Catchup with Coach M - Edition 72 - How to Change Your Life

I haven’t been here for a couple of weeks! Not because I’ve disappeared, but because I’ve been working on a five-part series that I want to share with you.

But somewhere in the process of putting that series together, I realised something. Something that made me stop and rethink where I needed to start.

We, as humans, don’t really understand what change is.

We talk about wanting change. We dream about change. We make plans for change. We tell ourselves that Monday will be different, next month will be different, and that this time we are going to get it right.

Yet, so often, we give up before we have even given ourselves a fair chance.

Why? Because we expect change to happen quickly, comfortably, and sometimes without having to change very much at all.

We want the result without the process. The finish line without the training. The transformation without the uncomfortable work of becoming someone different.

And that, my friends, is where we get it wrong.

Before I can take you through the five-part series I planned, we need to talk about change itself. What it means, what it requires, and why we so often underestimate what we are capable of achieving.

First things first: What is change?

Change (noun and verb)

Change is the act or process of becoming different, or making something or someone different from what they were before.

• As a noun: The act, process, or result of something becoming different.

• As a verb: To make or become different; to move from one state, condition, habit, or situation to another.

Simple enough, isn't it?

But change is more than a definition in a dictionary.

Change means stepping out of what is familiar, challenging what no longer serves you, and being willing to do things differently to achieve a different outcome.

Change can be intentional or forced upon us. It can be exciting, uncomfortable, frightening, or necessary. Sometimes we choose it; sometimes life chooses it for us.

And sometimes life throws us a curveball that we never saw coming, leaving us to figure out who we are and what we do next.

Personal growth begins when we recognise that we cannot always control what happens to us, but we can choose how we respond and what we do next.

Here is the part I want you to remember: If nothing changes, nothing changes.

You cannot keep doing the same things, making the same choices, following the same habits, and expecting a completely different outcome.

It simply doesn't work that way.

Let's make this personal

My birthday is nearly here, and this year I find myself thinking about the word change.

I have lived through a fair amount of it. Some changes I chose. Others were handed to me. Some were exciting, others uncomfortable, and a few completely changed the direction of my life.

So, naturally, I started looking at the numbers.

At the time of writing, my life adds up to:

• 44 years and 11 months

• 538 months

• 2,344 weeks and 3 days

• 16,411 days

• 23,614,560 minutes

• 1,416,873,600 seconds

That is a lot of living!

What have I done? What have I changed? What changes have happened to me?

There are countless answers to those questions, and I am not going to bore you with every detail of my life story.

But I do want to talk about something that I believe we underestimate far too often: our ability to change when we decide something matters enough to us....READ THAT AGAIN...

We are very good at convincing ourselves that change is too hard.

We look at the distance between where we are and where we want to be, and we become so overwhelmed by the gap that we never take the first step.

We decide that we don't have enough time. We are too tired. We have too much going on. We will start when life settles down.

Sound familiar?

Well, let me show you what 804 hours can look like.

804 days. One promise to myself.

For 804 days, I have been keeping a promise to myself.

That is:

• 2 years, 2 months and 12 days

• 26 months and 12 days

• 114 weeks and 6 days

• 19,296 hours

• 1,157,760 minutes

• 69,465,600 seconds

For 804 consecutive days, I have committed to a minimum of 20 minutes of movement every day.

It has to be logged on Strava. It doesn't have to be spectacular, impressive, fast, heavy, or worthy of a medal.

But I have to move.

And before someone decides that 20 minutes doesn't count, let me stop you right there.

It counts.

The walk counts. The mobility session counts. The stretching counts. The easy recovery session counts. The strength session counts. The swim counts. The cycle counts.

Movement does not have to look impressive to be valuable.

When I look at my Strava statistics, I average approximately 60 minutes of movement per day. That includes the long runs, the long trail sessions, the 20-minute stretching sessions, the walks, my consistent minimum of two strength sessions per week, the cycles, the swims, and everything else that forms part of my training and life.

I could keep listing them, but you get the picture.

Now, those statistics might look impressive on paper.

But here comes the reality check.

Across those 804 days, my accumulated movement time amounts to approximately:

• 33 days and 12 hours

• 4 weeks, 5 days and 12 hours

• 48,240 minutes

• 2,894,400 seconds

Thirty-three and a half days.

That is the time I have spent moving across more than two years of keeping this promise.

And here is the part that really made me stop and think.

Those 804 hours represent approximately 0.2043% of my life so far, and 4% of my day in the last 804 days, using the figures above.

Let that sink in for a moment.

A commitment that has helped me establish a daily movement habit, keep showing up for myself, and do things I once thought were beyond my capabilities represents only a tiny fraction of my lifetime.

I am not saying that 804 hours of movement magically transformed every part of my life. Nor am I suggesting that movement is the only thing I have shown up for myself to do.

There are plenty of other things I have worked on, changed, and committed to.

But this is one promise I made to myself, and I have continued to keep it.

And that is the point.

Sometimes, the change you are looking for doesn't require you to overhaul your entire life. It requires you to start keeping one promise to yourself.

Twenty minutes.

One decision.

One day at a time.

Then repeat.

What happens when you don't feel like it?

Now, before you put me on a pedestal and decide that I must have this whole thing figured out, let me tell you something.

I still have days when I wake up and think, Do I really want to do this today?

I am tired. My brain is overstimulated. I have work to do, responsibilities to manage, people who need me, and a thousand thoughts competing for attention.

Sometimes my body feels heavy. Sometimes my motivation is nowhere to be found. Sometimes the thought of doing anything beyond what is absolutely necessary feels like too much effort.

I am human, after all.

The difference is that I no longer need to negotiate with myself about whether movement forms part of my day.

I have built a habit. I have made it part of my routine. More importantly, I have started identifying as someone who moves every day.

That doesn't mean every session is brilliant. It doesn't mean I always train hard. It doesn't mean I ignore fatigue, push through genuine illness, or pretend recovery isn't important.

It means I have established a commitment that I take seriously.

Some days, I run. Other days, I lift. Sometimes I walk, stretch, swim, or do something that supports recovery.

The activity changes according to what I need and what my body can manage.

The commitment remains.

My identity has changed from someone who wants to move consistently to someone who makes movement part of her life.

And that, my friends, is a very different thing.

But here is where we need to be careful. A habit does not automatically appear because you have decided you want one. An identity does not magically change because you have written down a goal.

You build it through repeated decisions and actions.

One day at a time.

One choice at a time.

One opportunity to show yourself that you can trust yourself a little more.

This is where the rubber hits the tar

As a coach, I regularly meet people who tell me they want to change.

They want to lose weight. Get fitter. Build strength. Improve their health. Run a marathon. Change their relationship with food. Become more confident.

And they want results in four, six, eight or twelve weeks.

Now, let me be clear: you can achieve a great deal in four to twelve weeks if you put your head down and do the work.

You can make meaningful progress. You can establish better habits, improve your fitness, build strength, learn new skills, and begin changing your relationship with yourself.

But lasting change?

That is not something you achieve by snapping your fingers and suddenly becoming a completely different person.

And it certainly doesn't happen simply because you change your habits for a little while.

Let me say that again.

Stop thinking that meaningful change happens because you follow a new routine for a few weeks, reach your goal, and then go back to living exactly as you did before.

If the habits and behaviours that brought you to the place you wanted to change are still waiting for you when your programme ends, what do you think will happen when you return to them?

You cannot expect a different outcome while continuing to repeat the same patterns.

You have to grow into that person.

Actually, let me correct that.

You have to become that person through the decisions you make and the actions you repeat.

If you want to be fitter, movement needs to become part of your life, not something you do until you reach a certain weight or finish a particular event.

If you want to change your relationship with food, you need to develop an approach to eating that you can sustain, rather than following a set of rules for a few weeks and then going back to old patterns.

If you want to become stronger, you need to understand that strength is built and maintained through continued effort.

You are not simply changing a habit. You are changing the way you live, the choices you make, and the way you see yourself.

You are changing your identity.

And that takes time.

You have to practise doing things differently. You have to learn how to respond differently when life gets difficult. You have to keep making choices that support the person you are becoming, even when the excitement of starting something new has worn off.

There will be good days and bad days. There will be setbacks. There will be moments when you question yourself and wonder whether you are making any progress at all.

That is not necessarily failure.

Sometimes it is simply part of the process.

But you cannot use the existence of difficult days as an excuse to abandon the entire journey.

Adjust. Learn. Start again if you need to.

Just stop expecting meaningful, lasting change to happen without your participation.

If it matters enough, stop obsessing over the timeline

Now, I am not saying that goals and deadlines are pointless. They have their place. They give us direction, structure and something to work towards.

But I want you to think about what happens when you become so focused on a deadline that you lose sight of the reason you started in the first place.

You want to lose 10 kg in twelve weeks. You want to run a marathon in four months. You want to become stronger by the end of a programme.

What happens if you need an extra month? What happens if illness interrupts your training? What happens if your body responds differently than you expected? What happens when life throws you a curveball?

Do you automatically decide that you have failed?

Or Do you recognise that the timeline may need to change while the bigger goal remains important?

If something is important enough to you, the timeline becomes less important than the process of change itself.

You stop asking only, How quickly can I get this done?

You start asking, What do I need to learn, practise and change to make this part of my life for good?

That is a very different question.

Sometimes the deadline needs to move. Sometimes the goal needs adjusting. Sometimes you need to take a step back before you can move forward again.

That does not mean you have failed.

It means you are responding to the reality of your circumstances rather than trying to force your life to fit a perfect plan.

The goal may have a deadline. Lasting change does not have an expiry date.

If the change genuinely matters to you... You learn to adapt. You learn to work with the circumstances you have rather than waiting for the perfect circumstances to arrive.

You keep going, even if the route looks different from what you originally imagined.

The timeline may change. The route may change. The pace may change. But you can remain committed to the process of becoming the person you want to be.

And that brings me to an example I know particularly well.

Running a marathon.

Running a marathon is not magic

Running a marathon is not entering a race, standing on the start line, and magically reaching the 42.2 km mark.

If only it worked that way!

You can enter the race. You can pay your entry fee. You can buy the shoes, the watch, the kit and all the things that make you look like a runner.

You can even stand on that start line.

But none of those things automatically prepares your body to run 42.2 km.

Getting to that finish line takes months of preparation.

It takes consistent training, long runs, easy runs, strength work, recovery, fuelling, planning and learning how your body responds to the demands you are placing on it.

It takes getting out of bed when you would rather stay there. It takes completing sessions when the weather is miserable. It takes learning to respect recovery instead of believing that harder is always better.

It takes showing up for the ordinary sessions that nobody sees and that will never earn you a medal.

And then, after all those months of preparation, race day arrives.

You stand on the start line, surrounded by other runners, with your goal ahead of you.

The gun goes off.

You start running.

And somewhere along those 42.2 km, the reality of what you have signed up for begins to sink in.

Your legs get tired. Your energy fluctuates. The kilometres seem to stretch out in front of you. The weather turns and throws you a brownie You start doing calculations in your head. You question your pace, your preparation and possibly your sanity.

There will be kilometres when you want to quit.

There may be moments when you feel as though you cannot take another step. Moments when you convince yourself that you are failing, that you are not strong enough, or that you have made a terrible mistake by entering this race.

You may feel like a failure long before you ever reach the finish line.

But those feelings are not the same as being a failure.

They are moments within a much bigger process.

You have to keep making decisions.

Do I continue? Do I adjust my pace? Do I take on fuel? Do I reassess what my body is telling me? Do I stop chasing the time I originally wanted and focus on getting to the finish safely?

You work through the kilometres one at a time.

You manage the situation in front of you rather than becoming overwhelmed by the distance still to come.

And eventually, if your preparation, health, circumstances and race-day decisions allow, you reach that 42.2 km mark.

But here is what I want you to understand.

You did not become a marathon runner simply when you crossed the finish line. You became one through the months of preparation, the decisions you made, and the work you put in along the way.

The medal is the result of a process. It is not the process itself.

And if you only focus on the finish line, you miss the very thing that made reaching it possible.

The same principle applies to weight loss, building strength, improving your health, growing a business, changing your relationship with yourself, developing confidence, and creating a life that looks different from the one you are living today.

You do not get to skip the process simply because you want the result.

You have to do the work. You have to allow yourself to learn. You have to accept that there will be uncomfortable moments, setbacks and days when the destination feels impossibly far away.

And you have to stop interpreting every difficult moment as proof that you are not capable of achieving what you set out to do or the world conspiring against you.

Sometimes you are simply in the middle of the process.

And the middle is where you have to keep making decisions that support the person you are becoming. I like to call it the messy middle.

The scale is not the whole story just like a Start and finish line isn't.

I see this every day in my coaching.

Someone loses 10 kg, stands in front of the mirror, and still sees the person who was 10 kg heavier.

They become so focused on the weight they still want to lose that they overlook what they have already achieved.

They miss the non-scale victories.

They don't notice that they can walk further without getting breathless. They can run longer. They have more strength. Their clothes fit differently. They are making better food choices. They are learning to manage portions. They are showing up for their workouts more consistently.

They have developed abilities they didn't have before.

They are doing things that once felt difficult or impossible.

Yet, because they haven't reached the number they decided would make them happy, they convince themselves that they haven't changed.

Really?

Let's think about that for a moment.

If you have lost 10 kg, improved your fitness, become stronger, and established habits that support your health, how can you honestly say nothing has changed?

The scale may still have a number on it that you want to reduce.

But you are not standing in the same place you were when you started.

Don't become so obsessed with the destination that you fail to recognise the person you are becoming along the way.

Celebrate your progress. Acknowledge your effort. Pay attention to what you can do today that you couldn't do before.

You can still have a goal. You can still want more.

But you do not have to dismiss your progress simply because you have not reached the finish line.

You can be a work in progress and still recognise how far you have come.

Both things can be true.

Now, let's talk about decisions

Here comes the hard part.

We often talk about change as though it is something that happens automatically once we have decided we want it.

It doesn't.

Wanting to change and deciding to change are not the same thing.

And deciding to change is not the same as doing the work required to change.

Decision (noun)

A decision is a choice or judgement made after considering different possibilities. It is the act of selecting a course of action, option, or direction from the alternatives available to you.

But a decision is more than simply choosing between options.

A decision is the moment you move from thinking about something to choosing what you are going to do about it.

Every day, we make decisions. Some are small and seemingly insignificant, while others have the power to change the direction of our lives.

Some decisions are made from fear, others from courage. Some are made for comfort, while others require sacrifice, discipline, and a willingness to step into the unknown.

And here is the important part.

A decision determines your direction, but your actions determine whether you move towards the destination you have chosen.

You can decide to change your health, your habits, your mindset, your relationships, or your future.

But until that decision is followed by action, it remains an intention.

You can decide that you want to run a marathon, but the decision will not prepare your body for 42.2 km.

You can decide that you want to lose weight, but the decision alone will not change your daily food choices, movement habits, or relationship with consistency.

You can decide that you want to become stronger, but you still have to put in the work.

And you can decide that you want a different life while continuing to make the same choices that keep you exactly where you are.

That is the uncomfortable truth.

Your intentions tell me what you want. Your repeated actions show me what you are working towards.

This isn't about perfection. It isn't about getting everything right every day. And it certainly isn't about punishing yourself when things don't go according to plan.

It is about taking responsibility for the choices that are within your control.

You don't need to have every step figured out before you begin.

You need to make the decision to take the first step.

Then you need to take the next one.

And the next one.

So, what has actually changed in my 804 hours?

Has it created a habit?

Yes.

Has it made movement a non-negotiable part of my life?

Yes.

Do I still have days when I don't feel like doing it?

Absolutely.

Do I always feel motivated?

No.

Have I become someone who moves consistently, even when motivation isn't there to carry me?

Yes.

That is change.

Not because I woke up one morning and suddenly became a different person.

Not because I found some magical secret that made discipline effortless.

Not because I have an extraordinary amount of time available to me.

But because I made a decision, put a simple structure in place, and kept showing up. Decision + Actions + Repeat = Lasting Change

The daily commitment was not always easy. It did not require every session to be spectacular. It required me to keep finding a way to honour the promise I had made to myself, while adapting the activity to what was appropriate on that day.

And over time, those individual decisions added up to something much bigger than any single workout.

That is the power of consistency.

We tend to underestimate what we can achieve through small, repeated actions because we are too busy looking for dramatic results.

We want the transformation photograph, the finish-line medal, the number on the scale, or the moment when everything suddenly feels different.

But most of the work happens long before those moments.

It happens when nobody is watching.

It happens when you do the ordinary things that support your goal.

It happens when you choose to begin again after a difficult week.

It happens when you stop waiting to feel ready and start working with what you have.

And sometimes, you only recognise how much you have changed when you look back and realise that the things you once struggled with have become part of who you are.

I am not trying to maintain a temporary streak so that I can eventually return to a life without movement.

I am building a way of living that I want to continue.

You do not want to spend your life repeatedly starting over. You want to build a life that supports the changes you have worked so hard to make.

That is the difference between a temporary fix and a lasting change.

Before we begin the five-part series, I want you to think about this

What is it that you want to change?

Not what you think you should change because of somebody else's expectations.

Not what social media tells you needs fixing.

Not what you believe will make you more acceptable to other people.

What do you want to change?

What is no longer serving you?

What habit is holding you back?

What promise have you repeatedly made to yourself but failed to keep?

And, most importantly, what are you prepared to do differently?

Because change requires honesty.

It requires you to acknowledge where you are without pretending that you are somewhere else.

It requires you to take responsibility for your next step without beating yourself up over every mistake you have made along the way.

It requires you to understand that your starting point is not your identity, and your current circumstances do not have to dictate every decision you make from this moment forward.

You may not be able to change everything today.

You may have limitations, responsibilities, health challenges, financial pressures, or circumstances that make your journey more complicated than someone else's.

I am not suggesting that everyone starts from the same place or has the same opportunities.

But where you have a choice, you have an opportunity to make a different decision.

Start there.

Make it realistic. Make it manageable. Make it something you can begin doing rather than something you can only dream about.

Then give yourself the time and consistency required to build on it.

And remember, changing your direction does not mean you have to change everything at once.

Sometimes the biggest changes begin with one small decision that you finally stop negotiating with yourself about.

Coach M's challenge

I want you to do three things.

1. Be honest with yourself.

Identify one area of your life where you genuinely want to see change. Stop giving yourself vague answers. Be specific about what you want to be different.

2. Make a decision.

Decide what you are going to do about it. Not next month. Not when work gets quieter. Not when the children need you less, when you have more energy, or when life magically becomes perfect.

Decide on one practical action you can begin taking now, within your circumstances and capabilities.

3. Keep one promise to yourself.

Choose an action you can repeat consistently. Start small enough that you can build on it. Track it. Review it. Adjust when necessary, but don't abandon it simply because the initial excitement has worn off.

And here is the extra challenge: stop thinking of this as something you are doing for a few weeks.

Ask yourself how this action can become part of the person you are becoming and the life you want to live.

You don't have to change your entire life this week.

You do have to stop expecting your life to change while you keep making the same choices.

And if you stumble? Get back up. Learn from it. Make your next decision.

That is how you build trust in yourself.

That is how habits begin to form.

That is how you start becoming the person you want to be.

A final thought...

As my birthday approaches, I am reminded that we all have a limited amount of time. I cannot go back and change the decisions I made yesterday, the opportunities I missed, or the circumstances I had to navigate.

But I can decide what I do with the time I have today.

I can choose to keep learning. Keep growing. Keep moving. Keep showing up.

And I can recognise that the person I am today is the result of many things: the changes life has forced upon me, the changes I have deliberately chosen, and the countless small decisions that have brought me to this point.

I am not finished growing. I am not finished learning. And I certainly haven't got everything figured out.

But I have learnt that waiting until you feel ready, waiting until life is perfect, or waiting for change to happen by itself will not get you very far.

Change is not a magic trick. It is a process. A decision is not a result. It is a starting point. And consistency is what helps turn that starting point into something meaningful.

Stop underestimating what you can achieve.

Stop dismissing the small things because they don't look impressive enough.

Stop convincing yourself that you have to do everything perfectly to make progress.

Stop thinking that you can temporarily change your habits, tick a box, and expect a lifetime of results.

And one last thing before we go…

After 804 days and 804 hours of movement, I am still not where my initial goal was supposed to take me.

Read that again.

After all that time, all those sessions, all those decisions to show up for myself, I have still not reached the destination I originally had in mind.

Life happened.

My circumstances changed. My body had its own journey. Things did not always go according to plan, and the path I thought I would follow was not the path I ended up taking.

And yes, there were moments when that was frustrating. When I looked at where I wanted to be compared to where I actually was and wondered whether I should be further along by now.

But somewhere along the way, I realised something important.

The process of becoming better is far more important than reaching the destination on the timeline you originally set for yourself.

Those 804 hours have not been wasted simply because I have not reached my initial goal.

I have built a habit. I have developed consistency. I have learnt to adapt. I have continued to move through changing circumstances, and I have become someone who understands that progress is not always measured by how quickly you reach a finish line.

I am still working towards my goals. I still have things I want to achieve. I still have days when I question myself.

But I am no longer measuring the entire journey only by the distance between where I started and where I want to finish.

I am looking at who I have become along the way.

And that is a much bigger achievement than I initially understood.

Because if I had given up every time life disrupted my plans, I would have lost far more than a few training sessions. I would have missed the opportunity to discover what happens when you keep showing up, even when the outcome is uncertain and the timeline no longer looks the way you expected.

The goal gave me direction. The decision got me started. But the process is what has changed me.

And perhaps that is what we get wrong about change.

We become so fixated on the outcome that we forget to pay attention to the person we are becoming while working towards it.

We want to lose the weight, run the marathon, become stronger, feel healthier, or reach the next milestone. Those goals matter. They give us something to work towards.

But what happens when we don't reach them as quickly as we planned?

Do we throw everything away because the timeline changed?

Do we decide that we have failed because we are not where we thought we would be?

Or do we recognise that life is not a perfectly structured training programme, adjust our expectations, and continue working towards what matters?

I know which option I am choosing.

I will keep showing up. I will keep adapting. I will keep learning. And I will keep working towards becoming a better version of myself.

Not because every day is easy. Not because I always feel motivated. Not because I have reached my destination.

But because I have decided that this is how I want to live.

And that decision is bigger than any single goal.

This is not about becoming perfect.

It is about understanding that meaningful change requires more than a good intention and a few weeks of effort.

It requires a decision, action, patience, and the willingness to keep showing up.

If you decide to commit to change, consistency is what helps you turn that decision into a way of life.

If you want lasting change, you have to be prepared to live that change.

Not just for four weeks. Not just for twelve weeks. Not just until you reach a goal.

For life.

That doesn't mean you will never struggle, miss a session, change direction or need to start again. It means that you stop treating every setback as the end of the journey and start recognising that the process is part of who you are becoming.

Make a decision. Take action. Keep showing up.

Give yourself the time to learn, grow and adapt.

And give yourself the opportunity to discover what is possible when you stop giving up on yourself.

Because, my friends, if nothing changes, nothing changes.

And if you want something different, at some point, you have to be willing to do something different.

Movement + Nutrition = Life.

But it all starts with a decision.

Until next time, keep showing up for yourself.

Coach M ❤️