Some people just never quit. They have ferocious persistence and they never let go of their goals. They're like the bulldog that refuses to release its teeth-hold on a bone. No matter how hard you try to pull it out of his mouth... the harder the dog chomps down with a vice like grip. Other people abandon their biggest goals and dreams at the first obstacle they encounter. Did you ever wonder why that is? There is a reason.

An extremely important guideline for achieving fitness and fat loss success is the concept that there is no failure; only feedback. You don’t “fail”, you only get results.

This is a concept from Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and the first time I ever heard it was from Anthony Robbins. It stuck with me and never left me, because it’s a very, very powerful shift in mindset.

A lot of people will second-guess themselves and they’ll bail out and quit, just because what they try at first doesn’t work. They consider it a permanent failure, but all they need is a little attitude change, a mindset change, or what we call a reframe.

Instead of saying, “This is failure” they can say to themselves, “I produced a result” and “this is only temporary.” This change in perspective is going to change the way that they move forward and how they mentally process and explain the experience. It turns into a learning experience and valuable feedback for a course correction and not a failure.

It's all about your results and your interpretation of those results.

Dr Martin Seligman, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, did some incredible research on this subject and reported it in his book, Learned Optimism. Dr. Seligman noticed that the difference between people who give up and people who persist and never quit is what he referred to as “explanatory style.” He said that explanatory style is the way we explain or interpret bad events or failures.

People who habitually give up have an explanatory style of permanence. They hit a plateau in their diet and explain it by saying, “diet’s never work” or “I have bad genetics so I’ll always be fat.” These explanations imply permanence. Other people hit a plateau and explain it by saying, “I ate out too many times this week,” or “I haven’t found the right diet for my body type yet.” These explanations of your results imply being temporary.

The people who see obstacles as temporary and as valuable learning experiences are the ones who never quit and if you learn from past experiences, not repeating what doesn’t work, and if you never quit, you eventually must succeed. Those who see obstacles or negative results as permanent failure are the ones who give up easily and often generalize their failure to other areas of their lives.