Why Failure Is a Sign of Progress in Your Fitness Journey

Nikkiey: What's up, WarriorBabes? Hey, everybody. Nikkiey here, and welcome to our Sunday WarriorBabe Revolution rally call, guys. I know, I know, I know I say this every week, but I'm stoked to be here because I'm about to bring some tough love, the no bullshit approach that you guys all respect, which I love that you respect. I have a gloves-off approach to coaching and helping you guys. And I'm about to apply no fluff, okay? I'm about to get really real on this rally call and I am stoked to bring the fire to you guys to move forward in a new week, get motivated, light the fire under your ass, show up for yourself even freaking more. I mean, that's what we do on these rally calls, right? So I'm stoked to be here.

So we'll get started in just a few minutes. Go leave a comment to the other WarriorBabes in the group. Let them know this call is getting started. I'm about to bring the fire. They don't want to miss out. I've got my book in my hand. I'm going to virtually be hitting you guys over the head with the book that I'm reading right now, because I'm taking a clip from You Squared like I did two weeks ago, where that rally call was just absolute fire. So I'm bringing it to you again from the book You Squared. It's going to be a hot topic. So let the other babes know that we're getting this call started, and they don't want to miss out.

I think it's really good that they tune in when it's live because it's in the moment rather than listening to the recording. I know everybody can't listen live. But I think it's really better tuning into this live. So I'm grateful for you guys who are here and have made it to the call, because you guys are going to get the energy right now. Right freaking now. I'm stoked to bring it right now.

But before we dive in, make sure you guys go comment in the group. And then I want to give a huge welcome to all of the new WarriorBabes who have joined us in this past week. You are now a part of a community of thousands. Literally, you can see the members inside of our group. Thousands of women who are getting toned and becoming a stronger, more confident version of themselves. You guys are building the badass body and the lifestyle to live it out as a sustainable, maintainable, realistic journey here inside of WarriorBabe. And we bring the fire. We bring the truth. We bring the no bullshit approach. So I'm super excited for all you new WarriorBabes who are here. WarriorBabe is where strong is sexy.

And if you guys are new to WarriorBabe, we do these rally calls every single Sunday at 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. So legit, if you guys are new and this is your first time, there are so many more in the weeks to follow. So set your alarms on your phone for whatever time zone you're in, five minutes before this call gets started. Mark your calendars. Don't miss these calls. Immerse yourself as much as you possibly can into WarriorBabe, everything.

This is where you get a little glimpse of me every single week, other than our Q&As, to fire you up, to get you excited, to put you in that frequency, put you in that head space to fulfill the goals that you're here to accomplish. Because going through the everyday thing, sometimes it can get really low. Sometimes it can get kind of stale. And sometimes it can get hard to push your own self. I'm here to get you out of your own way. I'm here to push you. I'm here to call you out on any actions that I hear or see inside of our community that I know aren't in alignment with your goals. So mark the calendars, set your alarms, make sure you guys tune in every single Sunday, and make sure that you guys tune in to our Q&A day on Wednesdays at 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, or 6:30 Eastern Standard Time. All right?

So again, before we get started, I want to run through, for anybody who is new, the things that I recommend you do when you're starting off with this WarriorBabe journey. Look, there are so many golden nuggets inside of our application. Plus, you get the updated monthly workout programs that are fire and going to challenge you on a monthly basis. You get the weekly updated meal plans. But on top of that, you guys also have the WarriorBabe Blast Off emails that are so freaking important, coming to you for the first 14 days of you joining this journey, okay? It's going to help transition you into this lifestyle, quote-unquote lifestyle.

This isn't another 21-day fix. This isn't another six weeks to killer abs. I don't know what the fuck is out there. All the unrealistic shit, okay? It's not going to be six months to a dead-end goal where you're just going to gain all your weight back. All right? These 14 days are going to help transition you into the lifestyle. Get your goals set. What do you want to accomplish here? Have a clear outcome of what you want to accomplish. Dive into macros. Dive into workouts. Find your accountability partner.

Guys, if you don't have an accountability partner, shame on you, man. I've heard nothing but good things, especially with the new VIPs, about how important it is and how much they rely on their accountability partner on a daily basis. I mean, think of it. You've got me two times a week. You've got me here on the rally calls, and you've got the Q&As on Wednesday. But how about if you had somebody else that was a WarriorBabe helping you on a daily basis, pushing you, driving you to show up for your workouts and hit your macros? You guys send your MyFitnessPal logs to each other. Become friends on MyFitnessPal, right? Find your accountability partner.

Don't let that one fall through the cracks. Don't think, oh, I don't need an accountability partner. That means you really fucking need an accountability partner, okay? And even if you don't think you need one, still show up for somebody else. You can be an inspiration to somebody else. You can help somebody be motivated on a daily basis and show up for themselves. All right?

The Blast Off emails: every single day, one video coming to you to help you transition into this lifestyle. Get used to my language. Get used to my no bullshit approach. Get used to the way that I just call it straight, shoot straight: this is what you need to fucking do, this is what you don't need to do. All right? So make sure you guys are tuning into them. Even the veteran WarriorBabes, I always say go back and listen to them again and again and again. There's so much more downtime right now. You can easily wake up and put your headspace in a really good space for your day by just listening to those videos. All right? So I highly recommend them, even to the veteran WarriorBabes.

And then one last thing before I dive into today's topic, you guys: questions. Please, please, please don't be that person who asks questions that can be answered inside the application. If you are new, take the time to search through there and listen to everything that I am sharing with you. There's a bunch of golden nuggets. There's a bunch of tools. There's a bunch of resources. Take the time to sift through them and learn everything that's inside your application. Click around. That's how I learn everything. Just click around. And on day two of the Blast Off emails, you're getting a full-on navigation of the entire application, to help show you what's inside the app and what you have access to.

But if your question can't be answered by you just sifting through and getting used to everything, then click on the Need Help section on the home screen, and that will take you to our Frequently Asked Questions resource page. It's an entire platform that we update on a monthly basis with our most frequently asked questions. So go there. Search for your questions there. Get used to that platform as well. There are so many tools and resources here to help you along your journey.

If your questions can't be answered inside the app or in the FAQs, then head to the Facebook group and ask your fellow WarriorBabes, or tag Kate or tag myself. Kate is our community manager who is in there every single day, and she's answering all of the questions that you guys have to help make sure there's clarity around any specific thing that you need help on.

The last place that you guys should be going for questions is support. Okay? Support is technical. Support is membership questions. They're not there to help you with fitness and nutrition. That's what the community is about. That's what I'm about every single Wednesday on Q&A days. Please don't go to support asking questions like that, okay? Because I don't want them feeding you information that you can receive better inside the community or from me in the Q&As.

And then respect boundaries. Please do not message my team members outside the Facebook group. Keep everything inside the Facebook group. And I say that because I don't want your questions to go ignored. It gets too messy when somebody is messaging somebody else in the messaging feature. Maybe that person doesn't even know how to use it. So keep it all in one space. Keep it all inside of our community on Facebook. All right, guys?

Okay, so with that being said, I'm fucking excited. I'm taking the gloves off. I'm taking a no-bullshit approach right now. I'm removing the fluff, and I'm about to get really, really real with you guys, okay?

Today's topic is seek failure. Seek failure.

Okay, how many of you guys go three weeks, four weeks, and the motivation starts to dwindle? You start to lose all motivation to get your workouts done. It feels like a chore just to track your macros. And then you end up binge eating one day, or two days, or three days, and you feel like you've completely failed yourself and your program. How many of you guys have done that? How many of you guys are in the midst of that right now and you're trying to pull yourself back, and it's, hey, I'm going to start on Monday because Monday's a new week? And then you beat yourself up, you get in your own way, and then you get even harder on yourself and your emotions get the best of you and you start turning to more food. I'm sure I'm triggering a bunch of you guys right now.

Or how many of you guys check in after a week or two weeks and you look at yourself in the mirror or you see all these data points: your scale's not moving, pictures look the same, measurements look the same, yada, yada, yada. You think that you're a failure. You think this program isn't working. You think that you've got something wrong with your body. Right? How many of you guys feel that way, or have felt that way? Okay, so I'm specifically talking to you guys.

Or even, how many of you guys have had injuries, and you feel like, fuck, man, I'm failing. I can't do my workouts. I can't do my cardio because this thing's holding me back. I feel like a failure. How many of you guys feel like an absolute freaking failure at some point in your journey? I'm sure you guys have all had it. I've had it. There have been multiple times where I broke down crying inside the gym. There have been multiple times where I didn't hit my macros. There have been multiple times where I just wanted to give up.

And you know what, guys? I'm about to bring a different light to failure. I want you guys to seek failure. I want you guys to become obsessed with failure. And I'm going to dive into why you should become obsessed. And I'm taking this right from the book You Squared. So I'm going to be reading a few paragraphs, and I'm going to veer off course as I'm reading them to you to explain how I think those paragraphs specifically relate to the situations that I just talked about. All right?

So let me just start off. Unless you allow yourself to make mistakes, to fail, you will never have the opportunity to test the limits of what you are truly capable of accomplishing. You must realize that if you're experiencing no difficulties, if you're experiencing no problems, if you're experiencing no pain, then you have aimed too low for yourself. You've leveled off in your achievement and you're far from reaching the goals that you want to accomplish.

Another thing too is that a lot of people hole up in their safe zone of behavior, where they have beaten the odds of failing, right? What lies inside of that is an unwillingness to encounter defeat or run into problems as you're becoming the best new version of yourself. So unless you allow yourself to make mistakes, to fail, you will never have the opportunity to test the limits of what you are truly capable of accomplishing.

So I want you guys to start thinking of problems or slippage in your performance as a positive sign. Like I said, how many of you guys veer off track with your workouts or veer off track with your macros? You don't hit everything in one week. Look at that slippage in performance as a positive sign, because this performance lag occurs at the very onset, when you are making and becoming that next best version of yourself. Joke's on you if you have that performance lag the next week and the week after that. Joke's on you. But if you can actually look at failure as a learning lesson, look at a performance lag as a learning opportunity, then that's where you become that next best version of yourself. That's what I'm talking about here.

The performance lag ordinarily occurs at the very onset, when you are about to make and become that next best version of yourself. It's the pause during which you poise for a jump, the temporary lost momentum. You feel that lost momentum whenever you veer off track, whenever you don't hit your workouts, whenever you fall behind on your macros. You lose that momentum, but you're actually in the process of changing gears. Because if you can actually learn in that moment, learn in that pain that you are experiencing, learn in that self-sabotage that you are creating for yourself, if you can learn, this is where you move yourself forward.

Okay, let me tell you before I dive into this next paragraph: this is where a lot of people give up. When they think they failed, or they hit a performance lag, and then they hit a performance lag the next week and the following week after that, this is where people give up. This is the fucking comfort zone. This is the status quo. You know what, guys? If everybody could do it, everybody would be doing it. But this is where people get in their own fucking way and they don't see failure as a learning opportunity, to change what they just did, to move forward in their performance, to move forward in showing up for themselves.

So if you can break through that, if you can learn from this, you literally deliberately destabilize yourself when you break out of the habit patterns that represent the status quo that I'm talking about. The habit patterns of yo-yoing. The habit patterns of not learning from your mistakes, one treat feeding into three treats, and five weeks later you're fucking gaining all your weight back. That is the habit pattern that I'm talking about. If you are able to seek this failure and look at failure in a better light and learn from the mistakes that you are making, this is how you become that next best version of yourself. Instead of getting lost in the habit patterns that represent the status quo, you literally deliberately destabilize yourself when you can break free of those habits.

But listen, at this point, every level has a new devil. You guys, The Rock says this. I say this all the time. Every level has a new devil. So when you break free from this habit, when you catch yourself and you learn from the failure and you're breaking free of what everybody else is doing, the Mondays and shit, oh, I'm just going to start on Monday, or oh, maybe next week, or fuck, man, I messed up my macros, I'm just going to go eat a pint of fucking ice cream. When you break free of this habit, you create some inner chaos for yourself.

Because here we go. I've talked about this before. You've got the two selves battling in your head. You've got the one that wants to remain in the comfort zone. You've got the other one that's like, I've got some fucking goals to meet. I'm going to break free from this. You start to create some inner chaos for yourself. So be prepared at that time for the possibility of confusion, for the possibility of anxiety.

For a perfect example, and oh my God, this is prime right now, I'm so glad this is coming to my mind: so many of the VIPs are coming up from the Revolution, from where you guys are. They're jumping on these onboarding calls with me. And the first thing they're saying is, I am so nervous. And it's not just from seeing me on the other end of the computer. They're like, what the fuck am I getting myself into? And that is a beautiful thing. We've been programmed since we were children to think that anxiety and being scared and all this shit is a bad thing. It's actually a really fucking good thing.

You are in that chaos of, oh, I just want to stay comfortable, oh, but I've got goals to meet. And you're fighting yourself, like two people inside of you. The one is trying to keep you safe. The other one is trying to move you forward after you break free of these specific patterns that you find yourself in. So be prepared for the anxiety. Be prepared for the possibility of failure. That's part of opening yourself up to new terminology, new methodology, new teachings that I'm providing you, which have the potential to deliver exponential performance gains.

And guys, this is fire right now. You guys better be like, damn, Nikkiey, yeah, okay, I need to fucking stop listening to the safety side of things, the safe zone, the comfort zone, and enjoy the chaos that I'm experiencing inside of my head when I'm breaking free of these habit patterns. Enjoy that. Welcome anxiety. Welcome failure. Welcome being nervous and scared, because you are literally on the brink of becoming that next best version of yourself. You are breaking free of the shit that has been holding you back.

But this is only possible for those people who learn from failure, who learn from their mistakes, who don't allow it to go two weeks or three weeks and a pint of ice cream later. You've got to embrace the pain that you feel when you fucked up. You've got to embrace the breakdowns. You've got to learn from them, because if you can feel that pain, like I say, joke's on you if you put yourself in that pain again. Literally. You learn from it and then you move forward by not doing the same thing that got you in that position. So many human beings love pain, but they love it for the wrong reasons. I don't know why.

So anyway, back to it. So often in life it seems things first get worse on the way towards getting better. Okay, this is another great example. VIPs are coming up into my program, right? They're moving up from the Revolution into the VIP. They're getting in their own way. They're self-sabotaging themselves, stepping on the scale, not seeing the number move, and then just throwing up their pictures. And you guys can relate to this. Throwing up your pictures on a weekly basis and nothing has changed. Okay.

With anything, jumping forward, breaking through something and starting something new, believe me, things are going to get worse before they get better. You've heard that terminology before: things get worse before they get better. But you have the ability to control that turnaround just by mentally talking to yourself in a better way. Stop the negative chatter and start changing your perception and perspective on the journey that you are on.

So another thing, as I'm reading through this: you will break through these performance lags like I'm talking about, and you will break through that habit that I just shared with you, and you will experience the chaos going on inside of your head between staying comfortable and moving forward. And when anxiety and failure happen, or the possibility of them, you'll experience it and you'll start getting better for yourself. Every level has a new devil. But then everything else kind of starts to fall apart.

For example, fuck, what can I say? Maybe somebody gets hurt in your home, or a husband doesn't support your goals. I don't know. Something is always going to happen that makes it harder for you as you become better for yourself. Every level has a new devil, like I said. And at this point, you guys, it's really, really, really easy to lose faith, to lose faith in yourself, when all these problems start to occur. And they will occur. But this is the shit that makes you stronger. You've got to learn to handle this better, because I see a lot of people, I see a lot of weak people breaking at this point.

And yeah, I'm being completely full-on blunt right now, because my job is to help you become an extra stronger version of yourself. This is the way you're going to do it, by applying this kind of mindset. Okay, so sorry, not sorry, hashtag, if I'm being too blunt.

But like I said, the hard reality is problems may slap you in the fucking face. I'm telling you, progress often masquerades as trouble. As you're making progress for yourself, you will notice everything else around you maybe starts to fall apart. And like I said, it's easy to lose faith. People may withdraw their support and be critical of your efforts moving forward.

You will lose friends. I've lost dozens of friends on my journey. And you know what? That's okay. Because are you going to stop becoming that next best version of yourself just because somebody doesn't support your goals and your efforts? Fuck that. If they're friends, walk away from them, because they're just holding you back. If it's a loved one, have a conversation with them where you're supporting yourself, you're supporting your goals. Sell them on the reason why you want to become a better person. And fuck, man, they'd better hear you out. And if they don't, still keep going, babe. Still keep showing up for yourself.

But listen, when you start showing up more, progress often masquerades as trouble and creates more problems in your life. Plus, if this does happen, you start to lose faith. Other people may withdraw their support, like I said, and be critical of your efforts, and then you start having anxieties and uncertainties and contempt for yourself. You can turn on yourself in this instance, and a lot of people do this. And this is why, two, three, four months in, maybe friends don't support what you're doing, or somebody says a comment to you like, if you keep lifting you're going to look like a man, that kind of shit. You start to create uncertainties: am I really worthy of this? Am I enough? And then you start to turn on yourself.

This is the critical point in your process to not fucking give up. Guys, if I had listened to anybody and everybody who did not support me five years ago on my journey, if I had fallen victim to the emotional expressions that I was seeing on people's faces about what I was doing, if I had listened to the comments and the shit that people were saying, oh, she just takes steroids, she does it the easy way, oh, she looks like a man, I would not be where I am right now today.

So if you start to turn on yourself, if you start to have anxiety or uncertainties, if you start to lose faith, this is a critical point in the process to never fucking give up on yourself. This is where failure belongs. Failure belongs here. But it's a sign of progress. It sounds so fucked up, but it's a sign of progress. Everything that you will experience at this point of your journey is a sign of your progress moving forward. Okay?

And let me tell you, the stress will seduce you towards retreating to the safety of the status quo, the trap of the familiar. Just remember this: failure does not mean that you are defeated. The shit that you're experiencing as you make progress does not mean that you are defeated. This struggle, the things that you experience, the things that you have to deal with as you go towards your goals, gives you the fucking strength. And this is the light that people don't see it in. It gives you the fucking strength. It's like tempering steel, or the soreness involved in developing muscle. Literally, it gives you the strength, mentally and physically. The difficulties are just evidence that you are learning and progressing. You have to look at it this way, or you're going to be forever held back from reaching the goals that you want to accomplish.

So on the ending note here: go looking for failure, and then use it and become obsessed with it as you progress forward in your journey. Because you will know that when you fail, you're just making progress. When things start falling apart around you, you are just making progress. Don't interpret problems or breakdowns as proof that you should fucking quit, but instead take them as evidence of your own growth and improvement.

You guys, instead of being afraid of failure, instead of giving up whenever failure shows up, look at failure as a resource. It helps you find the edge of your capabilities, of what you are actually capable of accomplishing. But it's up to you to push forward and to never, ever, ever give up. Because failure is inevitable. It's going to happen. It's just the way that you respond to it.

And let me tell you, if I had let failure be the driver of my own car, I would never be where I am today. You have to let failure be in the back seat while you're the driver, and you're like, I'm taking control today. I'm in control of this car. I'm in control of the steering wheel. I'm going forward. Failure can just take a back seat, and you can almost embrace the failure that you experience on your journey. Seriously, kind of do a dance with it. See it in the rear-view mirror of your car and be like, yeah, dude, yeah, failure, I know you're there. You ain't going to stop me. And drive that fucking car forward.

All right, you guys, that concludes our rally call for today. The topic was seek failure. If you are just joining in, because I heard the ding, I highly recommend you go back and listen to this entire rally call again. It's going to be life-changing and help you moving forward on your journey. Okay? So let me know your feedback inside the Facebook group, inside the community. I want to hear what you guys thought about this rally call. And I appreciate every single one of you guys. Show up for yourself. It's a new week. Keep the focus on the goals that you want to accomplish. And if failure pops up this week, you know what to do now. All right, I love you guys. See ya. Thank you. Thank you.