Get the Body You Deserve
Part 2: It’s Not Your Fault, But It Is Your Responsibility
“If it is to be, then it’s up to me.”
I am sure you have heard this 1,000 times: If you are ever going to create The Body You Deserve (TBYD) – or anything else that you deserve in your life – then you must take responsibility for whatever happens. Repetition is the mother of skill, and if we only say it hundred times that’s still not quite enough because this is such an absolutely vital component in creating TBYD, and our entire culture seems to be hell bent on relieving you of your privilege of being responsible. So, we’ve got a lot of limiting conditioning to overcome. For most of us any resistance/challenge – perceived or real – is the “Pavlovian bell”. And the conditioned response, instead of salivating, is to give up our responsibility and power by making an excuse or rationalizing.
Responsibility is responding with ability. That is deciding that you have the ability to choose how you are going to respond to any situation, event or condition in your life in a way that empowers you or gets you closer to where it is that you want to go. A great example of this is - say that you have a lot of responsibilities in your life: a job, a house, kids, a spouse, etc., and suddenly you realize that if you are ever going to be alive long enough to play with your grandkids, then you had better start exercising and eating better. Since you already have some very significant demands on your time and can’t easily make the necessary time, there are two basic ways to handle this situation.
One, is to decide (usually unconsciously like Pavlov’s dogs) to respond with disability. This is where you realize that you are in fact a very busy individual, and that you already find it almost impossible to make time for yourself and your spouse. So you say something like, “Damn it! I would work out, but my kids (job, whatever) take all of my time.” While you’d never express it out loud, you begin to blame and/or resent your family or job for the current poor condition of your body. Please understand that by no means am I attempting to suggest that the challenges and demands in your life are not serious, or that these are trivial matters. Making time and overcoming self-imposed limitations is extremely difficult. But, if you spend your life only tackling the trivial matters, then your life will be trivial. If you’re the type of person who is okay with that, then you probably wouldn’t be reading this book. Just like a muscle, you as a person cannot grow without resistance, and you will atrophy without it if you avoid tackling difficulties in your life, and setting and reaching goals.
Two, is to respond with ability. In option two, you realize that there are indeed some people who have as much, if not more on their plate, yet they manage to exercise 5, 6, or 7 days per week. You say to yourself, “If they can do it, so can I.” You’re also encouraged by the fact that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel since someone else has already figured it out. Instead of asking yourself, “Why can’t I find the time?”, you ask yourself, “How can I find the time?”
With this new, high quality question, a whole new world is opened to you. Since you’re now deleting information in you favor, now you’re seeing opportunities instead of obstacles. You then decide to learn how to manage your time in such a way as to spend your time doing what’s important to you, rather than living at the mercy of the environment. You go to www.tonyrobbins.com, and purchase a copy of “The Time of Your Life”, and matching planner and software. You study the program at home, and find-out that if you are clear about what you really want up front, and master a few very simple skills, then you do in fact have all the time in the world to exercise 5, 6, or 7 days per week. Responsibility is deciding to take control of your life and understanding that you are the cause of the events and circumstances in your life, not anyone or anything else outside of you. I want you to know that I don’t make any money whatsoever from recommending that web site or those products to you. In my study of the subject of time management I have come to believe that “The Time of Your Life” is the absolute best product on the market. They have a 100% money-back guarantee on everything that they sell, so there’s no risk. If you do decide to purchase it, it works much, much better with the OPA binder, and software. That’s merely my opinion. Time is the most valuable resource we have because it is the most scarce – you don’t ever get any more – so whatever it costs to learn how to have more time is more than worth it.
We caution you to be responsible, not guilty. So-called “negative emotions” like guilt are extremely useful resources in quick bursts because they let you know that it’s time to act, and act now, but you are responding with disability if you walk around allowing yourself to be disabled by guilt, anger, and resentment. That is giving your rightful power away to something outside of yourself that you cannot control. What I am suggesting is that you have been given life, a body, the power of choice, some time, and some talents – all of that is given to you free of charge without having to do anything whatsoever to deserve it, but now it is up to you to use your gifts to do something worthy of what you have been given. If you don’t, then it is only one person’s fault. Some people sit around and say, “If I was meant to be thin, then God would make it so.” The truth is exactly the opposite. God gave you absolutely everything that you need to change, and now you need to do something to get there.
Power is inherent in every human being, but can only be accessed by those who decide to become responsible. We all have the ability to get ourselves to take action, and we all have the ability to get results. However most of us choose to give away our power and our responsibility through the use of excuses and rationalization.
We say things like:
- I’m too old.
- I’ve got a bad back or a bad knee.
- I’ve just got a slow metabolism.
- I’ll get started tomorrow.
- I don’t have the time.
- My wife, my kids, and my job take all of my time.
- I’m not that fat yet.
“Pardon my French”, but this entire list is bullshit! If you’re 30, 40, 50, or 60 years old and starting the journey to health and fitness, or any other age, then I applaud you. If you’re in the 60+ group then you should know that any person can build muscle and strength at the same levels as people in their 20’s. You can rebuild up to 2% of your bone mass per year with regular weight bearing activity at any age. The exercise routines that we’ll give you later in this book will absolutely help you to regenerate your bone mass much more effectively, and with only positive side-effects like energy and sexiness, than prescription osteoporosis pills. The only reason that you got flabby and weak as you aged was because your muscles atrophied from disuse. If you begin using your body again you can be in better shape at 80 than you ever were at 20. The only two things that really change on a physical level with age that you can’t do all that much about is, one, your skin elasticity, it probably won’t get back to where it was in your 20’s, but the more you develop your muscles the more taught your skin will be. Two, your muscles won’t be able to contract quite as fast as they used to, so your time on the 100 meter dash will be a little slower, but that’s it. You’ll have a hard time creating excuses that hold water in light of the facts.
In our culture we think hope is lost as we age because we live in a society where the overwhelming majority of people over the age of 20 begin to let their bodies completely deteriorate, so everywhere we look the social proof says, “You’re getting old, it’s time to get sick, get fat, get tired, and look like crap. Get used to it, because there’s nothing that you can do about it short of plastic surgery. Youth is wasted on the young.” This helps sell a lot of extremely expensive drugs, and keep our health care system’s cost growing 600% faster than our economy – potentially bankrupting our nation, but it does not help you get TBYD. Youth is just a state of mind and lifestyle. The people that I work with who are in their 50’s almost always remark after the first 8-12 months, “I’m in better shape than I was at 20.” Break away from the norm, and be your best.
What we call “health care” in this country is really “sickness care.” The vast majority of the system is geared to deal with people when they get sick, or have an extreme emergency, not to help us be any healthier. If the system were really about becoming healthier, doctors would use improved nutrition, exercise, and stress management to treat the overwhelming majority of diseases, and invest their time in creating such outstanding health that their patients wouldn’t need to come back, except for the occasional check-up, or to get new information to get even healthier. In fact, there are some countries in which the doctor only gets paid if you’re healthy, whereas here they and the entire sickness care industry make their money when you get sick. There is a vested economic interest in your sickness, not health. For the record, I am not blaming this on doctors. We have a systemic problem that desperately needs to be changed because we are bankrupting the country with the sky-high cost of sickness care in this country. Just in case you are interested in making a contribution to the cause, financial or otherwise, you can go to www.mercola.com and find out about the World Wellness Association. Solving this problem is their mission, and now most of their fundraising efforts are targeted at selling a fantastic cook book and program that Dr. Joseph Mercola authored, called “Total Health.” Pick-up a copy today, it has incredible information.
Hunter-gatherer cultures who practice a healthy lifestyle similar to the one in this book don’t even have words in their languages for cancer, heart disease, or Type-II diabetes because for them these things don’t exist. People make a ridiculous amount of money convincing you that you are powerless to change your health and fitness beyond a certain age, and selling you on the idea that the only solution now available to you comes from your local pharmacy, and must be consumed indefinitely. The main person who benefits from this set-up is he who receives the lifetime revenue stream from you because they don’t actually solve your problem they just mask the symptoms of what’s really going on.
If you’ve got back, neck, shoulder, elbow, wrist, knee, heel, etc. pain, don’t allow that to be the barrier between you and health. Decide to overcome it, go and seek out someone who can help. If the first attempt doesn’t help, then move to the second, third, or even hundredth. If joint pain is an issue for you, you are in luck because I am capable of helping people overcome their pain limitations while simultaneously becoming stronger and more toned.
The bottom line with all excuses and rationalizations is that they stand between you and what you want. So, if you’re ever going to get what you want then you had better get them out of the way by no longer speaking, thinking, or accepting excuses from those around you.
When you say, “I would exercise, but I don’t have the time,” you’re just trying to make yourself feel better about what you’re not doing. You imagine to yourself that there is something real and insurmountable stopping you, which alleviates the pain that you would normally have if there was a rift between what you want and where you are or what you’re doing. Normal healthy human beings have a gap between where they are and where they want to be. That’s how we grow, and if you’re not growing, you’re dying – there is no in-between. The pain, the discomfort, and the dissonance (like cognitive dissonance) are extremely valuable resources because they provide drive and fuel to move, and fix the problem. When you anaesthetize yourself through excuses and rationalization, you lose the pain, but you also lose the drive, lose the growth, lose your ability to respond, and ultimately your power to ever have anything that you really want.
If you will take responsibility for your life, and your body, and decide that you will keep going, trying, learning, and experimenting until you get what you want, then you’ll have it and nothing, not even yourself, will be able to stop you.
You cannot ever get the body you want without a consistent, properly designed exercise routine. Luckily for you Mike D., America's leading authority on exercise, will not only give you a world class education on how your body works, what to do, and why to do it, but he has also created a comprehensive two day live workshop that is coming to a gym near you. The NCEP , his educational company, will teach you the same system he has been teaching the most sought after trainers in the country. This system will answer all the questions you have on how to get that body you want. Instead of paying trainers money every session to generate for you the properly designed, customized routines that you need to get results, you will be able to create them yourself for both you and your friends and family. You can learn side by side with professional trainers studying to achieve their national certifications.
If you are interested in learning more about this program please go to our website NCEPFitness.com and see when we will be in a city near you. If you don’t see your city on our schedule let us know and we will try to get it scheduled as soon as possible.
