The Shame of Choosing not to Improve

So I was reading a book about Alexander the Great today (yes, he is (was) one of the people I look up to), and I came across an interesting quote; "There is no shame in performing poorly at something, only in choosing not to improve."

I had to put the book down for a moment to ponder the awesome message in this quote, and how much I agree with it. This is actually something I've held true for a long time, but never seen expressed so accurately; It doesn't matter how much you suck at something, what's important is that you try your best to improve at it.

Picking Up Something You Suck at

Whenever you attempt something entirely new, this is what you should be telling yourself. You probably won't be very good at it, at least not in the beginning. But that's when you have a choice; either you choose to continue with your new thing until you improve and become awesome at it, or you take the easy way out and just quit, sparing you the "shame" of being bad at something.

But guess what? If you just avoid the stuff you're bad at, you'll never improve in them, and you'll suck at them forever. That is where the true shame lies - not in being bad at something in the beginning, but choosing to continue being bad at them forever. Sure, if you choose to quit something with the sole purpose being that you suck at it, it might spare yous some momentary embarrassment, but it will also hinder your growth at whatever it is you want to do.

The Shame of Quitting

 Chances are that if you're doing something difficult, it's something you want to improve at. Whether it's a new sport you've picked up or even online blogging, it's in your best interest to become good at it (otherwise, what's the point of doing it in the first place?). Especially if you're bad at it, you would benefit the most from improving in whatever it is you're doing.

So if you decide to quit that, you're actively working against your own wishes and your own progress. And there is no awesomeness in that, only shame.

Example of Awesomeness

I actually see this principle in action quite often as I help some of my friends to start working out (yeah, I consider myself a bit of a personal trainer for those of my friends who want to get fit). Most of the ones I introduce to training don't have a lot to show for when it comes to muscles - at least not in the beginning. Usually, they can't lift any more than the 20kg bar without any weights on. But that's how it is - you can't start out and expect to be at the top immediately.

 Now, this is where a lot of people would simply quit, being disheartened and embarrassed about not being at the level they want to be. And that is when a person's true character comes to show - either they quit pretty much instantly, or they decide to push through and become stronger, ignoring whatever embarrassment they may be feeling in the beginning.

And that's what separates the awesome from the unawesome; that will to continue, to improve, even when facing a few obstacles.


So whenever you consider quitting something simply because you're not good at it, ask yourself this; Would you rather take the easy way out and keep sucking at it forever, or push through the hard times in the beginning until you emerged as a pro in your chosen field?

How to Avoid Letting Yourself Go as You Grow Older

This is an issue that’s been on my mind lately; how can you avoid letting yourself go as you grow older? 

I’m in pretty good shape – and so are a lot of my friends. Becoming out of shape has never really been a concern for me, since exercising has always been a part of my life. But then I looked around and noticed how very few people actually remain fit as they grow older. I know a lot of people who were pretty fit when they were young, and now sport an impressive beer belly– and I can’t help but wonder what went wrong. 
 

When did they decide to drop their training and go lazy? Did they lose the time to work out? Did they just stop caring? Will the same happen to me as I grow old?

This has led me to fear that I might lose my fitness as I age too, which has made me quite interested in finding the cause of this phenomenon, so I can avoid it myself.
 

Therefore, I decided to find the answer to the question “When and why do people drop their fitness as they grow older?”
 

When

Most people seem to lose their fitness around the time they finish school and start working. Their degeneration seems to start the minute they head out into the world and start living completely on their own. This leads to the obvious reasons behind it being:

The Reasons

The cause of most people losing their fitness as they age can be summarized to two reasons; poor diet and lack of training. As people start living on their own and getting a job, maintaining the well-rounded diet their bodies are used to can be tough. 

Be it because of a low budget, a lack of time or a lack of know-how, many people see a deterioration in the quality of their food habits. Some people start eating more junk food, while others eat a lot less than usual due to a lack of time. Either way, this dietary change has a severe negative effect on their fitness.

Meanwhile, the same person finds himself having less free time than ever, and simply doesn't have the time to work out anymore. (Which is why they should consider Making a Workout Part of Your Everyday Routine)

These two things combined are enough to cause a deterioration in everyone's health and fitness. However, being conscious about it can really help beat the issue, or at the very least provide an explanation of the situation.

Stay tuned for another post detailing how to avoid letting yourself go.

Making Exercise a Part of Your Everyday Routine

In order to stay physically awesome, you need to exercise regularly. There is just no way around that. But keeping up the habit of exercising can be tough, especially in the long run when motivation tends to run out. That's why it's important to make the workout a part of your everyday routine. This way it becomes easier to stay on course with your training, since it would be a natural part of your day, instead of something you just do when you have time for it.

Let's look at your existing routine. You probably have things like sleeping and eating on there, which you make time for no matter what (unless you're a med student, in which case it sucks to be you). Meanwhile, your exercise program is treated differently, and you only follow it when there is time. You don't make the time for it in the same way you make the time for sleeping and eating.

If you found yourself short on time, would you consider skipping sleep in order to catch up? No? Then how about skipping your workout? That's probably more likely to happen. Why is that?

You may argue that working out isn't important enough to be included in your daily routine. And granted, skipping a few training sessions probably won't cause as much harm as skipping sleep or eating would do, but it's of equal importance in the long run. If you don't stay in shape, it's going to take it's toll eventually. Therefore, you should make sure to treat your exercise program with the same respect as you do your sleeping schedule, and make sure you put time aside for it each day.

But how do you actually do it, if you're already short on time? Well first off, you should try making the time for it, by any means necessary.
 

Making the Time for the Workout

Let's say your daily schedule is already too full to incorporate a daily workout. (If it's not, feel free to skip this step). You just don't have any time to spare out of your day. Perhaps this is true, perhaps not. Either way, there are a number of ways to make sure you get some extra time for a proper workout - without any major consequences.

The first and simplest method to find time is to replace something you already do, with something that would give you exercise as a byproduct. For instance, would it be possible for you to replace your daily commute with a run or bike ride to work? Would you be able to do some pushups and situps while watching TV in the evenings? Search your day for everything and anything that could be replaced in this fashion.

If you're unable to find anything to replace, however, there is another method which anyone can implement; cutting back on sleep. This sounds counterproductive, I know - you probably sleep as much as you do for a reason. But the thing is that, with regular exercise, anyone can reduce their need of sleep with at least an hour every night. That's because a well trained body requires less sleep on average to recover during the night, that does its untrained counterpart. So by replacing an hour of sleep with an hour of exercise, it will all even itself out in the long run.

Making Sure You Stick With it

However, once you've found a way to incorporate your workouts into your daily routine, another problem still remains; how do you make sure you stick with your training in the long run? Although this problem is a lot easier to handle once you've successfully made exercising part of your day, it can still be difficult at times to keep up with your training. 

That's why it's so important to treat it like any other vital part of your day. You'd never skip out on sleeping, would you? Why would you be willing to skip your training? Just change the way you look at your training, and tell yourself it's something you have to do - much like eating, or brushing your teeth. That way, it won't be long before your training has become a natural part of your life, and you won't have to give it much thought in the future.
 

Developing Your Awesome Skills

Developing your physical awesomeness is an easy and straightforward process – all you need is a few minutes each day, and the resilience to stick with it long enough to see results. A great method to use in this case is the 21-day method, which builds on the idea that your body needs 21 days to adapt to a new habit. 
 

In this case, however, I advise you take a few minutes every morning before you start your day, and perform the exercises listed below for each thing you want to develop. This shouldn’t be too much to ask – everyone has at least a few extra minutes to spare in the morning.  And the results you’ll see are amazing. 
 

For instance, when I first decided I wanted to improve my coordination (which really sucked back then), I put away just 3-5 minutes in the morning to train it. How did I do it? I picked up a few balls and started to juggle. Simple as that. Every morning, I would get up, and before I did anything else, I would start throwing those balls into the air as I slowly learned how to juggle. And I saw some amazing results. In just a few weeks of doing this, I had learned to juggle three balls, and were already learning the techniques behind juggling four balls – and the benefits began to show in a lot of ways. 
 

Sure, I was pretty happy about having learned a new skill, but the results of my improvement were a lot more apparent when it came to sports in general. My hand-eye coordination had improved incredibly, and I had gotten a lot better at every sport I was doing at the time (both my handball coach and jujutsu sensei were amazed at my overnight improvement).
 

That’s when I decided to try the same technique with the other skills I wanted to develop – especially my balance and reflexes. So I added some exercises to my morning routine that would develop these skills  as well, and soon saw rapid improvement in all of these fields. 
 

What I came to realize by doing this was that I could improve my physical skills tremendously without putting a lot of time into it. All I needed was a little patience, and a few minutes of my day. And it usually took no more than three weeks to achieve noticeable results in each field. 
 

And the beauty of it is that You can do the same – just choose one of the skills you want to improve below, and spend a few minutes each morning doing the exercises. You should be able to notice the results within just a few weeks!

Coordination - in order to develop your coordination skills, there is one simple exercise to start off with; juggling. All you need is three balls, and you can begin developing this skill without a lot of effort.
 

Reflexes - in order to develop awesome reflexes, there is really only one thing you need to do; play video games. Shooting video games are a great way of training your reflexes, and just spending a few minutes each day at it will result in great results.
 

Balance - all you need to do in order to develop an awesome sense of balance is to get something small (like a pocket book) and balance on while standing on one leg. As your balance improves, all you need to do is get smaller objects to balance on.

These are all incredibly simple methods, which anyone can easily incorporate into their day. Just perform the activities listed above for each skill, and you'll be seeing results in no time.

Physical Awesomeness

The most straight-forward aspect of awesomeness, physical awesomeness, is perhaps the easiest to achieve. It is by no means difficult, and can be achieved by almost anyone. All you need is time and some self discipline (both of which can be acquired in excess through an awesome lifestyle in general).

Achieving Physical Awesomeness

But what is physical awesomeness, you ask? Well, as with awesomeness in general, this is a highly personal matter. However, physical awesomeness tends to boil down to shaping the perfect body - which also happens to be a matter of definition. Some strongly believe that a bulked up gym-body is the perfect body, while others prefer the skinny marathon runner-body. Everyone has their own view of this, all depending on what they want to be able to do with their physique. Chances are an Olympic swimmer will have a highly differing view of the perfect body than the average couch potato.

 So how do you define your "perfect body"?

It's simple; just decide what you want to be able to do physically, and then picture the body required to pull it off. And that's your version of the perfect body. Some might want to be able to lift 200kgs off the floor, which means their perfect body is a mountain of muscles. Others might want to be able to complete a marathon, which will require a much lighter body.

Everyone's definition of this is different - my perfect body, for instance, is a balanced body that can function optimally in every situation, from being able to get out of bed early in the morning, to going hiking in the mountains in the afternoon.

One Key Ingredient

Whichever definition you choose to strive for is fine - as long as you remember the one key ingredient: your body should be strong enough to handle an awesome lifestyle.

You see, an awesome lifestyle can be quite physically demanding - it's nothing like the comfortable existence of the couch potato. No no - an awesome lifestyle will require you to maintain a body that can keep up with all the awesomeness. You simply cannot lead an awesome life if your body isn't able to keep up.

So regardless of your view of the perfect body, you need to stay in good enough shape to have the energy and strength to sustain you in your pursuit of awesomeness. Only then will you have achieved Physical Awesomeness.