Fear is why your fitness goals fail. It’s not motivation, laziness, lack of time, or willpower. It’s fear. That sounds like an unrealistic charge, but the fact is it’s true. Your conscious mind doesn’t know it to be true, but your unconscious one sure as heck does.
Fitness goals come in all shapes and sizes. We’re all aspiring to be more ‘fit’. We want to lose 10 pounds, work out more, or stop eating sweets. Hell, I even started the blog that you’re reading, which devotes itself to improving your health and fitness. Even that is scary.
Let me explain why fear is why your fitness goals fail.
Why fear at all?
Fear and our brain’s response to fear rooted in science. Your brain’s programming keeps you safe and comfortable in familiar situations and surroundings. Whenever you step outside your comfort zone and try something new or unfamiliar, your brain throws a temper tantrum. That temper tantrum rears itself as fear (or procrastination, doubt, hesitancy, etc.). When fear sets in, you stop taking action.
Fear is not one size fits all. When you confront and dissect that fear, several common ones rise to the surface. They may overlap or fall under two overarching fears: Fear of failure and fear of success.
Fear of failure
Fear of failure stops you in your tracks before you even start on a fitness program or diet. When you start, the effort is half-hearted because you fear the inevitable. After all, who wants to try another plan or program so they can watch themselves fail again?
Failure might not come immediately. You make strides towards your goal, then have an off day. Then another. Maybe another. The natural resistance of your brain protecting you from unconscious fear offers a safer option of quitting – and therefore not feeling the fear anymore. Brain 1 – Goals 0.
Fear of success
Fear of success is a real thing, and there are many different angles to it. You may feel as though you don’t deserve to be successful or are unworthy of the success you achieve. Even worse is feeling like a fraud when you do achieve a goal.
Success generates the attention of others, and not all of it good. Some may react with jealousy and seek to diminish your success. Others will attempt to sabotage or reject your success outright. This can look like flooding your house with cakes and cookies when you’re on a keto program or goading you into a shopping trip instead of going to the gym.
When you internalize the behavior of others, the burden, pressure, and responsibility of maintaining your success becomes a heavy trade-off. Releasing yourself from the pressure of maintaining your success alleviates your brain of that fear. Brain 2- Goals 0.
Fear of change
Many people actively brag about not liking change and are comfortable wallowing in complacency and the status quo. Why? Because it’s safe and familiar, just the way our brains like it. However, when you desire to improve your fitness, and it’s outside of that status quo, change is necessary.
Achieving a fitness goal requires setting up new habits, taking on new tasks, and rearranging your comfortable environment to maximize your success. It may require a new perspective or way of thinking. Not only that, it requires that you be able to maintain these changes and new habits. This is made challenging by the continued resistance and temper tantrum your brain throws as you prune out old, familiar ways of thinking and doing things and attempt to build new ones.
Fear of acceptance
Humans are social creatures. We’re not meant to live in isolation, nor can we thrive there. That means we often conform to a normalized way of thinking and doing things, so we are accepted in our social environment. This is our happy place. Our safe place. Our brains like it here.
However, if you have a desire to embark on a mission to improve yourself, you’re confronted with this dilemma, “Will people still like me if I eat differently? Will my friends still accept me if I chose to go to the gym instead of brunch?”
When the social pressure to conform collides with your fear of acceptance, your brain will overwhelmingly push you to conform. It does this by flooding you with feelings of doubt, hesitation, anxiety, and reels of memories of past failures, all designed to push you back into your comfort zone where it’s safe and familiar.
Fear of disappointment
If you shoot for improving your health and fitness and fail, you’ll disappoint yourself and anyone else who believed in you. Therefore, it’s easier not to start or to sabotage the efforts to ensure a negative outcome.
Failure and disappointment go hand and hand, but they are not mutually exclusive. You’re okay with failing because you’ve convinced yourself it was inevitable anyway. You find ways to feel justified in your failure. Disappointment may or may not be a component. But if it is, it’s often accompanied by shame, humiliation, and foolishness for even trying. Your brain generates those feelings to convince you it’s better not to try to make any improvements to being with.
Fear of who you’ll become
Achieving a goal means changing bad habits and developing new habits. This results in the development of a new identity. No, I’m not talking “Witness Protection Program” new identity, but one where your new habits and the things you do execute those habits and outcomes re-shape who and how you are.
If you were someone who regularly has Sunday breakfast at your favorite diner with friends and family, your new healthy habit now has you at the gym for an 8 am yoga class. Regular Friday night pizza and ice cream dinners now only happen on occasion. Your 6 am alarm is now set at 415 am, so you can get up and go for a run before work.
These changes can either excite you or terrify you. If they terrify you, that’s fear rattling around your brain begging for a return to the status quo.
Fear of who you’ll leave behind
“A rising tide lifts all boats.” Although quipped by President John F. Kennedy about economic improvement, it’s been adopted by many self-improvement experts who encourage people to surround themselves with those working toward the same goals of successful endeavors.
Working toward achieving and maintaining the success of your fitness goals may mean surrounding yourself with like-minded people as well. If your current tribe aren’t those people, you may find that you have to leave some behind to embrace your new identity fully.
Does that mean you ditch all your friends? Not at all. However, consider if some drain you rather than inspire you, and decide if the cost is worth it. If it isn’t, but they are a loyal lifelong friend, then consider spending less time with them.
Being true to yourself should always come first.
Why you should embrace the fear
Fear definitely has an appropriate place. When walking through a dark parking lot at night, you are hypervigilant about your surroundings. If you’re about to go zip lining for the first time, fear makes your palms sweaty and churns up butterflies in your stomach. Yet you manage to do both and survive. Once the action is done, your brain settles back into comfort and familiarity.
Change doesn’t happen in your comfort zone. Anything worth having means changing. Your brain doesn’t differentiate between the zip-lining fear and the fear you feel when you step outside your comfort zone, yet the physiological response is the same.
Knowing that fear is what is ultimately holding you back from achieving your fitness goals is exactly the time to acknowledge the fear, recognized it for what it is, embrace it, and find ways to push through the fear so you can triumphantly crush your goals.
How you can embrace the fear
Pushing past the fear requires convincing your primitive brain that the change producing the fear is actually good for you. This means you have to tell your brain your logical story and not the scared story. And you have to repeat that story a lot. Many times, in fact.
Critical Questions
You can start to tell a logical story by asking yourself a series of questions when the fear of embarking on a fitness goal arises. They may be questions like these or others. Ask these questions as if you were asking them of a friend. When you project these questions onto someone else, you get honest answers.
What if I want to quit?
Remember why you started. Ask yourself how you will achieve your goal if you quit. You have to work for it. It won’t come by wishing. It will only come by doing.
What if I’m not motivated?
You won’t be motivated all the time. Instead, be determined. Be determined to succeed. Be determined not to fail. Be determined to complete one task at a time. Then another. Be determined to be proud of yourself.
What if it’s too hard?
It may be. Hard doesn’t mean impossible. Hard means you ask for help. Hard isn’t an excuse to quit. Getting to the moon was hard. A team made it happen. Lean on your team.
What if I don’t have the time?
Find the time in a week, not time in a day. Commit to 5 minutes. Ask – no – demand the time you need from your family so you can succeed.
What if people judge me?
Let them. When people judge you, it says more about them and nothing about you. You are in control of whether or not the things people say and do affect you.
What if my family doesn’t support me or understand why I want to improve my fitness?
Do it anyway and have the hard conversations about why this is important to you. If they don’t support you, ask them not to sabotage your efforts. Share your why and focus on that.
Visualize the outcome
To break the cycle of fear, it’s important to create a compelling story and visualize it coming to life. What’s curious is that your brain does not know the difference between the reality you live in every day and the one you visualize in your mind.
Something interesting happens when you focus on the most minute details of your vision. When you envision being a fit and healthy person, you start to behave like your goals have already come to fruition. It becomes easier to build and execute the habits that support your vision and healthy lifestyle. The resistance born out of fear begins to fade away. You become a fit and healthy person because your brain already believes that you are one.
Yes, I realize this sounds like fluff and silliness, but try it. Take a moment, get out a pen and paper and walk through these questions. Don’t do this on a computer. Taking pen to paper requires deeper cognitive processing, so our words resonate better and have more meaning.
- What goal have you achieved?
- What are you doing differently physically?
- What are you doing differently mentally?
- How are you different as a person?
- How are your days different?
- How are your relationships different?
- What is possible now that you have achieved your goal?
- What do you believe about your success and your worth?
Add some vivid detail that brings the vision to life.
- What are you wearing?
- What are you eating?
- What are you smelling?
- What are you seeing?
Don’t leave these last few questions out. When you bring this level of dimension to your vision, you incorporate it into the life you live now. That is the shift that snuffs out the fear that keeps you from reaching your fitness goals.
Final Words
If you’ve never thought about fear and its unseen impact on achieving your fitness goals, this concept probably seems ludicrous. But if you’ve started over and over and struggled each time, the problem isn’t your desire to change. The problem is confronting that which holds you back. The fact that you keep trying shows you have motivation, but unconscious fear is what is thwarting your efforts.
Take a quiet moment to reflect on the stops and starts and see if you can recall feeling like I’ve described. If you have, re-read this article and put some of the concepts into action—even one. I’m confident you’ll be surprised at the results.