You show me how you spend your time, and I’ll tell you what is important to you. Show me how you spend your time, and I’ll tell you where you are going to be in one year, in five years. Show me how you spend your time and I’ll tell you who you are. Everyone has the same 24-hours a day to accomplish and achieve.
Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Oprah Winfrey all have 24-hours a day to build their legacy and so do you. That is the one thing we all have in common. The difference is how we spend our time. And how we spend our time makes all the difference in the world. If getting in shape is important to you, you will find a way to work out an hour a day. If getting in shape is important to you, spending time preparing food, and logging what you eat won’t be a problem.
It isn’t about having more time. No one has more time. Everyone has the same 24-hours you have. We make time for what is important. It is your responsibility to use your time to achieve what’s important to you. Time is your most valuable resource. Show me how you spend your time each day, and I’ll tell you what is important to you.
In the book Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win, by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin the core concept is that you are responsible for everything. That’s it. This is a powerful concept to embrace. It is extremely empowering to acknowledge that you are responsible for everything good or bad in your life. When you take ownership, when you take responsibility, you take control of your life.
You are no longer a victim of circumstances. You no longer let yourself off the hook with excuses. You realize that everything is within your control. Action is the cure to unhappiness. The catalyst for action is the removal of excuses. The standards you set and the standards you achieve. It doesn’t matter if these standards are for yourself or someone else. A manager that accepts substandard work from an employee has essentially made that performance the standard. When you take ownership, you raise your expectations for yourself and others. You don’t tolerate poor performance or behavior. You don’t shirk responsibility with excuses. You find a way to correct the situation. You find a way to win.
Success at anything is usually based on three things, talent, effort and attitude. Luckily we can control two thirds of the equation, effort and attitude. Getting in shape doesn’t require talent. You don’t have to be particularly gifted or talented to achieve a good looking physique. It does require effort and attitude. Bruce Lee said, “Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.”
If you do what is difficult life will become easier. Not because the universe has bent to your will, but because by doing what is difficult, you become stronger and better at handling life’s challenges. Do today what others won’t, so tomorrow you can do what others can’t. Those that take the easy path, live a hard life of constant struggle. The best way to achieve success is to work hard to become someone who deserves success.
The strategies in our future book, The Fat Loss Habit, will increase your likelihood of success, but they aren’t magic. They make change easier, but not effortless. Change will still require motivation and effort. Getting better is a campaign of discipline. It is a daily battle against temptation, procrastination, and laziness. You must establish a sense of urgency around getting in better shape. This sense of urgency will fuel your efforts and keep you motivated.
Motivated individuals can accomplish the seemingly impossible. They take ownership of where they are and what they need to do to get where they want to be. They are willing to do whatever it takes. Failure isn’t an option. They don’t let setbacks deter them. They don’t place any value in excuses. They never quit. They adopt an attitude of it isn’t over until I win. When you encounter a set-back, take comfort knowing it is temporary. Real failure occurs when you stop trying. The only thing that makes failure permanent is quitting, and no one can make you quit.
Naysayers will say that motivation is fleeting. Famous salesman and motivational speaker and writer Zig Ziglar’s had a standard answer for them. He says, “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing, that’s why we recommend it daily.” It is true, that habits and daily rituals are the keys to long term success, but obtaining regular doses of motivation can be a powerful catalyst for action.
Motivational speeches can help provide the fuel you need to take action and achieve more. You’ll need to recharge your motivation on a regular basis, if you want to achieve more from life. It is no different than the need to regularly refuel your car or nourish your body.
There are some great YouTube channels that can provide daily inspiration. These are a few of my favorites: Be Inspired, MotivationGrind, Motivation Archives MulliganBrothers, MOTIVATION, and, Absolute Motivation. Download a few videos so you always have an inspirational pep talk ready to go when you need it most.
Some days will be harder than others. Some days you will not feel like working out. On those days, you have to convince yourself to at least give your workout 5-minutes before you make a decision to skip it. Once you start your workout, you’ll find it easier to keep going. Shrink the change. Take it 5-minutes at a time, one day at a time, and one week at a time, until you reach your goal.
When it comes to the actual workout, your effort is the most important factor. George S. Patton famously said “A good plan violently executed is better than a perfect plan executed next week.”
When I was in the military I was told a variation of his quote, “a good plan violently executed is much better than a perfect plan executed tentatively.” Both of these principles apply to your workout program. Stop looking for the perfect program, it doesn’t exist, and start executing the program you have. An individual that attacks each workout with passion and enthusiasm will achieve better results with a good plan, than the trainee giving a halfhearted effort on a better program. Both will do better than the person procrastinating, searching for the perfect program.
The program in our future book, The Fat Loss Habit, is based on decades of personal experience and backed up by scientific studies. As a Master Fitness Trainer in the US Army, I helped dozens of overweight soldiers get in the best shape of their lives. The soldiers that made the best progress were the ones that consistently attacked each workout with enthusiasm and logged their food intake religiously. They were committed to losing body fat in order to stay in the Army and serve their country.
Make the decision. In Latin, decision literally translates to “a cutting off.” Decide. Commit. Cut off all other options. Cut off the excuses. Cut off the negative people in your life. Cut off procrastination. Cut off laziness. In the military we say a unit is decisively engaged when it cannot retreat or advance. It must stand and fight or parish. Decide. Commit yourself. Commit, like Captain Cortes did by burning the boats. After his eleven ships carrying 600 Spaniards landed on the shores of Veracruz in 1519, he immediately gathered his men and ordered the boats be burned. By eliminating their only means of escape, he left them with only two options; succeed or die. There is no better time than now. Tony Robins says, “A real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken action. If there’s no action, you haven’t really decided. If you want to take the island, then burn the boats. With absolute commitment come the insights that create real victory.”
Stop procrastinating. Commit to taking at least one immediate action. The most productive first step would be downloading the MyFitnessPal app, creating your profile, setting your goals, and starting to log your food. After you’ve completed that task, commit to another action for tomorrow, and every day after that, until you have reached your fitness goal.
Be specific about when and where you plan to execute each of the actions as you plan them. Set a daily alarm to remind yourself. Your planned action could be signing up for a gym membership, purchasing portion control containers, whatever it is, just do it. There is no better time than now to start becoming stronger, leaner, fitter, and more confident. Now let’s get started!
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Discipline pushes us, motivation pulls us, but intentional habits keep us moving towards our goals.
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Are you ready to reboot and reset your relationship with food and exercise? Most programs focus on the mechanics of weight loss, but fail to adequately address the psychology of change required. Most people know more than enough about nutrition and exercise to lose weight, but fail to take action. This book takes a new approach to getting leaner, fitter, and stronger.
The book contains:
- 7 Change Strategies for Adopting a Healthy Lifestyle
- A Flexible Diet Program that Doesn’t Put Any Foods Off-limit, including Alcohol
- 20-Week Workout Log with Progress Assessments (Downloadable PDF)
- 3 Strategies for Resetting your Body Weight Set point to Keep the Weight Off
- A Nutrition and Training Program Based on Science, not Bro Science.
The Fat Loss Habit: Creating Routines that Make Willpower and Fat Loss Automatic takes a new approach to getting leaner, fitter, and stronger. The program uses high-impact change strategies that make the process of adopting a healthy lifestyle easier. The nutrition and workout program, like the change techniques have all been proven effective, and are all backed by research and scientific studies.
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