Unbreakable Mind & Body

Surrender Control: Four Keys to Success from a Fitness Veteran

• Tiana Gonzalez • Episode 18

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Ready to discover why some people achieve remarkable transformations while others struggle? Drawing from 28 years of experience as a fitness professional, I'm pulling back the curtain on what truly separates success from frustration when working with a coach or trainer.

For high-achievers especially—the entrepreneurs, leaders, and go-getters—these insights might challenge your approach to personal growth. The truth is, the very qualities that make you successful in your career could be sabotaging your fitness journey. The constant need for control, information-gathering, and self-direction often becomes the biggest obstacle to transformation.

My most successful clients share four critical traits that allow them to break through plateaus and achieve lasting change. 

These principles transcend fitness and apply to any transformation requiring expert guidance. Whether you're struggling with a plateau or just beginning your journey, implementing these four strategies could be the difference between perpetual frustration and genuine breakthrough. 

Remember: whatever timeframe you've set for your goals, your body deserves patience, and sustainable change takes time. Are you ready to relinquish control and catalyze real transformation?

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Disclaimer: This show is for education and entertainment purposes only. This is not intended as a replacement for therapy. Please seek out the help of a professional to assist you with your specific situation.


Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Unbreakable Mind and Body podcast. I am your host, tiana Gonzalez, a multi-passionate, creative storyteller and entrepreneur with a fierce love for movement. This is our space for powerful stories and actionable strategies to help you build mental resilience and elevate your self-care practice. Together, we will unlock the tools that you need to create an unbreakable mind and body. Welcome back to the show.

Speaker 2:

I am your host, tiana, and on this episode, I'm going to share with you four things that my most successful clients did. Now, these are pretty simple, but they're actually hard for people to implement into their life if they are used to being in the driver's seat. Now, you may or may not know, I am a fitness professional. I have 28 years of experience. That includes the time I spent in the gym building my physique, training myself to get ready for bodybuilding shows, then transitioning into powerlifting, crossfit, weightlifting, weightlifting and throughout that time, I also decided to become a personal trainer, get my certifications, get my boots on the ground and work in various gyms. So I worked in a CrossFit gym, I worked in a big box gym, I also trained people at home and I had an online business. And throughout all of my experiences, there are four things that I have noticed the most successful people have in common. Number one they stop self-coaching. This is really tough for some of my alphas the people who are leaders, who are small business owners, entrepreneurs, the go-getters, the primary breadwinners in the home they are used to being in charge. Now, when you layer that with the fact that we are inundated with information all day long, whether it's on your favorite social media platform, or you go on to some sort of group or community and you're in a part of a conversation thread, or you go to work, or you see advertisements or you hear them on the radio. We are getting slammed with information all day about what's really working and what's not, and so when I have my alphas, who are also people who consume or who watch podcasts or who listen to thought leaders, creators, influencers and sometimes they listen to actual, real scientists who know what they're talking about it leads to more confusion, and so what I have had to do with many of my clients is to ask them to stop consuming and then second guessing themselves. There's a difference in listening to information and maybe making some notes and seeing if it's relevant, or consuming something and then doubting yourself and being paralyzed because now you don't know which way to move and you don't know if what you're doing is actually the quote unquote right thing to do.

Speaker 2:

People who are used to figuring things out, people who are used to making quick decisions, it's hard for them to relinquish control. But here's the thing when you hire a coach or when you hire a trainer, you hired them so that they can teach you the things that you don't know, so that they can filter out the noise and so that they can keep you focused on what's really important Now. Number two most successful people that I have worked with over the years. Number two they were open-minded Just because you did a certain type of diet or a certain type of lifestyle or you used a certain method and approach in your past and it used to always work for you. And now you're at a sticking point. Now we have to maybe change it up a little bit, but people who are so used to doing things a certain way are going to find resistance, even if, on a superficial level, they do want the change and they are willing to try something new. Many times the people who default, who go back to their old ways, they end up not finding the success that they want.

Speaker 2:

I cannot tell you how many times I've started to work with somebody, particularly on their nutrition, and we're getting into it, and they're like oh well, I decided to go gluten-free and dairy-free. Who told you to do that? Well, it worked for me in the past, okay, but you hired me to work with you on your nutrition, so we're supposed to make these decisions together. So again, here we go with the control-free right, the ones who make the decisions, and they tell you about it after the fact, instead of including you in the process. Those people usually don't find success. Sorry, they trust me. They understand that they came to me for a reason and they trust that, with time, effort, trial and error, strategy implementation and always circling back to make sure we're on task and we're following, you know the plan and we're getting us closer to the goal. They trust me in the process.

Speaker 2:

It doesn't always have to be about diet and nutrition. This could be about, you know, a career mentorship as well. If you do not have trust with the person advising you, there's always going to be a gap, there's going to be a void, there's going to be something missing. If you do not feel safe in the space, then you cannot relax, and when you cannot relax, it's harder for you to learn. Think about your kids when you drop your kids off at school. If they don't feel safe in the classroom, it becomes very difficult for them to learn. But if they're in an environment where they feel comfortable, where they like their teacher, where the classroom is warm and cozy and, yes, of course, it is a learning environment. It's not a living room or a playground. I get that, but when it's a space of encouragement and kindness and joy and, yes, of course, respect and boundaries and rules. But when those things are all in place and it's the right ratios and the student can relax, then they can learn.

Speaker 2:

Now, when we're talking about nutrition, I always tell my clients listen, this is really personal. Sometimes it's going to feel like I'm looking in your underwear drawer. So, yeah, trust is kind of a big deal being overloaded with information. If somebody is constantly referring to podcasts they listen to or articles they read or things that their friends told them, it can start to feel like, hey, do you trust me in this process, or do you want to just share with me everything you know and tell me how much smarter than me you are? Like, what's the point? What are we doing here? Everything you know, and tell me how much smarter than me you are, like, what's the point? What are we doing here?

Speaker 2:

Now number four and this one is probably the most important and it's something that I talk to everyone about. Doesn't matter what the goal is, whether it's health and wellness, whether it's a career goal, a personal financial goal focus. This is number four. They focused on their efforts day to day and removed the emotional attachment to the outcome. I'm going to say this one one more time the most successful people that I have worked with in a health and wellness transformation or a nutrition transformation, where they're trying to change something about their health or their physique, they focused on the efforts that they were making day to day and not on the outcome.

Speaker 2:

So if I say I want to lose five pounds in eight weeks, okay, what are you going to do in order to make that happen? And we work it backwards and we build out a plan, we pick measurement intervals. So let's say, we're going to track each week, we're going to weigh in and get on the scale and we're going to make sure that things are moving in the right direction. If they're not, we adjust the plan. But every single day I'm asking the client to focus on what they're doing that day and that's it. We're not thinking about eight weeks from now. Is that the goal? Sure, that's the vision, but guess what? You don't actually have control over how that happens. You don't actually have control of if you're going to lose all five pounds in the eight weeks.

Speaker 2:

Now, this is just an example, remember. So what you do have control over are things like did you prepare your meals? Did you bring your meals with you to work? Did you drink all your water? Did you get your workout in? Did you get your steps? Did you go to bed on time? I mean, it's so basic and boring and it's not sexy and guess what.

Speaker 2:

That's the thing that's going to make the difference between a win and a loss, and the truth is there's really no such thing as a loss. It's just going to be a lesson. So you're either going to hit the target or you're going to learn a valuable lesson, and this is about self-discovery. So it's important to stay grounded. It's important to understand that you can have the best possible outcome, and it's going to be a result of the daily things that you do the habits, the tasks, the discipline in the beginning and making sure that you're doing all of the things, checking all of the boxes.

Speaker 2:

So I'm going to run through this list. One more time real quick. Number one One more time, real quick. Number one my most successful clients stopped self-coaching. Number two my most successful clients were open-minded. They were willing to try things my way and my approach. Number three my most successful clients trusted me. They came to me for a reason. They sought me out for a reason. They sought me out for a reason and even if I asked them to be open-minded and I asked them to stop self-coaching, once I got the buy-in they trusted me. They saw results. They know I'm not full of shit, they know I'm the fucking expert in my craft and that I can help them to get the transformation that they want. And number four my most successful clients focused on their efforts and relinquished the emotional attachment to the outcome.

Speaker 2:

I hope that you find this episode helpful.

Speaker 2:

I hope that you find this episode helpful.

Speaker 2:

And yeah, I use some strong language because that's how passionate I am about this.

Speaker 2:

The thing is, people for the most part, take what personal trainers do for granted. I see it every single day how people think that because they can use resources like AI or social media or they could just copy something that they see, that they know what they're doing and I got news for you. No, you don't, because you could read instructions on how to perform brain surgery. That does not mean you're going to be able to do it well or successfully. Okay, it's not what we do. It is how we do what we do and the thing is for me, I'm not really out here marketing. People come to me, I work off referrals, I get people results. I'm a change maker and I'm really fucking confident in my craft and in the work that I do. And I know that when you become the expert in the thing that you are the most passionate about and the thing that you can facilitate you, if you if you're already there, you're listening to this episode going fuck yeah damn right, me too.

Speaker 2:

There's room for all of us to be successful. There's room for all of us to win and there is room for all of us to make the changes and have the transformations that we want Relinquish control.

Speaker 2:

Get somebody to help you be open-minded, make sure you feel safe and you can trust that person and attach yourself to your efforts. That's how you catalyze change. That's how you make shit happen. One more thing whatever timeframe you have in mind to accomplish your goal, I would like for you to double it, if not triple it. Be nice to yourself. Your body's been through a lot. It's storing a lot. In order to catalyze change, you got to work with it. Okay, thank you so much for being here. I really hope that you enjoyed this episode and if you could do me a huge favor and give the show a five-star review and leave a comment, that would be awesome. If you enjoyed the show. I really appreciate you and I will catch you on the next one.