Promise

Back in my younger days I was a bona fied gym rat. I won’t say that it was “what I lived for”, could never go that far but I will say I was pretty obsessed. It was my escape from my miserable first marriage.

So working out and going to the gym was a serious pursuit for me in those days. I even took home the first place trophy in the Cortez Classic power-lifting meet in 1986. Of course, it was a small meet with only 3 women competitors. I was this tiny little thing back then but I could bench press my bodyweight (almost) and I could dead lift twice my bodyweight. I could squat a decent amount of weight, too. Ahhh, reminiscing is fun! But that is not the point of this post so I shall continue.

As any regular gym rat knows, you get to know the people who work out at your gym. Many become friends and it is a fun social gathering.

Well I had a friend at the gym. I’m going to call him Brad. Mostly because that was his real name and I’m sure that he wouldn’t remember me anyway.
So Brad was always going to become this great and successful bodybuilder. Brad would show up every month or so with big, huge plans for his workout success. He would promise that he was going to start what they call “2 a days”. That is training technique where they work out once, go home and rest for awhile and come back and work out again, making it a “2 a day” workout.

Every 2 to 3 weeks to a month or so, Brad would come in and workout. He would then announce to everyone who would listen that he was going to start this “2 a day” plan. He was ready. He was motivated. This time he was going to do it. He told everybody. But then we wouldn’t see him again for 2 weeks, 3 weeks or a month or more. Brad never completed even one “2 a day” workout that I’m aware of. He became a joke behind his back because he had such big talk but he never followed through.

Brad never kept his promises to himself to become a great and successful bodybuilder. But the problem with Brad was that he started with too big of promises.

You don’t start out with the impossible. You work up to it.

Nobody in their right mind, or anybody who wants to move the next day starts working out with a “2 a day” program. Have you heard of sore muscles? If you want to be so sore you can’t move try a “2 a day” on the first workout after a long time off! Whoa, pain! That is something you need to work up to. Of course the workout can be done and it is done but it takes time to work your way up to that level. It takes conditioning. Nobody does it on the first day.

Brad would have had a better chance of success if he would have started with smaller promises, a promise that he could actually keep! Like maybe just going to the gym once a day for 3 days a week for a while and then add upon that. .

Build small success upon small success until you get to the end result.

So if you have a plan and a desire for success, don’t start out with the overwhelming. Start out with a promise you can keep. Something small. Something do-able. Get the good feelings of success from keeping that promise to yourself. Then add to it. Again make it a small increment, a promise that you can keep and get the good feelings from that success. Then keep at it. Keep adding those promises you can keep. Keep the good, successful feelings going and in a short time you will have achieved amazing results.

But start with a promise that you can keep.