Mediocrity and Mal-ware are Everywhere…
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gadzukks
Posts: 28 Member
written by John C. Ashworth
I can’t be held responsible for your inability to act. I can do my best to inspire you, and to ask good questions that stimulate thoughts and actions. If you’re going to hold that tightly to your current behaviors and limitations, though, then I won’t be able to help you.
As a fitness coach who goes way beyond the fitness part, or at least makes an attempt to do so, I get bored when clients hold so closely to their old worn out belief systems. In fact, if you haven’t picked one up yet, I go into an entire chapter on this subject in my new book, “Weight Loss, The Job No One is Training YOU for.”
There are also quite a few good podcasts on that same web site on this subject. Mostly, because it represents one of the more elusive concepts that holds so much potential for holding you back. And at the same time, it’s so hard to see. Easy for me to see, but not so easy for you – the person wading in the molasses of your limitations.
Of course, that’s why people come to see me regularly. They need help in these areas and are strong enough in their convictions to do something about it. Something the majority of people just don’t do. The problem is, however, is that we all seem to get so bogged down in the fitness and nutrition part. Stuck in the weeds of what a balanced meal might look like and neglecting the job we first must do of pruning from the roots of our old belief systems and limitations.
This is all OK as long as you are eventually willing to let go, and to keep going with the work of improving yourself. Unfortunately, I’ve found over the years that most people would rather play tug of war. You can talk all you want about motivational interviewing and techniques for coaches to help people work through this stuff, but in my experience, the progress lies mostly with the client and their ability to be open to the questions. The questions that force them to re-consider their position, how they got there, and where this deeply rooted belief actually came from.
All of this reminds me of an old story from a sales program I attended inside a company that sold chiropractic and physical therapy equipment. It goes something like this…
The young girl, curious to learn more about how to cook from her mother is hanging around in the kitchen one night and watching her mom prepare a roast. As the mom prepares the roast she proceeds to cut off a large chunk on one end before placing in the roasting pan and then into the oven. The little girls asks her mom, “Mommy, why are you cutting off the end of the roast?”
Mom explains that this is how her Mom taught her how to do it. Curious though, the mom makes it a point to ask her own mother (the little girl’s grandmother) why she was taught this method. And the grandmother says, “That’s the special system my mom shared with me when I was a little girl.”
Later that week, all three of them were visiting the great grandmother at the nursing home and by now all were vastly curious to discover the ancient roasting technique passed down to them through the ages. When asked the question, the great grandmother replied succinctly that cutting off the end of the roast was necessary at her house, because that was the only way she could fit it into the small-sized oven she was working with in her kitchen at the time.
If you’re not careful, there are a multitude of beliefs just like this one that can snarf your growth by hijacking your ability to think creatively, question assumptions, and let go of belief systems that are not serving you very well in spite of your convictions.
Therein lies the problem, however. Many of our belief systems are formed in the beginning for very good reasons. Like the roast in the oven, they served a purpose for us at some point, even if it wasn’t a good one. The problem in the moment today, and that I find with clients who get and are stuck, is that the belief system has anchored itself so significantly to their identity that the work of shedding it becomes far greater than the work of holding on to and justifying it. Or at least that’s the perception. Because once you are able to move past that old worn out belief system and free yourself from the tyranny of mediocrity, suddenly their is clarity, freedom, and everything runs more efficiently and freely.
Just like that Mal-ware that installed itself onto your hard drive when you weren’t looking, those belief systems are eating away at your processing power, and making it impossible for you to grow, evolve and build a new more powerful operating system.
-John
John Ashworth is a guest contributor for Shaping Concepts. He is a writer, speaker, and fitness coach located in Madison, Wisconsin. He is also author of “Weight Loss: The Job No One is Training YOU For.“
I can’t be held responsible for your inability to act. I can do my best to inspire you, and to ask good questions that stimulate thoughts and actions. If you’re going to hold that tightly to your current behaviors and limitations, though, then I won’t be able to help you.
As a fitness coach who goes way beyond the fitness part, or at least makes an attempt to do so, I get bored when clients hold so closely to their old worn out belief systems. In fact, if you haven’t picked one up yet, I go into an entire chapter on this subject in my new book, “Weight Loss, The Job No One is Training YOU for.”
There are also quite a few good podcasts on that same web site on this subject. Mostly, because it represents one of the more elusive concepts that holds so much potential for holding you back. And at the same time, it’s so hard to see. Easy for me to see, but not so easy for you – the person wading in the molasses of your limitations.
Of course, that’s why people come to see me regularly. They need help in these areas and are strong enough in their convictions to do something about it. Something the majority of people just don’t do. The problem is, however, is that we all seem to get so bogged down in the fitness and nutrition part. Stuck in the weeds of what a balanced meal might look like and neglecting the job we first must do of pruning from the roots of our old belief systems and limitations.
This is all OK as long as you are eventually willing to let go, and to keep going with the work of improving yourself. Unfortunately, I’ve found over the years that most people would rather play tug of war. You can talk all you want about motivational interviewing and techniques for coaches to help people work through this stuff, but in my experience, the progress lies mostly with the client and their ability to be open to the questions. The questions that force them to re-consider their position, how they got there, and where this deeply rooted belief actually came from.
All of this reminds me of an old story from a sales program I attended inside a company that sold chiropractic and physical therapy equipment. It goes something like this…
The young girl, curious to learn more about how to cook from her mother is hanging around in the kitchen one night and watching her mom prepare a roast. As the mom prepares the roast she proceeds to cut off a large chunk on one end before placing in the roasting pan and then into the oven. The little girls asks her mom, “Mommy, why are you cutting off the end of the roast?”
Mom explains that this is how her Mom taught her how to do it. Curious though, the mom makes it a point to ask her own mother (the little girl’s grandmother) why she was taught this method. And the grandmother says, “That’s the special system my mom shared with me when I was a little girl.”
Later that week, all three of them were visiting the great grandmother at the nursing home and by now all were vastly curious to discover the ancient roasting technique passed down to them through the ages. When asked the question, the great grandmother replied succinctly that cutting off the end of the roast was necessary at her house, because that was the only way she could fit it into the small-sized oven she was working with in her kitchen at the time.
If you’re not careful, there are a multitude of beliefs just like this one that can snarf your growth by hijacking your ability to think creatively, question assumptions, and let go of belief systems that are not serving you very well in spite of your convictions.
Therein lies the problem, however. Many of our belief systems are formed in the beginning for very good reasons. Like the roast in the oven, they served a purpose for us at some point, even if it wasn’t a good one. The problem in the moment today, and that I find with clients who get and are stuck, is that the belief system has anchored itself so significantly to their identity that the work of shedding it becomes far greater than the work of holding on to and justifying it. Or at least that’s the perception. Because once you are able to move past that old worn out belief system and free yourself from the tyranny of mediocrity, suddenly their is clarity, freedom, and everything runs more efficiently and freely.
Just like that Mal-ware that installed itself onto your hard drive when you weren’t looking, those belief systems are eating away at your processing power, and making it impossible for you to grow, evolve and build a new more powerful operating system.
-John
John Ashworth is a guest contributor for Shaping Concepts. He is a writer, speaker, and fitness coach located in Madison, Wisconsin. He is also author of “Weight Loss: The Job No One is Training YOU For.“
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