Results
Comparison with others
Mistakes are not OK
Results: You think in terms of your workouts as results oriented. You have a specific goal in mind with each workout. You based your workouts weekly on if you see changes. If you don‟t see significant changes quickly it‟s frustrated and discouraging. Comparison with Others: You know what I mean. Looking at photos and wishing you looked like that or wondering if that person takes drugs to have those abs. Always comparing your results with those around you or focusing on others rather than yourself. If you had a good workout, you might not even care if you don‟t feel you got the results you wanted because you are too busy comparing yourself to a fitness model. Men are guiltier than anybody of not checking the ego at the door. “Team-Ego” takes over and more often than not, males are more concerned with the weight they can push compared to others than the effort they give. Rather than learn or worry about the effort they are giving, it‟s a numbers game.
How many times have you been on a bodybuilding forum and seen these threads:
How much can you bench?
How much can you squat?
How big are your arms?
Who cares? Mistakes are not OK: Ever make a mistake? Who hasn‟t? When you were a baby, did you just learn how to walk from the start? Even in nutrition people make mistakes. But they are taught that mistakes can be deadly. Derail their goals. You better get it right and fast or you‟ll be wasting years struggling to get the results you want. Making mistakes is bad! Now here‟s how a master defines success. This is a person who looks beyond the short term aspects of fitness and knows that the above will be guaranteed if they focus on the long term outcomes of their workouts. Define success like this and your entire life will change. How A Master Defines Success:
Effort
Learning
Mistakes are OK
Effort: Define your workouts based on the effort you gave or its intensity. The way you feel. Did you have a good workout because you gave it 100% effort? If you start to think in terms of the effort you are giving, the results from that effort will be guaranteed. No need to worry about results because if you put forth your best effort, they are coming no matter what you do. This is long term thinking. As long as you gave it your best effort, that‟s all that matters. You don‟t care about the weight compared to anybody else. The only person you are in competition with is yourself. You can use other people as motivation but you aren‟t comparing yourself to them. If it helps you to raise the intensity so that you can give more effort, that‟s great. But it‟s all about the effort you gave in the gym. Learning: Rather than focus on why you don‟t have that six pack of abs or why your friend is more lean, concentrate on learning how they got that way. Learning is beyond the short term mentality of comparing yourself to other people. The more you learn, the easier it will be to reach your goals. Forget other people. All that matters is YOU! When it comes to health and fitness you can be self-centered. After all, it‟s your health we‟re talking about. Mistakes are OK: If you aren‟t allowed to make mistakes, how can you learn from them? When you learned to walk, you first learned to crawl. You fell over. The same thing is true for riding a bike, driving a car, learning how to scuba dive. Make those mistakes with nutrition. Screw up in the gym and learn from them. Instead of beating yourself down for making a simple nutritional error in judgment, learn from that mistake.
Ask yourself how did it happen?
Were you in a position where you didn‟t have the best food choices?
Maybe you didn‟t know which options would have been best?
Could you have prepared better?
All too often we are taught that mistakes are not ok. People who achieve great success often make several hundred if not thousands of mistakes. They are ok to make and they learn from them. They keep giving 100% effort. The conclusion is that if you think in terms of effort, learning and mistakes are okay, you will achieve the results you want. It‟s when you think in the short term that you put limitations on yourself. Change your definitions and you will be guaranteed success!
