Are you the type of person that believes you create your own destiny? I am going to guess that if you are reading this, then somewhere inside of you, you do believe that. I often tell my students and gym members that you can either be like 99% of the population and go with the flow, kind of being pushed along the river of life or you can be a “one percenter”. The one percenters are the people who are going to stay up all hours of the night and work tirelessly to achieve their dreams. The worst thing to be is average or mediocre, yet most of the world is just that. The things that follow are very simple to do, yet very few make them a daily habit. If you continue on, I will teach you how to climb to the top of your own personal mountain and have a killer body to boot.
“Opportunities multiply as they are seized.” Sun Tzu
Discipline is a must if you are going to achieve anything worthwhile. As I said, I do compete and have competed in a number of bodybuilding shows and there is no sport in the world that requires more discipline than bodybuilding. Perhaps this is why I chose bodybuilding to compete in once my college years were done. I am often amazed at the lack of discipline that I see in adults and teenagers alike. Discipline is not something that just happens or that you are just naturally good at. As humans, we are all inherently lazy and we all want to be taken care of. We want to be shown the road to easyville (keep looking, it doesn’t exist). As far back as I can remember, I was making mental lists of what I had to do each day and the following day. Things really took off for me when I decided that the worst pencil is better than the best memory, so I started writing down what I had to do daily on the night prior. This change alone can take you so much further than you ever expected. The act of taking a few minutes to jot your “to do” list down will seep into your subconscious as you sleep, creating a snow ball effect. More importantly, your subconscious brain will work on those ideas and things that you have to get done while you are sleeping.
Many of the greatest “thinkers” of all time including Thomas Edison and Benjamin Franklin were notorious for waking up and jotting things down because answers had come to them in their sleep. Another important point of writing these things down is that your brain will seek to accomplish these things and complete the list by the end of the day. If this is new to you, start off easy, maybe writing one to three things down per night. As you get better and more efficient at working on your list, you can add a few more things. I am an avid reader (we will get to that in a minute) and I have heard Dan Kennedy say that every overnight success has taken at least 12 years. Think about that for a minute. Too many people want to create their list and work on it for 3 or 4 weeks and when they don’t see anything materializing, they give up. Those people just don’t understand that if you are planting a garden of greatness, the crop will take some time to materialize (I recommend Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell for an in-depth look at this). Make a list!
Second thing: become a voracious reader. I remember back when I started on my own personal journey to achieving my dreams that Tony Robbins said he read 700 books before he “made” it. He was an avid reader, just as you must be if you want to achieve greatness. I aim to read one book a week. Maybe you can start with 20 pages a day. At a recent seminar I was at, the speaker said if you read an hour a day for 3 years, you will be a leading national expert in your field and if you read an hour a day for 5-7 years, you will be a world authority. Doesn’t seem like too much of an investment to me. Show me someone who doesn’t read or claims they don’t have time to read and I will show you an average person (average is a curse word to me). It all depends on how badly you want to be great. Read books on self-development, in your chosen field and by great thinkers past and present. Reading is so powerful that it is actually scary. As I am writing this, I am sitting next to my library of books in which there are now over 400. I would be the first to admit that I would be average if it weren’t for my books. This principle, along with the one above are so simple to implement, yet very few people do. Will you make time for these things or will you put them on the shelf until tomorrow and then the next day and so on? The responsibility is yours and yours only and until you realize that, you will be stuck in neutral. This topic of success is so broad that you could fill dozens and dozens of books with it, but this should get you started on the right path. Hope to see you at the top my friend!
Now, on to my next passion: fitness. I am the owner and creator Newell Strength. I train athletes and men. My business is booming and has been for a number of years despite the fact that I used to run it out of my basement (I am now in a warehouse). Besides the facts mentioned above, I know the success of the business is directly linked to the results I get with my athletes and the knowledge I possess about the human body. I will make this short and sweet so you can put it to use today!
Too many people are still using outdated training methods such as body part (bodybuilding) training and/or they go the gym and walk or ride the bike for a half hour. This irks me to no end because the fitness of America is currently disgusting, but I’ll save that for another article and another time. The human body was designed to do 5 things, 6 if you want to stretch it. In no particular order, here they are:
- Push
- Pull
- Change levels
- Locomotion
- Rotation and anti-rotation
- Carry things
If you start designing your training program around these six movements, you will possess an exercise program that will take you to the highest level you could ever imagine in your own personal fitness regimen. The beauty of it is that you can use this knowledge to create a program for strength, fat loss, sports performance, conditioning and you will cut way down on nagging injuries. The other variables to think about would be order of exercises, will there be complexes, how much rest time, how many sets and reps and so on. Do not stray from the fundamental human movements. In addition to this, stay off machines, eat a paleo or keto diet for 90% of your meals and you will have a new body within 3 months. Again, simple, yet most people don’t do it. Be a game changer, don’t wait for others. Combine this with the success principles above and you will be a serious force to contend with!
