We all know people who appear to have it all together in every facet of their lives. You know the ones I am talking about. They always manage to stay fit no matter how hectic their lives get. Their kids are always well behaved. And they are never embarrassed to stand around half naked by the pool. Don’t you just hate people like that? They bring the envy meter up about 500%. If I could just exercise a little more, sleep a little longer and eat a little less for dinner, my life would be just like theirs. If only it were that simple.

Nobody has it all together all the time. Everyone has stress in their lives. It’s healthy. It’s what drives us. Stress at work, relationship challenges and difficulty finding time to care for our own needs. One’s social media feed is a great way to convey to others that you are living the good life. But even these seemingly “perfect” people still struggle with feelings of incompetence behind the scenes. It is very easy to look at others and believe that they are doing better than you are, until you come to the realization that there really is no “everybody else”.  None of us have the ability to escape the reality of bills, deadlines, obligations and responsibility. That is unless you are single, independently wealthy and living in a cave somewhere.

Accept that it is going to be hard. Struggling with physical and mental pain are part of being human. If you are training hard enough, you will experience both from time to time. We all have some level of self doubt that we carry around with us. We are going to fail a lot more than we are going to succeed. When we are young we want to be perfect and have it all, but once we reach adulthood those ideals are no longer realistic because things are going to go wrong. The ones who have the most success are able to dust themselves off and try again.

If you want to improve your physique, quality of life or your income, start looking for real life role models. Not the ones on Instagram. I am talking about real life people that you have the ability to interact with on a regular basis. Seek out their guidance and ask them questions. I can’t tell you how many times I have asked a successful client of mine how they market themselves or their company to attract new business and they are always more than happy to offer me their counsel.

Start by making small changes. If you don’t have time to get to the gym before or after work, do some push ups, planks and some body weight squats for 10 minutes by your bed first thing in the morning. If you are struggling to get your diet under control, pick one food item and focus on eliminating it each day. Once you have figured that out, move onto something else. Any successes that I have had in my life have come from taking small steps. Several small positive actions that eventually lead to big changes. They just don’t happen overnight.