Keeping Ourselves Accountable from Fitness to Sustainability!
Accountability and consistency is always a hot topic in our DM’s and in just casual conversation with one another. We were chatting about this topic on the phone the other day and how it all comes down to your WHY; Why do you want to keep working out? Why do you want to eat proper nutrition? Why do you want to drink more water? Why do you want to switch to sustainable products?
Without thinking about the reason behind your actions, there isn’t really an honest incentive to keep moving. Without a good reason to do something, how can you expect to have any motivation?! That deep rooted sense of motivation is what encourages you to be persistent and persevere, whether it’s going to an early morning workout class, preparing for that big meeting or making swaps for more eco-friendly products.
So let’s start with your reason. It needs to be something that YOU decide on for your own reasons. Not because of a trend or because other people think you should be doing something. For example: Wanting to work out more often because it makes you feel good and gives you more energy. Your personal “why” needs to be a positive goal thats based on self-love not hate, and something that will self-motivate you. For example, if you are working out “to be skinny” this starts your motivation with a negative stance and to be honest, this negative view will likely continue to morph with each step. Once you do lose weight, what is going to continue to self-motivate you then? We recommend focusing more on how we feel and attainable goals that allow for long-term success, like feeling strong and living a balanced life. Think about how the bachelor contestants may be “there for the wrong reasons” and put that towards your initial reason behind your actions. If it’s not for the right reasons, it will be hard to stay motivated and on track.
Quarantine has given us a lot of time to think about this and improve our mindset even more. We have gone through phases of productivity and hard core workout grinds to extreme laziness and skipping exercise for days at a time. We understand it can be difficult to have an even level of consistency because the usual things that hold us accountable have shifted. On the other hand it has given us the opportunity to become more in tune with our body and needs. Listening to what our bodies crave instead of going by commitments we have made to external people and factors has been incredibly helpful and allowed us to be self-reflective. We have become more in tune with intuitive eating and choosing exercise based on how we feel. If we don’t exercise for a few days we definitely feel it impact our mood negatively. Same goes for if we are not eating proper nutrition for fuel. Change is good and can make you learn or look at things from a different perspective. TRUST THE JOURNEY. Fitness and living a balanced lifestyle has become more of a form of self love than ever before for the both us. With our “why” being more clear than ever, we hope to always focus on how we feel rather than how we look, but we know that vanity will sneak in from time to time. Remembering the why keeps those negative thoughts to only be a passing thing. At the end of the day, do it for yourself. Nobody else.
Next lets talk about attainable goals and small steps to reach the bigger picture. Let’s use sustainability as an example. A goal of ours this year was to find ways to live more sustainably, specifically in ways that we can make a direct impact through S&T. We wish we could just wake up and completely switch everything we do to be 100% sustainable and reduce our carbon foot print to zero, but that is not realistic. For one thing, there is so much education involved in order to make significant and impactful changes to your lifestyle. Secondly, making a change by going zero to 100 typically means you are way more likely to burn out or disappoint yourself by setting unrealistic expectations. Setting attainable small goals to accomplish gives you a sense of satisfaction and encouragement to keep going. With sustainability, we chose to slowly and continuously learn small ways we can reduce our carbon footprint. One of the ways we decided we could do this was to purchase from less fast fashion clothing brands and incorporate more sustainable, high quality pieces in our wardrobe. This is a small step to a bigger goal of living more sustainably. It also is a powerful mindset to feel satisfaction in small actions encouraging you to do other small positive actions in other aspects of your life. Each small step makes a big difference.
One specific example of this is partner with one of our favorite brands AVRE Life, to incorporate sustainable footwear into our activewear wardrobes. AVRE is where these two goals morph into one. Its all about taking small steps to attain your larger goal. In this scenario we can take that LITERALLY. Avre shoes are the perfect step to encourage not only being active and staying on track with your health, but also an easy swap to being more sustainable. These shoes are made with all recycled materials (like 8-10 recycled water bottles) and we’re all about it. Like how can a shoe be so swaggy and help reduce our carbon footprint? Idk but we’re here for it. We are making more of an effort than ever to make product swamps and change our behaviors to better the environment. One step at a time.
To wrap it up, whatever your goals are keep these simple tips in mind. A clear reason why and attainable short term goals to keep you motivated. Respect yourself, forgive yourself, and don’t expect to make a drastic change overnight.
We would love to hear what some of your goals are and what steps you are taking to achieve them. Leave a comment below or message us on instagram @sweatandtell.
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Keep it Sweaty,
Jo and Jacqs
