I start writing this article as I sit in a cabana on vacation with my family. I'm totally relaxed sipping an ice cold can of the finest cerveza the room bar has to offer.
Sipping an ice cold beer as I write an article on fitness? This may sound strange to some but to me it is the only way to live.
You see, fitness is a lifestyle that should be embraced as a way of life that in which enhances all of your experiences.
To deny yourself of life's pleasures so you can die a good looking corpse with 6% body fat and a butt you can bounce a quarter off of should not be our goal.
The reason why this beer tastes so good and actually gives me a buzz is because I don't drink that often at all and therefore tend to enjoy it more. After months of hard work, a healthy breakfast off egg whites, toast and some chicken stir fry (gotta love the all inclusive resorts) a full hour in the gym and an hour nap watching MI3, I've earned this.
Training hard and eating smart 80% of the time is what gives you the guilt free 20% that you end up enjoying even more.
The Pareto principle aka the 80/20 rule is nothing new and has been written and talked about for a long time. Success means applying this rule to your all areas of your life, fitness is no different.
Today's executives are as busy as ever but feel the need to have a balanced life more than before.
What good is all that power, money, prestige and freedom if you're too tired and out of shape to really enjoy any of it? What good is being married and have children if you don't have the energy to play or spend time with them. To make love you have to give love. To give love you need to have passion and passion takes energy. If your energy is low you can bet that the most important areas of your life are suffering too.
I believe the fitness industry is about to come full circle. It has blown up to monumental proportions in a world that cries out for more, more, more.
This has only one inevitable end before it all comes crashing down unless balanced is achieved.
Instead of thinking "I'm going to eat healthy starting now, go to the gym 6 days a week and run every morning." You should be thinking about what you want out of life, not fitness.
The breakthrough is that nobody really wants fitness. They want what fitness can give them.
It isn't about 18" arms, 6 pack abs or a flat stomach. It's not about being able to run a 17 minute 5 km run or eating something green with every meal.
These are all surface level goals that really have nothing to do with the quality of your life. It is what doing these things or having these things will bring you in terms of experiences and ultimately feelings.
When you can link small everyday decisions that affect a positive physical change to life altering mega happiness that is when things start to move.
Being "fit"...why?
To have a certain look perhaps to give you more confidence? Maybe more respect is what you are after and a feeling of satisfaction. Great, but why?
Confidence comes from within and the decisions you make. You want confidence simply DO what a fit confident person does and do it today. It is the confidence that you exude in yourself that will transfer to others. Make people feel good about themselves and they will want to be around you and make you happy too.
Now you have the confidence because you are DOING what they are doing. So you don't look like they do just yet. So what! Give it some time.
Want respect? Respect others and the only way you can respect others is if you respect yourself first.
You want to just look better or perhaps for your future wife or husband, boyfriend or girlfriend. Looks will fade and what will remain is your character.
The character of a person who lives their life with passion and caring for themselves and others is what will draw that person into your life a lot faster than a tight ass.
All of these examples are linked to what fitness means to you personally but let's look at what it means to your ability to contribute to others and again how that comes back to you.
Simply put you'll feel better. If you suffer from anxiety, depression or stress it is hurting your ability to smile and make others happy. It is hurting your ability to build your business and focus on the big picture.
I have had many clients over the years and when they decided to make a physical change, everything got better.
Their mental state, relationships, finances, everything.
It starts out as a general feeling of discomfort or lack of forward motion. There life may not be where that want it to be and they see getting fit as the vehicle in which to change that and for many of us it is the first step.
The first goal may be to lose 30 pounds but in the end everything gets better. That first goal blends into another and another. Maybe it is fitness related maybe it is not. The point is that you can only see up one level at a time. When you elevate your life you can see higher and further than before and new goals make themselves visible to you only when you have achieved the ones that you can see now.
Excite yourself for the wondrous goals that are so amazing you can't even fathom them yet.
Lisa wanted to lose some weight to feel better about herself. She ended up competing in a fitness modeling contest, got married and had the confidence to quit her fulltime job so that she could go back to school and become a teacher like she always wanted.
Carl was fresh out of a terrible relationship but after the weight loss and muscle building found the courage meet new people. Now is the happiest he has ever been and is dating a hot young chick 10 years younger.
Frank had his daughter, father and aunt die all within one year. If not for fitness his life, marriage and business would have fallen apart. Fitness... kept it all together.
All of these people and so many more just like them have one thing in common, they have linked fitness to positive life experiences and are now designing their life with fitness as the medium.
Once you make the very real connection with "fitness" whether that means playing sports, eating healthy or going to the gym you give yourself the power to do it for life.
Your ability to make new friends, keep the ones you have, make more money, get things done, have new experiences everything in your life gets better when you can simply apply a fitness lifestyle and the 80/20 rule to your life.
And for god's sake don't forget to have fun along the way and the ride because there is no end (except for that one big one).
So the next time we meet and you see me enjoying a cold beer on a beach somewhere don't forget what it took to get us there and come join me.
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