Don’t Wish for Success!

I remember many years wasted “wishing” that I was fit and healthy. I thought about success in fitness a lot, every day. I bought various books, joined programs and bought gym memberships. I tried to exercise enough that I could eat whatever I wanted. I went to extreme lengths to avoid simply being accountable to myself for my own well-being. It has been said that the simplest answer is usually the answer and nowhere is this more true than in the pursuit of fitness. Eat better, move more. That’s about it. I was willing to try about anything else and my weight bounced all over the place. I have been a size 22 and a size 7 at 5’6″. Until I became accountable for my own actions, I had no stability and my health was beginning to suffer.

Tools of the Trade

Optimism

People who are successful at anything have some common characteristics. They are positive about whatever they are engaged in. They are optimistic that the activity is worth the effort they are putting into it. Something as simple as a term paper can be made great or a complete failure depending on the expected outcome. If you believe that you will get a good grade, you will give the project your best effort. If you believe that you will fail, no matter what, you will plod through the research with the least effort and the resulting paper will show your lack of enthusiasm. The same is true in your pursuit of health and fitness. If you have clear goals and believe them to be worthwhile, and obtainable, you will work harder and longer and you will reap the rewards.

Be Willing to Learn for Success!

You must be willing to learn in order to achieve success. We have all seen the guy who walks into a gym and is an expert immediately. This is the same guy who gives unwanted advice, flexes incessantly in the mirror and talks more than he works. If it’s a woman, she is probably spending more time on her phone and adjusting her ponytail than working out. No matter what a trainer tries to tell them, as soon as the trainer is out of the picture, they resort to their own way of doing things. Before long, they quit coming to the gym. They are unteachable.

Health and fitness has to be studied. In times past, healthy living was a given. People ate whole food, worked hard and slept well. Unfortunately, those days are gone. The fast-paced, drive-thru, microwave, instant world that we find ourselves in now is conducive to laziness and neglect of the human body. It is necessary to learn the lost art of being healthy. With social media reigning supreme, a false perfect appearance has replaced a healthy, natural body as the standard to attain. Since perfection is impossible without photo-shopping, people just give up. Forget the lying hype of social media and learn about health.

Resilience

Resilience is always present in a successful project. Resilience enables you to realize when a course of action needs to be modified and enables you to seek out a course that will work. Sometimes when we begin a new lifestyle, we want to cling to old ways. If those habits didn’t give you the desired end in the past, what makes you think that they will now? As you learn new ways of eating and moving your body, move away from habits that no longer serve your new goals. Resilience enables you to find the way that will work to take you where you want to go. Follow the ebb and flow of learning and change. That is the only way that growth can occur.

Success Comes By Persistence!

All success is based on persistence. When I first began lifting weights, I had “Newbie Gains”. I gained muscle and increased my strength fast. I was intoxicated with the feeling of power flowing into my body. I couldn’t believe how fast I was changing! David warned me that I would “fail” first at the Overhead Press because it used the smallest muscles in the body. Boy was he right! When I first started being unable to complete all of my reps, it was hard to accept. If David had not warned me about it, I would have thought that I was just not cut out to lift. The truth is, had I not gotten to that point, then I would not have been cut out to lift, because it would have meant that I had already quit!

EVERYONE gets to that point. The gains comes slower and slower until they stop for a while. That’s when you find out if you are a lifter. If you are, you keep lifting. You analyze your nutrition, sleep and activities to see where you can improve and then go again. The god-like feeling of demolishing your workout every time that you walk into the gym is over. Now, it’s time to dig in and PERSIST. That’s when you get really strong.

This method of PERSISTING is what makes you strong in everything. If you run every time something gets hard or you “fail”, you will never master anything. Mastery takes time and lots of persistence. If you want to master your nutrition, it works the same way. You may make some changes and get some good results but as you get leaner and more athletic, you may need to make more. When you first begin counting your calories you will be able to eat more than you will after losing some weight. If you plateau and you know that you are counting your calories accurately, it may be time to adjust them down. ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR MEDICAL DOCTOR BEFORE BEGINNING ANY WEIGHT LOSS OR EXERCISE PROGRAM. Ask him/her how many you should eat if your weight loss slows or stops.

As you become more fit, you may need more exercise to achieve the results that you desire. I certainly did. Being persistent and adapting to the changes in our bodies is necessary if we want to achieve lifetime fitness. It certainly takes more exercise for me at 65 than it did at 25 to build and keep muscle. Being persistent in ferreting out what you need to upgrade, change, decrease or completely redo is mandatory to be successful in every endeavor of life.

And for Heaven’s Sake, remove negative influences from your life! You cannot be successful when you are surrounded by people who are jealous and lazy.

Oh, did I say “Eat Breakfast!”? Do that. You will overeat at some point in the day otherwise.

Above all, take care of yourself FIRST. Otherwise, you will fail at everything. Self-care is necessary to care for others. Get enough sleep. That’s more important than most people realize. If you have trouble sleeping, see your doctor.

When you decide that you are accountable to yourself for your health and well-being, it changes the way that you live your life. You will find success.

Remember, take care of your body.

It’s the only place that you have to live.

You will live, or die, with your decisions. Make good ones.