Ready to redefine failure and transform your journey to weight loss success?
Many of us view failure as a devastating endpoint, a dangerous place from which there’s no return. But what if we saw failure differently? What if failure was simply an opinion we hold about ourselves when we don’t meet our expectations?
In this episode of my Get Unstuck series, we’ll explore the true meaning of failure and how shifting your perspective can dramatically change your approach to weight loss and healthy eating.
You’ll learn:
→ How to distinguish between destructive and constructive views of failure
→ Why avoiding discomfort might be holding you back from the results you want
→ The importance of normalizing mistakes and self-judgment as part of your permanent weight loss
→ How the fear of imperfection can be the only real obstacle to achieving your goals
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Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the podcast today. We’re going to do the next episode in my get unstuck series, which I am doing to help all of you overcome your internal objections to solving for healthy eating and weight loss. Now, our human brain is designed to keep us from where we want to go in terms of growth, becoming someone new or creating different results in our lives.
And so my ultimate mission is for you to feel equipped to manage your human brain when it comes to healthy eating and weight loss, so you can create those results with ease. So in this series, we have been addressing. Blocks that cause you to feel really stuck when it comes to your progress. And so today we’re going to talk about the internal block we can have of, I don’t want to fail again.
This is something I hear a lot from women who come seeking my help or wanting to join my program. And this [00:01:00] is a fear that I have seen hold so many capable women back from these results because they are so internally. Hesitant to go into an experience where they will fail again and again and again. And really, if you are here, it’s likely that you have experienced a series of quote unquote failures with healthy eating and weight loss, where you went in with the best intentions, you had high expectations for yourself.
You genuinely thought you would succeed. And then it ends up being the same as. All of the other things you’ve tried where you go in with high hopes and the results end up looking the same or even worse than they did before. I completely know how that feels and that is especially tough when we are considering that you want to change the results you have with your body.
This is a very important step. personal and tender topic. So that is hard when you have really put effort into so many things to solve [00:02:00] this problem and you feel like you haven’t gotten the results from it. So I want you to feel validated in this thought. I want you to know it is extremely normal and I want to give you a talk today on how you can overcome this because I don’t want to fail again is language that we will just use and it’s language we have normalized.
So much in society, right? But really, what do we mean by that? I don’t want to fail. What does failure even entail? And here’s how most of us are defining failure. And this is how you are likely defining it. If failure feels like this massive problem, we are often defining failure as a result that we will create, or an outcome will create that we can’t come back from.
It feels like this ultimate finish line where. We will just prove something about ourselves, or we will just become incapable, or we can never lose the weight. There is a finality to the concept of [00:03:00] failure that we will have, and when we think about failure As this dangerous worst case outcome, it’s going to feel really devastating, unsafe, and it’s going to trigger that fight or flight brain like crazy.
And I want you to consider here, why does failure even feel like a problem? And don’t invalidate yourself when you ask this, but genuinely consider. Why does failure even feel like a problem? Chances are it’s because there is some internal definition of it
where it feels like an outcome you can’t come back from, and I’ll talk more about that, but I just want you to consider the stakes we place on failure, and that’s what makes it feel like such a problem. Now, here is how I offer to define failure, and it’s what I tell all of my clients, and in my program, this is how we look at it.
So failure can only ever be a judgment you have of yourself. [00:04:00] When a specific outcome is created. So let’s say the scale goes back up or you don’t lose weight in that moment. Failure only exists as the judgment you have of yourself with that outcome. So Where you think I failed or I’m a failure.
It’s not the fact that the scale went up. It’s not what you did. It’s just the judgment. The sentence in your head that says I failed or I’m a failure. It’s your opinion of that result. Because the important thing to know is Failure is not something you can actually prove. It’s not something that everyone would agree on in a court of law.
It is an opinion because one person’s definition of failure might be another person’s definition of progress. And what I want you to know is you always have the option to look at an outcome as part of your progress And your overall journey towards [00:05:00] long term success. So if you have a weight fluctuation or you see yourself overeating or you make a decision that you know won’t positively affect the outcome, you have the option to look at that as progress and as part of your journey towards success, which really I want to offer is what those moments are and can be. Another option you have, which you may have been doing, is to look at that moment as a failure where you make it mean something negative about you or your progress. It is negative. an opinion. It’s a manner of thinking and it’s a lens you can put over what your weight loss journey looks like that’s going to feel really, really painful.
But that is the most important thing to unpack here is that failure is not this external thing that can happen to you that you can’t come back from. That will imply that it’s really dangerous and unsafe. Failure is only ever a judgment you can have. [00:06:00] of your progress. So then what this allows us to see is that if you feel like you’re really wanting to avoid failure, which you will because you have a human brain, And that feels like that’s why you’re avoiding this work.
It’s just because your human brain wants to avoid uncomfortable human experiences. So in other words, your brain doesn’t want to fail again because it knows that when you have that judgment of yourself, it feels really uncomfortable emotionally. So when we think the thought, I failed, or I’m a failure, most of us feel inadequacy, shame.
Shame. Whatever that emotion is for you. And that is what the brain wants to avoid now. It is not that those emotional experiences can harm you or that they’re dangerous. There is not this finality to failure that actually exists. It’s just that your brain is anticipating the judgment that you will have.
When you have a setback or when you perceive yourself as doing something wrong, what we want to make sure is that you do not [00:07:00] keep yourself from the results you want. That would massively change your life
because it’s important to know that the discomfort of your brain judging you and telling you, you failed when you have a setback can be tolerable. So for example, in my program, these thoughts come up a lot and it is very common on the way to permanent weight loss And what my clients learn in my program isn’t how to feel positive all the way to their success.
What actually ends up being more valuable is they learn how to normalize the experience of having those uncomfortable emotions and that it doesn’t have to be this dangerous, unstable experience of their progress. It can just feel better. expected
because it is safe for your brain to have a judgment and tell you you failed on the way to your weight loss success because it’s going to and this is how in our society so many of our brains are wired. What I don’t want [00:08:00] you to do is to avoid creating the results you want, because you perceive failure as this tangible end point that you can’t come back from.
That does not exist. You have permission today to establish with yourself that that devastating outcome that you can’t come back from is never an option. There is no situation with healthy eating and weight loss where you can indefinitely quote unquote fail. And never come back from. You always have another decision you can make.
You always have another day. You always have another chance to create the outcomes you want. The stakes are not that high.
Again, it is safe for your brain to have a judgment. Along your weight loss journey that you failed, but what’s not going to be safe is constantly believing now That you’re gonna fail at your weight loss and that this means you’ll reach a place You can’t come back from that is what’s gonna feel like suffering and actually what’s gonna feel less hard is When you acknowledge that your brain is [00:09:00] just gonna maybe judge you along the way and that’s expected Because we’re human and that’s what our brains do So what I want to offer here, if you are having a thought, I really don’t want to fail again.
First, I want you to know that failure can never be this tangible, dangerous outcome that you can’t come back from. It is only ever a judgment and we can logically normalize making mistakes along the way to the result, having weight fluctuations, and we can also normalize the judgment your brain will offer you.
Along the way to the results you want, there is nothing you can’t accomplish if you just accept that you will have moments where your brain makes the judgment that you failed, but it’s safe to have that experience because the most that will ever be is a judgment you have as an opinion and a feeling you have that results from that opinion.
There is nothing that can harm you when that occurs.
It’s so important to have an accurate definition of [00:10:00] failure, because if you have the definition that it’s a result you can’t come back from, you’re going to believe something terrible will happen if you’re not perfect in your progress. And here is the reality y’all, you are not going to be perfect in your progress to long term weight loss.
And that is necessary because that is how skill building occurs. Permanent weight loss is not about good performance. It’s about skill building. It’s like learning a sport and becoming a master at that. So when you decide to create that result, you have to create a tolerable climate of making mistakes, having setbacks, experimenting.
And this requires you to have an accurate depiction of what failure is, which is just that judgment. The worst case scenario of you failing. Diving head first into this result in your life is just a feeling. It’s just a judgment from your brain. And that is something my friends that you can tolerate.
And I know that when you do so, you will be capable of creating all of the [00:11:00] results you want with healthy eating and weight loss. All right, my friends, I hope this perspective was helpful and I’ll see you in the next one.
Hey there! I'm Kat Rentas. I’m a certified life and health coach for women who believes that eating healthy should feel simple and sustainable. I teach hundreds of high-performing women to change their eating habits without the overwhelm. Want to change your eating habits in a way that is aligned with your needs, preferences, and goals? You’re in the right place. You can read my full story here.