Birds of a feather flock together! Through all different areas of our lives, we tend to assimilate and hang around people whose situation or values align with ours and we take a lot of pride of these groups we form or passions/situations we share. Humans being social pack animals find comfort and security through these small groups, yes even if you are “antisocial” it is still hardwired in you that sticking with a group or people with commonality is the way to go.
So, it is interesting when we take this information and look at our health and fitness.
Take a second to think of your pack or circle of influence around your health and fitness. Good and bad and where you get your views on the topic come from. Is anyone or the collective standards of the group encouraging you to do things that align with your training goals? Or are they encouraging you to do things that actively make your goal harder? An easy way to tell is when you socialize with them what are you doing? What are you talking about? Are they even aware of your health and fitness goals?
Now I am suggesting that if someone is not encouraging to your health and fitness goals then they are actively hindering you from achieving anymore then you have right now and that they are an anchor you are choosing to carry. I am also suggesting that it is on you to make them aware of how important or not important achieving this goal is to you
Let us think about it in another way let us say you had a recovering alcoholic as a friend I doubt you would be asking them to catch up at the pub, right? And I am sure you would be letting them know how proud you are of their progress right?
Because you would not want to increase the difficulty of the task they are already working towards, and you recognize how much of an impact the result will have on their life. This is what we call being supportive. Now I know that example might seem a bit extreme but let me ask you are your friends and family as supportive around your health and fitness goals?
We choose to let the standard of support we receive drop when it comes to this area of our lives. If you want to improve the level of your health and fitness improve the level of support and awareness from the people around you and if you really want to level up start socializing in circles of influence where you are not the fittest, strongest, or fastest or with people who have what you want. Does not mean you have to completely abandon your current social circle I am just encouraging you to reconsider the difference between your circle encouraging you towards your health and fitness goals and tolerating you perusing your health and fitness goals.
