With nearly everything in life your perspective is what determines, what is good or bad, a success or failure, having enough or not having enough. Your perspective is how you see things and your mindset shapes your perspective. The perfect perspective likely doesn’t exist and our mindset is often changing but I think the” right” mindset will give you a more positive and optimistic perspective. My experience tells me that things in life come a little easier to those whose outlook is defined by positivity and graciousness. What does this have to do with fitness? Much, I am realizing more and more.

I have had the opportunity to work with a bunch of people, young and old, with varied backgrounds. My unscientific research tells me that those who were open and willing to acknowledge and be proud of small changes saw bigger accomplishment and greater overall change. If you are doing something that makes you feel good, makes you look better and allows you to have fun, that is worth being happy about. Getting people to see it that way is what we try and do. Self down talk and doubt are not welcome here. The “what I’m not” or “what I can’t do” mentality that exists hurts your opportunity to improve.

We at Core Principles are trying to help many people reshape their lifestyle. For us it is not all or nothing, it is a process and a learning curve, a curve where health and wellness move up our ladder of priorities. We like to say the benefit is in the effort. If you put in the effort and stay consistent, I guarantee that you are getting better. While fitness and life are not all fairytales and unicorns, we appreciate what you can do and the effort you put in. We want you to appreciate what you can do also. Too often clients forget what they were not able to do a few weeks back but are now able to do skillfully. That is real improvement. However, if you are again focusing on what you can’t do now, you negate many of the great benefits of proudly recognizing our improvement.

Not every workout can be your best one, and some exercises you just can’t nail the first few tries. We all have fitness goals and we want to you to execute them. Yet we want to shape an approach to health and fitness that focused on feeling good and moving well, putting in great effort, acknowledging accomplishment and being part of a community. We want you to appreciate what you can do!