Tales of a Quitter…

I have spent most of my life quietly considering myself a quitter. I didn’t necessarily vocalize this or even consciously think this, but I think it was always there in the back of my mind. I can’t think of anything before the past couple of years that I have ever TRULY finished to completion, in the way that I set out to do. I have been very successful in many ways, but in most cases that meant settling for the easiest of a couple of options. Here or some examples of ways this showed up in my life:

• Quitting the NC State Dance Team after my freshman year. I worked hard at dance my whole life and when I made the team the summer before my freshman year at State, I was so excited. My freshman year was also INCREDIBLY hard in so many ways. I had roommate issues, academic issues, body image issues, boyfriend issues, the list goes on and on. I ended up quitting the dance team after my freshman year for fear that if I didn’t give up one of the big “time suckers” in my life at the time, I would fail out of college, which was NOT an option. I won’t say I regret this decision, because I don’t know if I’d be where I am today if I hadn’t made this decision, but I will say it always sticks out in the back of my brain as something I feel like I didn’t truly give my all to. I know I could have dug my heels in, put in the hard work, focused on school and dance, and made it work. Instead, I feel like I threw in the towel and gave it up so I didn’t have to give up something else that was more important.

• Owning the Yellow Power Ranger and Scary Spice titles. Growing up in the 90s, we either played Power Rangers or Spice Girls. Whenever it was time to play, everyone was always piping up, calling their favorite characters they wanted to play. Of course, I wanted to play the Pink Power Ranger or Baby Spice. But I didn’t want to fight for it. I was always very non-confrontational and would fill role whatever role needed to be filled. So, I got stuck with the Yellow Power Ranger and Scary Spice, always. I put on a happy face and did those girls proud, but it sticks out in my mind as settling for less than I wanted because I didn’t have the fight in me to actually go for what I wanted.

• Leaving my job and life in KCMO. I have mentioned in previous posts about my time in Kansas City after college. I took a job with a great company, and I am confident I could have had a very promising career there had I stuck it out for the long haul. Instead, I had one foot out the door the entire time I was there. The only way I could convince myself to move across the country by myself in the first place was by always promising myself that I would stick it out for a year to get the experience, but that I would be back in NC in no time. I even referred to my apartment there as the “TLQ,” short for “temporary living quarters.”  So, after a year and half there, when I got another job offer in NC, of course I jumped at the chance. I have absolutely no regrets about coming back to NC in the way that I did and I 100% would not have the life I have today had I not approached it this way. BUT, I still have the voice in the back of my head wondering if I took the easy way out and what would have happened had I jumped all the way in with both feet and really committed to giving that opportunity all I had.

• Switching majors in college. I got into the engineering school at NC State. This in itself is not easy, as it is very competitive. I was proud of the fact that I was accepted and went into it with high hopes. After a couple of weeks of classes, I found myself very intimidated and overwhelmed. I knew my coursework was going to be hard and I knew I was different than lots of the other people I saw in my classes. Rather than seeing this as a challenging and exciting opportunity to prove to myself and everyone else that I could do hard things, I went the route of switching majors. My Business Management degree has provided me with an incredible career that I am very proud of BUT there’s no denying that I gave up on my engineering career before I gave it a fair shot.

So, why am I starting a post about 75Hard by describing a bunch of examples of me quitting or switching directions when things got really hard? Because I never had the confidence in myself or the accountability to myself to push through really fucking hard things until I discovered this program and committed to it. A 75-day program changed my life in ways that you can’t see from the outside. It changed my brain in ways so that I no longer shy away from hard experiences. In fact I now CRAVE them.

So, WTF is 75Hard?

75Hard is considered a mental toughness challenge. A simple Google search will show you millions of examples of people changing their lives by following this simple program. It’s had a lot of attention since coming out in 2019. Many people see incredible physical transformations since many of the requirements are centered around fitness/nutrition, but the program is meant to be a MENTAL toughness challenge, not a physical fitness or a weight loss program. In a nutshell, you must do all of the tasks below every single day without failure, exceptions, or substitutions, for 75 days. If you fail even one of these tasks on one day, you must start back at day 1. Yes, that means that even if you do all these things and on day 68 you forget to take a damn picture of yourself, you start back at day 1. It’s hardcore and it has the reputation it has for a reason.

1. Two 45 minute workouts. One of these workouts MUST be completed outdoors, regardless of the weather
2. Drink a gallon of water
3. Follow a diet. You can follow any diet you want, but you must follow it to a T every day.
4. No cheat meals OR alcohol
5. Read 10 pages from a non-fiction book
6. Take a progress picture

When I first heard about this program, I was 75 lbs. overweight and in the middle of a journey with alcohol that I was still trying to figure out. I remember looking at this list of tasks and thinking “I couldn’t even do one of the items on this list for 75 days straight. Who in the actual fuck is doing all of this at the same time and succeeding? Freaks. That’s who.” Fast forward to a couple of years later, and I was embarking on my own 75Hard journey. By the time I started the program I had seen enough success in all of the individual aspects of the program that doing it all together at the same time was terrifying, but it didn’t feel impossible. When I started, I was already working out at 9Round 6 days a week, drinking probably a half gallon of water every day, following a plant based diet 90% of the time, and I had been alcohol-free for over a year. So, every area was a stretch for me, but I wasn’t starting from zero. I knew it would be a challenge, but I became obsessed with reading people’s experiences and stories about how it changed their life in unexpected ways. It gave me hope and lit a fire inside me and made me feel inspired to make some big, scary changes in my own life.

Many people attempt 75Hard multiple times before successfully completing it. I have heard plenty of people who failed at 7 days in, 20 days in, even 60 or 70 days in and had to start over. That was a big fear of mine. Luckily Korey and I decided to do the challenge together, so we had some extra accountability and an extra person to help check-in at the end of every day. There were MANY times when I got into bed at 10:30 pm, realized I hadn’t taken a picture that day, and jumped out of bed to do it. I also spent many nights waking up a gazillion times to pee because I didn’t manage my water intake throughout the day and chugged 30 oz. right before bed. This was HARD and there were so many days I wanted to quit. I didn’t really announce to anyone outside of our immediate family and friends that I was doing it – mostly because I was afraid of failure but also because I’m the type of person who likes to do cool shit and announce it after, rather than talking about it while it’s happening. To each their own.

Korey and I ended up completing it on our first try, without failing and having to go back to day 1. We started Day 1 on January 30, 2023 and completed Day 75 on April 14, 2023. This was truly the first time in my life I felt like I had accomplished something really really really fucking hard and I was so damn proud of myself for following through with it. To be totally honest, I went into this experience expecting crazy results, both physical and mental, but what I got was 10-fold what I could have ever imagined.

Top 5 Benefits I experienced from 75Hard:

• Accountability – The amount of accountability and integrity needed to complete this program HONESTLY is unmatched. At the end of the day, your completion is totally on you to be honest with yourself. Anyone can download the app, say they complete the tasks every day even if they didn’t, and then boast to the world that they completed 75Hard. There is no 75Hard fairy godmother watching over you and stopping you from lying. If you read the book or listen to the podcast, they talk in depth about accountability and the fact that if you lie or cheat on any of the required tasks, you’re cheating no one but yourself. This stuck with me and kept me honest with myself throughout. There were many times I thought about cutting my walk 5 minutes short because “what the hell difference does 5 minutes make, I am fucking tired” or stopping my water intake 20 oz short because I really needed a good night sleep and didn’t want to have to chug it before bed and wake up a million times to pee. But every time one of those instances crept up, I asked myself if it was worth starting over or if it was worth not admitting the shortcoming and knowing that I “completed” this by taking shortcuts. The answer was ALWAYS no. Here’s a time when I really wanted to cut my walk short. It was sleeting.

• Time Management – I want to brag on us for a second here. Korey and I BOTH completed this program simultaneously while both working full time and raising two young boys. In the middle of sports seasons. We absolutely did not have time to complete these tasks every single day and live our life as normal. We had to bend and adjust and communicate with each other to make this happen. We had to find time where there was none. We literally mapped out each day the night before to make sure we each had time to get our workouts in. This often meant waking up insanely early before the boys woke up or getting workouts in at night when we would normally be winding down or going to bed. This program taught me how to be INTENTIONAL with my time in a way I never had before. 30 minutes between meetings? Let me get my reading in while I have the opportunity, rather than scrolling mindlessly on my phone. Let me replace my lunch time tv show with a lunch time walk around the neighborhood to knock out my outside workout for the day. It took identifying gaps of time and thinking creatively of how I could use that time to my advantage. Here is me getting my outside workout in at 5 am by walking laps around a hotel outside Philadelphia while on a work trip in 30-degree weather.

• Trading Excuses for Solutions – this was a HUGE one. Reading the 75Hard book and listening to the podcast helped me a lot with this idea of identifying my excuses and trading them in for solutions. We all make excuses every day as to why we can’t do something. This program has taught me to identify when I am making an excuse and how I can change my thoughts to find an opportunity/solution rather than just throw my hands up and settle in my excuse. Here are some common examples I can think of off the top of my head:
  • Excuse: my spouse has to work late so I have the kids by myself tonight and won’t have time to work out.
    • Solutions: if you know in advance, wake up early to get your workout in before your day starts. If you don’t know in advance, involve your kids. Many gyms have daycares. Throw your kids in the wagon and haul their asses on your walk with you. Do a late-night workout after your kids are in bed.
  • Excuse: My body is tired and my muscles are sore. I need a rest day.
    • Solutions: try a different type of workout. Instead of lifting that day, go to a yoga class to actually stretch your muscles. Go for a long leisurely walk. Not every workout has to be hitting a new PR or sweating through your clothes.
  • Excuse: I am too tired to read. I keep falling asleep and I can’t keep my eyes open.
    • Solutions: get out of bed and go sit on the couch with the light on. If you know this is a problem for you at night, adjust your schedule to start reading in the morning when you are more fresh.

Here is Korey and I getting our walk in, in a freezing cold monsoon, while on vacation at the beach. See any excuses in that sentence? Not me 😉

• True Value of Self-Development – when we first started, I was REAL salty about the fact that the reading had to be a non-fiction book. I kept saying to Korey “I don’t understand why I can’t just read what I want to read.” About a week into the program, the reading became my favorite part of it. The non-fiction books not only kept me learning and expanding my mind every day, but they were motivating as shit. Reading motivating shit while you are on a self-improvement journey is uplifting as hell and makes you feel like you can do anything you put your mind to. Any time I had tried to read self-help books in the past I normally had a glass of wine in my other hand or was so deep in a hole that I was reading hoping for the book to pull me out of my spiral. In this case, I had already started the steps to improve my life, so adding the self-development books on top of a journey that already had momentum just exponentially increased my excitement and feeling of badassery.

• Confidence – I don’t know if I can actually put into words the difference in my self-confidence before and after 75Hard. I know it seems far-fetched to think a 75 day program can change something so drastically, but it did and you have to trust me or see for yourself. As I mentioned in the beginning of the post, I always subconsciously considered myself a quitter. Even after having some success with my weight loss and sobriety, I think I still had a part of my brain that thought “yeah I have come a long way, but I won’t go all the way. I will stop short like I always do.” Completing this program solidified in my mind that I can and will always do everything I decide to do. I keep promises to myself. I know without a doubt that I will continue choosing myself every single day because I have already proven to myself that I can do hard things and it feels good as hell.

How my 75Hard Lessons Show Up for me Now:

Every single benefit I listed above that I experienced from 75Hard (plus countless more) are still a constant in my everyday life. This program didn’t just give me accountability and confidence while I was completing the program – it solidified these qualities in my life and taught me the concepts, allowing me to expand them out to every other area of my life. Every single skill I built during 75Hard I use every day, as it applies to the challenges that come with being a wife, being a mom, being an employee, being a friend, and most of all, being true to myself.

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