Don't Lie to Yourself

Ever get that feeling where you're just not making progress and then you tell yourself that it's just some external issue... I can't do X because Y is happening in my house.

There's always some external excuse that we can make in any given situation, but I've found that it's the most mentally driven people who don't lean on external excuse when things don't go there way.

I love the example of dieting because I feel like it's one of the biggest areas where people lie to themselves about progress.

They lie to themselves because they're not losing weight at the pace they expected, or their not gaining as much muscle as they hoped they would be... Something must be wrong.. Something out of my control.

Lying to yourself is one of the greatest lose-lose situations...

Lying to yourself creates a situation where you become blind to the true issues. It causes you to overlook the things that you actually could be doing to make the situation better and overcome your obstacles.

In weight loss, a lot of bodybuilders tend to lie to themselves about why their not cutting weight fast enough, or why the reps aren't feeling quite right in the gym.

They may come up with some wild external excuse for why these things are happening when the true issue is right in front of their eyes but because they're not looking for that issue, they won't see it.

I think of this kind of like a dark room. If you're looking into a dark room with no flashlight, then you won't see anything. But if you look into the dark room and shine a light, you will see all of your obstacles and then you can get to work on getting through them!

-The dark room is your goal and the flashlight is your decision of whether or not to make excuses.. the obstacles are.. obstacles ;)

---

What have you been lying to yourself about? Is it some area of your life that you're trying to improve in? Are you lying to yourself about how fast you really should be making progress?