MM Ep 43: Do It Ugly

We share the mindset shift that helps us stop overthinking and finally start: doing it ugly. We talk about keeping workouts and content natural, why “effortless” is often an illusion, and how real progress comes from messy reps.
• adding mindful moments to on-demand workouts and feeling nervous about how it will look
• choosing to start anyway by “doing it ugly” instead of waiting for perfect
• keeping recordings natural with minimal editing and honest effort
• rejecting the illusion of effortless fitness content and embracing the real work
• getting better through repetition with small upgrades to audio, video, lighting, and setup
• remembering every great speaker and professional starts rough and improves over time
• challenging ourselves to begin without knowing the whole how and learn by doing

https://aarondegler.com/

Transcript

Welcome And The New Format

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to another mindful moment. A few months ago, when I started adding on-demand workouts to the app, I started adding mindful moments to the workout. There were some things I was nervous about. There's things I was, especially when it came to the workouts, you know, how would it look? How would I film it? How would I edit it? How do I make it look professional? All these different things. And I finally decided all these different things were holding me up. So I finally decided to do one thing. I decided to do it ugly. So what does that mean? It means that I'm not going to be perfect. So when I started recording my on-demand workouts, you know, a lot of things I like to do, whether it's the podcast, I like to not do a lot of editing. I like it to be natural. I like it to be normal. I like it to be the real thing. And so I did the same thing with the on-demand workouts. I said, you know what? If I get tired and we say, hey, I'm tired. If it gets hard and you hear me breathing heavy, it's going to happen. I wasn't going to make it easier. I wasn't going to make it look all pretty. You know, we see those workouts, whether it's on a Peloton or other apps, and they just make it look so easy and effortless. And it's not easy and it's not effortless. So I finally decided, you know what? I'm just going to do it ugly. I'm going to say, hey, I'm tired. Hey, I messed up. And I'm going to just start it. And that's the great thing about doing it ugly. You can start out and it's going to look ugly and it's going to look a mess. Nobody starts out perfect. But you know what? Next time you get a little better. The next time, you know, I figured out how to do a little bit better audio, a little bit better video, a little bit better lighting, a little bit better positioning. All the different things, same thing with this mindful moment. I can now kind of blur out the background a little bit. I can stand. I can use my headphones, they have a microphone. All these different things, as we progress, we learn to do a little bit better. But we don't learn that unless we say, I'm just going to do it ugly. I'm going to put myself out there and do it ugly. We see all these great speakers, all these great teachers, all these great professionals, all these people that seem to be just killing it in their profession and whatever they're doing, and we think, they start out like that. No. A lot of the a lot of the mindset coaches and things I listen to, if you listen to stuff from 10, 15, 20 years ago, there's a preacher I listen to every week. If I listen to his stuff 20, 25 years ago, it's like, oh my gosh. But now when he when he delivers that sermon, when he tells a story, it's like, wow, that's so good. But it's neat to look back to see where they started. Because by doing that, it gives me hope. It gives us hope that if we just do it ugly, we'll get better. We'll do a little bit, we can see what we can change a little bit. But if we don't do it ugly to start with, we can't ever make it look good. So remember that. That those that you see are just making it look so effortless and easy. They start out ugly. And I encourage you and I challenge you to don't let that stop you. Whatever it is you want to do, whatever it is, goals and dreams you have, you don't have to know the whole how. Just get started. Start doing it ugly. Start messing up. Start figuring out how to fix that, how to do that different, how to change that, how to all these different things. Do it ugly, and it'll get better. And then there'll be other things in your life that you'll really you start out doing ugly, and you got doing it really good, and there's gonna be something else you want to start, and you're gonna do it ugly again, and you're gonna do it ugly again. And we have a life full of doing it ugly because it's gonna get better and better and better. So stop waiting. Just do it and do it ugly. Thanks for joining me on this week's mindful moment. I'll see you next time right here on Mindful Moments.