As some of you may have seen, I recently came across a quote that has quickly become my favorite. The quote said "Success doesn't come to chicken-shits." It made me laugh but I thought about it and it is so true. Have you ever been through hard times and challenges in your life? Of course you have. Some of us have faced more hard times than others and unfortunately, they will happen again. Divorce, death in the family, severe illness, financial challenges, the struggles of raising children and having a family, starting your own business, moving and owning a home, just to name a few. I personally have been through each and everyone of those. It is to be expected in life that we will face hard times. Many times that is out of our control. But how we deal with them is completely under our control.
As many of you also know, I spent over 10 years as a competitive bodybuilder and although that is where I acquired much of my training and nutrition knowledge, what I acquired most from that experience was mental toughness. I found that the discipline required to get up at 5 AM every morning to do my workouts and to stick to my diet for months at a time, during parties and during college when everyone else was eating pizza and drinking beer, made me very mentally strong and proved to me that when I set my mind to something, I could do it. I played hockey in college after only learning to play when I was thirteen years old. At that age, most hockey players have been skating and playing for close to ten years already! I still remember going to a summer camp where I was, by far, the worst kid there. Having usually been one of the better athletes in my other sports, this was new for me. And it really sucked. I was falling down during drills, wearing old shitty equipment. Other kids were literally laughing at me. Somehow, which I still find shocking, I came back each day. I refused to give up. My mind was strong enough to say "No way I am giving up and one day, I will be as good as all of these guys." I don't know where that came from, but I had to dig deep. I remember crying on the way home from the first day. But when my mom asked me if I wanted to go back tomorrow, I said yes. ( I will never forget the satisfaction when in college, some 7 years later, I played against one of the "cool kids" from that summer camp and I knocked him on his ass. Another cool side effect of strength.)
Training hard has that same effect. When you can get out of bed when it's still dark out, go to the gym relying solely on your own discipline to do so, push yourself with heavy weights and exercises that are very hard and cause you to dig deep, it helps you to understand how strong and disciplined you can really be. And this has a huge crossover to real life. There will be many times in life when things are tough and require you to dig deep.
Some people think going to the gym at 6 am and doing heavy squats and presses is hard. That's not hard. You know what's hard? Raising a family is hard. Fighting cancer is hard. Losing a family member or friend is hard. Training is easy. I think of my father, who had to wake up at 4:30 in the morning several days a week to drive me to those hockey practices and then to drive me all the way home, then go and do a full day's work and all of the other responsibilities that come with being a father. What if he had decided that that was just too difficult and he would rather sleep? I think about what I watch my wife do when she takes care of our children. She has to wake up numerous times throughout the night, take care of them and then still get up at 6:30 am when they are ready to get up. My oldest daughter is almost 7 years old and I can't think of more than a handful of days in seven years that my wife has slept a full night. What if she thought it was just too tough to get up and take care of our kids at night? What if she said she was just too tired? Her mental and emotional strength to not only bear these children, but to take care of them each and everyday never ceases to amaze me. She has a strength far greater than mine. The lesson here is that to be successful in life, to have the life that you want and to be the person you want to be takes guts. It takes courage. It takes strength. The work ethic, discipline, and motivation it takes to achieve a strong body lead to a strong mind and ultimately to a strong life. This is why I love strength. And it doesn't come to chicken-shits. ;-)
