EP46 Mindset Monday - How Systems Save Us

This is the empowered athlete podcast Mindset Monday. 10 minutes with Kari Schneider to learn new mindset tactics and tricks to optimize your performance in sport, business and life. Let me take you back to the summer of 2008. It was my first summer not playing for the national team. I had it off. And I got to train the entire summer with Kari on a specifically made program that was tailored to me, my injuries, my body, and my goals for that next upcoming season. And I was 34 years old. Well, the result went back over to Turkey and won a European cup in incredible physical condition. Thank you to that program setting me up for the perfect season. Well, now you have access to the exact same thing. Hit email ksempowerconditioning.com that's KS for Kari Schneider. And get started on one of Kari's incredible online training programs. The program is tailored to you. It has video of each exercise you're doing so you know what you're doing. Your reps are laid out, the sets are laid out. You can't go wrong. Reach out now to reach your best.

Happy Monday, everybody. This is Mindset Monday. And I feel a little bit rusty because it's been a couple weeks since I did a Mindset Monday because we were out of town, we were in Mexico on a little mini vacation, a little workation. But today I'm talking about how systems save us. Because there are all kinds of things that tank our motivation. And we're always looking for motivation to keep us going. And it's not motivation that's going to keep us going. It's going to be our systems. And systems sound a hell of a lot more boring than motivation. So I'm going to tell you how this works exactly and what I mean by that. So, first of all, there are five key things that I see over and over and over with my clients and with myself and people I know that really cause us to have us get off track. And it could be with our exercise, could be eating, could be our training, any of those things, but it could be our work routines. But these five things tend to derail people. It might be all five. It might be one of them. And for you, you might have one of those things that is much more derailing than the other four. So here they are. Number one, they're not in any particular order, but number one is being tired. This one is big, big when it comes to keeping us on track with whatever we really want to do for our best performance in work, in sport, in parenting, in our relationships, in our mindset. And how we function. So being tired is something that physiologically really takes a toll on us. When we don't have our mental clarity, we're going to crave sugar because we're looking for that little boost. It's really going to take a toll on us. A second one is being sick. Who knows when something comes upon us and we don't expect it, and then we're sick and we feel awful. And what you're going to notice in all of these things, if you think of yourself when you're tired, when you're sick, or our next one is emotional, you find when you're emotional, and I'm talking about anything from overwhelm to loneliness to sadness to anger, anything that's causing you to be a little more emotional. So there's usually a trigger there. But say you've become emotional and that too sets your motivation aside or your direction aside. Number four is injury. So how many of us stay just as motivated when we're injured? Most people have a sideline when they become injured. So tired, sick, emotional, injured, and then the last one that tends to sideline us. Hey, Michael. The last one that tends to sideline us a fair bit is something unexpected happening. So maybe your schedule changed. Maybe the weather wasn't the way you thought it would be. Maybe someone reacted in a way you weren't expecting and it really took you by surprise. So the unexpected is another one of those things that tends to have us really derail. Now, here's the thing. In all of those scenarios, it's not going to be disciplined. That saves you. We can't fight physiology when we're sick. We simply aren't going to be able to do certain things when we're sick. When we're tired, we're going to physiologically not be as clear and crave sugar and do all these other things. So those are examples when we are emotional or we're overwhelmed or we're sad or any of those things, that it's not discipline that's going to save us, because then we're not actually experiencing our emotions or dealing with a thing. We're stuffing it, trying to be straight and narrow. Same thing with the unexpected. We can't just always ignore what's come up. We have to often deal with something, even if it's not one of our important rocks or boulders that we want to really prioritize with. It might be something urgent that needs to be done. We can't always just ignore the unexpected. So all of these things, discipline is not going to Be the thing that saves you. I had a friend look at me one time, and I think it was the topic might have been exercise or something like that. And she said to me, well, you're just more disciplined than I am. And I thought to myself, like, no, not at all. I've been the procrastinator. I've been the lazy person. I've done all of those things. It's not that at all. What it comes down to is your systems. And this is how systems save us. Once we find something that works for us, maybe it happens to be a meal plan, maybe it has to be. It happens to be certain types of meals or timing of cooking that works for our daily regime. Maybe it happens to be a route that we take to work. We really like this certain system or this certain path to get to work because it works best for maybe the view we want, maybe the timing we want, maybe the number of lights along the way. I don't know. But when you find the system that works for you, that is the key to keep repeating and tweaking it slightly along the way, to optimize. Because once that system really works for you, then you create a habit. When you create the habit, that's when you have to. That's when you don't have to think. You don't have to rely on discipline. You don't have to rely on motivation. You don't have to rely on almost anything because it becomes autopilot. It goes into your subconscious. It's become a problem program for you, but one that really works and serves your greater goals. So this is what I mean when I say systems save us. Let's look at just a little obvious example. When you first started driving, I would bet money that you couldn't even have the radio on, that you had to really, really focus. And it took a lot of discipline to drive from your home to the store because you're 15 years old or 16 years old, and you're so focused and trying to do all the right things, look in the right places and not miss anything because it's new and it's a new thing that you're doing. And then as you keep going and as you practice and as you develop that system, you're in habits. When you're driving, you know, when you stop, you look left first, then you look right. You signal you've got the habits going because you have a system. And now when you drive, you get to a point where you go from point A to point B, and you don't even Think about it, it's just there and it's automatic. And that's the type of thing that serves us when we create our systems. We tweak and optimize our systems and then we make them habits so that we don't have to think about it. Because I promise you, when you're tired, when you're sick, when you're emotional, injured or something comes up, motivation or discipline aren't going to be the things that you can add to the already stressed out way of being that being tired or emotional or sick or injured or any of those things have brought on to you. You don't need an extra thing to try and do which is be motivated or be disciplined when you are already extra taxed from something like an illness or sickness or whatever. Sickness, illness, same thing. Fatigue, illness. So those are the types of things that save you in the long run. On this note, I practice and practice systems and optimizing and habits and all of those things all the time. But I can promise you, when it comes to being fatigued, when it comes to sickness, emotional triggers, being injured, having something unexpected coming up, at least one of those things comes up for me every at any given time. So right now I have a sick child upstairs. I was suffering with something over the weekend. There's an emotional thing going on from an unexpected work thing. So right there I've nailed four of them just like that. And that's in this one given time. So I promise you all of these things will come up for you. But what's going to serve you best is when you've got those systems, you've optimized them and tweaked them and, and then you go and make them habit. And that's the way that I was able to get two sets of my workout in this morning, despite having very little sleep from a vomiting child last night and a sick child at home and other things that have come up that were unexpected and all of those things. So that is Mindset Monday. Today. I know you can do it. Find your systems, find what works for you in all those areas. You're happy. Health, your patterns in the morning, your eating plans, when you want to work out, find what works for you and optimize it and then make it your habit. Your systems will save you every step of the way. Don't rely on motivation, don't rely on discipline. Go for your habits. Have a great day guys. Happy Monday.