I have always been fascinated behind the mindset that successful people share. The moment I grasped that you are in complete control of your life, was indeed, a very powerful one for me.
It brings me back to when I was six years old and I had just learned that you can become strong, ripped and buff by working out. Before that time, I had no clue that you had any control over your physique whatsoever.
This realization was probably one of the most important ones in my entire life. It sparked my undying passion for nutrition and fitness. It’s wasn’t until many years later that it dawned on me that you also have complete control over your life and who you become. This was a lesson that took a long time to sink in and it all started with a tragic event.
I was eleven and I had just learned that my father had past away. If you haven’t experienced this type of loss before, then it’s hard to wrap your head around just how tragic it really is. It’s as if your whole world has crumbled all around you, yet, paradoxically, it still feels like it’s not real.
Your mind can’t fathom it and you slip back and forth between denial and excruciating sorrow. Why am I bringing this up? Well my dad had the most productive mindset and outlook that I have ever come across. His way of viewing the world, his beliefs and his work ethic meant that he would percolate to the top against all odds, which is precisely what he did.
A Simple Promise
As a boy I couldn’t wait for my father to take me under his wing and teach me his ways, something that he had promised he would do when the time came. And of course, as fate would have it, he was gone. Yet his promise remained unbroken.
The impact he has had and forever will have on me is so deeply profound that he has imbued something far more powerful than any amount of knowledge. He has imbued a yearning, a yearning to learn and to become and to self actualize. This is all because of the way my father lived his life.
No matter how badly the chips were stacked up against him, nothing was ever unattainable. And all it came down to was this, my father knew that if he wanted it bad enough and he was willing to work, he would get it. And throughout my childhood I witnessed this firsthand, time and time again. But as a child, I never really put the pieces together. I just saw my dad as this larger than life character who could achieve anything.
It wasn’t until many years later that I realized he was cut from the same cloth as everyone else, including myself. But what separated him from the rest of the pack was his mindset and willingness to fight like hell for what he wanted. This realization was the very start of something incredible and from that moment forward, everything had changed.
I knew that if I could adopt the same tenacity, outlook and conviction as my father, I could conquer any goal in life. Now over the last several years, I’ve been actively studying what differentiates those that flourish from those that fail. And funny enough, everything I learn, I can somehow relate back to the way my father lived.
The 4 Principles to Magnetic Success
Throughout my journey I have ended up with four life principles. When you live in alignment with these four principles, you get out of your own way and in turn you begin to attract success with magnetic-like power. But first things first, you need to have a vision for where you want to go and a plan to get there.
Once you have defined what success looks like to you and you have a strategy in place then these four principles will work their magic. Perhaps you want to build an incredible body. You may have a certain look in mind and you might currently be using a solid workout and nutrition plan to get there. But that in and of itself isn’t enough.
Nothing worth having is easy to come by. Because of this, most people aren’t able to follow through or push through when the going gets tough. Live by these four principles and you will transmute discomfort, burden and struggle into joy, ease and lightness. This will make conquering your goals downright fulfilling and uplifting!
Principle #1 – Be in a State of Complete Acceptance
This is one of the single most important principles I have ever learned in my entire life. When things go wrong and you’re unhappy with an event or situation, the mind likes to resist it. By resisting it, you create negativity. The mind believes that through negativity it can manipulate a desired outcome, otherwise why else would you create negativity?
Negativity only ever brings more negativity and all it takes is one retrospection to see that this is the case. This is precisely why when one thing goes wrong, everything goes wrong. To be in a state of complete acceptance means to embrace everything in your life, even the worst stuff as if you had chosen it. You no longer let your mind and ego cling onto an undesired event.
What happens is absolutely beautiful! You create room for positive action. You’re no longer resisting anything and because of this, nothing is holding you back. You’re completely free to work toward your goals. Furthermore, this shift in outlook creates gratitude.
When you’re grateful for what you have, you’re acting out of a state of abundance and more great things seem to come your way. In the area of fat loss, you must accept where you are right now and take full and absolute responsibility. Then and only then will you be able to move forward.
Principle #2 – Learn from your past, don’t identify with it as a hard done by person
One lesson I picked up on pretty quickly by comparing those that succeeded by those that could never seem to catch a break, was this; the ‘unlucky’ person always seems to dwell on their past and all the unfortunate things that were done to them. They see themselves as a hard done by person and they feel sorry for themselves.
They create an identity out of their past and they tell their victim story to other people to strengthen it. So long that you’re identifying with your past, you will never escape free of it. Your sense of self is invested in being this hard done by person and to succeed would be to contradict your very identity. So your ego will never let you succeed, it’s life depends on it.
Only when you take responsibility for where you are right now, will you be able to move forward. This may sound quite simple, but the magnitude of this very thinking process can not be understated. Instead of deflecting the blame onto someone else, you are taking full responsibility and thereby taking complete power over your life. This is the very start of a massive life transformation.
You were blind but now you can see. Instead of seeing yourself as a victim to your circumstances, you now see all the different things you could have done to avoid a situation. This process gets the brain working and puts you into success mode.
Principle #3 – Don’t look to the future for salvation
The human condition always likes to project happiness into the future. It tells us that we’ll be happy, complete and fulfilled when we have this and that… As long as you’re chasing fulfillment in the future, you’ll always feel incomplete and inadequate. Why? Well because fulfillment, happiness and salvation can only ever be experienced in the present moment. It can’t be experienced in the future, nothing can ever be experienced in the future.
This is hard for the mind to grasp. But when the day comes that you thought would give your life meaning, invariably the same state of lack reappears. This is really a dreadful mentality to have. Moreover, this mindset strips away the beauty of the adventure and sees the present moment as a mere stepping stone.
Your life turns into a chronic obsession to arrive, to attain and to make it. This desperation kills the beauty, creativity and liveliness behind what you do. Everything becomes a means to an end instead of joyous in it’s on right. As far as fitness is concerned, this mentality makes the journey a slow and painful one.
Principle #4 – Make the present moment the primary emphasis of your life
In the great words of Eckhart Tolle, “As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When you act out of the present-moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love – even the most simple action.”
The idea is to spend most of your life with your attention honed in on the moment that you’re in. This is when working and seemingly laborious tasks become so deeply satisfying. Have you ever been so intensely focused on what you were doing that all your problems dissolved? Nothing else in life mattered. You were just simply being and it felt fantastic. Surely you have!
This is precisely why people love drinking, partying, riding motorcycles, surfing, racing and sex…. Anything that takes them out of their head for a change and makes them feel alive. The greatest artists, athletes, writers, business people.. They get so enraptured with their work because it brings them into presence and it connects them to being.
When you can become present to what you’re doing you’ll be amazed at just how incredible life becomes. However, this is a very difficult skill set to attain, but easily one of the greatest skills you can ever learn. It requires you to observe your mind and to catch your mind when it tries to escape the present moment.
Final Comments
When you can utilize these principles while actively working towards your goals, everything will come together. This is why I spent so much time on the missing chapter in the warrior shredding program. I knew that I could create the most enjoyable cutting program to getting shredded, but that still wouldn’t guarantee success.
Unless you have a productive mental model in place, you’ll end up unconsciously sabotaging yourself. Because of this, I teach a special drill in my courses to absolutely shatter any negative thought patterns and make your mind malleable to new habits and beliefs.
In closing, I want to leave you with one final note…. We’ve all been guilty of putting our life on hold, waiting for the perfect moment before taking action. Hell, we’ve even let our mind stop us dead in our tracks, by replaying some story about how we’ll never succeed. I say enough with this! The only thing holding you back is yourself. Once you realize this, barriers become stepping stones and life begins to flow with much more ease and grace.
So let’s stop living for the future. Let’s stop sobbing about our past. And let’s stop resisting what we don’t want. You have complete and full power over your life and who you become. This is the most beautiful thing in the world to me. This is really the very source of my love for life and I’m forever grateful to my father for passing this gift onto me.
