Today we wanted to talk about taking ownership of your domain. You are the only person who has control of it, and your shit. It’s important to be comfortable with handling failure, and to do so gracefully isn’t always the easiest task.

IF YOU SMELT IT, YOU DEALT IT

1.  If you smelt it, you dealt it. This cliche usually is used for farts, but it applies here because everyone’s shit stinks. 
   • An important thing to bring up and realize is that every single one of us struggles. It’s part of the battle of life. We get sick of ourselves, we get fed up, but we also have to accept the fact that some things are within our control and some things are not. 
   • We all have scars, we all have battle wounds, we all come from different paths in life. But, we also all have control over one thing: ourselves and our bullshit.
   • You are the one who puts food in your mouth, not your family or friends because they wanted to go out to eat. 
   • You are the one who shows up to go to the gym and makes time for the things you care about, no one else.
   • When we don’t own our own shit, it ends up owning us.
2. Are you upset because you’re not getting where you expected to be going?
   • It’s time to get out your MTK bingo card. Consistency. Are you actually eating enough? Are you actually getting enough of the nutrients your body needs? Is it time to regroup on your nutrition because you’re stuck? Are you pushing yourself? Are you being ACCOUNTABLE?
   • We’ve talked about this many times before. But, consistency is one of the main building blocks on any journey. A lot of times on my own journey, I’ve stalled on progress and I have to sit myself down and be real about the things I’m doing, and more specifically what I’m NOT doing to realize the why behind the stall
   • More often than not, it’s because I’ve become complacent in some aspect. I’m not tracking my nutrition as much, or at all. I’m not keeping tabs on the nutritional benefits of my food, or have stopped thinking of it as fuel altogether. 
3. Are you pushing and challenging yourself, still?
   • Sometimes when we have been doing a program for a while, we get bored with it and thus, don’t push as hard as we would if something was brand new and still fun. This is where your grit and mental fortitude need to come and be best friends to get you across that finish line.

FAILURE TO OWN IT IS FAILURE TO PROGRESS

1. It’s near impossible to make progress in a positive way if we don’t own all of it.
   • Owning your shit is really rough and it can be one of the harder things to accept and do. But being able to be the master of your domain and keep your side of the street clean is one of the fastest ways to grow, evolve and get where you want to go faster.
2. Failure to plan is planning to fail
   • Think about it this way, if you don’t have a training regime or some way or keeping tabs on your nutrition, how will you know exactly what you’re doing to your body or feeding it?
   • Without a training plan in place, who is going to show up to the gym and write out what they’re going to do that day? Not very many of us.
   • There are different methodologies behind how to keep track of your nutrition, and finding the best one that works for you is more important than the training program. How you fueling your body basically affects almost every outcome you’re expecting from your body. 
3.   If you’re not failing, you’re not growing
4. Losses are just as important as the wins
   • I want to focus on this again because I think it’s so important to be able to realize and apply to every day life, let alone a fitness journey. You’re going to fail. You’re going to fail. You’re going to fail. But failing in the gym setting leads to all of those wins we’re always talking about. If you don’t fail at a certain weight, how will you know how good it feels when you finally put up the weight for a PR? How do you know where you’re at if you don’t have failures to solidify that for you?
   • Owning your failures and your shit is the difference between struggling and healing/growth. You need that ownership to move past the hurt, the embarrassments, and disappointments, the crap, to get to the healing, strength, growth, and being a badass

TAKING THE L WITH GRACE

1. Don’t take yourself so seriously
   • As humans, we’re bound to fuck up. Sometimes you’re just going to be STUCK. Take that inventory, sis. YOUR inventory. Hold yourself accountable for the things that you have ownership of, acknowledge it, but then let it go and grow from it.
2. You’re more powerful than you may realize
   • Human beings are resilient as fuck. Be proud of your battle wounds, your scars, and all of the other things that make you who you are. 
   • Realize that everyone has shit in their compost pile, but without tthat shit, you wouldn’t be who you are. You’re a survivor of your shit and other people’s, if you want to put it that way
   • Own your failures so they don’t own you
3. Being able to recognize that you’re the one who failed and owning it allows you to be cognizant of the actions that lead to it, and hold yourself accountable so “failures” or the perceived ones, don’t turn into excuses in the long run.

In summation, owning your own shit is powerful. It can be difficult, but when you’re able to accept that there are things you CAN control and a lot of things you cannot, and are able to come to terms with that, whether you like it or not, you are unstoppable. Once I was able to practice this in my own life, I got a hell of a lot less angry