READ THIS TO LOSE LOVE HANDLES FOR GOOD.
The hard truth is that fat loss is often a difficult journey.
I personally was never able to stay consistent until I learned to callus my mind.
The mind must be built before the body.
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DISCLAIMER: NOT MEDICAL ADVICE
This is the post for you if you are looking to improve your:
- Mental toughness
- Physique
- Overall health and longevity
- Performance
- Career aspirations
- Relationships
TL;DR
Listen, building your dream body, your dream business, or your dream life requires a lot of sacrifice. It's far from a walk in the park. While it is very achievable, you must take certain steps to callus your mind.
The mind comes before everything.
Here are the steps I took to callus my mind:
- Find the root cause of your bad habits
- Address self-limiting beliefs and why you have them
- Get comfortable with discomfort
- Practice self-denial
- Accept criticism, embrace failure
- Stop being afraid of uncertainty. Be confident.
- FOCUS
- Confront past traumas that occupy the subconscious
- Live in the present
Storytime:
Like many, I started off in a dark place.
I was unhealthy.
I was unmotivated.
I couldn't stay consistent with any of my goals.
Eventually, I reached a breaking point where I said enough is enough. No more setbacks. No more relapses.
After much self-reflection, I realized that I was self-sabotaging myself because subconsciously I did not believe the massive goals I had set for myself.
I was a walking self-limiting belief.
I was the assistant manager of my own life.
I was afraid of the uncertainty of the future.
For me, the first step in building my mind was assessing every single self-limiting belief I had. I analyzed every single one.
What I came to realize is that many of the self-limiting beliefs I had were mental shortcuts I made for myself over time to protect my emotions from the realization that I was not happy with my reality.
No more I said.
No more excuses.
No more self-limiting beliefs.
I'm going to do this.
I'm all in on myself, I know I have it in me.
From that day forward, I embarked on a journey to callus my mind.
I knew that getting the physique, dream career, and dream life that I wanted were all difficult goals to achieve. Rather than letting self-limiting beliefs plague me and lose hope, I decided to craft a master strategy to strengthen my mind.
The point of this?
When it really hits the fan, I will not be phased anymore.
When something doesn't go my way, I won't make excuses.
When I mess up on something, I won't hate myself for it.
When everyone else is ready to give up or not be consistent, I'm going to run laps around them and trudge through the pain.
Here is exactly what I did to callus my mind:
STEP ONE
Audit your subconscious.
Why do you have your current habits?
Why do you have your current circumstances?
Why can't you get motivated?
Keep asking yourself why until you get deeper and deeper. Eventually, you will hit the root of it all. Maybe there will be multiple.
I did this by:
- Meditating
- Praying
- Being patient
It can take a while to figure this all out.
Be patient and trust the process.
STEP TWO
Address self-limiting beliefs and why you have them.
A self-limiting belief or perception that one has that limits their ability to take action, achieve goals, or fulfill one's potential.
Some examples:
- I'm not attractive enough to date ___
- My parents are fat so I will be too
- Only a small % of people can get a six-pack
- I'm not smart so I need to work a lower-level job
- It's not likely that my dream will work out
- I'm too old to do XYZ
Whatever it may be, I encourage you to ask yourself why you think that. Keep asking yourself why until you get down to the root cause. It may be a painful experience, but it's worthwhile I promise.
Once you figure out what your self-limiting beliefs are and why you have them, throw them in the garbage and move on from them!
STEP THREE
Get comfortable with discomfort.
I used to be the type of person who would always find the easiest solution for everything. I never stepped outside of my comfort zone.
Here's what I learned in my journey:
If you want to transform your body, your health, or your career, you will need to strengthen your mental fortitude.
The journey that you embark on will inevitably involve managing significant discomfort, fatigue, self-doubt, ups and downs, and more. You need to be preparing your mind for adversity at all times so that you do not relapse into old habits. This is the new you.
The most effective way to get comfortable with discomfort is to step outside of your typical comfort zone. Do things that you don't want to do.
Some examples from my own journey:
You don't feel like doing your typical 3-mile run today?
Great, looks like you're doing 7 miles.
You don't want to do a 5-minute cold shower?
Looks like you're doing 10 minutes.
You prefer to do HIIT on the rowing machine over the assault bike?
Looks like you're only doing assault bike HIIT for the next month.
Every time you really really do not want to do something, you must unleash total war on your mind and completely ignore the impulse to not do it.
STEP FOUR
Practice self-denial.
The ability to delay immediate pleasure for the sake of greater rewards down the road is ESSENTIAL for hitting your goals and achieving your dreams.
Fitness example:
Transforming your body is a long long game that requires saying no to the temptations that are right in front of you in order to stay consistent.
You're not going to see progress in the gym after one workout. You might not even see progress in the gym after five workouts. But after 500 workouts, you'd better believe that you're going to see significant progress.
This goes for ANYTHING.
Health, fitness, learning, skill development, etc.
Stay consistent over time, delay gratification, and your life will seriously change for the better.
Practicing self-denial strengthens the mental muscle of willpower.
Make it a habit to periodically avoid the typical comforts and conveniences that you typically fall victim to. Give up snacking. Don't watch TV after work. Stop scrolling on social media. Walk to where you need to instead of ubering. Take on fasting. Give up caffeine for a day.
The goal of these acts is to exercise your ability to RESIST your indulgences and persist through your discomfort when you are without these things.
This will build grit and self-control.
Practicing self-denial will also make you more grateful when you allow yourself to partake in your common indulgences.
STEP FIVE
Invite criticism and fail forward.
If you hope to achieve ambitious goals, you must adopt a mindset that welcomes criticism and perceives failure as feedback rather than defeat.
I won't lie, my journey has had plenty of critiques, setbacks, and plateaus. I have failed plenty of times. It's a part of the process!
Share your plans with others. Be receptive to criticism.
For example, I once had a post on here where I misinterpreted the mechanism of a supplement. Someone called me out on it.
Rather than getting angry and arguing with them, I thanked them for pointing me in the right direction and learned from it!
When you attempt a new diet or training regimen and it does not go as planned, resist the urge to beat yourself up. The same goes for your business attempts.
INSTEAD, do a thorough analysis of what went wrong and ask yourself how you can improve your approach the next time.
Each time you expose yourself to criticism, process it with an open mind rather than reacting defensively. Every failure presents an opportunity for growth rather than condemnation if analyzed thoroughly enough.
YOUR SHORTCOMINGS DO NOT DEFINE YOU.
HOW YOU BOUNCE BACK FROM THEM DOES.
This perspective will allow you to fail frequently without becoming a failure.
Rather than shielding yourself from negative feedback out of fear or ego, embrace critiques and unsuccessful efforts with HUMILITY.
STEP SIX
Stop being afraid of uncertainty. Be confident.
Pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone requires an enormous amount of mental courage. Attempting to achieve your dream will require implementing many new tactics that you are unfamiliar with.
Want the dream body?
You will likely need to learn some things about fitness that you never knew.
Want the dream career?
You need to learn new skills.
Building the bravery to move with confidence is paramount.
Make it your mission to do activities that create nervousness.
Social anxiety?
Start talking with people in public fully sober.
Constantly look for opportunities that will override any existing self-doubt.
When doing this, always pay attention to any fearful or anxious inner dialog that comes up. Be mindful of your second thoughts. Recognize that the primal part of your brain is stepping in and trying to make you avoid any emotional trauma. When this happens, remind yourself of your capabilities.
Every time you confront fear, anxiety, and uncertainty, you will build reference experiences that reinforce your ability to handle adversity. You start to become more resilient. Over time, tasks that once seemed challenging will start to seem easier.
Move towards fear rather than avoiding it.
True strength is often built by mastering the mind so the body can follow.
STEP SEVEN
FOCUS.
Embarking on any difficult sort of journey will require tremendous physical stamina, mental focus, and presence.
These resources are needed whether it's in fitness, business, or self-development.
Building your ability to concentrate intensely and tune out distractions is vital.
Some good activities to strengthen mental focus:
- Meditation
- Box breathing
- Vortex breathing
The goal of these all is to strengthen awareness of the present moment and minimize wandering thoughts.
Make time to focus just on these activities 10-15 minutes a day.
In fitness, approach your workouts with mindfulness.
Clear all other matters from your consciousness to intensely connect with each exercise. When distracting thoughts inevitably arise, gently return your attention to the body and breath.
Progression in any field requires deeply engaging the mind to drive the body to higher levels through technical mastery and sheer force of will. Building up your attention span will empower you to stay on course for whatever goal you have.
LASER FOCUS + RELENTLESS EFFORT = UNSTOPPABLE
STEP EIGHT
Confront past traumas that occupy the subconscious.
For me, this was a big one.
In my own life, I've had two near-death experiences.
When they happened, did not process them properly and they led to mental trauma down the line.
We all carry painful emotional memories and past traumas in our subconscious minds. Though we try to suppress them, they can subtly sabotage our self-worth. Transforming your body or your life will not happen until you heal your old wounds.
Make time for self-reflection to bravely confront experiences that may still be dragging you down.
If you are comfortable doing so, open up to people you trust with your story. Acknowledging and naming your past trauma can help lessen it's grip on you. I know it can be very hard to open up about some things, but once you do you will not regret it.
One thing that really helped me was processing the ways that the pain I had actually shaped self-limiting beliefs that I had about myself. I literally had to consciously challenge every single story that was going on inside my head about unworthiness, separation, and deficiency. I then realized all of the strength that the struggles I went through had given me.
Taking this approach will open up mental bandwidth in my mind to fully show up to the present moment and charge towards every single goal that I had.
I essentially was able to clear away the old wreckage in my mind to create space to build something legendary.
So my advice to all of you is to stay vigilant for echoes of old traumas reemerging as sabotaging thoughts, feelings of isolation, or any feelings of stagnation on your journey. Meet them with self-acceptance and rewrite those outdated stories.
Your past makes you who you are in a sense but does not define where you can go.
YOU HAVE EVERYTHING YOU NEED INSIDE TO TRANSFORM YOUR BODY AND SPIRIT.
Thanks for reading.
I hope this helped!
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