moment I think I've come a long way from there and it was very much forced in many ways by having a motorbike crash and you know breaking a lot of and and frankly I'll never be in that shape again. So it highlighted that if I knew that at the time and that was the last time that I'd be in that sort of shape on stage doing that thing. I probably would have appreciated that moment a lot more. Right? And I've had to have a pretty big discovery of goals and drive and who I am and all that stuff in order to get to that place. And hopefully you don't have to go through throwing yourself off a motorbike in order to get to that place too. So I'm going to highlight a really really important part of this whole talk is that you can achieve certain things while having peace at the same time. And I think there's been some really good examples in the professional athlete space that I certainly follow where people that have won two, three, four different championships or whatever it might be really all get to the same place of like, I really wish I enjoyed the first one or two of these a bit more. Right? I'm now allowing myself to as I get closer to retirement or whatever it might be for that particular professional athlete, they're able to give themsel permission to be in the moment to enjoy and appreciate this the atmosphere and the event and whatever else that they are uh doing. And I think you can apply the exact same thing when it comes to your health journey is the good old times are always something that were five years ago or when you're in the middle of something. And I've seen the same thing apply with with individuals that have sold businesses or finished in their career or whatever it might be. And in the moment it felt like stress and overwhelm and uncertainty, but now in hindsight it looks like the good old days. And I think all of us can appreciate some version of that where at the time we were probably stressed and overworked and all these things yet just a little bit more of being present of like what if this is the good old times right now or a version of that. And a big portion of that is how we talk to ourel in that process. All right. So, I'm going to take you through two versions of this self-love discussion that comes through really regularly. One of them you'll probably identify really quickly, and the other one really sits under the radar a lot more, but I want to make sure you're super aware of as well. So, there are really two ways to to fail at this whole self-love discussion. The first one is the critic, right? The one that missed the workout, eat the thing, whatever. And the voice starts saying, "Look, you're useless. You're weak. Here we go again. You've done this before." And many of us will call this discipline, right? We're being hard on ourselves. We're punishing ourselves for not doing the thing. But it really gets in the way of us actually enjoying the process at all. Right? We just beat ourselves up the whole way and it might be effective. It might make us do the actions, but it's certainly not an enjoyable process and it does reduce the sustainability of this happening long term. The second one is the coddler. And this one is just as damaging, but like I said, a little bit more under the radar, which is that you miss the workout, you eat the thing, whatever, and then you make up this beautiful reason that makes it okay, right? Which is I deserve this. I'm being kind to myself. And in isolation, if it's the one, you know, this one time you've gone for a big ride or it's a birthday or it's whatever, amazing. But if this starts to happen as the wine that happens every night or the dessert that happens every night because you deserve this, it really gets to a point that is no longer useful. It's no longer serving you, right? Where you call it self- loveve in the moment, but what will differentiate is that it's actually self soothing wearing these self-love clothing. And a really interesting way of looking at this, certainly from what I've seen from an overall pattern through many, many clients, is for many individuals, it can certainly be a loop. And whether you start with the coddler or the critique, it doesn't really matter. There's an overall cycle that we start to build, which is the more we critique ourselves, the more we beat ourselves up, the more we put our body in this threat state, right? Cortisol's up, recoveryy's down. We need to soothe in some form. So the coddler comes in, the comforter, which then means we slip, we miss the workout, we eat the food, the whatever, which means that we start this whole cycle and we're critiquing us because we slipped and then we're comforting us because we're critiquing ourselves and it's a horrible cycle to really get in. So a way to really think about this is what we call the parent test. And this is a really simple example of look, if you gave ice cream to your dinner every night because, you know, you simply said yes and you didn't want to upset them, would you call that, you know, good parenting? Well, in my perspective, take it if you will, it would be not having a boundary, right? You can't say when it was serving them for a particular, you know, birthday or night out or, you know, day trip or whatever it might be with them compared to having every day to the point that they're actively putting on weight, their blood sugars are no longer in a good spot. They're no longer a healthy child. And it's the same thing for you personally, which is do you create that boundary? Do you create that avenue of personal standard where you're being kind to yourself? If you're able to if you're at a birthday party, you're out with friends, whatever it might be, and if you're going to have a drink, you enjoy that drink and you're present in that drink without beating yourself up in the process. However, if it now becomes something that you're having a wine every night or ice cream after every dinner, where do you draw that line? Where do you set their own personal boundary? Many of us can see where that might be with a friend or a horse or dog or their child, but in many ways, we do struggle with that ourselves. So, I'm going to give you a simple frame that I think is a really nice way to separate this personally. The first one is the self soothing, right? If it's something that serves to simply make you feel better in the next 20 minutes, but it's it cost you later, right? You have the donut or something now and then you feel sleepy for the afternoon, it cost you later. That's self soothing, right? And if you do that too often, that's really going to bite you in the bum. It's simply this concept that if if a choice feels good now but it cost you later, that's not self-love. It's a loan against your future self. So the true version of self- loveve that we're trying to get through on this this concept is what's something that I'm doing now that serves me in 20 years time. It might even just serve me in two or three hours from now. Right? I have a good healthy meal means that I have that productivity, that cognition, that focus through the afternoon because I decided to eat the healthy option rather than have the extra donut. Right? Being able to really true self-love becomes a shift in dialogue from simply the pamper and the massage towards something that I do the hard stuff now that makes me a better human, makes me more present, makes me happier, makes me stronger, makes me stick around longer because I'm actually looking after myself. Now, absolutely, a pamper, a massage might come into that, too. But where the real risk comes in is we call self soothing self-love when really what it is is letting ourselves off the hook. And there's a few different ways that that can show up, right? It's the the classic I deserve this, right? And it becomes a nightly pattern. I'm listening to my body and then you miss another workout because you constantly feel tired. Or and a really crucial one we see very regularly is I just don't want to rock the boat. So I never have that hard discussion with my spouse or my child or my boss or whatever it might be because we can't have the discomfort of a discussion now that really leads to a better life later. And I think that's a really really big one when it comes to both mental and physical health. Whether we deal with a low level of discomfort or discontent for a really long period of time, right? Real self-love sometimes has a cost in the moment. It is the hard thing that you don't want to do, but you know it makes you better later. Right? You might be getting up at 6 a.m. in order to get the workout in even though you want to stay in bed. You might be having the chicken salad and saying no to the donut because you know you need to be productive in the afternoon. Right? That's true self-love, not just having a donut because you earned it. And I think that concept of being able to find that balance between, you know, actually if you're going to have a splurge, you're going to have a dessert, whatever, then truly enjoy it and don't beat yourself up in the process, but make sure it's a choice that's intentional rather than just the convenience factor that will absolutely create uh that regret long term. So there's an overall quadrant aspect that I think is really really helpful in my personal framework of making sure that I'm holding a high standard to myself while also being a little bit warmer, a little bit kinder to myself along the way. The place that we really don't want to be is the spiral, right? We we talked about this where it's the harsh voice. We're con constantly critiquing ourselves, but we're also letting ourselves out on the easy option, right? We're having the donut. We're having the coffee. We're having the wine. We are skipping the workout. We're going to bed late because we just feels better to stay up late for the movie. It just feels better to have the dessert right now. We're simply going through life based on emotion of what makes us comforted. Now, likely because we keep beating ourselves up and we simply are unhappy or frankly even disgusted with the fact that we can't stay on track. We can't make progress. And it only starts by putting proof in front of us of actually taking hard action of actually getting to a point of anchoring in the steps that are required to get the to the goals we have. If we don't do the actions, we don't get the goals. But I would argue the first place I would go is step down into this place of a kind voice, which is being able to do them for the reason of making myself feel better rather than it feeling like it's punishment. Okay. Now the second one that we look at here is the coddler. And this is just as bad where it can feel like we are simply masking ourselves from seeing the truth. And this discussion is simply that we have the kind voice. We're trying to be nice to ourselves, but we're just wrapping a bow around a pretty story while justifying the fact that we're not taking the actions we need to take in order to achieve the result. Right? If we want to drop body fat, we need to be able to burn more than we can consume. Right? If we're constantly eating more and we're getting rid of that deficit that's supposed to be available, doesn't matter how kind you talk to yourself, you won't achieve the result. And that will allow you to feel slightly happier now, but you will get to a point of regret where you just wish you did the actions. Okay, the next one here, which is kind of the exact opposite of the spectrum, is the grinder, right? The one that absolutely gets result. They hold their breath and push through hard, but they pay for it in that high stress, that high cortisol, never feeling like they frankly get to that place. So even though they get results, ironically, they never feel like they've truly achieved the results they're after. They never achieve, they never realize it when they get there. Okay? So in this particular case, they've built the muscle and the skill of doing the hard things. What they haven't built is the skill of talking themselves slightly more warmly as they go through that process. How can they actually appreciate the gain, the, you know, the progress they've made, not just the gap that's yet to still be filled in? And I think that's a really really crucial part of highlighting true progress isn't just physical. It's the ability to allow yourself to actually feel like you've arrived. So the true place, the true pinnacle that we're trying to get to is of course the true version of self-love being that there is a warm tone and high standard. We are certainly not lowering the standards here. We are looking at that space where we're nurturing the body. We're doing the required stuff and we're showing up regardless of our emotion in the moment, but we know that it's leading to a better version of us in two hours, in 20 years. It's not just the emotions of that fleeting moment. So, the really big highlight here is that the actions absolutely need to get done. That's the non-negotiables. The standard does not slip. But the choice for you here is that the voice you do it in absolutely can. Being able to highlight that criticism is a choice. Being able to highlight that comfort and compassion is also a choice. And that highlight of you can actually still do stuff while really being proud of yourself and happy and enjoying the fact that you're growing of in character or or progression uh by simply being more mindful of the words that we use for yourself. And that frame of you know how you would talk to a friend, how you would talk to your child is a beautiful one to notice that there is s usually slightly a different dialogue. It's certainly a different tone in how many of us will speak to ourselves versus how we will speak to a friend or someone that we love. So that's the real separation. You can do it regardless. The actions are required. Provided you do the actions, you can achieve the result. But we need to be mindful of how we talk to yourself. And if you're talking to yourself really well and you're really happy with that internal dialogue but you're not achieving the results then there is that risk of falling into the coddler which may require a more honesty check of how we still need to require the actions in order to achieve the result. So the final step for you here and really the psychological reset that is the foundation to so many of these results really lasting long term is that we can have the perfect nutrition protocol. we can dial in your nutrition, but if you don't treat yourself in a way that is nurturing and kind, there will always be this low-level simmering stress response that's impacting digestion and immune system and muscle recovery. And so many of these aspects of actually you physically actually getting the result, but also if you even truly hit the result, you never really feel like you've arrived. So the way you talk to yourself, this compassion discussion is absolutely a skill. It is not a personality trait. Being an all or nothing or a yo-yo is not a personality trait. It's just a lack of a skill. So being able to do the hard things and doing them on a regular basis is a skill. Being able to talk to yourself in a compassionate way and be kind to yourself is also a skill. So highlight which one of those skill discrepancy you might have and it becomes a much more useful journey of being able to work on the area that we actually know we are deficient in. Right? If it's not actually that we don't do the stuff, we do all the stuff, we just beat ourselves up as we go. Then we highlight that the skill to be learned there is actually being able to one identify when we do critique ourselves in the moment and then two how we adjust that story and use that frame of the friend or the parent where we're able to highlight that shift in dialogue, the protecting of standards but the change in tone. Whereas the second is we're just being very mindful that in order to achieve a result we need to do the required actions. If we don't do the required actions and we create up a story at some point that is going to be unhelpful. We're simply being what we've turned before the president or the secretary which is the president will do the thing and follow through. The press secretary will find a way to not do the thing and justify it later. And I think that's a huge risk in a place that frankly too many people lie in where they think they're being kind to themselves but they're actually just lying to themselves. When we ma find that personal balance and we identify the area that you need to work on personally, I think we get to a much more honest, compassionate, and realistic spot of the progress we're making and the enjoyment of that process as we