Undersupported Life Athlete
they could accomplish their dreams, if they could convert their earnest efforts into success
Perhaps some people are lazy. The Undersupported Life Athlete is the farthest thing from lazy. But they have had little to no luck converting their efforts into reality. The Undersupported Life Athlete can have challenges in all areas of life. Their lack of success is not for lack of trying. Sometimes the effort that they can put into projects is not sufficient to bring about results. Other times, when they do manage to put in the required effort, things don’t work out. The Unsupported Life Athlete is not someone who has given up on themselves. But they may hold doubts about their own capacities due to ongoing difficulties. They may have received unsupportive and unfavorable feedback from others. And many live with the frustration of not living up to their own expectations.
In a small subset of the Undersupported Life Athlete, the problem is a case of learned helplessness that arises after disappointment or traumatic results from past efforts. Phitness training can certainly address our mindset and the ways in which we have take the wrong lessons from failure. In Phitness training, we change the relationship between the athlete and the challenge. By converting it to a controlled exploration of exertion to failure, Phitness builds personal strength. In the majority of cases, the problem is not a matter of learned helplessness or a lack of persistence. Rather, the problem is that there are hard limits that all of us come up against in our efforts to be successful. Some of these may be environmental, and are a result of other people. Some of these may be internal to our minds and bodies. These hard limits cannot be overcome by determination and incorporating feedback. These hard limits are not universal. And that means that the one-size-fits-all advice will almost always fail the Undersupported Life Athlete. And moreover, if they attempt to double down on their efforts without acknowledging the hard limits they encounter, they can generate injury. In this case, the efforts of the Life Athlete are reflected back on them. The problem is not the learned helplessness; it’s the unacknolwedged hard limit, which is a limit beyond one’s understanding and control.
The challenge for the Life Athlete is to take control of their relationship to challenges so that they can use it as an opportunity to build strength. The goal is not to push past a limit. It is rather to increase our own strength so that the limit is no longer a barrier. We know that the Unsupported Life Athelete’s lack of success is not their fault. It’s a combination of bad advice, and insufficient preparation for life. Phitness training is a reset. It trains us to work on ourselves, not to follow a plan. By the time someone else has devised a plan for us to follow, its old news. The world has changed, and so have the hard limits. Becoming a stronger person is never a waste. And in the process of building personal strength, the Life Athlete is able to clear their minds and bodies of hard limits because they take time to acknowledge them, understand them, and mitigate them. If we can predict them, we can often control them. Similarly, environmental hard limits that are a result of other people’s activity, is also something that the Life Athlete is better positioned to address. And if they cannot, they have the strength to take detours. What the Undersupported Life Athlete has lacked, in the way of support, is coaching to help them be their own guide and mentor. They know their challenges best. They are best placed to solve them. Phitness coaching is the missing support for the Undersupported Life Athlete.
Are we all an Undersupported Life Athlete? Hopefully not. Hopefully we get the Phitness coaching we need. But in the absence of that, many people do something else. They lose interest and change plans when they hit hard limits. The Undersupported Life Athlete is someone who shows themselves to be undeterred at some level. They need the support to redirect their energy away from the hard limits, to themselves. If this is you, please sign up to keep up to date with our offerings directed to your needs.
