15 Feb Exercise The Magic Key

We all want to be live a successful life but most of us struggle with realizing our potential.  We flail about with no real purpose.  We fail to intentionally design our life and following through with our plan.  Exercise is a key component to living life by design.  Charles Duhigg, in his book the Power of Habit, describes exercise as a keystone habit.  Keystone habits unlock the mystery to building other successful habits.  Here are the secrets tucked away in a successful exercise program.

1.  Vision – For an exercise plan to be successful you need a clear vision of what you want to accomplish.  Are you trying to lose weight, build bigger biceps, run a marathon, or simply improve your quality of life?  Vision helps clarify what you actually want to accomplish. Many athletes use their vision to develop an actual mental image that propels them forward.  They visualize what a perfect game or race will look like, building purpose into their actions.  Visualize what you want your ideal career to look like.  Picture in your minds eye how you feel with a well developed social circle.  What area of life do you want to improve?  Develop a clear vision of what it looks like to have success in that area.

1. Goals – Visions are just dreams, however.  Visions become reality only with concrete action.  Setting SMART goals (S – specific, M – measurable, A – attainable, R – relevant, and T – time bound) is how you put visions into action.  I can have a vision of running a 10k but without developing incremental goals I’ll never see success .  What other areas of your life do you need to set goals.  Consider the major areas of your life and develop goals for each.  See post on SMART goals, http://www.nuvitalityhealth.com/smart-goals/ .
2. Strategies – The process of setting goals forces us to develop logical plans of action.  We can have vision and goals but without a cohesive overriding strategy, we will miss the mark.  Start with the end in mind.  What do you want your life to look like?  …….http://www.  Write a mission statement for your life and list the most important core values you want to embody in your life.  (We’ll write more about this in the future)
3. Emulation – If I have somebody to emulate it is easier for me to see the path to success.  I find it becomes easier to push myself through stages of growth that I once felt were impossible.  It’s the old adage, “if he can do it so can I.”  I was born with small framed “skinny guy” genetics.  I will never be a Mr. Olympian.  When I first started exercising I could only bench press about 140 pounds.  Breaking 200 pounds seemed like an impossible task, but then I saw somebody with my build bench press 225 pounds.  All of a sudden 200 pounds seemed much more attainable.  Maybe your goal is to lose 75 pounds.  That goal may seem impossible.  Find somebody that has done it and learn from them.  Want to make million dollars?  Find somebody that has done it and emulate what they do.  Too often we try to create what has already been created.  Take a short cut and find a mentor that can give you guidance.
4. Motivation – The process of daily exercise requires tapping in to sources of motivation.  Motivation is what drives you forward.  Without finding what motivates you a consistent exercise program is impossible.  There are many mornings when staying in my warm bed is a …… temptation.  I am motivated by how much better I feel since I incorporated daily exercise into my schedule.  I also realize that exercise is a choice.  I can chose to reap the benefits or I can chose the penalty to pay down the road in the form of poor health.  Pretending that there are no consequences is a fantasy.  Find what motivates you to persist in each area of your life.  You want a better marriage.  What is your motivation?  You want to expand you knowledge base.  Identify one motivator that will help drive you forward.
5. Daily Steps –  Focus on the process.  Success does not come overnight.  We all want immediate gratification, whether it be fitness or finances.  For me this one is the hardest.  I want to see progress now.  Progress may not always be something you can see on a daily basis.  I have to trust that my intentionally designed steps will deliver me to the ultimate goal.  I have to focus on what I can do today.  Cumulatively the small daily steps add to tangible change.
6. Discipline – There are not short cuts here.  For an exercise program to be successful, you must exercise consistently.  You will never any significant gains if you exercise for a few days, stop for a few weeks, then exercise for another month.  Too many times we look for gargantuan change.  Change occurs in small incremental steps that accumulate over time.  The accumulation over time produces the large change.  We look for the one secrete key that will magically make our dreams come true.  There is a secret ….. it is the daily commitment to do the hard things.  Think of the Grand Canyon.  It is a site to behold.  Its depth and vastness is difficult to fathom.  It was created not by one simple act.  Instead, it was created over thousands, maybe millions of years, of slow steady erosion.  You want your life to be filled with deep and meaningful relationships?   Invest in people’s lives consistently.  You want a fabulous career?  Do the small tasks that are required daily – not inconsistently, not occasionally.  Do them daily.
7. Failure – Failure is inevitable.  There are days when no matter what I do, I fail to lift the same amount of weight I lifted the previous week, or I fail to goal time for my daily run.  Sometimes I injure myself and find that all the hard work I invested in my fitness plan slips away. Occasionally I am lured by a quick success tip in the latest fitness magazine only to find that it was a gimmick.  Obstacles and set backs are part of the life.  How we respond is key.  Do you learn from your mistakes or do you let them paralyze you with fear?  Failure is not the problem.  Fear of failure is what demoralizes and steals our motivation.  Failure does not have to discourage.  Thomas Edison said on his way to inventing the light bulb he discovered 10,000 ways to not make a light bulb.  He viewed his failures as learning experiences.  He realized that with each discovery of what not to do, he was one step closer to finding what to do. I have personally seen failure in business ventures.  Truthfully those were painful experiences but I learned from them.  I could have given up, and at times that crossed my mind.  Instead, I dissected the mistakes and found the root causes.  I found the teachable lessons.  Lessons bought with the price of failure.  Look at those failures as investments in your deposit of knowledge and wisdom.
8. Confidence – Once you start seeing success from your exercise plan, you start to feel different.  Your endurance improves.  Your strength improves.  You find your daily tasks require less energy empowering you to do and accomplish more.  You clothes fit better and people look at you differently.  The brutal truth is that if you look healthier, people will treat  you differently.  How we look should not determine how people treat us but the simple fact is that it does.  As people treat you differently your self-esteems grows instilling more confidence.  More confidence leads to more success, and with more success comes more confidence.  It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Any area of life is the same way.  Once you start to develop the momentum of success, you confidence builds and future success comes easier.

Here’s to the Journey!