Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Motivation Monday: The Real Secret to Toughness Isn’t What You Think

Episode Date: March 19, 2018

This episode is part of a weekly series that I have dubbed “Motivation Monday.” (Yes, I know, very creative of me. What can I say, I’m a genius…) Seriously though, the idea here is simple: Every Monday morning, I’m going to post a short and punchy episode that I hope gets you fired up to tackle the workouts, work, and everything else that you have planned for the week ahead. As we all know, it’s one thing to know what you want to do, but it’s something else altogether to actually make yourself do it, and I hope that this series gives you a jolt of inspiration, energy, and encouragement to get at it. So, if you like what you hear, then make sure to check back every Monday morning for the latest and greatest installment. Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

This episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead, I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my one-on-one coaching service. So the long story short here is this is the personal coaching service that I wish I had when I started in the gym many years ago. Every diet and training program that we create for clients is 100% custom. We provide daily workout logs and do weekly accountability calls. Our clients get priority email service and discounts on supplements, and the list goes on and on. Furthermore, my team and I have also worked with hundreds of people

of all ages, circumstances, and needs and goals. So no matter how tricky you might think your situation is, I promise you we can figure out how to get you results. If I have piqued your interest and you want to learn more, then head on over to www.muscleforlife.com forward slash coaching and schedule your free consultation call now. I'll tell you there's usually a wait list and new slots fill up very quickly. So if you're interested at all, don't wait, go schedule your call now. Alrighty, that is enough shameless plugging for now, at least let's get to the show. Hello, hello. Welcome to another Monday, which of course means another motivation Monday, which of course means we are starting with a quote. And today's quote comes from

Carl Jung. and he said, Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. Now, what comes to mind when you think of toughness? What do you think is its essence, its quintessential expression? Maybe something like a grim stare, a set jaw, bald fist, rising up in the air, resistance. What do you think toughness requires? What really sets the stronger people apart from the weaker people? Do you think it's incredible stubbornness or maybe masochism or maybe even sociopathic tendencies? Well, we can easily find these types of manifestations of toughness, but I think that when you really get to the heart of it, toughness comes from something that is much less obvious. And I think

that it really is represented by a very non-serious thing, a smile. So in World War I, when the British soldiers were stuck in a horrifying stalemate of trench warfare with the Germans, and I mean, it was bad. They were surrounded by piles of rotting corpses and chunks of rotting flesh. Literally, I'm not exaggerating. They were sleeping to a symphony of bullets and mortars and artillery shells on a bed of their dead comrades that were strewn about the floor and they had no way to advance. They had no way to retreat. How can people deal with that without completely losing their minds? Well, they dealt with it the only way they

could, by smiling, by releasing the tension through morbid jokes, by seeing the humor in the absolute absurdity of their circumstances. That, I think, is real toughness. not simply bearing the cross, but doing so cheerfully, not just holding back your complaints, but viewing the current predicament that you're in as an opportunity to find some sort of joy, to learn a lesson, to move forward in some way. It's choosing to invest your emotions in what you can take away from the experience, no matter how slight or consoling. And the person that can do this, the opponent who can smile at your worst is the one that is feared the most because he's the hardest to beat. His smug grin silently mocks every mistake and shrugs off every successful strike. This is the person who never loses his

composure and never flails around or never really gives you the satisfaction of a wince or a grimace. You might win in the end. You might be able to beat this person, but at what cost? What is it going to take? Well, with this type of person, it's going to take everything that you've got. And you're going to walk away with some scars too. You better be ready to hurt if you are going to compete with someone like this. Now, while you might agree with me so far, you might also have some nagging doubts because when things go bad, the last thing that we usually feel unless something is wrong is cheer. We mope, we sulk, we growl. At least that's what we want to do. That's how we feel. You know, you might wonder why us? Why now? Why here? Most of us do not want to smile. This can be changed

though. You can recalibrate your perceptions and your expectations and interpretations. We have to remember that the physical, intellectual, and social comforts of modern civilization have softened the reality that life is and always will be a never-ending, wildly unpredictable game of competition and selection. This is baked into us. It is hardwired into our biology. The trials and processes of evolution and the survival of the fittest run this game. Those are the rules. And that's why turmoil is inherent and unavoidable in anything that we are going to do. If it's going to involve reaching out beyond our immediate sphere of influence and understanding into the unknown, it's going to come with chaos. Just know that. The romantic idea that we can somehow make our way through the world through honeyed thoughts and candied smiles and cloying words is complete nonsense. The reality is only the toughest people survive

the rigors of existence, and even they have a time of it. It is hard. It is difficult. It takes nonstop effort, nonstop work, and a bottomless reserve of resilience. Nature smiles at the economic, political, and social devices that we have erected to try to change these rules and escape their commotion. And in time, these futile attempts to shift the pressures of life off of our backs and onto the backs of others will fail. They always have in history and they always will. The people that rely solely on the collective effort of the group for their own personal survival eventually find themselves without support and soon after that, at last, gasp. If you can't take care of yourself, eventually there will be nobody left to take care of you.

Eventually, there will be nobody left to take care of you. Remember that not too long ago, our forebears had to chase, fight, and kill just to survive. These people expected hardship. They were willing to face the worst. They embraced the simple fact that the universe and all of its apparent tranquility is really just a carefully balanced chaos of forces that we barely understand. And if we want to bear upon its journey, then we too must be a force of nature. Positive visions and convictions are the muses of optimism, but their inspiration is fleeting if they're not supported by a backbone of steel.

So know this, you are going to face many situations in your life that are going to call for toughness and how you respond to those situations is going to shape your character and your destiny in very profound ways. There are going to be points where you're going to have to decide, are you going to keep pursuing that goal despite the obstacles or are you going to decide that it's really more than you can handle? Are you going to let your opponent have his way with you or are you going to fight back and win? And ultimately, if you do lose, are you going to at least go down swinging?

Are you going to give in to what is immediate and gratifying or are you going to sacrifice that for the future? Are you going to sacrifice your present self for your future self? Oscar Wilde famously said, two men look out a window, one sees mud and the other sees the stars. We all are going to have these moments in our lives where we have to decide, how are we going to view this? Where do we go from here? Into the mud or into the stars? Because remember, no matter how ugly things get, there's always something you can do about it. And there's always something you can smile about. Even if it's just the simple fact that you're still in the game and you still can make a go at it.

This, I think, is one of the secrets to not getting demotivated. I know it's something that has helped me tremendously with motivation. I rarely get demotivated because I rarely allow anything to demotivate me. It doesn't take that much motivation to keep going when nothing really demotivates you because you simply choose to not be affected by it. You simply choose to laugh at it and to reject it as your knee-jerk response and then figure out how to deal with it. And my team and I have hit some pretty big speed bumps along the way on all fronts, really. Books, Muscle for Life, Legion. We've had personnel issues, inventory issues, cashflow issues, retailer issues, distribution issues,

marketing issues. We've run into pretty much all the obstacles that you can run into when starting up a business. Now, we've been smart about how we've approached things and we've come up with good solutions. And so everything has grown very quickly, but we still had to deal with all the random problems that come with building a business. And one of the things that has always served us well is to never dwell on things. And no matter how ridiculous or unwarranted or unfair some of these things have been, we have consciously chosen to find amusement in the randomness of it all. And even in the pain, for example, last year, Legion lost at least $1.5 million in sales due to inventory issues and Amazon issues. So that's money we would have made guaranteed

if random things wouldn't have just randomly exploded in our faces for random reasons. And so what do you do? Well, a weak person just caves in. They just go straight into apathy and they just throw their hands up and say, this is so unfair. I can't believe this. And just doing it for who knows how long. In some cases, I've seen people that have been hit hard enough to just make them give up completely. And what does a tough person do? At least after, of course, the initial shock wears off and initial anger and frustration. Of course, you feel these things, but then you just bring yourself to laugh at it, at the absurdity of it. And then that opens the

door to doing something about it. Once you get beyond the woe is me, then you can really do something. And so it goes with every area of life. Every aspect of living is going to hit you at some point. Hopefully not all at once, because that can be a bit trying, but you're going to get hit from various sectors going through life and how you respond to those blows is everything. make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any of the new goodies.

Lastly, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback, so please do reach out. All right, that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my one-on-one coaching service.

So the long story short here is this is the personal coaching service that I wish I had when I started in the gym many years ago. Every diet and training program that we create for clients is 100% custom. We provide daily workout logs and do weekly accountability calls. Our clients get priority email service and discounts on supplements, and the list goes on and on. Furthermore, my team and I have also worked with hundreds of people of all ages, circumstances, and needs and goals. So no matter how tricky you might think your situation is, I promise you, we can figure out how to get you results. If I have piqued your interest and you want to learn more, then head on over to

www.muscleforlife.com forward slash coaching and schedule your free consultation call now. I'll tell you, there's usually a wait list and new slots fill up very quickly. So if you're interested at all, don't wait. Go schedule your call now.