How to Deal With Missing Your Fitness Targets

Introduction

When you fall short of any targets that you set yourself, it can be a frustrating experience. If they are work-related goals, you might feel that you have let others in your team down and worry about the possible fallout on your position and your career.

When it comes to personal targets, it can be even harder to deal with as the only person you have to blame is yourself and the worst voice of criticism is usually your own inner monologue.

Fitness, health and exercise goals are often the hardest ways we push ourselves and the areas in which we can make the most demands on both body and mind.

If you are the type of person who has clearly-defined targets in terms of training, activity or even competition, you are also likely to find failure hard to deal with when it does rear its ugly, but inevitable, head.

Mental Blocks

Some people hold fast to the idea that performance is 90% mental application and only 10% physical, and, although it’s something that could never really be proven, it certainly holds more than a grain of truth.

Having a mental block is often thought of as applying to writers, musicians or other artists, but in fact, it is something that can happen to all of us at one time or another.

Most top-class athletes will experience ‘hitting the wall’, at some point so it’s comforting to know that even the best in the world will think that they have failed or reached the edge of what they are able to achieve.

Of course, what separates the great from the merely very good is the mental capacity to get past those blocks and jump over the walls that are holding them back.

Helping Hand

The idea of asking for help is often something that is hard to accept, especially if you are one of those people who are used to setting your own targets and achieving them through your own efforts.

However, to cite the world-class professionals yet again, every one of them has a trainer, mentor or someone who plays an important motivating role in their lives and their efforts. Sometimes overcoming a mental block and moving forward to achieving your goals can be as simple as reaching out for a helping hand in the many different forms it can take.

Depression

Failure is hard to handle, and the way you cope with setbacks and overcome them is both character building and a testament to your inner strength and resources. Even so, missing important targets that might relate to health or fitness ambitions, or simply not making the grade in terms of competition, personal best timings or being able to complete a task you have set yourself can lead to deeper problems.

Depression is something that many people who set their aims high and fall short of them can be prone to suffering from. Although it is a phrase that is perhaps used too often, when someone is clinically depressed, it can be a debilitating condition that affects all aspects of day to day life.

A paradox is that physical activity is known to be a great weapon in the battle against depression, but if it is part of the underlying reason for your state of mind, it can be even harder to ‘get back in the saddle.’

Thankfully there are plenty of things you can do to be proactive, such as using online therapy for depression stress and anxiety. Not only does an online service offer you access to a specialized helping hand at the time of your choosing, it is also discreet as you don’t need to visit a professional in their own office but can do everything from the comfort of your own home.

Incremental Improvements

A really good way of getting over the fear of missing targets or avoiding the possibility of failure leading to depression is to think about your goals in a different way.

Setting smaller scale objectives isn’t a cop out, in fact the concept of incremental gains leading to larger-scale compound achievements is something that has grown to be more or less taken for granted in the worlds of professional sports and athletics.

By making it easier to see that you have moved forward in whatever setting you are working in, it reinforces your own self vision of what success means and creates a positive feedback loop which both encourages results and helps guard against self-doubt.

Conclusion

Missing your fitness targets isn’t the end of the world. While it can certainly make you feel like a big failure, the best thing you can do is make peace with yourself and move forward.

The quicker you can acknowledge your “failure” and accept that mistakes happen with even the best of us, the faster you can take the necessary steps to get back on track.

Remember, success doesn’t happen over night. Even the most successful people run into “failure” along their journey. The question is, what are you going to do when you hit a bump in the road?

There are two choices. You either continue to wallow in failure or get back on your feet and work towards not only achieving but crushing the next step. So, what’s it going to be!?

About Theresa Duncan

Originally from Detroit, MI, Theresa has been offering health and fitness advice for the last 30 years while working as an engineer. She decided to turn her passion into a profession, and finds nothing more satisfying than helping others reach their health and fitness goals.