SUMMARY

• So many of us miss when it comes to naming a vision around the body and end up feeling badly about ourselves. It IS possible to create a vision where you feel inspired and dedicated to the result you want to see in the body.
• “When you construct a vision for your body, start with the way you want to feel.”
• “There's plenty of people who look amazing out there, and what they answer to in the feeling everyday is disgust, is unworthiness, is shame, is guilt as it pertains to the body. Regardless of where you’re at with your body, you can feel empowered, confident, and joyful.”
• If you’re looking for tips on how to manage your emotions and thoughts to create a vision of health and vitality with the body, this episode is for you.
• Watch the video to get the full training.

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 Full Transcript:

[The following is the full transcript of this episode of Joey’s Performance Tune Up With Joey Klein. Please note that this episode, like all episodes, features Joey speaking unscripted and unedited. This video is captured in one take.]

Hello there. Joey Klein here. We're going to take a minute and talk about creating a vision for your body or a vision for the body. And we're going to touch on essentially why the way people go about creating vision for the body actually has missed the mark of what they want to create physically and also tends to make them feel bad at the end of the day in terms of feeling like a failure and disgust and things like this.

And so most people, when they look at a vision for the body, they start with the aesthetics of the body. They think about the six pack they want to have or how skinny they want to be or how they want to look in an outfit or something like this, or beach body, like how are they going to look on vacation when their shirt's off? And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that and it's okay to aspire to have a great physique, but I wouldn't recommend that as being where you start and I'll explain here in a minute. Because so often when people start with creating an idea of how they should look aesthetically, when they look in the mirror and they don't look that way, they feel disgust or they feel shame or they feel guilt or they feel like a failure. And that's what they are linking to the body are those emotions, those painful experiences that they have inside.

And a lot of people, when they create an idea of the way they want to look, the physique they want to have or the weight they want to lose, the belief that they have is, man, if I create this physique and I look this way and I have this great six pack or I look amazing in my outfit or things like this, that's going to translate to feeling confident and beautiful and courageous and joyful and accepted and worthy and things of that nature. And it often doesn't work out that way. If that was the case, then beautiful people would all feel great and they don't, right? Like for me, when I work with a lot of people in the fitness industry and you have these individuals with these, who are extremely strong and these amazing physiques, a lot of them are highly insecure and feel a lot of disgust tied to their body and a lot of shame tied to the body. And even though they have this great physique, they don't have the emotional well being to go along with it. 

And the same can be with a lot of athletes sometimes who have great physiques is they have these amazing physiques because they are like a pro athlete or because of their athletic accomplishments, but they often are driving with insecurity and a sense of unworthiness. And sometimes that's why they are so good at their sport, right, is because they're trying to out perform their unworthiness or outperform their insecurity or outperform their lack of value and things of that nature. And even though they have amazing physiques, they don't look at themselves and go, I'm amazing. They don't feel that way inside. 

And so when you construct a vision for your body and what you want to create, I recommend doing it with a little different approach, right? Start with the way you want to feel, and start with that as the vision for your body. What's the experience of myself I want to have? What do I want to feel? I want to feel joyful. I want to feel confident. I want to feel compassion. I want to feel worthy. I want to feel, what do you want to feel inside as the experience of yourself? Because we have those experiences through the body, through the nervous system, and let's decide that we're going to learn how to create a sense of happiness and a sense of worthiness and a sense of acceptance and a sense of joy now, regardless of how the body is, right, the body may not feel great right now, or it may not look the way we want it to look yet, that doesn't mean that we can't be joyful and we can't feel worthy and we can't feel acceptance and we can't feel inspired starting right now, starting today.

So let's learn how to cultivate those emotions first. What's the way I want to feel? What's the experience I want to have of myself? Start naming that. Just by naming the experience you want to have the way you want to feel, you start putting your attention toward it. You start putting focus on it. You start moving in that direction as opposed to creating an expectation of a condition that's never going to translate to you feeling that way. Instead of creating an expectation of how you're going to look, that then is going to translate to how you're going to feel, which is never going to meet the expectation. Just because you have a six pack doesn't mean you're worthy, doesn't mean you're inspired, doesn't mean you're joyful, doesn't mean you're happy. There's plenty of people who look amazing out there, and what they answer to in the feeling everyday is disgust, is unworthiness, is shame, is guilt as it pertains to the body, right?

So instead of that, let's just name how we're going to feel. What are we going to start creating there? I'm going to start appreciating the body today, and when I start acknowledging what I appreciate about the body, that's going to translate to a sense of gratefulness for the body. That's going to translate to joy for the body. That's going to start translating to confidence with the body. So we've got to evolve the way we relate to the body and the vision for our body in order to create what we really want. Sure, it's okay if you want to look different or you want a great physique. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. But we got to start with the inner construction first, because if we have the outer construction without the inner, then it's not worth anything anyway.

And then the second focus as it pertains to vision is what do we want to do with the body? How do we want it to perform? Do we want to dance? Do we want to be able to travel and walk all over a new city and explore it? Do you want a mountain bike? Are you a skier? Do you want to be able to paddle across a lake or something?Do you want to do an Iron Man? Right? I was in Hawaii a little while ago and people aspire to do Iron Man's where all these Iron men and women all over the island and they're super fit, right? Those are all different things that people choose to do with the body.

And so what is it that you want to do with the body? Do you want to play with the grandkids? Do you want to keep up with your children? Do you want to be able to play catch with them and do their sporting events together and be able to enjoy vacations with one another? Just what are the things you want to do with the body? Think about the way you want to live your life with the body and start putting your attention there. The physique should be a byproduct of what you're doing, right? If we can make sure our physique is a byproduct of what we're doing that sets us up to succeed and then finally, what is the mental clarity that I want the body to have? 

What is the level of health I want the body to be inside of? What's the level of health and vibrancy that I want to hold within the body? I want mental clarity. I want a high level of mental focus. I want my mind and my brain to be sharp. I want the body to just feel great. I want it to feel strong and light and flexible inside of the body. Right? Like, what's the level of health and vitality that I want inside the body? I want to have unlimited energy from the moment I wake up until when I go to rest at night. And then boom, I'm out and I rest and rejuvenate and I sleep really well and then I wake up and I get to do it all over again. Right? What's the level of health and vitality that you want for the body?

And then the way it's going to look is just sort of a byproduct of those first three things. The physique that you build is just like an icing on the cake, right? It's an awesome side effect of those first three things. Individuals who have amazing physiques and they maintain those throughout their whole life, in their 30s,in their 40s, in their 60s, into their 80s and they just obviously are healthier and more fit and aesthetically, have a great physique that's better than 90% of their peers is because they're not focusing on the physique. I know that sounds weird, but it's true.  The physique is a byproduct of them focusing on their emotional health number one, how do I want to feel? What's the experience I want to have of myself? And then number two, they're focusing on what do I want to do with the body, what is it that I want to be capable of being up to in my life? And then, number three, how do I optimize my healthand my vitality vision in terms of the way Iwant to feel day after day after day? And then the physique ends up being a byproduct of that. Or if you want to get a clear idea of how you want to look as a fourth element, go for it, but make sure it's the last on the list, not the first of what you focus on each day.

And then you want to execute that in a practical way as you live your life, as you go through your day. For me, when I wake up in the morning, first thing I focus on is, how do I feel? I wake up and I go, what emotion is present and what can I do to activate and feel a bit of joy or inspiration from my day or a sense of gratitude? Then I go, what's the experience of my body?  Right? Do I have mental clarity right now? Do I feel alive and energetic? How are my muscles feeling? Do they feel light and loose? Or is there a little bit of soreness there? What does the body feel? And then finally, what do I want to be up to today? What am I going to do? Right, I'm going to go ahead and train people today. I'm going to get on stage in front of 1000 people. I'm going to jump on my mountain bike and go 10 miles on my bike and climb 2000 vertical feet, or I'm just going to go on a walk. Right? 

What are the things you want to do with the body? And then make sure that the way you are creating your lifestyle is to nail those three components. How do I want to feel? What's the experience I want to have of myself as vision? Number two, what are the things I want to do with my body, what I want to be able to be up to with the body? And then three, health and vitality. What do I want to achieve inside of health and vitality? And then fourth, if you want to create an idea of your physique, go ahead and go for it. Because what I find is a lot of times when we start with the physique, sometimes we create an unrealistic idea of what the body should look like as it pertains to health. And especially today when we're looking at the magazine covers of fitness models and things that are then photoshopped and it's not even a real human that you're looking at anymore.

And then people create this idea that they're supposed to look like that when in reality they're not. Or they look at a bodybuilder who is 5% body fat and cut a bunch of weight six weeks prior to their competition, and they don't actually live that way or look that way in their daily life. But we don't know that, right? We don't understand that. And so we start with this idea of physique, and then we think everything else is going to fall into place. But then what we're trying to do to create the physique is actually counter to our health and vitality. It's diminishing our health oftentimes, right? Or it's counter to the emotions that we want to feel and the way we're driving. We're not creating a healthy experience of ourself or in terms of our activities or the things we want to be up to. We start making the physique a priority, and we're exhausted all day, and we're not able to do the things that we love doing and we're not spending the kind of time that we want to share with people and so on and so forth.

And so when you create vision for your body and you want to set yourself up to actually fulfill it, go in that order, how do I want to feel? What's the experience of myself I want to have? And let's start training that first. Then second, what do I want to do with the body? What do I want to be up to with the body? Let's train that second. And then third, we want to go to what's the level of health and vitality I want to be inside of. And then fourth, hey, the physique component. Okay, let's go and create a great physique. But let's make sure that the physique we're striving for actually lines up with those first three components. And now you're good to go. You got a whole picture of what to strive for inside of health, well being and vitality.

And remember, most important is there's no reason that today you can't feel great about yourself and who you are from an emotional perspective. It all starts with your inner world, your inner game, because it's that inner world and inner game that you're going to need to leverage in order to execute working out or eating differently or doing the activities, the things that you want to do anyway. If I'm working out every day, there's an emotional reality that's driving that. If I'm sleeping in every day, there's an emotional reality again that's driving that. And so if we construct our inner world first, our experience of ourself first, as we create our physique, you're going to love the journey you're going to love today. And you get to celebrate when you achieve what you're aspiring to tomorrow.