Dave Brown, NSCA Certified Personal Trainer, NASM Corrective Exercise Specialist
The title of this article seems obvious. Here’s the original version; If you’re gunna do it, you gotta do it. If you ain’t gunna do it, you ain’t gunna do it. Right now you’re wondering if I’ve lost my mind and where in the heck I came up with that phrase. I have no idea why I thought of it, but probably over a year and a half ago I started saying it to my dogs before I took them out for a walk. It starts off very high pitched and within the first second they know it’s walk time.
While it’s goofy, if you think about what it’s saying it makes a lot of sense. Many will read it and just think – Well of course it does. Now think about it in relation to your goals. This is when the plot thickens.
We see a lot of goals people set, some accomplished and some not. Almost 100% of the time when a goal is not realized it was because You didn’t do it. What do I mean by that? Let’s take weight loss as an example. If your goal is to lose weight Are you really doing it? Are you making the decision to skip alcohol most of the time? Are you making the tough decision to tell your significant other and friends you can’t go out to eat 90% of the time? Are you planning and preparing food if you’re out for the day? Are you getting 5-6 days of cardio in, including weekends? If the answer to any of these is No, then You’re not doing it.
As an avid trail runner if I make excuses not to run, if I don’t run on the days when I don’t feel like it or the weather isn’t cooperating, I’m not doing it, and I won’t reach my goals. I’ve run in weather as cold as 8° and while it was a cold start when I got done I was on cloud 9 because I did it! The reason I mention the running when it was 8° is to illustrate it’s not always easy, but pushing through when it’s tough has rewards.
No matter what the goal is You have to do it! Often we will see people confused as to why they don’t reach a goal and in almost every case it’s because they Didn’t do it. Doing it takes sacrifice and it isn’t always fun. But when you engage and You do it it is always worth it and it’s rewarding. Before you know it a snowball effect starts and you gain more momentum and not Doing it is no longer an option.
A quote from Dr. Jim Afremow sums this up well. Commitment always boils down to, “Am I willing to go all the way to DO what I SAY I want the most? Am I going to get it done, or aren’t I?