“Ugh, I have to do cardio again.”
“I don’t get to eat tasty foods; I hate my fish and broccoli.”
“I hate my life, I wish I could go out and party with my friends but I have to go to the gym.”
Being very involved with the fitness industry in my daily life, I hear these sentences all the time. Mostly from individual’s subconsciously complaining about the things that they cannot have when they are following a nutrition program or training hard. As human beings, we naturally like to complain, but it is important we try our hardest to override this impulse as it can take a huge toll on our daily life and how far we get in achieving our goals. I hear phrases like this all the way from high-level physique competitors to your average person looking to shed a few pounds. What they do not realize is, that the seed of these negative thoughts can manifest itself into how they see their daily life, and if you are unhappy with what you do, it will only be so long until you quit the pursuit of your goals.
Anything in life has a price; you need to give something up in order to attain something else. For the sake of most of you reading this, our goal is to improve our physique and our athletic performance by developing a Monster Mindset. The price you must pay is in time, effort, physical exertion and can come in many other ways. Many individuals tend to focus so much on the things they are giving up and forget about why they're originally doing this. You must look at the benefits from this, and why you are doing what you do, as it is with a future purpose of being better than you are now. Being physically active and working towards your goals, as long as they are important to you has no price tag!
Being healthy, having a higher self-esteem, knowing you worked so hard to do something you never could do before is much more rewarding than having temporary pleasure eating a certain food, or watching TV as opposed to going to the gym. It is important that we remind ourselves daily, especially when we experience periods of low motivation, why we began this journey in the first place. Something inside of you wanted to change so bad that you took the first step forward towards improving yourself. This is the “WHY”, why you started will be the driver for your motivation all along the way. ‘
When I first began training at a gym with a very advanced athlete at the time, he put me through a very intense leg workout. I had told this man “I want to be a professional bodybuilder” and he showed me what it was like to train hard. When we did the workout, I complained the entire time and could only think about how much pain I was enduring and how I was out of breath doing lunges in the pavement due to how hard this was. I never thought his next words would change my life, he told me: “You need to stop focusing on the pain, and begin focusing on the benefits of this, how much muscle you will gain out of this, what the rewards will be when they come.” With this mindset I really began seeing things in a new perspective, this allowed me to not think so much of the price I was paying but more to think of what I was reaping from it.
Your mind is everything; the body will not go where the mind has not been. So stay focused on your goals, write them down, and constantly remind yourself why you do what you do and how many benefits and rewarding experiences this has brought you throughout time. You cannot have negativity in your thoughts and develop a Monster Mindset. Without your Monster Mindset, you will never even come close to operating at your maximum potential. Are you naturally one of those people who are pessimistic and tend to see the negatives as your first reaction? THIS CAN BE CHANGED! The Monster Mindset program may be what you need to turn your life around.
The last thing you want to think of at the end of your life is: “What if I would have tried a little harder?” or “What if I wouldn’t have given up on my goals and dreams?”