This episode is part of a weekly series that I have dubbed “Motivation Monday.”
(Yes, I know, very creative of me. What can I say, I’m a genius…)
Seriously though, the idea here is simple:
Every Monday morning, I’m going to post a short and punchy episode that I hope gets you fired up to tackle the workouts, work, and everything else that you have planned for the week ahead.
As we all know, it’s one thing to know what you want to do, but it’s something else altogether to actually make yourself do it, and I hope that this series gives you a jolt of inspiration, energy, and encouragement to get at it.
So, if you like what you hear, then make sure to check back every Monday morning for the latest and greatest installment.
What did you think of this episode? Have anything else to share? Let me know in the comments below!
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Hey, this is Mike from Muscle for Life and welcome to another episode of my podcast. This episode is part of a weekly series that I have dubbed Motivation Monday. Yes, I know. So creative of me. What can I say? I’m just a genius. Seriously though, the idea here is simple. Every Monday morning I am going to post a short and punchy episode that I hope gets you fired up to tackle the workouts, work, and everything else that you have planned for the week ahead.
See you then. Because it’s one thing to know what you want to do, but it’s something else altogether to actually make yourself do it. And I hope that this series gives you a jolt of energy and encouragement to go ahead and do all of those things that you want to do. So if you like what you [00:01:00] hear, then make sure to check back every Monday morning for the latest and greatest installment.
So this week’s episode is called, if you can change your body, you can change your life. I hope you like it. One of the things that I love about fitness is you can’t slide by on bullshit. It’s just one of those special things in life that you can’t buy. Steel or fake, there aren’t any rewards for complaining or failing, and it doesn’t care about your opinions or feelings in fitness.
The bottom line is you have to give something to get something. It’s called working out after all. And for a good reason, you either do the work and transform your body or you don’t period. This is a very valuable lesson to learn, I think, because it’s a metaphor for something bigger, no matter what you’re facing in life.
You basically have two choices. You can put in the work or get put in your place. Nature must be smiling at everything we try to do to [00:02:00] change or avoid this rule and escape its certainty. We should remember though that not so long ago, our forebears had to chase, fight and kill just to survive. They expected hardship.
They were willing to face the worse. They embrace the fact that the universe, in all of its apparent tranquility, is really a carefully balanced chaos of forces that we barely understand. Now us, on the other hand, we have it very easy. And that makes it easy to go soft, to lose perspective and be lulled into idleness, inertia, and irresponsibility.
And I like to think that working out is something of an inoculation against this. I like to think that it’s a tribute of sorts to the primacy of work, a constant reminder that the same power that you muster to change your body can also be harnessed Transcribed To change your life. And that’s another [00:03:00] reason why we do it, right?
Another reason why we pour so much time and energy and effort into our training and why it’s so important to us. Many people, they look at us and they just don’t get it. They wonder, is it just narcissism? Have we just fallen in love with our reflections or maybe it’s insecurity? They think maybe they think we’re feeding some sort of superiority complex, or maybe it’s something darker, something like.
Self loathing, are we just unable to accept ourselves the way that we are? If you ask me all of these people, they’re just missing the point. We don’t train to feel vainglorious or paper over shortcomings or punish ourselves. We train because it gives us more than a better body. It gives us a better life.
It builds a lot more than muscle it builds It teaches us how to stop bullshitting ourselves and confront reality. It teaches us how to have courage to commit to big goals. It teaches us how to create purpose and meaning. [00:04:00] It teaches us how to take action instead of just making excuses and finding reasons to fail.
It teaches us how to take responsibility for ourselves and refuse to be a victim. It teaches us how to work hard. Hard instead of chasing magic bullets and quick fixes, it teaches us how to get gritty and how to push through pain and adversity. It also teaches us how to value long-term satisfaction over immediate gratification.
And at bottom, I think working out teaches us a very powerful lesson if you have the power to change your body. Then you have the power to change your life. That’s why we train and let’s not forget it. Let’s also not forget that the gym is a lot more than a place to just move, grunt and sweat.
It’s a miniature cosmos of sorts where we can make contact with the deeper parts of ourselves, our convictions, our fears, our habits, our [00:05:00] anxieties. It’s an arena where we can confront these opponents head on and prove that we have what it takes to vanquish them. I think that the gym is also a setting where we can test the assumptions we’ve made about ourselves and the stories underlying them.
It calls on us to demonstrate how we respond to the greater struggles of life. Adversity, pain, insecurity, stress, weakness. Disadvantage, and I think in some ways calls on us to demonstrate who we really are. In this way, I think the gym really is a training and testing ground for the body, mind, and soul.
The conflicts that we learn to endure in the gym, they empower us in our daily lives as well. The concentration, discipline, and resilience required to build a great body are also required to build a great life. And like I’ve been saying, if you can do one, you can do the other. Because the way to do anything is, at bottom, the way to do everything.
I think that the gym is also [00:06:00] a source of learning, because it calls on us to constantly attempt new things. It’s a forum of sorts where, Questions are at least as important as answers, and it also cultivates what scientists call a growth mindset by teaching us that our abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work.
And that’s a worldview that is essential for great accomplishment. It’s a place that accepts any and all ideas, but it also gives clear, unqualified feedback. Things either work, or they don’t. So in short, the gym can be so much more than merely a place to work out. It can be a refuge from the chaos around us.
A world of our own that we create to satisfy our most personal and primal dreams and desires. This is why the gym can give us a lot more than muscle and strength. It can give us more life. Hey there, it is Mike again, and I just wanted to say that I hope you enjoyed this episode and [00:07:00] found it interesting and helpful.
Now, if you’d like to read about all this stuff as well, then head over to muscleforlife. com. That’s muscle F O R life. And legionathletics. com, L E G I O N, athletics. com Because I’ve published over a million words of free articles on the blogs on those websites On all types of things related to building muscle, losing fat, and getting in shape Healthy new articles go up every week on both sites as well.
So if you like what you read, then definitely hop on my mailing list and you will be notified when new stuff goes live. My email subscribers also get exclusive deals on my products and services and other goodies. So there’s that too. Thanks again for listening to this episode. And I will see you in the next one.
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