I consider fitness and sports as the best school of life. In fact athletics and fitness have been my daily battlefield for life while growing up, being very influential in shaping me up and making me the person I am today.
This may sound cliché but it really is this way. The true benefits I have gained from fitness and sports do not lie in my sporting achievements or the way I look, but are found deep within every training session and every workout I’ve completed since I started. In other words the journey I’m talking about is an internal one rather than external.
If you think about it, simply looking big and shredded does nothing to your self-confidence;
Compare a great body to a million euro. If somebody lends you a million euro for an hour, you will feel great and hyped while that hour lasts, but once they are taken away nothing is left and you remain the same person. If on the other hand that one million euro is earned through genuine hard work, even if that money had to be somehow lost, you will have gained a whole lot of experience and built character in the process, becoming a better version of yourself, for life, which is what really matters.
The same applies with the act of building muscle or becoming a better athlete. The act of successfully completing every set, every workout or session through hard work, determination and resilience, makes you a goal getter and fills you up with a sense of accomplishment, each time.
Unfortunately in today’s society characterised by the hunt for express gratification, we want the muscle without the process. We want to take the fast route as opposed to the hard work because our focus is very short term. We do not understand that the end result means nothing without the process.
When you work out or train and you do it right, you overcome your ego, you set yourself free from laziness and you force yourself to be mindful, paying attention to the way your body is moving and feeling. This is a great opportunity at winning, every day.
In fact fitness also helps you learn how to be mindful, fully focusing on one thing at a time. Being mindful of the task at hand will lead to a higher probability of successfully achieving it or doing it right, each time generating a sense of fulfilment and boosting your confidence. On the other hand, trying to perform many tasks at one go without full focus (as we typically do in the normal course of life) will inevitably lead to leaving many things unaccomplished which rather than building character will lead to stress and a sense of insecurity.
In concluding: set the goal to build muscle not for the muscle, but for what it will make of you to achieve it.
To fitness with love,
Andrew
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