5 Ways Working Out Will Develop You Mentally
Tags: Motivation, Health, Mental Toughness, Self Development, Fitness

1| Consistency creates success

“Success isn't always about greatness. It's about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.” — Dwayne Johnson

Consistency seems to be a quality that people innately question when it's towards something they can't wrap their heads around. “Why do you work out so much? I don't see the point.”

I know I heard that one far too many times when I was starting out.

Funnily enough, those same people that thought I was pointlessly putting in the time and effort for nothing have come desperately crawling back, asking for fitness advice or to help them start out in the gym.

If there's one golden rule to life that all the most successful and inspirational people preach, it’s that if you stick to something long enough you will become successful.

Take the 10,000-hour rule for example. Popularized by Malcom Gladwell in his bestseller ‘Outliers: The Story of Success.’ If you practice any given skill for 10,000 hours or put that time into a certain field, you will inevitably become an expert in that field or skill. Despite debate around “debunking” this “myth”, what’s important is what we can learn from this simple rule. Putting time and work into something will give you rewards, no matter how significant they are, you will see them.

Strictly following a fitness regimen, week in and week out, without making excuses, builds up a mentality that refuses to do things half-heartedly. Seeing the consistent work and time you’ve put into your body and how it developed over the months or years you’ve been training can only teach you one thing.

Consistency gains results.

The beauty of this simple takeaway from dedication to working out is that you learn this:

Seeking results from something, say your new side hustle, a business venture, or whatever involves a long journey, you realize that the only way to achieve your vision is by proving to yourself how badly you want it.

How many hours are you willing to put in?

How many times are you going to give in to laziness?

How many times are you going to persevere and beat the odds when nothing is happening?

Developing your body through fitness will teach you this: Results take time and success is relative to how much work and effort you put into something consistently.

2| Comfort crushes ambition

“You need to get out of your comfort zone to make new connections with new ideas. If you don't have that grit and resilience to embrace a growth mindset, you might never get a taste of what it feels like to be successful” — Ifeoluwa Egbetade

Here it is. The comfort zone. You knew it was coming.

A comfort zone is a strange place and the relationship we, as humans, have with it is even stranger.

It’s like getting out of bed in the morning. Sure, you can decide to stay in bed all day under your warm comforting covers, but if you never leave your bed what will you achieve?

Nothing.

Exercising on a schedule puts us in that state of physical discomfort I mentioned earlier, and at times it isn't pleasant. But would you get any drastic results from your fitness programs if they were too easy? That is the point of progressive overload, to always increase the level of intensity in which you work at.

Similarly, if you got too comfortable or confident with your fitness routine and skip sessions, you will sooner or later fall out of the rhythm and end up quitting, as happens to the majority of beginners.

You should regard your training as mental development as well as physical development.

Growth happens in the most uncomfortable of scenarios.

There is a channel on youtube called ‘Yes Theory’ with over 6 million subscribers who have branded their channel around two simple words. ‘Seek Discomfort’. As the name suggests, they say ‘yes’ to everything.

The success and impact that this channel has had on countless people globally, shows us that working out consistently and actively putting ourselves in discomfort can only yield positive outcomes.

Continue to leave your comfort zone and allow the discomfort to permeate through your body as you feel the mental growth take place

3| Proving them wrong

“People ask me why I work so hard and why I have this compassion to reach the top and be great. I respond by telling them ‘I work insanely hard because people said I couldn't do it.’ When someone tells me I can't do something, I am determined to prove them wrong.” — Robert Cheeke

When I was 17, I hit a low point. Self-esteem levels were devastatingly low, my first bout with heartbreak, and people constantly commenting on my ‘sickly thin appearance’, I decided to quit feeling sorry for myself and started to chase a dream I was always too scared to live out. The nights of crying in front of the mirror because of the deep sense of hatred and shame I had for my body died right there and then.

3 years later with over 40 pounds of muscle added to my thin frame, I can safely say the satisfaction of transforming yourself and proving people wrong doesn't fade away.

It’s almost a constant subtle high in the background of your daily life, humming away and making you carry yourself with pride and fortitude as your own body becomes living proof of the hardships you overcame.

External successes lead to internal developments.

Doubts start to fade, ambitious dreams start to grow, and possibilities never seem to end.

Proving people wrong enhances that part of our mentality that believes we can do whatever we want, despite the hate.

If you can do it once, you most certainly can do it many more times. From starting the businesses your family told you to stay away from, to any doubt that people have placed on you, you yourself can be a living testament to how you will not let anyone determine your capabilities.

4| Become the architect of your life

“If you don’t choose what you are doing today, all your tomorrows will look like yesteday” — Jim Rohn

No matter who you are on this earth, everyone sets goals for themselves. Especially more so now than ever, with 2021 rapidly approaching. You may have had a sudden realization of something that you wish to change about yourself.

As I ambitiously progressed through my fitness journey I had one goal in mind. Building as much muscle as I physically could naturally.

As the changes slowly started to come it was as if every time I would look at my body I realized that I had the capacity to change it, grow it and essentially construct it through the grittiness of hard work.

As I continued to grow I was overjoyed and in awe that I actually had it within me to transform my physique. I focused on building aesthetic proportions such as the “boulder shoulders”, the V-shaped Back, the peaked biceps, etc.

It hit me around 6 months after I started training. If I can effectively pick, choose, and pretty much design my physique in the aesthetic vision I had in mind then why couldn't I do this in other aspects of my life?

And so it began, my wonderful journey into self-improvement. Each day I focused on bettering myself, creating new habits, reading more books and before I knew it, a year had passed.

What struck me by surprise was how much I changed within this year by focusing on the little things.

Most people talk about their goals as stand-alone events but never think about the actual work and process that goes into achieving them. You may talk about losing 40 pounds or writing a book, but these significant achievements are the result of marginal successes and improvements that accumulate over time. It’s like a compounding effect that continues until you reach your goal. James clear talks about the idea of improving yourself by 1% each day, so you end up 37% better than when you started. This is mentioned in more detail in his book “Atomic habits”.

The beauty of this is that it all stemmed from the changes that I made and saw in my body from continuously hitting the gym.

I’m sure many fitness junkies will agree with me when I say this. When you realize you have the capacity and determination to actively go out and improve your physical health and image you get this eureka moment where a burning flame alights within you.

This flame pushes you to persevere and chase other dreams that you were always putting off as you continue to prove to yourself that there is a passionate drive within you, even after all the precarious self-doubt.

5| The role of sacrifice

“A noble purpose inspires sacrifice, stimulates innovation and encourages perseverance” — Gary Hamel

How many times have you decided to eat the piece of fruit instead of the cake? How many times have you decided to wake up before everyone else to go to the gym? Or left your friends early so you could go to train? to which they proceed to call you boring.

If the answer to any of these is “no” then you need to reevaluate how bad you want it.

Sacrifice is one of the core necessities needed when working towards a goal or a vision.

The more experience you gain working out the more you realize that the sessions where you would rather do anything but go workout always end up being the best. Once you drag yourself out the door or into the gym the element of pride for overcoming your laziness and breaking out of that comfort zone is character building, to say the least.

Of course, the longer you stick with your regiments the more this will happen, and the more benefits and carry over you will see in your life. This has created a mental note for me that I access whenever I need that extra push to do something that I’m too scared to do

“It will be hard. It will require you to sacrifice aspects of your life you do not want to. But you’ve sacrificed time and comfort many times, what’s stopping you from doing it again this time?”

I’ve applied this mentality of “if you can sacrifice aspects of your life every week to build the body of your dreams then you can in any aspect of your life” to most notably side hustles, investments, and business ideas such as starting a podcast or an online store.

They to require work and sacrifice to achieve success, but luckily enough, I learned the role sacrifice has in building dreams early on through working out, and so can you.