The day I stopped waiting to be saved

There used to be a time in my life where I was waiting to be saved.

I lived with the mindset of poor me, my life is hard. Poor me, all these bad things are happening to me.

Poor me, I have too much fat on my body, I’m out of shape, I’m unhealthy, I’m poor, I’m stressed, and the list went on. And to a certain extent, all those things were true.

This was when I had just turned 22 years old. I had just come off traveling the world via hitchhiking because I had no money and I didn’t want that to stop me from exploring. It was about eight months after I met this wonderful girl, and within three months of us dating, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Mind you, when I met her, I was living on a couch, paying $150 a month to live at a friend’s house in Vancouver. I had nothing.

And there it was: the big diagnosis, the big life changing moment. When the doctor told Jen, “You have breast cancer,” my heart sank. That bus ride from the hospital back to the couch was a brutal one.

That’s when I decided to stay because of love. I got a better job in Vancouver and got my own apartment. It was my first time renting a place in my life, my first time having monthly bills, my first time living with a girl, and my first time being a caregiver to someone I cared about who had cancer.

It was the hardest transition I had ever made up to that point.

I even called my closest friend six or seven months into it and told him it was too much and that I wanted to jump off the Cambie bridge. I’m happy I didn’t.

We talked over the phone until two in the morning, and he made me realize that I was imagining all these awful scenarios in my head because I was afraid and had never been in a situation like this before. He told me, “Listen, none of these things have actually happened. They are all situations you made up in your head that are making you suffer, and there is a high likelihood that none of those things will ever happen.”

He was right.

As I continued down this path in what I would call the hardest chapter of my life, I slowly, over time, fell into a victim mindset.

And that close friend of mine I was talking to on that dark night became labeled in my head as my savior. He had done really well for himself financially and saved my ass more times than I can count.

When I lost everything almost eight years ago, he gave me a place to live for dirt cheap and helped pay my rent. He gave me a car so that I could drive to a new job that paid more, even though it was an hour away from our place.

Ah, I loved that car. It was an old beater 1989 Toyota Corolla (which I ended up hydroplaning in on a rainy day one year later right before my big Ironman 70.3 race in Whistler, totaling the car and smashing both my knees).

He gave me a job running his supplement company called Vytogo, which was too early for its time and has now been restarted as Nutrigazm, which you might have seen me share online before as Ivy and I are now investors in the company. It’s funny looking back now.

He was the first person to believe in me and see CEO qualities in me.

I didn’t expect my writing to go in this direction, but you guys know that I write from the soul and I don’t plan ahead of time what I’m going to write about.

To get back on topic: because that good friend had always been there for me, I started to rely on him to help me financially. I was doing fundraisers left and right to help pay for cancer treatments because I worked almost a minimum-wage job, and it feels crazy to say that now, looking back.

Looking back, I realized I was letting my fear trap me in a victim mindset, when the person who truly needed all my strength and support was Jen, who was fighting for her life every single day. I don’t have a lot of regrets, but I wish I had understood sooner that taking ownership was the only way I could truly show up for her.

It wasn’t until three to three and a half years into the cancer journey that I got tired of waiting for the knight in shining armor, and I realized that I had to BE the knight in shining armor.

It was also the time when I was laid off from my corporate job because they were running out of money. Not only did I not have a job anymore, I didn’t have the company car, which I was also using to drive to cancer treatments.

I was running out of money to pay for my apartment. I had $34.37 in my bank account, minus $70,000 in debt. No money for rent. That’s when I started eating at the food bank so that any money I had could go directly to my partner to buy organic fruits and vegetables for her healing. I just ate whatever came in that brown paper bag.

That’s what made me really hit rock bottom, and that’s when I decided to take control of my life. It didn’t happen overnight, and it took years of relentless, unglamorous work, but I committed to building something that provided real value to the world while allowing me to pay for cancer treatments and organic food. That resolve is what birthed my first company, Fit Vegan Coaching, which has now evolved into Mavy Wellness.

It wasn’t until I made the decision to take ownership of my life, my actions, my decisions, and my mind that my life started to change.

I’ve had several moments like that in my life where I’ve gotten out of shape, blamed it on circumstances, and then finally had enough. I would tell myself, “I need to tighten up. This is my responsibility. No one is coming to save me. No one is coming to do the workout for me. No one is going to stop buying the junk food for me. No one is going to make or eat the healthy meal for me. I need to do it, because if I’m waiting for someone or blaming everything, my body, my health, and my household will never change.”

And don’t get me wrong, I have my moments just like any other person where I waver off and forget to tighten up certain areas of my life. But when things start to drift too far, I catch myself and remind myself that it is my responsibility to:

• Take care of myself

• Take care of my wife

• Take care of my family

• Take care of the clients we serve

Any time things start to go sideways, I’m not trying to blame circumstances. The reality is that it is my responsibility, and I need to take ownership.

That is why, when I was 80 lbs overweight, I had to be honest with myself: for me, my body was a direct reflection of my daily choices. I was putting food in my mouth that didn’t serve me, and I was eating far too much of it. It wasn’t my genetics or my circumstances holding me back; it was my lack of ownership over my own plate. I’m not here to preach from a high mountain as if it was an easy journey or a perfect one, but over time, I was able to get there. I was able to develop my mind, my habits, and my strategies.

I understood from the start that if I sought a shortcut, I would get short-term results, and I was looking for lifelong results. Anyone can be fit for two or three months, but who cares? I’d rather be fit for decades.

It wasn’t until I stopped blaming the world, the environment, and my lifestyle that things started to change. I had to take ownership. I realized I had direct control over:

• What food came into my house

• What food went into my mouth

• Whether I worked out or not

• Whether I went to bed on time or not

• Whether I let my phone control me and affect my sleep at night or not

• Whether I read a book for the day or not

• Whether I prioritized date night with my wife every week or not

• How I showed up every single day

I think that is the beauty of being human: we have so much more power than we realize, but we tend to forget it.

I think what needs to happen for a lot of people is to simply get tired and get pissed off with how things are going, whether in your health, your fitness, your relationships, your finances, or your household. Start taking real ownership over your actions, your decisions, and your lack of action, because choosing to do nothing is still a decision.

I wanted to share this today because I recently caught myself lacking in the area of my fitness and nutrition. Twelve weeks ago, I made the commitment to retake ownership and really dial back in. Right now, I am in the best shape I’ve been in for years, and I feel fantastic.

By the way, I was not out of shape by society’s standards before I started, but now I am at a place that matches my personal standard for how I want to show up for my life and the people around me. Having a strong body gives me the energy to do everything I want to do in this world.

I hope this resonates with someone today because this one came straight from the soul. Am I perfect? Do I do things right every single time? Far from it. But whenever I realize that I am giving ownership away, that’s my cue to take it back, own my actions, and focus on what truly matters.

Sincerely,

Maxime Sigouin

PS: If this post resonated with you today, drop a comment below or reply to this email and tell me: what is one area of your life where you are choosing to take extreme ownership back starting today? I read every single reply and I would love to hear your story.