I spoke in an earlier piece, Micromanaging the Path to Success, about the importance of harnessing our innate pleasure-seeking behavior along with our “here and now” societal shift to focus solely on the task at hand. Often times, lofty goals are coupled with undue, self-inflicted pressure. Successful people, along with those looking to propel themselves into such a paradigm, are often creatures of immense self-criticism. You will often hear successful individuals are their own self-proclaimed “worst critic”. Again, herein lies another tie to an earlier article, Self-Assessment, which speaks to the importance of being honest with oneself and constantly striving for personal improvement with a healthy degree of passion and vigor. All of these practices of successful people that we have discussed can be seemingly overwhelming, especially when one is in the infancy stages of beginning a personal journey. We first find ourselves with a goal or self-vision, inevitably followed shortly thereafter at the crucial “where do I start” juncture.

Whatever your idea of personal success is, you’ll find that there are innumerable parallelisms between your ultimate goal and the preceding stepping stones along the way. If we understand the vitality of these stones and how to step on them correctly, we’ll eventually get to the other side. Some individuals quit their journey the instant they find how treacherous the river that blocks the shore of success can be. This is an easy fix, so long as we approach the river in the correct manner.

The best way to understand these stones is first, conceptualize the fact that they are individual endeavors. In the aforementioned Micromanaging the Path to Success, we discussed to concept of viewing each of our daily tasks as individual milestones with precision and motivation. When looking at the broader spectrum of day, viewing each and every task as a singular mountain the needs climbed and approaching it as such can be overwhelmingly exhausting. Again, we are at a crossroads of sorts. How do we manage through all of these tasks with optimal effort without being too engulfed in our goals and, moreover, neglectful of our energy and life outside of our interpersonal desires?

The key is to make each task habit. You’ll often hear that successful individuals are “creatures of habit”. They have been stepping on the river’s stones for so long that they often are monotonous in their approach. Let’s consider bodybuilders as an exemplary analogy. Bodybuilders epitomize habit. They don’t conscientiously consider the importance of each meal. When constructing and changing a plan they do, however, their daily meals are eaten with little thought. That’s a mindset that has become second nature to them. Likewise with training; training hard is simply a habit. All of the stones that physique competitors need to step on to cross their individual rivers eventually become habit.

As with most things, I look for how bodybuilding and the practices therein can lend itself to giving me clues for success elsewhere. Anytime we find ourselves looking up stream to a goal, we need to take one step at a time. Pick one stepping stone and focus solely on that for a given amount of time. Working with clients has afforded me the opportunity to work with a varying level of athletes, though for most of them the term “athlete” is a huge misnomer! When I start working with individuals who are sedentary, have horrible diets, and wouldn’t know what a gym was if they woke up in one, the task of getting in shape seems insurmountable to them. That’s where I put this concept into practice. A full-fledged diet and training routine inevitably ends in failure, if of course, the individual is several stones away. For many, the first stone is simply hydration and increasing daily water intake. Shortly thereafter, this becomes a habit. The client doesn’t need to constantly think about tracking their water intake. They drink water out of habit, are healthier as a result, and then are adequately prepared to step on the next stone.

Self-assessment

When looking at human nature objectively, it’s very easy to identify common flaws. In my estimation, these flaws are clustered geographically, generationally, and culturally. One seemingly universal flaw that I’ve found amongst nearly all individuals, to at least some degree of severity, is the inability to be honest and self-assessing. I personally struggle with this on a daily basis.

I coach high school football. It’s been a passion of mine for a few years now. It has allowed me to connect with student-athletes on an intimate level and impact them in ways that far supersede the field. It has also allowed me to continue my analysis of human nature from a unique perspective. Working with these young men gives insight into how pure and genuine a young mind can be. Let’s briefly flash forward to July.

As an annual tradition, our players and staff traveled to camp for a few days and nights. This allows for intensive targeting of our players. They eat, sleep, and breathe football. It becomes a mentally and physically trying time, testing our players’ fortitude and capabilities. During a team meeting, each player and coach was required to write their goal for the season onto a large poster board. Many of the players wrote quantitative and measurable goals (e.g. undefeated season, state championship, etc.). For me, however, I wanted something a bit more meaningful.

“I want to have established team of young men that are honest, self-assessing individuals.”

When it was my turn to expound upon my goal, I looked amongst the athletes and saw inquisitive stares. As I explained my rationale, I began to think. This team flaw is merely a microcosm of an enormous societal inadequacy. It’s something that, even though I’m well aware of how it plagues us, I still need to mentally free myself from its captivity. The inability to be “real” with oneself is an overwhelming detriment that keeps us all from our goals.

Each and every individual has some altered perception of self. Analogous to my athletes, we all think we’re better than we actually are in some realm of life. At times, I’m guilty of thinking I’m a better bodybuilder, teacher, or coach than I truly am. This issue transcends itself even into our daily habits. Most people think they work harder than they really do, too. We identify with a fitness community that embraces “the grind”. Everyone seems to have the perception that they work harder than everyone else and often want to feel rewarded for such. A social media post about how hard we work is great way to give ourselves the proverbial “good job”. I tell my players on a daily basis: “You don’t get rewarded for doing what you’re supposed to do.” We want to pat ourselves on the back for having a good workout. You do realize there are thousands of athletes across the country that worked their tails off today too, right? Thus, we didn’t make any progress. They took a step forward as did we, hence the separation between us and mediocrity remained stagnant. I even address this issue with my 5th grade students. They often seek rewards in the form of bonus points or extra recess time for the most trivial of things, such as doing their homework. As always, I sound like a broken record; you don’t get rewarded for doing what you’re supposed to do.

The evident issue with goal setting lies in the near-sightedness of human inclination. Be it through thousands of years of evolutionary and environmental programming or through an innate mind state, we are organisms focused on the present. Dialogue with innumerable colleagues has hinted towards a general connotation of negativity towards this fact. Personally, I always strive to be open minded and assess any issue from a multitude of angles. Whenever I analyze neurological patterning, I full heartedly believe that most people are focused on solely obtaining pleasure (refer to my earlier article The Subjectivity of the Happiness Paradigm), which catalyzes our society into becoming one that is unable to see the “bigger picture” as well as one plagued with an inability to set long-term goals.

Our society is one that is founded on instant gratification. That’s a large contributor to why we, generally, only focus on the present. Even as someone who’s aware of this state, I find myself being unable to break the pattern. It’s something that’s all around us. Cell phones, for example, provide access to people and data within milliseconds. I can’t even begin to tell you how often I use Google on a daily basis. I’m a knowledge junky, as many of us have become.

Bodybuilding is analogous to life. It’s a simple microcosm with innumerable parallelisms to the real world. This is observable when we talk about genetics. Genetically, we all have our predispositions. For me, the true joy of bodybuilding is found in overcoming genetic limitations and playing to your strengths. When thinking of the aforementioned, society would flourish if we were to use this same mentality. Taking our constant obsession with instant gratification and using it to play to our strengths could be the most advantageous route one can travel as an individual. We are programed to be fixated on the present. Let’s maximize that fixation and execute.

Successful people find value in becoming micromanagers. I’ve noticed that I’ve had the most efficiency, in all aspects of life, when I temporarily ignore long-term aspirations in favor of honing in on small details of a particular trade. Take contest prep as an example. When beginning a new dieting phase, the task can seem a bit overwhelming. Looking several weeks or months down the road can make the arduous task of dieting seem almost insurmountable, especially for the inexperienced. Herein lies the importance of being a micromanager and focusing on the immediate task at hand. Every meal is its own beast. I approach each and every Tupperware container as if it’s the only thing that’s separating me from my goals. They are often difficult to eat but approaching all my daily meals individually with this mentality definitely puts me at a favorable advantage. Likewise with my training: each set is its own entity and thus, requires my complete, uninterrupted focus. I obviously try to avoid putting an overemphasis on trivial matters and having a typical “meathead” mentality that requires a primitive ritual prior to each set as though the lifter is preparing for war. A unique balance between understanding how vital small details are while not succumbing to the cliché “paralysis by analysis” is the key. Even still, I’d rather side on being obsessive rather than ignoring what’s truly important: the details. Adjust your attention to the building blocks and watch the fruits of your labor manifest a house of success.