Key to Fitness: Understand Yourself

The blog mentioned in the video can be read here:
https://www.matrix-pf.com/blog/2017/8/23/two-things-you-need-to-know-for-better-health

0:00 - Introduction

Hi, everybody! It's Shane from MATRIX Personalized Fitness. I'm coming back to you today because I just posted a blog on Wednesday and I wanted to give you a little bit more information about what I wrote about in that blog. This blog was all about two really important keys that you need to know for your health, and how many people don't talk about them. Basically, what I was giving away within this blog, are some little secrets to get you to know a little bit more about yourself and about how you can become better at creating a more fit lifestyle.

0:35 - Blog Review

One part of the blog was knowing that things exist on a continuum, there really is no good and bad. I gave an example of how chocolate cake can be a healthful diet option for some people, while being harmful to others. In addition, I talked about how your body can sabotage you when you're trying to create changes around fitness. So please read the blog to get a little bit deeper into those details. But what that blog is really about is habit change. And the only way to be able to change your habits is to know yourself a little bit better.

1:13 - Better Than Before

As a part of that blog, I recommended trying to make small changes or being a little bit better every single day. Now, if you want to do this, it's important to know what your natural instinct is when it comes to making a change. I've recently read a book called Better Than Before. It's by Gretchen Rubin. She lays out four different fundamental values that we go through, that we have inherent within us. There're four different types of people: The Questioner, The Upholder, The Obligor and The Rebel. Of course, every one of us is a blend of each one, but we typically go towards one type specifically. So, I'm going to go into detail about what each of these means. And show you how they might be helpful to you as you're trying to be a little bit better every single day in changing your habits around health and fitness.

2:07 - The Questioner

Personally, I'm a Questioner. You can get me, or I can get myself to do pretty much anything if there's a good enough reason for it. But I'm going to ask questions. I'm going to dive really deep. I want to understand what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. And once I'm convinced that it's the right thing to do, it becomes much easier for me to make a change. Now, there's a lot of people out there that are like this. So, if you consider yourself to be a Questioner, know that about yourself. Collect the data that you need to be comfortable with what you're choosing to do. And then, start to roll with it.

2:39 - The Obligor

Next up, it's another huge percentage of the population, are Obligors. Obligors are the people who will never do anything for themselves. But they are more than happy to do somehthing if they have to set up an appointment or if they owe something to somebody else. They're the general caretakers of the world. They're the people that like to come for personal training because if they have a responsibility to show up, they're going to be there. And that's what's going to get their workout done. So again, there's nothing good or bad about being either one of these types of people. You just need to recognize who you are, so that you can take advantage of it. By setting up appointments with friends for your training, getting into groups so that you have to show up or respond to different things surrounding dieting, that's going to be your best approach as an Obligor.

3:26 - The Upholder

The last two are slightly smaller percentages of the population. Now the Upholder is the person who does everything perfectly. It's just what they do. "I'm going to change". Boom! It happens. Somebody asked them to do something, they're going to do it. They're never going to show up late. They're always going to get the job done. They're going to do it well, and they're not going to understand why other people aren't doing the same thing. So for an Upholder, they work a little bit differently. For the Obligors and the Questioners that "being a little bit better every day" is probably going to be a really good approach. If you can give yourself a very good reason why having a smaller piece of cake might be better, or you can set up an appointment with a friend to show up that day, be present, and get your workout started. With an Upholder, they're the type of people that can just go cold turkey. So it's a very different approach. They can go big if they want to! They can say, "you know what, that smoking thing, I'm done with it!" Cut it right off, let it go. So, for those of you that are out there that are like that, congratulations! Keep working strongly towards your habits.

4:42 - The Rebel

The last group is the Rebels. The Rebels are the trickiest of all, because not only are they not going to do anything anybody tells them to do, they're not even going to be able to do what they tell themselves to do. Basically, if you're a Rebel, the best way to approach habit change is that you have to build an entirely new identity around yourself. But similar to the Upholders, the Rebels are also very, very good at broad wholesale changes. To that point, if you have the identity of a video gamer, as a Rebel, then that's what you're going to be. You're different from everybody else because you're there playing your games. If you want to become more active, you have to create an entirely new identity. You have to start to tell yourself that I am a person who is active and fit. And as soon as you convince yourself of that change, then all of a sudden, boom, your whole lifestyle changes and you start making everything happen. But creating that shift in your identity can be very, very challenging. There are some interesting ways out there to do it, though.

5:47 - Summary

So that's a brief summary of Gretchen's book. But more importantly, about how it applies to the latest blog that I wrote. When I talked about getting a little bit better every day, it's going to work for a large percentage of us. But, if you happen to be an Upholder or a Rebel, there might be some other approaches that you want to take.

6:07 - Conclusion

Thanks for watching. If you have any questions, please send us an email or give me a phone call. I'd be happy to talk to you about this or any other health and fitness questions that you have. Take care!