Work Hard and Expect Success
Success with your body and in every area of your life is all about stepping outside of your comfort zone and that means embracing pain.
To reach high levels of physical and personal success you must approach your training, and your entire life, as an endeavor in constant growth. The ultimate truth is, you are either moving forward or moving backward; growing or dying. There’s no such thing as comfortably maintaining.
To grow, you must step above past achievements; beyond your perceived boundaries and limits. That means stepping out of the known, into the unknown; out of the familiar and into the unfamiliar; out of the comfortable into the uncomfortable. You must get out of your comfort zone.
Most people are scared of the new, unknown and unfamiliar.
They prefer to stay in that womb of comfort. When the going gets tough; when the effort gets painful, when the work gets hard, they always pull back into safety.
But the extraordinary people do the opposite. They know they have to get out of the comfort zone, and into new territory or they’ll stagnate and die.
Here’s a little quote that you should post on your bulletin board, your computer desktop or somewhere you will always see it:
“Do what you always did, get what you always got.”
You can’t grow or change by doing what you’ve already done. You’ve got to train just to prevent yourself from going backwards. Maintenance doesn’t occur when you do nothing, maintenance is working to fight entropy (the tendency for things to naturally deteriorate).
Still, most people won’t leave their comfort zones.
They won’t do it in business, they won’t do it in their personal lives. They won’t do it in their sport. They won’t do it for personal health and fitness.
The old saying, “no pain no gain” gets knocked all the time as if it were bad advice. The fact of life is that you don’t grow unless you are constantly stepping outside the comfort zone, and outside the comfort zone is discomfort and pain.
I find that it’s mostly the non-achievers who make out “no pain, no gain” to be a bad thing. But the winners get it. The champions understand stepping outside the comfort zone in a healthy context, so they embrace it.
The elite athletes and high achievers really have to push themselves; they’re going to push their boundaries and test their limits. But if you’re not an elite athlete or seasoned bodybuilder, and you take the advice, “no pain, no gain”
too literally, you’re going to end up getting injured.
You’ve got to break comfort zones. And if your body is not changing, then I don’t care how hard you think you’re working, whatever you’re doing right now is inside your comfort zone.
Embrace the “good pain” of growth like the champions do. Soon it subsides, you enjoy the benefits of the change and the pain is forgotten. You’ve reached a new, higher plateau of achievement. Enjoy the view for a short while. But be on guard because it’s not long before that higher level become s your new comfort zone and then its time to press on again.
