I have been having a lot of conversations over the last week, which has sparked my need/want to write this. I really should start a blog page or post my thoughts here more often so people can read if they want to.
YOU and the life you live are a result of the choices YOU make.
Very well known and cliché quote but its fitting for what I’m going to say here.
I’ve said this sort of thing before so its nothing new but when you go to the gym, you make the choice to either go through the motions and get a workout in or you can make the choice to go in and work as hard as you possibly can.
My bet is if you’re the type of person who goes in and goes through the motions you may not have achieved the goals you’re wanting to… and if you have then I don’t believe you when you say you’re just “going through the motions”.
We all make goals based off of a feeling or result that we perceive to be successful. Whether it’s a performance-based goal, a physical goal, or a health related goal the work required to achieve that goal is hard…
HARD…. What is hard? Hard when defined is “done with a great deal of effort”.
Effort is quite subjective and is defined as the exertion of physical or mental power.
Hard:
-Being uncomfortable when you’re out of breath
-Doing ALL 50 pull ups with your chin going over the bar on EVERY REP
-Saying no to dessert.
Those things require you to work hard and they require effort if you want to see change.
Where I am going with this is you have to now make a choice. How much physical and mental exertion are you going to exert in this “hard” situation? What choice you will make?
When you rest in a workout, you are making that choice. When you count the rep that doesn’t have your chin over the bar, that’s YOUR choice. When you say YES to dessert, you chose to have it.
Those choices I’ve just listed are the EASIER choices. They don’t require as much effort and the satisfaction for making that choice lasts 10 minutes (if you’re talking about a workout) and probably 2 minutes (if you eat dessert.) After you’ve cooled down, you say “if I hadn’t of rested for 10 seconds every round in those 6 rounds, I would of gotten it done 1 minute faster” or if I wish I didn’t eat that dessert – I just ruined my week of eating really well.
The HARDER choices of picking up the bar when you’re out of breath, or not resting too long , doing ALL 50 pull ups with your chin over the bar and saying no to desert all require A HIGHER LEVEL OF PHYISCALAND MENTAL EXERTION (EFFORT) and will lead to longer term success and a greater sense of achievement.
Every time you push yourself and pick up the bar when your heart rate is high, you get a little better.
It’s easier to describe with the pull up and desert examples. If you do fifty reps meeting the standard, that’s another fifty pull ups that you have NOW done and you can add to your pull up bank. If you say NO to desert 5 times and every desert is a loss of 200g in weight, that’s 1 KILO you could lose.
It’s a physical and mental battle that you can either chose to win or lose i.e. – achieve or not achieve. The thing is, the “win/achievement” in some cases takes longer to see. You just have to trust that if you are honestly putting your BEST effort in, IT WILL HAPPEN and you will succeed.
I have been doing this for almost 10 years. I have done thousands of push ups, wall balls, thrusters, pull ups etc. etc. and because of the EFFORT I put in and my ability to work HARD, I have become quite good at this exercise thing… but also have changed my mindset in the process.
I wasn’t born good at this. I couldn’t do a pull up or push up or even run 400 m when I started, butI worked hard and looked for the areas where I could find success and wasn’t afraid to fail.
I did every push up with my chest touching the floor – even when the coach turned his back because I knew then I could add that as ‘another one’ I had done well.
Effort like I have already said is subjective and is mental and physical exertion. I truly believe its 90% mental and 10% physical. Your mind is so much stronger than you think and your head will give up on you before your body will. Your mind is like any muscle…. It needs to be trained. It needs to be fearful, it needs to succeed, it needs to be open to challenges, but most importantly it needs to fail. It needs to FAIL but then it needs to be picked up again to accomplish anything.
All of what I have said doesn’t just relate to exercise. It can relate to building successful relationships, business and just LIFE! You just need to take responsibility for what happens to you, work hard with all of the effort and make the best choice for long term success.
An insight to my crazy mind—
What I find hard and what pushes me to give my best effort is knowing that choosing the “harder option” is going to set me up to feeling successful for the rest of the day.
Yesterday, I prd my 2km row (YAY for me ☺) I am not a LOVER of the 2km row. Its one of my most feared workouts. It’s a test of your ability to endure excruciating pain for a solid 6-8 minutes of your life. I was 1200m in. I had set the screen so I could see my “projected finish time” and I was doin’ it.
800m left and I’m hitting a wall…. Legs are burning, heart rate through the roof, arms wanting to fall off… WANTING to die,…I had this voice in one ear just saying – stop. It hurts way too much, your legs are on fire, your arse is cramping, your lungs are burning and its so incredibly uncomfortable… its not worth it… then I had another voice saying, 800m, it’s a song and a half, its three minutes… THREE FUCKING MINUTES…. Three minutes of your day…. You have come this far, finish it, be SO proud of yourself, your effort and your ability have the physical – but more importantly MENTAL win. It’s the difference between being successful today and failing today.
That whole conversation in my head lasted about three seconds… the point is, i have those thoughts of giving up and stopping too sometimes, but i don’t CHOOSE to do that.
The difference between a successful person and an unsuccessful person is up to the CHOICES you make.
The difference between you and me is my ability to push beyond what my MIND thinks its capable of.
You CAN do that too, you just gotta do it!
Its all in our heads!
JB <3