How Do I Get Ripped?
Well, simply stated, I believe that personal development is critical for just about any aspect of life. Any, getting ripped or otherwise. This includes getting the most out of your abilities to achieve success by enhancing your physical and mental awareness – toughness. For example, pushing yourself beyond what you THOUGHT were your physical limits to complete many of the intense INSANITY or P90X workouts! Understanding your opportunities for improvement also requires leveraging positive attitude with motivation to challenge yourself and stretch outside your comfort zone (where significant, and in my opinion most, learning occurs). Taking failure in stride and learning from experiences to advance your growth potential is fundamental. With that said, I attribute much of my current and developing success in my workouts and career to renewed focus on personal development. Of course this can translate to your personal life, perhaps most importantly.
So how do I focus on personal development? Well, many ways, but mostly looking for experiences or training approaches that expand my comfort zone, whether resulting in success, failure or a combination thereof. Training involves not only my day-to-day workouts, but also educational seminars, advanced degree opportunities and / or general development literature available to challenge my perspective. Although I have an advanced degree, I am the first to admit I still have a lot to learn and, thus, embrace reading personal development books, for example. Some of my favorite titles include “The Slight Edge,” “Good to Great,” “Goals,” “Eat That Frog,” “Failing Forward,” “Think and Grow Rich,” “Personality Plus,” “7 Habits of Highly Effective Leaders,” and “Developing the Leader Within You,” to name a few… in fact, several of these titles are recent additions to my library. To date, my favorite book is “The Slight Edge” by Jeff Olson. I embrace the concept of “compounding” effort, whether focused on increasing the value of your retirement account or achieving progress toward your fitness or career development goals. I ascribe to the theory of doing the small things every day, which appear rather insignificant, and are easy to do – easy not to do. It is the small things accomplished over time that will lead to great success if consistently executed. It is the Slight Edge that I am executing in both my physical and professional initiatives with success. This has driven the evolution of my development and is key to my recent success as both a R&D manager AND Team Beachbody Coach.
From a workout perspective, graduating programs such as P90X and INSANITY has stretched my imagination in terms of physical capabilities and going beyond my comfort zone. I have achieved confidence from these programs. Graduation from P90X and INSANITY helped expand my mental toughness allowing me to achieve some significant physical challenges this past summer while on a REI adventure trip to Alaska including hiking a glacier, mountain biking and whitewater rafting difficult obstacles. I encourage each and every one of you to figure out how to get outside YOUR comfort zone and grow physically, mentally and financially. Life is good. Live it while you can. BRING IT!!
