A few days ago while I was brainstorming with one of my friends who is a successful entrepreneur I happened to ask his suggestion about the key to his success. He shared a few of his favorite things which are very common in the self-help books. but one statement changed my mindset entirely.
SELF LOVE
He said: Deep inside everyone lives for himself/herself unknowingly. so pleasing someone to do the things which “YOU loves them to do” is not going to happen until they realize it is for their benefit.
End of the day everyone seeks their pleasures & it required a real self-determined mindset to seek something purposeful.
It was a while ago when I was training a client the same realization came to me but ignored as I was not keeping a mental check on it. My client Pulled his shirt while rubbing his tummy said: ” I HATE MY BELLY SO MUCH. I am going to do core exercises until I stop hating it!! “
Then he got on the physioball and seemed possessed by a new level of motivation doing rep after rep and even squeezing in a rep after I told him to stop because his form was breaking.
Usually, those words and his determined heart-felt will to keep crunching would have made me feel pleased and proud. “Look at my client, He’s a BEAST”. But my experienced trainer wisdom understood more profoundly what was happening.
“Wow, he truly hates his body and himself ” This is the moment I understood the true key and forever fitness success. it had to be based and rooted in something other than self-hate. it had to be based on self-care and self-love.
Love is a positive emotion and hate is a negative emotion. when you hate something a do some activity it destroys the things in its trail. but if you do something with LOVE and care, you are helping yourself subconsciously like a mother nurtures her baby.
“YOU” CAN BE ANYONE
Let’s take a pause for a second and reflect. Why did you start working out in the first place? What was the initial intention behind the changing of your diet? If you are like most people, it was because you didn’t like seeing yourself in the mirror that way? or the people around you who said that you are getting fat?
Everyday attention of yours is the social media and its keeps filling your mind with rage against yourself because you see sculpted bodies in it and you are not like them.
Self Judged COMPARISON.
A chain of negative emotions spirals up in your mind and pulls you down to the bottom of its pit.
If this was and is you, don’t feel distressed – in my experience, this is what motivates most people. It’s also why most people eventually gain the weight back, lose their fitness, go back to eating terribly and fail. Why? Because NO ONE wants to hate themselves forever.
Think about the last time you started working out and then stopped or the last time you were on a roll with your diet and then went right back to old habits. I bet you said to yourself (or maybe even to friends) something along the lines of, “I just want to enjoy life…dieting and going to the gym isn’t enjoyable…life is too short, I’m over it.” Let’s break that down objectively and factually for a second.
It’s been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that eating healthily and being properly active improves physical health, emotional and mental health, gives you vitality, elevates sex drive, and enhances mood. Yet, you stopped trying to eat right and being active because “life is short” and “you just want to enjoy life?” How can that be?
Being unhealthy is objectively NOT enjoying life to its fullest. It makes no sense, right?
It does when you realize that eating right and exercising that is motivated by self-hate will ALWAYS feel like punishment precisely because you are using them to punish the person you hate, which is YOU.
This so-called impulse is coming from negative self-hate – What we need is a positive self Love.
What if, instead, you ate and exercised because you recognized that you deserve to be healthy, vibrant, and fit? What if you understood the truth, that those are amazing forms of SELF-CARE and SELF-LOVE? In my experience, this is the most impactful key to long-term success. Who doesn’t like to take care of themselves?
Next time you look in the mirror, instead of confusing your body image with self-image, notice that your body simply reflects the lifestyle and circumstances of your life.
It’s ok to notice that you may have a higher than ideal level of body fat or that you lack healthy levels of physical strength and fitness but those things do NOT establish who you are. It just tells you that it may be time to take care of one of the most significant people in the world, YOU.
Think about the chance of you being born as ” one in 400 trillion”: yes there is a math of how lucky you are here reading my post.
Just think about the greatness we have in this era, the technology, and the medical help. and the number of people around us. people who lived in history never would have ever dreamed of a world like this much of abundance. yet we are discouraged and complaining. all these are coming from a negative mindset. it’s time to change the paradigm
A healthy and fit version of you feels better and makes it possible for you to do more for the people around you. A less than healthy version of you doesn’t feel great and doesn’t have the best capacity to do good for the people around you. You deserve to be taken care of and it starts with yourself. Understand this, move forward with it, and be empathetic and compassionate to yourself through this process (it’s not easy), and your odds of true and forever success will skyrocket.
I offer Online Personal Training to people all around the world who is looking forward to living more happily with a physique that can fit their favorite clothes and make them even more confident without clothes (ahem .. I mean looking good at naked is what self-love is all about )
jokes a part Find me on Instagram @muhammedsanoob: you can message me over there if you have got any questions that need to be addressed.
Cheers
