Finding Variety within the Paleo Template

In the spirit of overcoming common objections to the Paleo template, today’s blog will be about finding variety.  I know people who are new to Paleo, or who try Paleo and give up, say “but I can’t find anything new to eat” or “it’s just the same thing over and over”.  Now, let me first say that I think this is a completely bogus argument.  I heard on a recent podcast that the average person only eats the 10-12 food regularly, but often we think we eat a lot more than that.  I bet if you write down the number of foods you eat regularly, it probably will add up to a lot less than you think.  Additionally, dietary variety may be an over-rated idea.   In one study (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15919842 ) decreasing variety of high-fat foods while increasing variety of low-fat foods was associated with weight loss and weight loss maintenance.  Multiple studies (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23902783; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22885982 ) with kids, have suggested that if you increase variety you also increase consumption.  Now, I’m certainly not suggesting that variety should be avoided.  This study (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20807832) correlates an increased variety of fruits and veggies with a reduction in cancer rates.  I would suggest that we should strive to get a nice variety of vegetable sources to make sure we get exposure to as many nutrients as possible, but otherwise eating pretty similar foods from week-to-week can allow you to establish new (healthy) habits.

So, what about this objections overcoming after all???  If you are concerned about how to get enough variety to keep you happy while implementing a Paleo template, I submit to you the following…  As a test, I did a Google search for “Ground Beef Paleo Recipe”.  Because grass-fed ground beef is a super-healthy and reasonably priced option, it’s a protein source I recommend everyone fit into their diet regularly.  If we’re on a budget, and can’t afford to have grass-fed rib-eye (at $20/pound), how can you possibly not getting bored eating ground beef multiple times every week?  Well, here’s what I found when I did that Goooooogle search:

 

The first link in the search results has some 40 or so recipe’s from PaleOMG that use ground beef!  Everything from simple, quick, and easy Mexican Rice Bowls (http://paleomg.com/mexican-rice-bowls/), to a delicious looking Beef, Bacon and Plantain Casserole (http://paleomg.com/beef-bacon-and-plantain-casserole/) that I’m making later this week, to a simple lettuce wrap burger (http://paleomg.com/4th-of-july-triple-protein-burgers/).  The next link in the search results has 15 more recipes, and if those 55 recipes aren’t enough for you I’m sure you can find your variety in the “About 369,000 results” in this search.  Hopefully the point I’m trying to make is crystal clear by now, but in case it’s not I’ll summarize…  My point is that even if you limit yourself to one cheap protein source (grass-fed ground beef) multiple times a week, you can still eat variety to your hearts’ content.  In fact, in just the first two search results, there are enough new recipes for you to eat a new beef dish 5 times a week for 11-straight weeks!  I guarantee that you don’t have NEAR that much variety in your current diet!

To take this one step further I’ll give you the list of my top 10 favorite Paleo ground beef dishes.  And here it is…

1. Asian Beef stir-fry: I already outlined this recipe in my previous blog. http://timstrainertalk.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-recipe-of-sorts.html
2. Spaghetti Squash Bolognese: From Practical Paleo, this is a staple in our house year round! http://balancedbites.com/2013/03/easy-recipe-spaghetti-squash-bolognese-practical-paleo-ideas-for-replacing-pasta.html
3. Paleo Shepard’s Pie: A great cold-weather meal! http://www.elanaspantry.com/paleo-shepherds-pie/
4. Paleo Taco Salad: A quick and delicious meal we eat all the time.  We add sautéed squash and onions to a recipe like this: http://www.paleoplan.com/2009/12-04/taco-salad/
5. Lettuce Wrap Bacon Burger:  We often eat burgers without the bun.  I like to fry bacon in my cast iron skillet while I prepare 1/3-1/2 pound patties.  When the bacon is done I throw the patties in the bacon grease such that the get a super nice crust on the outside.  Use butter lettuce or romaine, and garnish as you like.  We often use tomato, fried sweet onion, and avocado.
6. Chili: I have loved chili for all my life and I have found that having it without the beans is just as good!  We will garnish with avocado, or maybe even a little bit of cheese (GASP!).  Plenty of people have their own chili recipe, but here’s a link to the chili that won Robb Wolf’s Paleo Chili Contest last year. http://robbwolf.com/2013/01/06/ultimate-paleo-chili/
7. Mom, Meatloaf!!  I like to put some bacon in my meatloaf, and I like to mix in some veggies.  Just throw some onion, carrot, celery, and whatever else you got lying around in the food processor, and crank it until you have something not too far away from baby food.  Adding this veggie mixture to your meat makes it taste even more awesome and ups the nutrient content.  Here’s a list of 40 Paleo meatloaf’s for you perusal! http://paleogrubs.com/meatloaf-recipes
8. Paleo Cabbage Roles: These can be a little time-intensive, but they are delicious and make excellent left-over’s! http://cavemanstrong.com/2011/02/paleo-cabbage-rolls/
9. Ground Beef and Eggs: The Meat and Nut Breakfast (http://www.poliquingroup.com/ArticlesMultimedia/Articles/Article/270/The_Meat_and_Nut_Breakfast.aspx) is a fantastic way to start your day if you want to be more awesome (IE- normalize insulin levels, improve brain function, be strong and tough!), and this is my favorite version.  Just heat a pan, add some ground beef, season and brown meat.  In another pan cook up 2 eggs, I like mine sunny-side or over-easy for the yummy-runny-yolkie!  Throw the eggs on top of the meat, and grab a handful of nuts to eat on the side.  This breakfast is chalk full of protein, healthy fat, and will have you feeling satisfied for hours!
10. Stuffed Zucchini Boats:  Simple and reasonably quick, this recipe can be tailored to fit your tastes.  Delete or add herbs and spices or mix up the cheese (or leave it off) to make this meal just the way you like it. http://www.cravepaleo.com/recipe/stuffed-zucchini-boats

If your objection to Paleo is that there isn’t enough variety, I hope I’ve done a sufficient job showing you that variety doesn’t have to be a problem.  There can be more than enough variety within this template, even if you’re trying to keep to a tight budget.  You do have to jump into this stuff though, or you will never see the world of variety that’s available to you.  So far we’ve looked at the objections “I don’t have time to cook”, “I don’t have money to eat healthy”, and now “it’s just the same thing over and over”.  What’s holding you back from implementing a Paleo template?

Fresh, Frozen, or Canned… Which Veggies Should I Eat?

I had this question submitted to me, and it will make the perfect topic for a quick blog.  I’ll hopefully be back to more substantial topics on the blog next week, but I hope you enjoy this blog in the mean time…

When it comes to eating veggies, do you ever wonder if there is a difference between eating veggies from a can or bag (frozen) versus eating fresh veggies?  Well, like many questions of health and wellness the answer is: it depends.  I’ll briefly touch on the considerations regarding this topic, give you my hierarchy of vegetable eating, and finally wrap up with a bit about my take home points on this topic.

When we are trying to decide the best sources for our veggies, there are many small considerations to factor in.  As I go through this discussion, I’m going to make the assumption that we are all trying to eat more veggies, and that we want to get the most nutrients we can possibly get from said veggies.  I think that goes without saying, but I’ve said it anyway…  You’re welcome!  Anyway, the first consideration I’ll address is not necessarily related to our health, or the nutrient content of our diet.  The first thing I think that needs to be mentioned here is sustainability.  Eating fresh local veggies is very good from a sustainability standpoint, and can’t be matched by any other veggie option.  Go buy it from the farm if/when that’s possible!  Here are the other considerations that come to mind:

• Additives: If you’re eating frozen or canned, what are you getting other than the veggies you’re after?  Read labels and understand what you’re actually eating.
• Frozen Veggies are Picked at Their Peak: If you buy conventional produce in the grocery store it was picked before its’ peak so that it could spend many days getting to the store so you could purchase it.  Produce has its’ highest nutritional content at its’ peak ripeness.  Frozen veggies are picked at that peak, and then flash frozen to lock those nutrients in.  Therefore, some believe they can potentially have higher nutrient content than fresh conventional produce.
• Conventional Produce is Picked Early, and Transported:  Picking it early, then transporting ends up with produce that is below its’ peak of nutritional content for a couple reasons.  First, picking early means the produce hasn’t had an opportunity to get to its’ prime, and therefore is somewhat less nutritious.  Second, the transport process exposes the produce to numerous factors that degrade it (light, heat, pressure, etc).
• How Long Will it be in Your Fridge: We already know produce looses nutrient content as time goes by, so if you buy fresh produce and put it in your fridge for a week before eating it, how much nutrient value has been lost?
• Nutrients Lost in Preservation Process: Before veggies are canned and sent to your grocery store, they go through a preservation process.  There is some disagreement about how much nutrient content is lost in that process, but everyone agrees there is some nutrient content lost.
• Water Soluble Vitamins are Lost While in the Can:  While your canned veggies sit in water on the shelf, some of the water soluble vitamins leach out of the veggies and into the water where they are lost when you drain the can.

So, we have considerations all over the place here.  What does that leave us with?  As I see it, here’s the hierarchy of veggie options, from good to better to best:

1. Frozen or canned with minimal additives (good)
2. Canned veggies without additives (better)
3. Fresh conventional produce (better)
4. Frozen veggies without additives (better)
5. Fresh local produce (Best)

Finally here are your take home points:

1. Eat More Meat and Veggies: I may have mentioned this before in the blog, but whatever route you take to get there, be sure to eat more meat and veggies!
2. Stop Stressing About Details:  If you’re eating more veggies that come from a can, that’s markedly better than eating from a drive-thru.  Don’t stress too much over the details cause on some level it’s just splitting hairs…
3. Eat More Meat and Veggies:  See #1 in this list…
4. Make the Decisions that Work for You:  Again, if all you can do right now is eat canned veggies with your meat, that’s great.  Maybe someday you will have the resource (time, money, cooking skill) to move up the hierarchy, but for now do what works for you.

A Recipe... of sorts...

This is a first (and last?) for the blog, as today I’m going to share a recipe of my own with you.  Well, to be fair it’s much more of a general framework than a recipe.  See, I wanted to address some of the common objections people have with eating Paleo, or even eating healthier, and I thought one way I could do that is to simply show how I overcome those limiting factors.  I thought the way to do that would be to share a recipe I make at home, but the thing is that I don’t really ever cook with recipes.  I love to cook, but most of the time I start with a concept, and just start throwing things together till it’s cooked and tastes good.  I don’t really ever measure things.  So in this “recipe” you won’t see a lot of specific measurements, but I think this can easily used as a framework for you to make this dish at home.

So, what are the common objections to Paleo or healthy eating I wanted to address???  Today I wanted to address the “I just don’t have enough time to cook”, and “I don’t have to money to eat healthy” objections.  I feel like I hear these objections as much as any, so I thought I’d show how I could make a simple, yummy, nutritious meal in under 30-minutes and on the cheap.  What follows is a meal that we eat nearly every week because it’s so tasty, cheap, and easy…  Is it going to win any culinary awards?  No, but neither is the fast food you’d be substituting for this, because it’s the only thing faster and cheaper.  I love this meal and I think you will too!

            No-Sweat Paleo Stir-Fry

Ingredients:

• From The Pantry/Fridge:
• 1tbs Coconut oil
• 2tbs Coconut Aminos (a soy-free sub for soy sauce)
• 1tsp Gluten Free Siracha
• 1/2tbs White wine vinegar
• 1 clove Garlic smashed
• 1tbs grated Ginger grated
• 1 handful cashews
• Chinese 5-spice
• Salt
• Fresh ground pepper
• From The Grocery Store:
• 1lb Grass fed ground beef ($6.99)
• 1 container sliced mushrooms ($1.99)
• Small red onion ($0.45)
• Cilantro ($0.79)
• 1 lemon ($0.89)
• 1 med carrot ($0.09)
• 1 can bamboo shoot ($1.39)
• ½ cabbage head ($1.22)

Directions:

1. Heat a cast iron skillet over med-high heat.
2. While that’s heating up, chop the onion and carrot to desired size.
3. When the pan is hot, add 1 tbs fat (I used coconut oil), then add the beef. 
4. After a couple of minutes, flip the beef and season with salt, pepper, and other spices (I used some Chinese 5-spice).  Then begin to break up the meat with a spatula.
5. After a couple more minutes (now the beef is about 60% cooked), add the longer cooking veggies (mushroom, carrot, onion). Stir occasionally.
   
6. While that’s cooking prepare any other ingredients left to prep (garlic, cabbage, cilantro, cashews).
7. When the veggies are mostly cooked (5 minutes or so), add the rest of the veggies (cabbage, garlic, cilantro, ginger), as well as the sauce components (aminos, siracha, vinegar, the juice of one lemon).  Fold to incorporate, and increase heat to High. You’re almost done…           
   
        
8. After 1min add the zest of the lemon, and the cashews. Fold to incorporate, and turn the heat off.  Let the veggies finish cooking for another couple minutes while you prepare your plate.
9. Remove from heat and serve.  Garnish with cilantro and siracha as desired.
   

That’s it!  Pretty simple right?  And as you see in the final picture the whole thing (from putting the skillet on the stove, to plating) took me less than 29 minutes.  It takes you almost that long to drive to a fast food joint, go through the drive through, and come home!  What about the cost???  The groceries I bought for this meal came to $13.81!  This is enough food to easily feed two large hungry people, and could likely be 3 portions for many folks.  Even at only 2 portions, that comes to $6.91 per serving, which is less than most fast food value meals!  If money was particularly tight, I could have saved $3.00 buying regular lean ground beef at $3.99 a pound.  Would that have decreased the healthfulness of this meal? Yes a bit, but it still would have been better than anything you could get at a fast food joint or from a box for that matter!  I obviously have a stocked pantry/fridge because I’ve lived this lifestyle for a while, so there is some initial cost to getting going, but once you get stocked up your bill will be about the same.

This recipe is super simple, and can be adapted to whatever meat and veggie options you prefer and/or have available.  I’ve done this with ground beef, turkey, and pork.  I’ve also used snap peas, broccoli, and asparagus.  It just depends on what I’m feeling at the time.  Often times I actually cook a lot more cabbage in a separate pan, and serve the stir-fry over a plate of sautéed cabbage.  Sometimes if it’s after a workout and we need some carbs, I’ll serve this stir-fry with some white rice.  Try this out, and make it your own!

So, if you haven’t implemented a Paleo eating plan, what’s holding you back?  I hope I’ve proved here that we can all eat healthy meals while maintaining a tight budget for money and time!

Cortisol, Caffeine, Coffee, and Country Music

Today I wanted to share with you a couple of concepts that are currently at the forefront of my personal journey towards health.  This week I’ve been thinking a lot about Cortisol, and the causes of elevated Cortisol.  Why, you may ask?  Well, I can’t seem to get my body fat below 13%, and the body fat that I do have is contained in a spare-tire I have at the level of my belly-button.  Now, being at 13% is certainly within the range of healthy and carrying my body fat in a small spare-tire isn’t inherently a problem, however I have some competitive goals I’d like to pursue and that spare-tire could potentially hold me back from reaching those goals.  Also, storing your fat in your mid-section can be indicative of things like carb-sensitivity, gluten-sensitivity, and (you saw this coming right) elevated Cortisol.  I already don’t eat gluten, and eat a low carb diet, so Cortisol is the most likely cause of my inability to get below 13% body fat.

So, what is Cortisol???  Well, Cortisol is a hormone that the body releases to help you become more alert and focused by increasing metabolism, blood sugar, and suppressing the immune system.  It’s always being produced in the body at some varying level.  Cortisol levels should be elevated in the morning (to help us wake up), and should decrease during the day (so we can sleep), bottoming out in the middle of the night.  Cortisol should also elevate when we are exposed to stress, as it is the “fight or flight” hormone.  Herein lays the problem with Cortisol levels in modern life…

When our caveman brethren had stress, it was because they were being chased by an animal that wanted to eat them or they were chasing an animal they wanted to eat.  In that setting being more alert and focused can mean the difference between life or death (or eating this week).  The caveman didn’t have to deal with worry about whether or not he could pay his mortgage this month, or whether or not one of his Facebook friends was mad at him (after all he didn’t read my blog!).  Modern life presents low-level chronic stress, instead of the high-level acute stress our bodies are designed to deal with.

So, if you’re concerned at all with your Cortisol levels like I am (and you should be!), the first step is taking stock of the stress in your life.  I previously addressed this topic in http://timstrainertalk.blogspot.com/2013/08/sleep-more-exercise-less.html , but I’ll hit it briefly again here.  Modern day stress comes in many forms, and here’s a list to get you thinking about the forms of stress in your life:

• Emotional Stress: Anxiety, Worry’s, Job Stress, Relationship Stress… It all adds up.
• Physical Stress: It you’re recovering from an injury, surgery, or illness you’re body is stressed! Exercise also falls in this category…  too much exercise could be more harmful than too little.
• Sleep: If you sleep less than 7 hours a night (or your quality of sleep is lacking) you’re sleep deprived and stressing your body!
• Diet: Eating too many calories, or too few calories are both stressors on the system.  Likewise eating a diet of crap is a stressor too…
• Caffeine Intake: This could fall under diet, but it needs its’ own bullet point. Caffeine is a stress on the system like any other…  If you have too much caffeine you could be doing more harm than good.
• Alcohol Use: Alcohol intake is a stress… period…

Now honestly take stock of how you’re doing in each of these areas, and consider that they all affect your cortisol levels.  If you know you’re not doing so well in one or two of these areas you need to make sure you account for that when you consider the other areas in the list.  IE- If you don’t get enough sleep and have a bunch of emotional stress, it’s time to tighten up the diet and back off in the gym.

Circling back now, I told you I was going to share some of the things I’m working on in my own journey towards health…  As I said I have a good reason to think my cortisol levels are (at least) somewhat elevated and that the elevated cortisol is holding me back from reaching the leanness I currently want to reach.  So, #whatareyougonnadoaboutit!?!?  Here’s what I’m doing over the next 6-weeks to address my elevated cortisol levels:

• Redouble my efforts to sleep more:  The next couple months I’m only coaching classes 2 week days during the work week, so in theory I should be able to get in bed earlier more often.  I’m going to make every effort to sleep more than 7 hours per night.
• Cut my caffeine intake: I LOVE coffee!!  No, I mean I REALLY LOVE COFFEE!!!!  This isn’t gonna be easy, but I’m cutting coffee out for a little while.  This week I’m reducing my intake to one cup a day, and next week I’ll switch to decaf for 4-weeks.
• I’m meditating: I’m going to make a solid effort to spend 10 minutes a day meditating.  This has been proven to do great things for stress management, but I haven’t been able to get into the habit.  We’ll see if I can this time…
• No cardio: I’m going to walk when the weather isn’t too terrible, but otherwise I’m not doing any cardio.  3 Days/week of strength training is my exercise for the next 6-weeks.
• Explore tanning: There’s some good science suggesting that small amounts of tanning can do great things for vitamin D levels and help with stress management.  I’m going to investigate options, and potentially integrate a tiny bit of tanning into my weekly routine.

Basically, I’ll try these things for the next 6-weeks, and reassess.  If I haven’t seen improvement then I’ll go back to the drawing board.  And by the way, I TOTALLY recommend this sort of approach for you.  As Robb Wolff always says try something new for 30, 60, or 90 days, and if you don’t look feel and perform better, try something else.

Finally, I’ll leave you today with a hot tip on some fantastic music.  If you don’t know already, I’m a HUGE fan of a band called The Avett Brothers.  I love them and their music for many reasons, but this quote nicely sums up a few of the reasons:

“…they craft alternately stompy and swoony music that's rooted in a desire for self-improvement. Take their body of work as a whole, and it forms the outlines of a makeshift guide to life, and to being fundamentally decent in the pursuit of something even better.”

As you already know, I love self improvement, and the struggles that The Avett Brother’s music is so often about, are the struggles I identify with so well.  It’s amazing music!  Today, in the interest of stress management, I’m going to spend my lunch break in a quiet dark room listening to The Avett Brothers new record Magpie and Dandelion.  It will be released next Tuesday October 15, but you can stream it NOW on NPR (http://www.npr.org/2013/10/03/228941827/first-listen-the-avett-brothers-magpie-and-the-dandelion).  Take some time to check out the stream, then buy the record next week!  You can thank me later for turning you on to this life-changing music!

Slap Your Inner-Voice in it’s Dirty Little Mouth

Have you ever slapped someone across the face when they said something you didn’t like?  NO?!?  Well, I haven’t either…  But there have been a few times in my life when I had the urge to do that.  Today I want to encourage you to take that step whenever that voice in your head gets out of line…

I don’t know about you, but my entire life I’ve battled my own negative self talk.  That voice in my head has told me I wasn’t good looking enough to talk to that girl across the room, that I wasn’t strong enough to lift that weight, that I wasn’t worthy of the thing I wanted at the time.  You can find any number of books in the psychology section of Powell’s that will provide well laid out theories regarding the psychological origins of  that negative self talk (damaged inner-child, out of whack id, relationship with parents), and you can spend thousands of dollars working with a psychologist to find those root causes, but I’m going to suggest today that you simply learn to slap that inner-voice right in the mouth when it gets out of line, and move the hell on with your life.

This past weekend I competed in a powerlifting competition for the first time in about 13 or 14 years.  I decided earlier this year that I wanted something to train for, so I set up a 10-week cycle and trained for this competition.  It was a very interesting experience for me because not only was it my first time back on the platform in a LONG time, I also cut weight for the competition for the first time in my life (we won’t get into that right now).  I say all of this because there was a moment this weekend that illustrates the point I want to make in this blog.  Powerlifting is a sport comprised of the squat, the bench press, and the deadlift.  During a competition lifters have an opportunity to complete 3 squat attempts, and their highest weight counts towards their powerlifting total.  Likewise, lifters also get 3 attempts at the bench press, and finally the deadlift.  Well, Saturday afternoon, about 3+ hours into the meet, I warmed up for the deadlift and felt like crap.  My energy level was low, and I couldn’t seem to improve it.  I had already committed to my opening attempt being 495#’s (a weight I did in the gym a couple weeks ago pretty easily), so I wanted to finish my warm up with 455#’s in the warm up room.  Well, I did pull 455#’s in the warm up room, and it felt SUPER heavy.  I waited about 5 minutes and decided to pull it again before I went out onto the platform to do my opener.  This time it felt even worse.  At this point that little voice in my head was going crazy…  “You opened too heavy you idiot” “You are going to fail”…  And on and on…

So what did I do???  I told that voice to shut the hell up!  I told that voice that I had easily pulled 495#’s just a couple weeks ago, and I was going to easily pull it today!  I told that voice that I was in fact going to rip the damn weight off the floor like it was 195#’s.  I slapped that voice right across its’ dirty little mouth, then went out on the platform and did what I had prepared to do.

One more example I have is one that didn’t end as well…  A few months back I was coaching someone as they pursued a max height box jump.  If you’ve ever done box jumps anywhere near your max height, you know it can be a little scary.  In this particular case, the woman I was coaching was having a heck of a time putting the fear of missing the jump out of her head.  We were working up in height, and she was doing well, but the self-talk was sitting in the back of her head getting louder and louder as the box got taller.  She made a jump easily around 26”, but when we added 1” she missed horribly and skinned her shins on the side of the box.  Did she miss because she exceeded her jumping ability that day?  26” she could do, but not 27”?  Nope!  She missed the jump because at the moment she jumped she allowed that self-talk to take over.  She didn’t commit to the jump, hardly got off the ground, and in the process nearly hurt herself.  That inner-voice snatched away her ability to succeed that day.

Now, what’s the point of all this???  Well, today I wanted to make a couple points about self-talk that I hope will help you continue to improve yourself, and find a way to rise above the negative self-talk that I think everyone suffers from at some point…

My first point about all of this is simply, learn to identify this negative self-talk and talk back to it (IE- slap that little jerk in the mouth).  There’s a great book written by psychologist Dr. David Burns called “Feeling Good”, that goes into great depth on this subject.  What I want to say here is just that learning to identify when your brain is talking to you in a way that doesn’t reflect reality, is the first step to improving your own self-talk.  Really what this comes down to is that no matter what the cause of that negative self talk is, if we can learn to identify and combat it, we can defeat it.  After all, once you slap that inner-voice in the mouth enough times, it’s going to start saying things you like so it doesn’t get slapped any more.  Re-train your brain to identify that crap, and talk back to it.  Give that inner-voice a dose of reality!

  

The other point I want to make about this is that I suggest you move away from the practice of comparing yourself and your performance to others, and simply compare yourself to you.  Now I’m all for competition, I’m all for holding yourself to high standards, and I’m all for wanting to be the best, but in my own experience I’ve learned that comparing yourself to others can only do harm.  There are VERY few people in this world that will ever have a moment in their life where they can say they were the best in the world at something, and even for those few people it’s a passing moment.  For everyone else there will always be someone better than you, no matter how good you get.  If you’re trying to measure up to others, you can always find a way to ensure you don’t measure up.  Now I’m not going to say you shouldn’t compete with others and that you should go all “rah-rah everyone-gets-a-trophy” on life, but I am suggesting you compete more often with yourself than with others.  Today is the day to do the work to make yourself a better you tomorrow.  If you set a personal record be proud of that personal record, instead of focusing on how it’s not as much as so-and-so’s personal record, then go back to work trying to better that personal record.  I think that success in life comes from the journey of constant improvement, not the end result of being the best.  I think I said this in a previous blog, but take some time to celebrate your successes then get back to work addressing your weaknesses.

So, do me a favor today and honestly consider how you’re talking to yourself and how you’re measuring your success.  If you’re like most of us, there is some work to be done in how you talk to yourself.  That self-talk may well be holding you back from being the best version of yourself you can be (IE-the box jump example), and it most certainly is holding you back from being as happy as you can be.  Next time your mind tells you you’re not good enough, strong enough, smart enough, or whatever…  Slap that sucker in the mouth, and tell it what reality actually is.