Love The Process
The fitness industry, not helped by the rise of social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook – has become a massively ‘results’ driven business. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, before and after pictures are really powerful and have their place in what we do.
However, it can often lead to a more results focused approach instead of a process focused approach. Which more often than not leads to misery and lack of achievement – and even if you do achieve the self comparison this can cause to other people online can be enough to destroy your self confidence anyway.
Focusing on the result is fine if your goal is short term. If you have to get in shape for a photoshoot, wedding or event you have coming up over the next few weeks then you absolutely have to grit your teeth and get through it. You can often achieve some great results by using this approach but it’s through willpower alone that you get through the process – and it’s not sustainable.
If your goal is a longer term one, you need to be more process focused. There’s no way around being patient and loving what you do if you want longevity and long term results.
Being results focused works in the short term (if the goal matters enough) but past a certain point, motivation starts to waver and you will struggle to maintain the same level of intensity and commitment you started out with.
Long term goals require long term mindsets. And this means that you have to fall in love with the steps required to get there.
Let me put it this way: if you’re doing things that make you miserable you’re not going to continue doing those things even if they get you the result you’re after. And if you do – in the long term – you’ll make yourself ill. Life is literally too short to spend it being miserable so please find something you enjoy to do. If that’s training like a bodybuilder then cool – if it’s going to f*cking yoga classes then that’s also cool, but make sure it’s effective for your goal and you don’t hate your life when you’re doing it.
Sometimes it’s just a case of tweaking what everyone else does to fit your lifestyle and goals. The traditional bodybuilding way of doing things (eating chicken and rice 8 times per day and doing body part splits) might not be the right way for you.
Just because something has been scientifically proven to be ‘optimal’ doesn’t mean it’s necessarily what you should be doing. A trade-off between not chasing ‘optimal’ to preserve some kind of enjoyment and mental benefit is always worth it in my book. Most of us aren’t professional bodybuilders and we’ll never earn money out of the way we look, so enjoying our training is absolutely vital.
Whatever you choose to do, make sure you enjoy the process and don’t make yourself miserable doing it. If you don’t enjoy what you do – how is it serving you? What’s the point?
I hope this short article was useful. If you want to read more, head over to the blog section of my website and you can see the full bank of articles I have over there.
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Cheers
Andy