Imagine you’re the passenger on a bus. You pull the cord to let the driver know that your stop is coming up, but instead of slowing down they slam their foot on the gas and veer out of control as they turn to stare at you.

Their hair is disheveled, shirt filled with random stains and the funk of 1,000 years invades your nostrils. Their eyes are bloodshot and the last good tooth they had abandoned ship years ago. For all you know they may not even be wearing pants!

To say they’re methed out of their mind would be the understatement of the century.

And that’s when it finally hits you: wherever you want to go, this bus definitely isn’t getting you there.

Why Victimhood Is Killing Your Gains

Have you ever felt like things were constantly happening to you and that you were just a passenger along for the ride?

It’s exactly like being on that bus, except way worse because it’s actually your life.

I’ve been there, and on any given day I can easily slip into right back into that passenger seat if I’m not careful. Blaming, defending, complaining – these are all tools of the trade.

And I get it. Sinking into that victim mentality and letting it run amuck has a certain seductive appeal to it.

When in that mode, it’s easy to think that you’ve got it all figured out and that if only those other people out there would get their act together, you wouldn’t be in this predicament.

You’d be in much better shape if your co-workers would stop bringing all sorts of treats and delectable fatty foods into the office…

You would have time to hit the gym if people stopped making so many demands on your time…

When dieting for a photoshoot, I felt myself mentally blaming friends I was going out to eat with – how could they order that when they know I’m trying to get mad sexy?

AND WHY ARE THESE FRENCH FRIES SO DELICIOUS? DOESN’T THIS RESTAURANT KNOW THEY’RE MY FAVORITE AND THAT I CAN’T POSSIBLY RESIST?!

On the outside, I played it cool. On the inside, I was whiney and had a pretty bad case of the emo.

It’s tempting to feel like you’re always the one in the right, making it easy to blame everything on something outside of you and keeping the pristine image of yourself intact.

That’s taking the easy, low-effort approach to living life.

Blaming others will never better you. It only ensures that you stay exactly where you are and miss out on the best parts of life

Whenever I find myself playing the victim, I tell myself one thing that never fails to pull me back from the brink of destruction…

It’s Always Your Fault

Are you not exercising as much as you’d like? It’s completely your fault.

Looking like Captain America pre-Super Soldier serum? Certainly your fault.

Do you feel like you can’t create the kind of relationship that you want to be in? It’s definitely your fault.

Are your eating habits spiraling out of control and it’s wrecking havoc on your mental and physical well-being? It’s for sure your fault.

If you’re anything like me, hearing that something is your fault can make a piece of you immediately want to jump on the defensive.

The goal here isn’t to send you down a self-critical rabbit hole of shame and doubt, but to empower you. This is all about self-acceptance with as little judgment as possible.

“It’s your fault” is a helpful mental shortcut capable of sneaking past all your hidden defense systems, leading to the end result of it being your responsibility.

Let’s say I kidnapped you and dropped you in a pile of quicksand (which I have on hand at all times).

It’s not your fault that I was a big ‘ol meanie and snatched you up while you were watching How I Met Your Mother, but if you want to live long enough to see another episode then it’s your responsibility to do something about getting out.

If something involves you, you play a role in the situation and bear the responsibility of bringing about change.

Own it all. The good, the bad, and the fugly.

When you stop looking for things outside of yourself to blame, you’re forced to look inward and search for ways to better yourself.

Instead of all of your resources going towards deflecting and complaining, they’re now funneled towards finding solutions to get you where you want to go.

Only by claiming responsibility can the process of true growth begin.

Be Your Own Hero

This is your life. Hold yourself accountable to it.

You are responsible for everything in it, from the look of your physique to how you make a living and the quality of your personal interactions.

Others can help you, so don’t be afraid to ask for it. It’s great if they do, but no one else is responsible for making anything happen in your life but you.

No one is coming to save you. Fully embrace this fact.

Stop the momentum dead in its tracks by asking this question: what’s one thing I can do in this moment to help myself?

No matter how small the answer that you come up with is, do that thing and then build off of it relentlessly.

Regardless of your situation, there are dozens of things that you can do today to snatch your power back from the claws of victimhood and actively create the life you want to live.

It’s ok not to be perfect. It’s ok not to have all the answers. It’s ok to say you don’t know but that you’re still looking.

It’s not ok to blame your problems and struggles on others.

Staring right now, you are no longer a victim.

Action and a deep, ever-evolving understanding of self. is the only thing that can and will save you.

Go forth and act boldly, even if it looks like a hot mess until you get the hang of it.

 

Invest in your fitness and your sex life will improve dramatically.

It sounds like the biggest duh moment in the history of humanity, doesn’t it? Of course it will be better: you’re stronger, leaner, have rock hard abs and more stamina. You’ve just achieved the holy grail of sex appeal.

Not necessarily.

While these are nice additions, they’re far from necessary and aren’t close to the actual character traits that – in unison with these features – will drive your woman wild, connecting you two on an entirely new and meaningful level.

And these are traits that you can practice and develop daily, on your own, in less than 45 minutes.

1. Commitment

With all that we have on our plates, taking care of our physical health is never convenient; there’s always something else that you could be doing. Then again, showing up for our woman fully in the relationship (and in the bedroom) isn’t always convenient, either.”

It would be easy, maybe even understandable, to let our physical health fall by the wayside of other responsibilities, to put in occasional effort here or there and pat ourselves on the back. But this small degree of effort only leads to mediocrity, and deep down inside you know you want more than the meager results it offers, and that she wants much more from you and of you.

What we commit to grows. What we commit to commands our full attention, focus and energy, and the things that we once thought were so important begin to fall lower on our priority list.

Your woman needs your complete commitment to be able to fully open to you. Even if you aren’t consciously aware of it, her Spider-Sense notices when you aren’t providing it, and over time this will serve as a barrier to your intimacy.

Choose a strength training program that’s appropriate for your current fitness level and commit to it fully for the next 12 weeks. From this day forward, like breathing, it is something that you unequivocally do. Create a backup plan for when obstacles get in the way, and then create a backup plan for that backup plan.

During these 12 weeks, it’s less about crushing it and more about flexing your commitment muscles, becoming a man who prioritizes and grows through his commitments.

2. Connection

To connect fully with her, you must first connect fully with yourself.

The gym, or wherever you are building your body, is the ultimate training ground for self-discovery. It gives you the chance to get out of your own logical head and into your body.

Feel how your body responds as you grind out the last repetition of your set – did you have more in your tank?

Observe that sensation in your gut as your body fatigues mid-workout – does it make you want to dig deep or to call it quits?

The best things in life must be felt, not philosophized.

Would you trust with your goals a personal trainer who had never trained a client or exercised effectively in his life? Or a professed surgeon who only took a quick look at Yahoo Answers before opening up your chest?

Your body is your tool and it is your responsibility to understand it well, as a knight knows his blade. The more in tune you are with all of its inner workings, the more connected you can be to hers.

3. Presence & Intention

Millions of people around the world watched Michael Jordan play basketball because they knew from the moment that he stepped onto the court that this was not a game.

He wasn’t thinking about what his momma ate for dinner, nor how many thousands of dollars he just made in the last few minutes from Air Jordan sales. Every thought and movement was intensely directed towards a single objective; fully in the moment, he responded intuitively to the ever-changing landscape, wasting not an ounce of movement.

He didn’t come merely to win – he played like he was saving the world (and thus Space Jam was a biopic).

Are you fully in the moment when making love to your woman, able to sense what she needs and giving it to her even before she even knows that she does?

Or are you distracted, thinking about the argument you had with your boss, or mentally drafting your next tweet?

You can either tweet, or you can fuck – pick which one is more important.

When you’re at the gym, you’re at the gym. Leave your phone and any distractions in the car and immerse yourself in your sessions, over time developing the same immersion with your lady.

4. Passion

When was the last time that you truly ravished your woman? I’m talking lifting her out of the shower, throwing her over your shoulder and lovingly, passionately, bending her over the kitchen counter kind of sex?

Society tames us to a large degree, dulling our edges for the sake of group cohesion, but the bedroom (or backseat), the intimate space for you and your partner, is the last place that you want to be civilized – it’s not in your basic nature to be.

That desire to give all you’ve got to your woman springs from the same part of you that would risk your life to protect her from harm. The woman wants to surrender to you and to the direction you provide – but only she trusts that you can handle it all.

Don’t waltz your way through your gym sessions. Bring intensity to each repetition no matter how tired you are. Don’t worry, it won’t kill you. In fact, through strength training, you are literally overcoming resistance with every push and pull, identifying your weaknesses and bolstering your strengths with decisive action.

Each time you grab the weight, you’re slightly better than you were before.

She wants the passionate, unbridled animal inside of you. The lion that snuggles and is affectionate with his lioness is the same creature that’s capable of fighting tooth and nail anything that would bring harm to her and their cubs.

By approaching your workouts in the manner laid out above, in due time you will develop the ability to give her just that.

Death by a thousand cuts.

Luckily I don’t mean a literal death, since that’s the least anabolic activity of all time and would surely negatively impact your gains. The death I’m speaking of is more sinister, capable of covering your otherwise great life with a general malaise that seems unshakable.

Most of us know objectively that to compare ourselves to others is an exercise in futility. We’re emotional creatures, and logic and rational thinking get drop kicked right out of the window when it comes to our wants and desires.

When it comes to how we look, how strong we are, how fast we’re progressing and everything in between, our emotions can push our rational minds out of the driver’s seat, take the wheel, and drive us straight towards Crazyville.

Like sticking a fork into an electrical socket, or taking a 3 hour nap while you’re cooking a steak in an oven (I’m not alone in the last one…right?), comparing ourselves to others is more often than not a horrible idea that no good can come from.

Much like a moth drawn to the flame, we just can’t help ourselves. None of us are truly immune to it.

Our Behind-The-Scenes VS Their Highlight Reel

We’re with ourselves 24/7, and as a result we know more about us than any outside observer would; our motivations, goals and hot button issues. When we go into comparison mode, our brain wrangles up those demons and throws them right back into our faces, completely unfiltered.

The problem is that we aren’t comparing our demons to someone else’s – we’re pitting them against only what we can see on the surface, and given that people typically put their best foot forward in the public, this is rarely an accurate portrait of the situation.

Imagine yourself doing all that you can to get results in the gym. You’re logging your workouts, keeping track of your calories and nutrients, making time to prepare your meals when you would love nothing more than to ease up on the reigns just a little bit.

Then one day you see someone working out there with a physique that you would sell your first born child for, casually strolling through their session. And here’s what kicks you right in the junk: they’re eating a candy bar post workout.

All of a sudden, your inner comparison beast busts loose.

Why do they look like that and I don’t? They clearly don’t work as hard as I do. I train hard ERRYday. #BeastMode #NoDaysOff #AnotherRidiculousHashtagHere.

 I take my nutrition way more seriously and here they are eating a candy bar, looking like they just walked off the set of a photo shoot.

But you don’t know the full story. You don’t know what they sacrificed to get there, or anything about them. All you have to go off is this brief snapshot in time, and it’s easy for the comparing mind to take that and create a vivid picture that’s far from reality.

Getting caught in this trap can cause you to do things you otherwise wouldn’t do. I’m talking constant program hopping, ridiculous diets, setting unrealistic time frames for yourself, and setting out on a never-ending quest searching for “the secret”.

Our worst vs their best. Our inside vs their outside. It’s always a losing battle.

Welcome To The Black Hole Of Suck

The appetite of a black hole is insatiable, feeding off of everything around it. When it comes to comparisons, this is the exact scenario that we find ourselves in – and it will drain your life dry if you let it.

In this mode, nothing is ever enough. You constantly feel inferior.

You’re never strong, because someone else is stronger.

You never feel truly feel comfortable in your skin, because someone is always leaner, has bigger biceps or more ab definition.

You aren’t making progress fast enough, because someone is always achieving more in a shorter amount of time.

Comparison feeds off of these types of thoughts., and it never ends.

I once dated a woman whose ex boyfriend was a UFC fighter. After a quick Google search to find out who he was, I went from being completely happy with my development and progress to feeling like Captain America pre-Soldier Serum.

Here I am, a guy who works out 3x a week, loves to eat ice cream by the pint, enjoys a good marathon video game session and more often than not falls asleep to a YouTube video because I stayed up way too late clicking my way through the internet rabbit hole, comparing myself to an Olympic champion with ungodly genetics who trains more hours in a week than I do in a single month and makes a living training to punch a hole through the soul of other elite athletes in front of thousands of people.

If I were looking for a recipe to help make myself feel like hot diggity dog shit, I hit the nail right on the head.

By constantly sucking in all of this outside stimuli without any filter, letting it bombard our inner world, all we do is diminish our own accomplishments, taking the wind out of our sails for no good reason.

The Only Way To Slay The Comparison Beast

To be forewarned is to be forearmed.

The act of comparing may never really go away, but you can turn the tide in your favor.

When you notice in the moment that you’re falling victim to this mindset, stop immediately before the thoughts build any momentum.

Take a deep breath and relax. By doing this, you go from being reactionary to proactive, creating space to decide what you’re going to do next with the information you have.

This may sound woo woo as all hell, but give it a try. Your breath (that thing that keeps you alive) is intimately connected to controlling how you feel in any given moment.

Is your training partner progressing faster than you? Great – there’s something that you can learn from them. Maybe you won’t have the same results as them for a host of reasons, but if nothing else it shows you a vision of what is possible, and you can bring that energy and excitement to your workouts.

There will always be someone better than you out there, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter. All that you can focus on and truly control is the effort that you bring to the task.

You’re the only person that you need to compare yourself to, and only to check-in and make sure that you’re improving at a rate that’s acceptable for you and your goals.

When this is the focus, what others are doing becomes irrelevant.

Let me be clear. I’m not saying that you can’t look at what others are doing and using that as fuel to push yourself forward.

Sometimes seeing others making progress towards their goals can be a healthy gut check for you, allowing you to reconnect and give yourself an honest assessment as to if you’re playing it safe or if you have more to give.

For others it does more harm than good. It’s like fire: you can use it to warm up your house or burn it to the ground. The devil is in the details, and it will take time to learn when to push forward and when to be kinder to yourself and pull back a bit.

Instead letting the accomplishments of others feel like a slight towards you, use them to build yourself up. Choose to be inspired by what others are doing, no longer making yourself the victim of outside forces, and tap into a constantly renewable source of motivation and energy – yourself.

It’s hard to ignore, isn’t it?

That pulling sensation from somewhere deep inside. While the origin is unknown, this isn’t the first time that this feeling has crept up on you.

Maybe it was the game you watched. Seeing the athletes move their bodies with a sense of purpose, all towards a single objective, trigged your own desire to step into the arena.

It could’ve been that couple that ran past you, laughing with each other as they quickly changed from full-sized humans into tiny specks in the distance. You haven’t gone on a walk in awhile, and on any given day a set of stairs can leave you more winded than you care to admit. It feels like a finger thump straight to your heart.

Or perhaps it hit you as you flipped through the magazine in the checkout lane. On the cover, some “fit” model with abs for days. Page 26: lean legs and a butt that could stop a speeding bullet without so much as a flex.

Regardless of the source, the cause is the same. Your higher self, your own personal version of Jiminy Cricket, your inner voice (mind sounds like DMX, in case you were wondering), is throwing anything it can at you, trying to get you to pay attention to one thing: you’re not firing on all cylinders.

I’ve Been There Too

Back in the not too distant past, I was about as unhealthy as you could get.

Outside of organized sports until I was 12, moving around just wasn’t my thing. I took full advantage of every possible opportunity to lie down, sit in a chair or lean against a conveniently placed wall.

Exercise? Nope – it made me breath too hard. Then I’d sweat too much, which means I’d need more showers, which would cause me to run out of workout clothes, forcing me to continuously buy new ones. You can clearly see how if i kept exercising it would only lead to my financial ruin.

And eating healthy? French fries are technically a vegetable, and scientists have managed to cram every vitamin, mineral and nutrient that I need be a fully functioning human into chicken nuggets, so I didn’t need to bother with eating that green stuff.

Lengthy gaming sessions that stretched from dusk till dawn were the norm. Food that I could buy and eat in five minutes or less became my main source of sustenance.

At 20, after years of these kinds of shenanigans, it’s no wonder that I slept horribly, was in a constant state of lethargy, had cholesterol levels over 350 and suffered from a boner that was as dependable as a narcoleptic security guard.

Looking to do something (pretty much anything) to turn things around, I stumbled my way into fitness thanks to a series of random events, and it sent my life in an entirely new direction.

The Benefits

You’ll probably live longer. Even if you don’t, your quality of life will undoubtedly be better when compared to doing nothing.

You’ll have less fat and more muscle, all contributing to a leaner you. Clothes will fit better.

You’ll be more resistant to random injuries and the normal wear and tear of life. Slipping on ice in the winter time is no longer an instant death sentence.

Everyday life become easier because you’re stronger and more prepared for the tasks.

Exercise can serve as a new outlet for your aggression, sadness, or simply become a way to wrangle and process your thoughts better. Empowerment is just one workout away.

You’ll have more energy and an increased sense of self-confidence, not only from your appearance changing, but from the act of pursuing a goal.

Less stress, sharper brain function and an increased sense of creativity all await you. Your sex life will be better too because you’re more aware of and connected to your body – hollaaaaaaa.

You’ll be better able to modulate your energy. Like a DJ doing their DJ thing (like Jon Snow, I know nothing), you’ll know your levels at all times, whether you’re giving a task your all, have a little more in the tank, or you’re just coasting. And you can adjust your faders – is that what they’re called? – accordingly.

Here’s the rub: it takes time & consistency for all of these benefits to come to fruition. The sooner you make peace with this fact, the smoother your ride will be.

I completely get the urge to want it all right NOW. I was there, too. I was stunned when my biceps didn’t explode through my Kmart t-shirt after my first curl, and my back didn’t grow wide enough to block out the Sun when I did my first chin up. You mean I have to come back tomorrow and do this whole exercise thing AGAIN?!

Yup.

Do Something. Anything.

Do what you like. Yoga, running, weight lifting, break dancing or chasing ducks through the park like a crazy person. In the beginning, it really doesn’t matter.

If you’re new to exercise, pick something and get moving just to get the ball rolling. Remove as much friction as you possibly can between you and starting.

Do you need to have a solid plan when starting out? Not at all. Don’t let perfect become the enemy of good enough for the time being – you’ll learn what you need to along the way, refining your aim as you progress. Plus you’ll likely change course plenty of times as you figure out what’s important to you and what isn’t.

One of my first fitness fails was a run in the middle of winter wearing sweatpants, a hoodie, gym shoes and construction gloves because I just finished watching a Rocky montage. I slipped and bruised my tailbone and I gingerly limped my way back across campus while holding my buttcheeks in shame.

Sign Up For The Journey, Not The Destination

Some are motivated by the drive to succeed while others get pumped up when they’re trying their best not to lose. You may be someone who is motivated by outside rewards, or you forge ahead based on intrinsic factors. No matter which camp you more or less identify with, tap into your motivation style.

There’s no judgement on where you fall. This is a marathon, not a sprint. To avoid burnout, find something that you enjoy about the process outside of the end goal you’re looking to achieve. Regardless of where you want to go, the distance between point A and point Z is going to take time, and you can run yourself ragged grinding as fast as you can towards the finish line without actually enjoying anything along the way.

It’s like someone on a quest to make a million dollars. They can either become so focused on the destination that they only experience any kind of joy once they hit their goal, or they can create mini check points & rewards along the way, specific to how they roll, to keep them excited and make the road to dolla dollas far more enjoyable.

Abs Are Overrated

Last year I hired a coach and spent a few months dieting down for a photo shoot, something that I always wanted to do for the hell of it. I set the of goal of becoming leaner than I had ever been, and 20 pounds later I achieved just that.

And I was happy. For like 5.6 seconds in total.

Mainly I was just hungry and I wanted cake.

That’s the thing nobody really tells you. Once you reach your coveted destination, the victory is short-lived and before you know it your brain is already focusing the next shiny object.

I wasn’t any happier when I reached complete ab-domination, but when I started I sure thought that I would be. That’s when I realized that it’s not necessarily about the goal that you pick, but more about what your goal represents, who you become in the process and the traits that you develop along the way.

Even if you don’t completely hit your target, you’ll still learn a ton in the process. Sometimes a goal isn’t meant to be hit, but it gives you something to aim at for the time being.

As tempting as it is to try and fix inside issues with outside solutions, don’t. You’re enough as is right now. Instead of aiming to fix yourself, or thinking that you’ll be happier once you have X, adopt the mindset that you’re just making upgrades to an already awesome design.

Work from the inside out, not the other way around.

You’re Gonna Mess Up

A lot.

Years later you’ll look back on the major fails made along the way and laugh at yourself, wondering if your brain was hijacked by aliens who controlled your body, making it do silly things for their enjoyment.

It’s part of the game, so chalk it up as nothing but feedback designed to help you learn, grow, and spin your wheels less in the future.

Don’t add unnecessary pressure by locking yourself into some arbitrary deadline from the start. Chances are it’ll be unrealistic to begin with anyway. This whole exercise thing is like a giant carousel. When you inevitably goof up, fall off your intended path or things don’t go as planned, don’t flip out – the next chance to make things right is moments ago.

Ready? Take a deep breath and get ready for a wild ride. I have no idea where you’ll end up, but I promise that it will change your life if you let it.

“You have exactly one life in which to do everything you’ll ever do. Act accordingly.” – Colin Wright