Fit For Life: Success is Not Easy

Sunday, June 10, 2018

Matt Espeut, GoLocalWorcester Health +Lifestyle Contributor

As hard as we work and as much as we try in life, we don’t always progress as fast as we want to. In fact, sometimes we progress very slowly, and to some of us, this is nerve-wracking.

We sometimes get knocked backwards even when we give an all-out effort. When this happens, it can be extremely frustrating and when we feel like we are doing everything right it frustrates us even more.

Notice I said “when” it happens and not “if” it happens. Because it’s going to happen. It happens to the best of the best, and it’s going to happen to you too.

A friend said “As long as you take two steps forward for everyone back, you’ll be alright. A quote from a Rocky movie was that “Life hits you hard and it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, that’s how winning is done”.

So now that we know that we are going to face setbacks, the question is what will we do to deal with them?

We all want to be successful in every arena of our lives.

Whether we want to lose weight and be healthy, or create a successful business, or be a great athlete, nobody wakes up in the morning wanting to be defeated.

Although we can prepare ourselves, and take all the right paths to reach success, it’s inevitable that we will face some sort of adversity or setback. Like I said earlier, it’s going to happen, but we can take some actions to minimize the effects and keep moving forward.

Success is a matter of mastering the monotonous and doing the things you need to do instead of the things you want to do on a daily basis.

You may not want to go to the gym some days, but you need to in order to see success with your fitness routine.

You need to get up, deal with people, and put in the hours every day if you want to have a successful career or business.

You need to train until you are in pain to become a professional athlete.

You need to skip dessert and eat more vegetables if you want to be healthy and see the scale go down.

These are the things that you need to do regularly and relentlessly on a daily basis in order to achieve your goals, and even when you are disciplined and do all these things you will sometimes take a step backwards, so imagine how hard it would be if you didn’t work hard?

Success isn’t easy, it’s a matter of doing the things that move you forward whether you like it or not.

You need to do the things most people won’t do. That’s why success isn’t for everybody, and many won’t reach it.

So understand that there is no easy way, but being smart about the way we do things will eliminate total failure, and decrease the amount of setbacks we will encounter.

Visualize what you want and what you are doing. Are they in line?

Do you visualize a 6 pack and eat junk every day?

Do you visualize your bank account with six figures in it, and take days off from work, or spend money senselessly?

Do you visualize being a great athlete, and sit on the couch and play video games every day?

If you are doing all the right things, and things aren’t happening at the rate that you want them to, don’t get frustrated, keep pushing forward. Turn discouragement into determination and push harder, and never give up.

Life is NOT a marathon, it’s a series of sprints. You need to go hard, quickly recover, and go hard again.

You can’t do that in a marathon because you need to conserve energy, or you will get burnt out, get discouraged and quit.

I was listening to a podcast and the person was talking about how achieving success is like climbing Mt. Everest. It takes 10 days just to reach base camp. Then you have to climb to the first level and come back down before you progress to the next level. Then when you reach the next level, you need to come back down and get acclimated to the elevation. This is a process you need to do in order to maintain forward progress. If you were to get dropped off at the top, your lungs wouldn’t function, and you would die.

The same goes for anything good that you are trying to accomplish.

You need to keep making positive steps forward, even if you have to backtrack, or get knocked off course.

If you step on the scale, and it doesn’t tell you what you expected, you need to keep trying, and moving forward.

If you fail a test, you need to regroup, study harder and try again.

If you get skipped over for a well-deserved promotion, work harder and make yourself even more valuable to the company.

When a member cancels their membership, I need to keep working and get 5 more.

If you get an injury during training, let it heal and come back stronger.

We are resilient as humans, and the ones that have driven and discipline will always succeed.

It’s in all of us, and if you were ever successful at anything, it means that you have the ability to be successful at everything.

You just need to learn how to channel your energy, be focused and do the work.

Yes, we will get knocked down, but we all have the ability to get back up.

My advice is to get back up quickly, reload to try again.

Remember life is a series of sprints.

Go hard, rest, and go hard again.

When you repeat this process, good things will come your way even when you hit some speed bumps along the way.

Matt Espeut, GoLocal's Health & Lifestyle Contributor has been a personal trainer and health & fitnesss consultant for over 25 years. He is the owner of Fitness Profiles, a one on one, and small group personal training company, as well as Providence Fit Body Boot Camp, located at 1284 North Main St., on the Providence/Pawtucket line. You can reach Matt at (401) 453-3200; on Facebook at "Matt Espeut", and on Twitter at @MattEspeut. "We’re all in this life together – let’s make it a healthy one.

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