70. You're Not Scared. You're Stalling

Playing it safe can sound like wisdom, but sometimes it’s just fear with better PR. I’m Tiana Gonzalez, and I’m getting honest about the ways we talk ourselves out of the very things that would make us stronger, calmer, and more capable. If you’ve ever felt a spark of excitement, then watched it die under “logic,” overplanning, or someone else’s opinion, this conversation is for you.

If this hits home, subscribe, share it with a friend who keeps postponing, and leave a review so more women can find the path to an unbreakable mind and body. 

If you want the deeper lessons behind strength training, I write a weekly newsletter called Between Reps: Building the Unbreakable Woman. Check it out HERE

Instagram: www.instagram.com/tianamoves

Website: unbreakablemb.com

Email: info@unbreakablemb.com

Grab my new Strength Training Program: HERE

Disclaimer: This show is for education and entertainment purposes only.  This is not intended as a replacement for therapy. Please seek out the help of a professional to assist you with your specific situation.

Transcript

Welcome And The Real Problem

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to the Unbreakable Mind and Body Podcast. I am your host, Tiana Gonzalez, a multi-passionate creative, storyteller, and entrepreneur with a fierce love for movement. This is our space for powerful stories and actionable strategies to help you build mental resilience and elevate your self-care practice. Together, we will unlock the tools that you need to create an unbreakable mind and body. Welcome back to the show. I am your host, Tiana, and this episode, episode 70, actually, we're going to talk about why playing it safe is keeping you stuck. Listen, I understand. Maybe you're scared, maybe you're nervous. You have talked yourself out of doing something before you even tried it. You saw someone maybe do something, post something, share something, and it got you really excited in the moment. And then logic started to kick in, and you started to talk yourself out of it. And you started to come up with all of the reasons why maybe it's not such a great idea anymore. Or when you circled back, now you're looking at it from a different lens. Maybe you made the mistake of telling somebody, and all of that excitement is now completely deflated. Well, on this episode, we're going to talk about why caution feels responsible, but usually when you pull back the curtain, it's avoidance. And I'm going to help you break the cycle so that we can uncover what it actually looks like to start from right where you are. Now, you may know that this podcast is a perfect example of something where I had this great idea. I was pumped. I was excited. I was all in. I watched tutorials. I got the microphone. I downloaded the software. I learned how to use it. I learned how to edit. I learned about copyright infringement and what not to do. I learned about naming your podcast and picking a topic and coming up with all of the episodes, recorded 13 episodes, edited them, saved them in a folder on my desktop, and did not publish anything for three years. Or maybe you've heard the story about how in 2017 an acquaintance reached out to me and he asked me to compete in a mixed doubles masters CrossFit competition. So mixed doubles means it's a male-female team. Uh Masters is 40 plus, and we competed in a local CrossFit competition. But here's the interesting part we never worked out together. We could not even get our schedules to align to come to practice before the competition together. We showed up, we shook hands, we got our t-shirts or whatever it was that we were wearing, and we just went in. Thankfully, we were able to communicate with each other, but that's a perfect example of where I could have used every, not even an excuse, every reason to just say, hey, this isn't going to work out for me. I don't feel fully prepared. Well, I did not feel fully prepared, but I didn't let it stop me that time. Now it's interesting when I think back to certain things, why sometimes I just went ahead and did the thing, even though I was scared, even though I didn't know what I was doing, even though I didn't know any kind of certainty as to what the outcome was going to be. But then other times I allow my fears, I allow my self-judgment, I allow the imagined criticism to take over and to put me in a chokehold and stop me. So let's talk about first three ways in which I see caution or being overly cautious disguising itself. How about waiting to know enough? Waiting to know enough, waiting to have enough information, collecting information. You already know what I'm talking about. If it's not you, it's someone you know. They listen to podcasts, they consume every piece of content from their favorite thought leader, influencer, coach, guru. Listen, some of those people are actually qualified, intelligent, capable, and smart and know what they're talking about. But it's very easy to get pulled into someone's bubble. And if they continue to give you confirmation bias on something you suspect or believe, and you might not have the science and the published journals to back up the data. It's not proven by any scientific method. You're really just trusting this person's thoughts and opinions. And that could be valid for some things, but it's always going to leave this gray area of like, well, is that true or is that just what this person's opinion is? And is that true or is that just what this person's experience is? Now, in bodybuilding, we have a term called anecdotal evidence. Meaning, yes, I competed in shows for over a decade, and I learned how my body responded to certain things. So I would take notes throughout each competition prep journey, and then I would be able to reflect back. And it was helpful for me because I would know what my body's patterns are, I would know what things it liked, I would know how it typically responded to certain things. But here's the thing: what works for me may not work for you. And what I learned over time is that what works for me or what worked for me in previous shows may not work for me now. So that's anecdotal evidence because it worked once, maybe twice, but that doesn't mean there's any science behind it. Now, here's the second way: waiting for the right time. So, first it was waiting for having enough information. Now it's waiting for the right time. And you already know. Oh, I'm going on a cruise, I'll wait until I come back. Oh, um I'm gonna be traveling this week for work, I'll catch up with you the following Monday. I'll start on Monday. Oh, it's the middle of the week. I will start my new diet on Monday. You have said it, you've heard it. You know that you know that that's true. Come on. I've done it too. I'm guilty. But here's the thing: you're waiting for perfect conditions to start something. If it's meant to be sustainable, if it's meant to be something that you're gonna incorporate into your lifestyle, if it's meant to challenge you and to for you to become somebody new, it does not matter what the conditions are. It does not matter if you start on a Wednesday, it does not matter if you start one week and you have to travel the following week. You are working on creating habits and then slowly but surely chipping away to build the path and lay it out for the new thing that you're moving towards. Now, for the purpose of this podcast and conversation, we're gonna keep it to lifting because that's my jam, that's my bread and butter, that's what I'm passionate about, and that's what I personally feel like if you're physically capable of, you should be doing that. And I don't like to use the word should, but in this instance, I'm speaking with my chest proud. Lift the weights, but I digress. So here's the third way that caution can disguise itself, and that's waiting to feel confident. I used to coach at a CrossFit gym. And when I worked at this CrossFit gym, I also worked at other gyms as well. It's very common for most people in fitness to have a couple of different gigs. We may have one primary gig where we do the bulk of our work, and then we pick up a class here or an extracurricular there, or maybe an after-school program, or we help somebody's kids with, you know, some drills for their sport, maybe some soccer, basketball, whatever the case is. And when I would go to other places and tell folks, like, yeah, I work at a CrossFit gym too, they would say things like, I'd love to try it, but I got to get in shape first. Or, well, I'd love to go there, but I'm not ready. Or I want to lose 15 pounds first and then I'll start weight training. Why? Why do you think people look better than you? Or that you have to fit a certain made-up criteria in order to start learning how to lift weights and in order to start building the body that you desire. You build your confidence lifting weights by lifting weights. You just have to do the thing. You don't plan and think and come up with every single step in your brain and have it laid out perfectly. You show up, you may have some things on your checklist that you're gonna run through before you start your lift, but you really learn by doing it. You have to feel it in your body. So, what's actually happening when you wait? First thing I'm gonna tell you is that being overly cautious has a cost. Sometimes we think of waiting as being neutral. Like we're we're not really losing anything by not starting. But time is your most valuable commodity, and the truth is none of us know how much of it we have until our time is up. So every week that you're waiting, you don't get back. Every month you postpone, you don't get that back. Every year that you keep putting it off, and you say you're gonna try again next year or next January, you don't get that time back. And the thing is there are women who kept waiting and waiting and waiting until they were in their 60s, 70s, maybe even their 80s, if they're lucky, and they could have been working on their preventative care long before that. But instead they chose other things. And so now they are seniors and they are frail, they are fragile. If they fall, they might not have the strength to push themselves up off the floor and get up. I'm sure you've heard it. When someone who is senior falls, it could be deadly for them. That's not an exaggeration. So another thing that is actually happening when we wait is that the imperfect action starts to compound. See, progress is not linear, it's built from layers. And so every workout, even the shitty ones, even the ones that feel like I only did 20 minutes, I didn't have the right shoes on, I'm starving and I feel weak, or I ate too much and I'm too full. They all compound upon each other. So it's not one single workout, but it's the actions, it's the attempts, it's the doing, it's the showing up. And the person who starts messy and just makes adjustments along the way and starts to figure out like what are their weaknesses, where are their the holes in their strategy, how can they make this process better for them? Those are the people who are at the end of the day going to end up further along, as opposed to the one who is just waiting for everything to line up perfectly. We are living in a different time where it's so common, I hear it often, where people don't know what to do with themselves if they have a few hours of downtime. And I'm guilty of this myself. I fill it with work. You know, I've got the podcast, I write on Substack, I'm building a new business out. I'm gonna be getting business coaching. I work full time, I love what I do, I have a great partner and we spend time together. And so it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. My plate is as full as I would like it to be. And I don't want a crumb more right now. The goal will be to do less over time so that I can make space to breathe, to think, to plan, to maybe go on vacation. And I'd like for you to think about that too. But if you never start, you don't allow yourself to make mistakes, you don't allow yourself to be messy, if you don't allow yourself to just say, ah, whatever, this is good enough for today. It's not perfect, but it's good enough. That's how you figure out how you can improve, process improvement, right? Now, the third way, or the third truth about what's actually happening when you're waiting is that you're never gonna feel ready. It's not something you wait for, it's not something that's going to ding dong, ring your doorbell, or call you, or send you a text message. It's not gonna show up in an Amazon box at your doorstep. You're never gonna feel fully ready. You just have to take the plunge. Do the thing, launch it. And this applies right to coming to the weight room. The woman who is ready is not the one who's done all her research, it's the one who decides she'll figure it out, or she'll hire somebody to help her and commits to the process. There's no shortcut here. And I truly believe in the direction in which the world is beginning to move with artificial intelligence and with technology, the more human you can become the stronger you're going to be in the future. Meaning when you build grit through doing difficult things, you will have mental strength to face challenges. That's truly what this whole podcast is about. That's why we're here. I'm here to share this stuff with you because I don't want you to be afraid. I don't want you to feel scared. I don't want you to be on the sidelines. I want you to be able to defend yourself. I want you to be able to make decisions. I want you to be able to think quickly. Now, listening to a podcast versus taking action, they are two different things. But when you put them together, well, now you've got a formula. Because this is the mind, and then you work the body. And that's why I came up with this whole idea in the first place. Unbreakable mind and body. This is where we talk about the stuff, but we also have to go and do it. So, how do we get from waiting to moving? This is the shift. This is really important. You have to sit down and think about what it is you're actually avoiding. Give it a name. This requires you to get honest with yourself. This requires you to take a good look in the mirror and to call yourself out on your own bullshit. What do you keep restarting and why? Let's give it a name. Now, the second thing you need to do is define what would starting look like right now. It's not the perfect time. Work is busy as fuck, your kids are busy, everything's busy, busy, busy, busy. Yeah, that's not gonna change. You're just gonna get busier. So, what would looking, what would starting look like now? What do you have available? Where can you make time? Where can you put appointments in your calendar? Now, the next thing I want you to do is think about what is an ideal day look like in the gym, and then what does a difficult day look like in the gym? And I don't mean difficult in the sense that the workout is difficult. What I mean is what would the minimum dose be? You've heard me talk about like the minimum viable dose. In some instances, you may hear people talk about the minimum viable product. So in this instance, what would be the minimal amount of time or the minimal commitment you can make to yourself to feel like you're at least scratching the surface, that you're making a little bit of a dent. What would that be? Would it be 20 minutes? Would it be 30 minutes? For me, I'm telling you right now, and I know I'm on another level, so don't compare yourself. 30 plus years of experience doing this. For me personally, I need to move my body five to six times per week. Ideally, I love to lift weights. I love heavy lifting four to five days a week, maybe one to two, just depends on where I'm at and what season of cardio. And that's to keep my heart healthy. And I also want a full rest day where I'm not even stepping into the gym, where I'm not even putting on tight workout clothes, where I am eating and relaxing and not in a gym. And for me, those sessions have to be about 45 minutes to an hour and 15. That's my minimum. That might not be your minimum, and that's okay. And then the last thing here, in order to really shift from waiting to moving, you have to get accountable. Now, I said this in the last episode, and quite frankly, I say a lot of the same things in these episodes because this is my truth. These are my values, and this is what I know and believe works for 99% of the women out there who need to get stronger so that they can protect themselves, so that they can protect their children, so that they are not an easy target when they're out grocery shopping or when they're out in the mall. You do not want to be easy prey. You want someone to look at you and be like, yeah, I'm gonna skip over her. That's what you want. And I don't mean to get all intense and crazy, but we are living in a crazy time. And preparation cannot be understated. So what are we gonna do now? Well, everything in this episode was about shifting from you know the cost of waiting to to getting moving, right? But what if you don't know what to do? So what's the solution there? And again, I talk about this on a lot of these episodes. You have options. You could find a trainer to work with in person, but don't waste their time if you're really not interested or if you don't want to invest in yourself, don't waste the trainer's time. If you just want information, you can use a lot of other resources than making a complimentary appointment with a trainer that thinks you're gonna buy from them and then you're just kicking the tires. Don't do that. But if you're genuinely interested, that's a valuable conversation. Another option you have is to buy a strength program. Now there's a lot out there and it's confusing, but what you want to look for is a strength training program, something that's going to show you how to train properly to build muscle and get stronger. And I have to make this clarification here getting stronger and building muscle are not equivalent. I'm going to say that again. And building muscle are not one and the same. They are two different things. It is important we talk about the distinction because getting stronger does not necessarily imply that you're going to build bigger muscles and that you're going to lose body fat and that you're going to look like a comic book character or a superhero or a movie star just from getting stronger. You can accomplish those things, but not by chance. Okay? And I'm gonna just just stick with me now and I'll I'll bring it all home. Building muscle, you would do the same or similar exercises. The layout is the same, the foundation, the movement patterns, the number of days of weeks, of how you train, the number, the number of days in which you're going to train per week. So a three-day split, four-day split, five-day split, whatever. How you split up your body will be the same. But the distinction, which is important, when you are building muscle, you're probably going to work in a different rep range. It's going to be slightly higher in repetitions. And the goal is really more about getting the repetitions in. Less of the focus is on the weight that you're lifting. So the mindset and the approach is a little bit different because when you're strength training, you're going to have periods of time in your program where you're doing very heavy weight with very low repetitions. Think five sets of five repetitions. If you see that on a workout program, that means that you are selecting a weight that is so heavy that you can only do five reps. That means it's got to be hard because you're only going to do five reps. And you do five sets of that. Versus, if you saw a program, it's the same exercise, same tool, same implement, same movement pattern. But maybe it's four sets of 10 reps. That's a lot more volume. That's a lower load because you're doing 10 repetitions per set, which means that it doesn't get really hard until maybe seven rep eight, rep nine, rep ten, you feel like you're gonna die. And then you rest. Okay. Now, can you build muscle and get stronger? Yes. Can you get stronger and build muscle at the same time? Yes. However, they don't happen at the same trajectory by accident. And I think that's really my long-winded point. So I know that might be a little bit confusing, but for the purpose of this conversation, we can accomplish both, but more than likely you're going to be building muscle a little bit more and your strength will increase, but not at the rate at which it could if you were, unless you were training more of like a power lifter. Okay. So you could get a program, you could hire a trainer, you could work with someone online, you could work with them in person, you can get a done-for-you program, you can have someone build one for you. All of these options are viable. It's really just about how much time and effort you want to put into learning. Now, of course, I am putting together a strength program. By the time this episode airs, it should be live and available for purchase. And it has education, it has the workout program, it has progressions, it has demonstration videos, it's it has how to explain the movement patterns, teaches you how to select the weights, how many reps, how many sets, all that good stuff. But you it's a self-paced course. It's like a mini course with audio guide. So you're you're listening to me talk, you're not watching me. Even in the demonstration videos, I'm not talking. So there is a lot of autonomy there and a lot of trust. And if you're somebody who just buys something but you're not actually gonna implement it, don't buy the program. I don't want that for you. I want you to buy it if you're really interested in doing it and if you're committed to the process. But it is a process. And if the process is the thing that's holding you back, that's never gonna go away. It's always gonna be a process. If you want someone to hold your hand and white glove the whole experience for you, then you need an in-person trainer and you need to work with them at least two times a week, maybe three, maybe four. And I know some people are gonna be like, What? That's an investment. Yeah. I have a client that works with me in person four times a week. She's seeing amazing results. She's committed to the process. She trusts me implicitly. And she's getting results. There's no secret there. But it's really up to you. It's really up to you deciding what do you want your future to look like, your immediate future and the future in the distance. If you're interested in checking out the program, it's called Lift Like You Mean It. Check the show notes. There's a link. Thank you so much for being here, for always showing up for yourself and giving me your time and attention. It's not lost on me. I know how incredibly valuable your time is. So I am grateful for you. I'm grateful to have you sit at my table and have a cup of virtual coffee with me while we chat about all things strength training. And hopefully, this conversation will inspire you to take action so that you can live your best life. I want you to lift like you mean it and become the unbreakable version of yourself. Thanks so much. I'll see you on the next one.