It's not you, it's where you are, right?
If you're feeling stuck in life, this F&TF is for you
This December, I’ll have been a qualified personal trainer for three years and a busy online coach for two of those – having been made redundant from my mid-weight marketing job for a London-based start-up in November 2022.
In that time, I’ve learnt and felt and shifted my perspective on what it means to fail and succeed. In this week’s Fitness & Thinking Fridays, I dive into some of these learnings, take responsibility for some of my perceived failures and show you strategies you can use to better get out of your own way.
Success for me has various forms but most of them centre around a person’s ability to grow, to celebrate wins (ideally with other people) and to take responsibility for and then bounce back from losses. And trust me, I have a laundry list of reasons for not feeling like a success in some of those areas of my life, and none of them are my fault, right? The litany reads:
nobody wants to start a fitness journey in the winter…or summer…or spring or or or
because I don’t have people to practice with, my German, Italian and Spanish aren’t fluent
my secondary school friends stopped talking to me one summer
because people are really inconsiderate in dorm rooms I don’t sleep well
portion sizes are too small in Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos so I can’t get enough protein in
because it’s x, y and often z, I can’t get my steps in to manage my day-to-day health and fitness.
Can you see any issues with my framing here? I winced when I wrote what follows…
Not everybody wants to start a fitness journey
when I’m ready to coach them, but I can keep starting conversations and promoting my approach so that the people who do – or are strongly considering it – collide with me more easily. This means – whether business is fast or slow – following up on conversations, making content for social media, and, consistently, checking in with my clients on their experience and their likelihood to stay with me or recommend me to others.
I’m not fluent in the languages I’ve studied because I’ve not put the work in
There are free language exchange apps – and I know for certain my mate Jason would text me back in Spanish if I asked him – just as other people didn’t stop me from learning languages they’re not stopping me from continuing them.
My secondary school mates were a massive part of my life
and despite me going to a different sixth form to all of them and a different university city to most of them, they still invited me to parties through until graduation…and then they didn’t.
This one’s still sore because some of my happiest and most inventive dreams still involve my best buds from then.
And yet, I was the one who kept moving away – to college, to uni and then to Australia. And when I came back with yellow hair, crippling nihilism and debilitating depression, we – understandably – struggled to relate to each other, and, if I’m being honest, I had no inclination to try to talk to anyone anyway.
I guess when I got better I hoped they’d have been there, and yet, in reality, after two years – and in some cases maybe more – of no communication, it’d be unfair to expect anyone to stay.
I turned down the lads’ holidays (I’m a pale boy who dislikes hangovers but didn’t know how to pitch different trips to the group then), I missed out on the WhatsApp group (by virtue of deleting my social media and having a Nokia brick until September 2016) and most of the friend requests haven’t been accepted since I came back online.
For the longest time it felt like I’d been spurned by them, but reading this I imagine you and I would agree that it’s likely that they felt spurned by me for even longer. And I’m sorry about that. Recognising that it’s not them, it’s me, hurts, and is possibly my biggest spiritual loss to date.
I don’t sleep as well because other people are inconsiderate
is a valid statement wherever you are in the world, and yet, I could pay for private rooms, heck, I could even stay in hotels, and yet, that’s not the point of this trip. I’m investigating a lifestyle rather than a holiday, and with practice and an amount of luck I’ve gotten better at finding places that are both affordable and reliably great for sleep (in between the buses, trains and ferries, of course)!
I personally know one person who has successfully made a living while traveling, and I want to figure out if I can too. While sleep is massively important and still somehow underrated – see this article and this one for my previous discussions of this – I know how important movement, diet and a positive mental attitude are to making the most of your days regardless of how many zs you catch.
Southeast Asian cuisine is “deficient” in protein therefore I should stop trying
Blaming different cultures for their cuisines not having what you’re used to in them is like blaming the sun for rising – particularly if you’ve bought the ticket over! Nonetheless, we can fairly accept that if you’re looking to build muscle (and lose fat like I am) in Southeast Asia, from a protein perspective, three square meals just won’t cut it.
While the foods here are not of themselves unhealthy, the macronutrition of many meals is not optimal for the physique I’m trying to build as they favour high-carbohydrate, medium-fat and, outside of Thailand, relatively low-protein – rather than mid-to-high-carb, low-to-mid-fat and mid-to-high-protein.
Nonetheless, I’m willingly here and grateful for the opportunity to explore, and so I either order two portions and drop the second set of carbs or supplement with a protein powder or shake.
I can’t get my steps in because of where I live
Where people live gets blamed for a lot – not least the lack of steps people do wherever they are in the world.
In the UK, it’s too rainy, too dark, too cold, etc, and while these might sound like valid gripes, unless you’re willing to relocate, they’re not going away for at least a couple of months – if at all! And, here goes the cold water, it doesn’t necessarily get easier when you move abroad!
In Southeast Asia, for a Brit, unless you get up early or go to bed late, it’s always on the cusp of too hot even when it rains; excluding Malaysia, the sun has set by 18:00 every day in the year; pavements are rare and anyway mostly unusable and while walking the roads is doable it’s rarely a relaxing stroll.
What have you done today to change your circumstances?
If you feel like things could be better in your life, what have you done to move the needle in the right direction?
Some notes from the above that could apply to us all:
if you’re dissatisfied with your level of success in a given area of your life, really ask yourself, first, if you want that success and, as a part of that, how it would feel to attain it.
Then, if you’re working sufficient hours, you’re invested in self-improvement (and you meaningfully put those learnings into actions) and you’re involved in a wider community – so we can fairly say you’re giving it all you’ve got – go and explore alternative routes.
And if you’ve done all of that and success still seems untenable, maybe you need to let it go (for a time). Using my Spanish learning as an example, in the long-term, I plan to make it a larger part of my life, but, right now, in Thailand, it’s very much a nice-to-have rather than something I need.
If your sleep is insufficient (and you’ve optimised your sleep environment and routine as described in this video), then focus on the day ahead rather than complain about the sleep you didn’t get.
If your current food is insufficient, follow me on Instagram for super simple meal ideas and recommendations for fat loss and muscle building, (learn how to) cook your preferred foods for yourself, and, if you can’t do that, invest in a supplement or two.
If you’re budget conscious, Aldi and Lidl’s high protein shakes and yoghurts are convenient, quality and affordable ways to bump your protein up, similarly their frozen fruit ranges could help you with your fibre and micronutrition, and, as a last resort, both supermarket chains sell cheap isotonic drinks and A-Z multivitamins to plug any remaining gaps.
Lastly, when it comes to your general health and fitness, the real issue might not be your surroundings – it might be how you see them.
It’s not your hormones, your environment or your metabolism holding you back
It’s you.
The truth is, you don’t need a perfectly equipped gym or the world's most scenic hikes to achieve your fitness goals. What you might need is a shift in perspective, and – real talk – to stop inventing things you can’t control.
Take Peter, for example. He’s one of my clients this year who recognised that in order to get better at running he’d need to do incrementally more roadwork and, at times, a lot slower than he was used to. Rather than complain about the workloads I set him to meet his performance goals for his quickest half marathon ever, he decided to gamify his running.
Instead of dreading the same old routes, he turned them into a sort of science experiment, deliberately revisiting the same places at different times of the day on different days of the week, just to see how much they changed. You can read more on Peter’s story here.
Or Graeme, who’s recently been on the road for work. Long car journeys could easily have been an excuse, but instead, he turned them into an opportunity. He texted me this gem: “Back at the same services, there’s a walk around the frozen lake. So even though I’m on a five- or six-hour car journey, I’m still at least getting some steps in!” Not only is Graeme staying active, but he’s also breaking up the monotony of travel with a small, consistent win.
Safety concerns in winter
Safety is a significant factor preventing my female clients from getting steps in during winter. While I’ve never felt unsafe as an adult where I’ve lived, it’s not my job as a coach to give impracticable recommendations.
From choosing well-lit routes to walking during daylight hours to partnering with others for added safety and accountability, there are myriad ways to ensure you move more than you currently do. And the way Sarah and I approached it was game-changing for her mental and physical health – check the clip from our recent catch-up below to find out what we did.
Reframing limitations
Peter, Graeme, and I all had environments that could’ve easily been written off as “boring” or “not good enough.” But here’s the twist: the environment is only as limiting as you make it. In fact, when you learn to embrace the quirks of your surroundings, you start to see them differently. That service station lake? A lifesaver for Graeme. That tarmac loop? My mental reset button.
Imperfect effort is still effort
Here’s the thing: waiting for perfect conditions is a recipe for standing still. There will always be rain, traffic, deadlines, and excuses if you let them win. But Peter’s gamified runs and Graeme’s frozen lake walks prove that small, seemingly suboptimal efforts count just as much as big, impressive ones.
The magic is in the work you’re not doing
Whether it’s professional or personal, most of us love a good excuse. “I’d totally exercise, but the gym’s too far.” Or, “I can’t run; it’s dark outside.” The truth? The issue isn’t your environment – it’s your mindset. The key is to start where you are, with what you have. A park, a service station, a functioning pavement(!) – every step counts.
The beauty of fitness isn’t just in what it does for your body but what it does for your mind, for your sense of self. Sarah and Peter and Graeme aren’t superhuman. They just decided to make their surroundings work for them instead of making excuses. They found ways to make their earlier perceived limitations work for them and, in so doing, created helpful habits that stuck.
So, what’s stopping you? Rain? Dark? A not-so-pretty park? Start small. Start imperfect. Just start. Because your environment isn’t your limit – it’s your launchpad.
Ooh wee.
From the personal anecdotes to my clients’ reflections, there’s so much lived and shared experience here – I hope you found some nuggets!
I love writing these newsletters and the feedback and input I get from you as readers. But what haven’t we discussed yet that’s been on your mind? Let me know by replying or commenting below.
Much love and I’ll see yas in the next one
Jack x