Category: motivation

It’s good to be written off and told you will never do something with your life, because especially now in dark and wet November, it’s the perfect excuse to light a fire inside of you.

It encourages you to pull out the stops, do all the stuff you know you should be doing (but maybe stopped doing), it’s important to DO THE WORK and keep slamming it in relentlessly, because with that approach, you will cause a ruckus and will will desperately upset the people who wrote you off (which is great).

Everyone needs to be kicked up the behind now and then, and we need to get serious about habits that will transform us from where we may be struggling now, to a place where we can be mightily proud of in the near future.

To do it though your priorities must change.

Your workouts must be on top of the “to do list”-no compromises.

No more putting rubbish in your shopping basket, it will take you further AWAY from your goals and will keep that mediocrity feeling going that much longer.

Tell your very close circle what you REALLY want, and ask them to support you even when you are tempted to quit, miss workouts, eat rubbish or when you start to doubt your ability all over again.

It is said that the wolf who is climbing the mountain is ALWAYS hungrier than the wolf at the top of the mountain, so someone continuously writing you off is not always fun to put up with, but if you use that criticism and doubt as FUEL for your fire to keep climbing, to keep getting stronger, fitter and getting your mind much stronger, that negativity can be much more useful than you thought.

“Zooming in” in on the stuff you really want to accomplish makes all the difference.

Ask most people why they are exercising and they will usually say “I just want to be fit and healthy”.

Drill down under that, and you will see a lot more. 

Deeper reasons are more like “I want to help my blood pressure out after the doctor told me exercising would reduce my chances of getting a stroke”,

“I have put on 2 stone this year, and I’ve never felt so bad, it’s got to go and my clothes need to fit again and my energy needs to come back!”.

“My balance is terrible and I’ve had a couple of falls, it’s stopping me doing so many things in life I used to do, I need to improve it urgently”.

“My mental health is struggling big time, I feel low most of the time and it’s destroying my life, and I know exercise will help me feel better, and I need help get out of this big rut I am in”.

Everyone has got their own reason for exercising, and it will always make you stick to it more if you focus on the most important reason that is so special to YOU.

Here’s a couple of things I live my life by every day, I wasn’t always like this but I’ve learned to put my trust in these principles at the gym.

I’ve learned to trust that most people have positive intentions and want to do some good in life, and they should always have a great welcome.

I ask a lot of all of you at times, but I ask those big things out of you expecting a “yes” from you instead of a “no way”, and it’s meant to be a sign of respecting your true ability, and never letting you go through the motions.

Problems often crop up at the gym, but the quicker we come up with a solution the better, when we act on our problems it stops us thinking about them  and waking us up at 3am, every single thing in life we can figure it out, or at least make the very best out of it.

The recent brutal weather puts all in a difficult mood at times, but when we fall back on what our training has given us, we realise the best in life is yet to come, we do have enough energy to change difficult moments in our life, we can help people out of dark situations around us too because we have learned true resilience and grit, and we need to lead from the front-ALWAYS.

It is said that the Special Forces are always training, always keeping themselves ready for action, ready for combat and always on the “edge”.

Their philosophy is that if you train well all the time across a variety of scenarios, and you train with real intensity, then you are ready for any eventuality, physically and mentally, and you can rely on your training.

We are what we train to do, and our training becomes a massive part of who we are, creating not only a toughness in our bodies but a mental toughness and protection too, a stronger body means a stronger mind all ready for the daily stresses of life.

BUT without the exercise part, our minds don’t respond so well either, all sorts of laboratory tests prove this as the latest science shows..

We can train ourselves to get good at sitting down too on the settee, we can really good at remembering all the plots on the latest boxset, and it’s easy to “train” ourselves to do this through our daily habits.

We can get exceptionally good at posting on social media thinking we are an authority on all sorts of different subjects, venting our frustrations, our fears, things we don’t like and debate our time away thinking our opinion really matters on every controversial subject.

We got to ask ourselves what are really training ourselves for, is exercise becoming a part of who we really are?

I like many others, have found that in working out through our most stressful times in our lives is highly beneficial in the way it crushes stress, and gives us a clarity of thought that cannot be achieved through any other process.

We rely on our training to get us through any situation. Exercise isn’t just about “losing weight” or looking good, it’s about feeling our best, performing at our highest level when the highest pressure of life is on, protecting us against serious illness and making us mentally strong just when life threatens to overwhelm us at times.

“The wheels eventually will fall off the bus” is a phrase that will affect us all at sometime in the future, but delaying that scenario as much as possible is largely down to us.

You will know by the weight you are using at the gym if you are declining or not. BUT even a slight decline in the weight you are using is SO MUCH BETTER than not using any weights in the first place, or not even doing a workout at all.

After the age of 30, our bone density and lean muscle starts declining but ONLY IF WE LET IT.

When we are in our teens and early 20’s, the motivation to LOOK much better is pretty important, but as we age it’s all about the longevity question taking over.

Most studies into people’s lives and health notice a “not so great” decade with their health, where we have let ourselves go a bit, which is often associated with both infrequent exercising and not eating so healthy as we should, which can eventually come back to haunt us.

Our body clearly decays during this decade where health declines and usually it’s our lifestyle is the “architect” of our health being in free fall.

Recent studies have shown that exercise not only halts any decline in your cells and your body’s important functions, but it will actively reverse decay and along with eating well, turn around the decay phase into a “thriving phase” which actively changes the way you feel very much for the better, and changes the way your body is capable of performing, which drastically transforms your quality of life every single day.

Be aware of how much you move directly affects what’s going on in your body AND MIND, and you have direct control too whether you are in a decay phase or a thrive phase-all the latest science backs this up. 

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