88. Failure Is Data

In this episode I share three of my own losses: a training plateau I stayed stuck in far too long, a competition that didn't go my way even though I did everything right, and a career reset that made me question whether the earlier work even counted. 

I'll walk you through the exact way I examine a setback now so it becomes fuel instead of a wound, including the three questions I run every loss through before I let myself judge it. 

If you're standing on your own square one right now, this one's for you — you're not as far back as you think.

If you want the deeper lessons behind strength training, join my newsletter called Between Reps: Building the Unbreakable Woman. Check it out HERE

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Email: info@unbreakablemb.com

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.

Transcript

Welcome And The Pain Of Loss

SPEAKER_00 0:07

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. I'm your host, Tiana, and I want to ask you: if you look back on your life, can you think of a couple of things that didn't work out? And at the time that you wanted them, it was probably devastating, or it was a heartbreak, or it felt like a major loss for you. And now, years later, when you look back on that time, you can say to yourself, either I learned a lot from that, or I'm glad that didn't work out the way I wanted it to, because what I have now is so much better. Or the choices that unfolded after that event that hurt in the time was so much better. Or it put me on the right path. So today we're going to talk about feeling like you're losing or feeling like a failure at something, and how we can reframe that so that you don't feel like you're going all the way back to square one and how you use that event, that circumstance, or that thing to grow, to learn, to advance, and to propel you into the next chapter. So for most of my life, especially in my younger years, I was incredibly hard on myself. And I always thought, you know, if something didn't work out, or if I failed at something, that it was a complete waste of time, that it erased all of my hard work, it diminished my efforts, it disqualified me. And looking back now, I realized that every single time I got my heart broken, or I lost at something, or I didn't get the promotion, the job, the relationship, the thing that I wanted, it's because it wasn't for me. And instead, something so much better came along.

Failure In The Gym And Plateaus

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Now, obviously, as a trainer and as a former competitive bodybuilder, retired IFB pro, we are going to talk about working out and failure in the gym and failure in competition. But we're also going to talk about failure in life. Because everything in your life is almost like a mirror image. If you've ever been to a carnival or an amusement park, if you've ever gone into a house of mirrors, sometimes you can be standing in a place and there is a mirror in front of you, and there is a mirror to the side, and there's a mirror behind you. And as you start shifting your perspective, you could end up seeing millions of versions of yourself reflected back to you with a slightly different angle, with a side of you that you normally would never see with your own eyes. And it can sometimes be jarring. And I truly believe that in life, everything that we go through is very similar because the common denominator is you, how you do things. You're going to do them the same in the gym, in work, and your relationships. Your mindset is the constant, it's the consistent thing. It's the different settings that you put yourself in where you start to see and feel and experience those variables. So when we're talking about failure in the gym, it's actually one of my most favorite things. Of course, when I'm working out and I try to execute a lift and I get to a point of failure, it could be frustrating for me. But it's teaching me something and it's teaching me something valuable. Now, at face value, I think weight training can look pretty simple, meaning you move a load or a weight or a piece of equipment or a tool or an implement from point A to point B. You make it harder by adding more weight to it. And probably at some point in every lifter's career or journey, they are stuck at a certain weight on a certain lift for an inordinate amount of time. So, for example, maybe a squat or a bench press or a deadlift. And, you know, if the goal is really aesthetics, then it doesn't matter so much what the number of the weight is because we're concentrating more on stimulating muscular hypertrophy, which is muscle growth. But if you're doing something for a performance-based sport or endeavor and you want to get stronger, then the numbers really do matter. And it can be so frustrating when week after week after week, maybe even month after month, you feel like you're stuck and you cannot advance. And I know from experience that it can be very defeating. It can make you feel like, what is wrong with me? Why can't I make any progress? What am I doing wrong? Maybe you get somebody to watch your form. Maybe you record yourself and send it to a trainer or a friend or whoever is working with you, or you review the footage over and over and over and over again because you're trying to find any little nuanced adjustment that you can make so that you can improve, so that you can add that extra weight and so that you can keep growing. And sometimes when you're at that plateau, you just have to sit through it. Because maybe there's stresses in your life that you're not factoring in. Maybe you started a new job, you moved, your schedule shifted, your hormones are dysregulated, maybe your sleep patterns are not consistent, maybe you're not eating enough protein, maybe there's something stressing you at a really high level.

Stress Grief And Training Stagnation

SPEAKER_00 6:51

And even if you are someone, by the way, let's talk about stress for a second. I am somebody who used to operate very well under pressure. And I have a high tolerance for a lot of stress. Well, at least I used to. And I used to almost wear that as a badge of honor. And, you know, I was seriously behind closed doors. I was navigating so many complex situations. In my mid-20s, I was, you know, working full-time. I was bartending at a few different places and not sleeping very well, recovering from an abusive relationship, you know, trying to get myself further in my career so I can move up the ladder, so I could make more money, dealing with family stress. And I, my parents are divorced, so I had stress from both my mom and my dad. At one point in time, uh, my father had violated his parole and he was dealing with that. And then my mom was diagnosed with a tumor, with a brain tumor. Within the same week, these things happened. I've remember being in my father's apartment, actually, which was my old apartment that I left because I was so tired of his womanizing, which I didn't know at the time he really wasn't supposed to be doing because he was out on parole. But that's another whole episode in and of itself. So the apartment in Mount Vernon, which used to be mine, which was now my father's, I'm in the apartment. I'm going through his paperwork, and I was trying to just make heads and tails of some of his bills and finances. And my mom called me while I was there. It was on a Sunday afternoon, and she said, I'm so sorry. I know you're dealing with your dad's stuff, but I have to tell you that you need to come to the hospital. I'm in the emergency room. Don't worry, I'm I'm okay right now, but you need to come here because we need to talk. And when I got to the hospital, she told me that she had a brain tumor, and they were going to admit her, and they were not going to let her leave anytime soon. And probably about six days later, that following Friday. So this was early July in 2007, my mom had her brain tumor removed. And again, that's another whole episode. It could be a whole series, that whole experience. But the moral of this story of the first sidebar of the episode is that yeah, I was trying to help my dad navigate his shit. Even though I was pissed at him, I was doing what I could. I was trying to be supportive of my mom. I had a baby brother that I was trying to keep informed and also protect at the time. I think he was 11 years old when that diagnosis showed up. And I was also working a job in the city, very stressful, a lot of pressure, very high maintenance clients and high profile. And I was in this sort of haze, if you will, because I had to put on a smiling face. I had to show up to the restaurant where I was bartending happy. I had to provide my customers with a good experience. And I used to have some regulars. They would come in at happy hour, they would order, you know, food from the kitchen. Many times my customers would be like, oh, give you a plate, and they would share some of their food with me. Like it was very, very sweet and endearing. I loved working at that bar. But underneath it, like a duck on a pond, my feet were just going and going and going and going. And I was under so much stress. I almost couldn't contain it at times. I've remember once in a while my manager would stick me in this one service bar where it was off in the corner. And not only was that bartender responsible for making all of the drinks for the dining room, it was two floors of uh seating area. There was also an outside seating area. So that bartender was slammed and then also had customers. And so it was like so so fast-paced that I had no time to think or breathe, and I would just try to bang out drinks and it was not good. And eventually I had a crash out. But of course, during that time, my training was just almost non-existent. I think I was going to the gym maybe three days a week at that point in time. It was difficult because of my commute coming home from the city. It was also difficult because I would want to go visit my mom in the hospital. So after the tumor was removed, she was in the neuro ICU for about 10 days. She was in a coma. And then they kept her there for close to a month, maybe six weeks, so that she could be monitored, so that they could make sure she was okay, so that they could get a um a diagnosis and get the results back from, you know, testing the tumor to see what in fact it was. And it did take time because unfortunately, my mom has or had this cancer that only manifests in like one in 80,000 adults. So it's extremely rare. It's typically found in children. But anyway, I digressed for a while there. So yeah, training through a stressful time, you're obviously gonna get stuck. You're just phoning it in, you're checking off the box, you're probably not necessarily making any measurable gains or substantial strength gains, but you're still showing up and doing the thing. And what you can teach yourself there, or what I learned about myself through that time, was like, I can still show up, I can still do the thing. And even when I feel hollow inside, you know, I can still one show up and do what's expected of me at my jobs, whether it was the full-time job in the city and the job working at the little bar and, you know, serving drinks. In both instances, they are service-based jobs. And so it was important to me to still show up and do what I'm there to do. But yeah, my training was absolutely stagnant. Now, interestingly enough, I was incredibly thin at that point in time. Uh, even though I wasn't working out too much, I was under a lot of stress and not really eating too much. And I would get probably 20,000 steps a day. This was before the time of wearing an Apple Watch. I think maybe the Apple Watch was pretty new, but people would wear Fitbits or step trackers. And I just remember because of property management, I was always on foot, walking from building to building, surveying floors, going up to the roof, checking IDF closets, just having a really good time getting in a lot of activity. So thin as a rail, wearing a double zero suit. In fact, I remember I found one of these suits uh not too long ago and I just held it up. I didn't even try the jacket on, but I just held up the suit and I held up the pants and I giggled. Like, this looks like a little kid would wear it because it was so tiny. But going back to learning from that, you can learn a lot about yourself. You could learn a lot about what you're made of when shit is really hard and how to get through those things. Now,

Losing In Sport And Building Character

SPEAKER_00 14:58

talking about loss meaning in a competition or an event or a promotion, that could also be incredibly humbling and teach you a whole heck of a lot about yourself and your character. But the thing about losing, let's say you you do a bodybuilding show or you run a an event, maybe high rocks or maybe a running event, and you you set a goal for yourself and you don't make it. It's what you do immediately following that loss that reveals your character and can teach you things. Bodybuilding is so interesting to me because we live in a time where everything is conveyed through a screen. And bodybuilding truly cannot, you truly cannot judge someone's physique unless you are actually in the room and looking at them on the stage against their competitors, properly posing and tan and under the stage lights. And it's frustrating for me as a you know more senior person looking at people commenting on other people's bodies online on social media. You cannot do that. You can, I mean, people do it all the time, but it's almost absurd because it is the type of thing where you just had to be there. And if you're not in the room and seeing it with your own eyes, you're you're looking at a misrepresentation. So when someone fails or loses, and it's something that they had been working towards for months or years, and they've been training for it, they've been preparing for it, they revolved their whole life around this thing, and they come up short, it's gonna take some time to heal from that. It's gonna take some serious reflection, some introspection, some notes, some meditation. If you want to take that important and valuable error or loss and really refine for the next one, or to better understand yourself. I used to compete in karate competitions when I was a little kid, and I remember I was not the fastest, didn't have the most skills. There were a few things, you know, techniques that I, no matter how much I practiced, when it came down to competition, I would just revert back to my old way, just automatically. It was like on autopilot in my system. And in karate, when somebody is performing a kata, it's very precise. And typically, in the style that I studied, which is Shotokan, there is a referee uh in each corner of the ring. So there's, you know, one, two, three, four, four judges. Um, I'm sorry, that's for the sparring part. For the kata, the four or five judges are in a table facing you when you start. And they're giving their assessments. And typically, whatever the score is, they will rule out the lowest score. You know, this is how it worked when I was a little kid. And so when you're under that kind of pressure, you have all of these eyes on you. Maybe your parents are watching you. And in my case, my parent was my dad, who was also my teacher. There would be so much pressure on me. And guess what? Even if I made a little bit of a mistake, there would also be things that I would do that were so much better than anything I ever practiced. It was almost as if I knew all eyes were on me and I needed to send it all the way because that was my only moment. That was my chance. And I remember losing as well and just punishing myself for that and feeling like a disgrace and defeated and talking badly to myself. And of course, as a kid, you know, we can be our own worst enemy. And unfortunately, some of that has still stuck with me and lingered on even into adulthood. But we do the best that we can with what we have. You've prepared as much as you possibly could. You've turned over every stone on your path. And sometimes it's just not your day. Now,

Career Setbacks And Feedback That Helps

SPEAKER_00 19:49

when we're talking about a career, and let's say you interview for a role that you don't get, or you give a presentation and it doesn't go off as well as you had hoped. You're not gonna go back to the drawing board and completely shred up your presentation or throw it in the trash or be afraid to try again. You wanna look at lessons learned. You wanna ask your mentor or your manager or your owner or company owner, whoever you're reporting to, and looking for constructive criticism doesn't mean you have to agree with it all. But being offered that insight gives you a chance to go back to the drawing board and do better. I've had this really interesting sort of experience with a colleague at the gym I work at because when we first started working together, I think we bumped heads a bit. He's significantly younger than me. In fact, he could be my son. And we kind of just bumped heads, typical bro. But over time, we've developed a friendly working rapport. And a lot of that is due to the fact that I'm very honest, I'm very real. When I'm pissed about something, I express it and it's always respectful. But there have been instances where, you know, he has done something that upset me or was rude or just wasn't aware. And I said, Hey, please don't do that next time, et cetera, et cetera. And one day he came up to me and he said, Hey, I just want to say something real quick. I was in the middle of a workout, but I was resting. And I'm like, Okay, what's up? And he says, you know, when you first started working here, I really didn't care for you because I thought you were kind of a bitch and you were very outspoken. However, he goes, What I have also learned about you is sometimes you will offer correction. And if you don't like something, you're honest about it. You don't play pretend, you're not fake, you don't wear a mask, you don't smile in my face. And talk about me behind my back. And I really appreciate that about you because I'm young and I'm still learning. And when you inform me or educate me or show me where I could be better, you're giving me the opportunity to improve and to grow. And you're stretching me, you're challenging me in a healthy way. And I just want to say thank you for not being a fake bitch, which it was so funny when the way he just delivered that whole thing. And, you know, we bumped fists and he went back to whatever he was doing. And I went back to my workout. And I operate in that fashion. I can't teach everyone, and that's not my job. But if you are not corrected, or if you are not given those notes, or if you do something and it's a bomb and you're not even given any opportunity to say, for someone to say, like, hey, you could have done this, this, this, and this better. How do you improve? I mean, that's just, that's just the way I operate. So growth is going to come with a lot of failures. It's going to come with a lot of losses. It's going to come with, you know, looking back on things and being honest with yourself, trying not to punish yourself, but asking yourself, where could I do better? Where could this be better? How can I improve this experience for myself and for everyone around me? And, you know, that comes with a level of radical responsibility that is only going, you're only going to be afforded that if you can own your shit and if you can say, hey, I fucked up, but you know what? I'm not going to do that again. Or I'm going to try better next time. And really try. Not just say the words, not just go through the motions, not just checking off the box, but actually doing the thing.

A Simple Reframe For Setbacks

SPEAKER_00 23:57

So here's some takeaways for you because you know I can't leave you without a takeaway list. Number one, the next time you have a setback, I want you to try to separate the fact from the story you're telling yourself. Maybe sit down and think about what actually happened. Come up with a sentence or two. And then reflect on what you made it mean for yourself. And then think about what actually happened and what you made it mean. And try to bridge that gap because in there, that's the shame. Now, next, think about the loss through three questions before you judge it. Okay. What happened? What was actually yours to own? And what is a single thing that you can carry forward? And if you feel like there was nothing in that situation that is mine that I take ownership of, then just move on. But if there is something, what are you going to carry forward and how are you going to do it better next time? And then lastly, consider giving yourself that reframe that we've talked about. And it we've talked about this on a lot of episodes on this show. Because you're never starting out at zero. You are starting again, even if you change jobs, even if you're in a new situation, you are starting again with the knowledge and the experience and the seasons that you've already experienced. So think about that. Because you're not going back to the starting line. You're going back to a starting line with more, with more of everything. And so that changes it. Because you're not going all the way back to day one when you were born. It's impossible. But maybe it's just a small step back so that you can propel yourself forward the next time.

Share The Episode And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 26:04

Thank you again for being here, joining me in this conversation. I appreciate you. I appreciate you being here each and every week. If you found this episode helpful, please send it to a friend. That helps me get more visibility. It helps to invite more amazing people into my community. And if you'd like to follow me on social media or join my email newsletter, you can check the show notes for how to do that. Thank you again, and I'll see you on the next one.