Lifting Iron & Lessons of Life

I love lifting weights and I’m lifting from almost 10+ years of my life and it has become almost daily routine. But this lifting iron and hitting the gym daily has created some kind of curiosity in my mind to think about, why I was so consistent for all this year? And more importantly what it has taught me? Has there been any lesson to be learn from it. It is bizarre thought but when I pen down my thoughts I realize it has taught me so many valuable lesson of life like so many but I want to highlight six of them which has really impacted me. Before that let me tell you lifting weights is not YOU versus weights but also YOU versus your mind and excuses. Because to win anything in life you need to first win in your mind. Like any other sports, lifting weight requires tremendous amount of dedication and spirit of fight - a fight within.

So lesson which I have learnt from lifting iron are as below:

Lesson 1: Baby Steps leads to Small Success and small steps leads to bigger success.

When you enter into gym for the first time it is all about taking those baby steps to achieve small success because to be regular in gym you need to taste small success For instance: After two months where you were lifting 10 kg now you can lift 20 kgs and then you gradually keep increasing the volume. But this all happens by taking tiny steps at a time. No Hurry No Rush.

Same applies to our life overnight success doesn’t happen. There’s always behind the scenes which show the long path that the person had to go in order to get to a certain point, aka success. Nature of progress is one of the most important one in life and training is a great teacher for it.

Lesson 2: Failure is Important and True Friend of life.

Every time you hit the gym you have a determination to lift x amount of kgs in your bench press or squats but every time the weights defeats you. But it is completely natural and part of lifting. But if you little step back and redesign your lifting strategy and time bound to it. Finally you’ll get there but this will not happen till you fail and forces you fight back with double the strength.

Similarly in life we get discouraged whenever we fail at something. Failure is a complex issue, but more often than not, it’s not as bad as you think, granted that you take a step back, analyse the situation and adjust your strategy. Doing so will get you a little bit closer to your goal whenever you fail. Sure, you didn’t achieve what you planned right now, but you see what went wrong and prepare better for the next time. Trial and error and failure is the foundation of a great body and of a happy life too.   

Lesson 3:  Long term investment beats short term Gain.

Training in gym can sometime be easy and fun too but the toughest part comes in the kitchen because it’s your diet determines how your body’s going to look like and how you’re going to perform in the gym. For many, the hardest part is in the kitchen, where you need a lot of willpower to choose healthy products and track what you put into your body. The Urge to cheat and have some sweets or thing which you like is high, but how you react to that shows whether you’ll be successful or not. Body of a lifetime or to satisfy half n hour of craving choice is ours!!!

In life, you have to sacrifice or give up something you really like (which is also sometimes deterrent for your success) for the long term benefits or rewards. The ability to choose the long-term reward and ignore the short-term satisfaction differentiates the average guy from a successful individual.

Lesson 4:  Power of Cynic’s – Ultimate Fuel to reach your goal

Don’t underestimate power of cynic’s they can do wonders in your life. There will be always couple of cynics or naysayers in your process of lifting or to reach your lifting goal don’t avoid them, Embrace them! Because greatest joy in life is to prove your critics wrong and this is also applicable to life as well. Those who say you can’t give them a big thank you or word of appreciation letter because they gave you another reason why you can.

Lesson 5: Comfort zone – Biggest disease of human race

You need to shock your muscles to make them grow, you need to step out of your comfort zone to become an achiever. If you are way too much comfortable with a weight, you are not pushing your muscles enough. Hence, you wouldn’t grow. Life starts when your sweet little space ends. Squeezing in the last two reps when you can’t is just like chasing your dreams when you can’t afford to or dare too.

Doesn’t it simply applies to our life??? Because if you need to grow you need to step out of your comfort zone.

Lesson 6: Being Humble is Sexy

Well no matter what aggression you bring on the table or with what motivation you enter into gym floor for lifting iron for that heavy work out but it never allows you to conquer because intuitively it tells you if that was so easy then you will get arrogant and arrogance will never allow you to reach ultimate destination.

Similarly in life we tend to get little overwhelmed with few success here and there and sometime arrogant too but it doesn’t makes the personality sexy but remaining humble will. It doesn’t matter if your simple or stylish ~ Intelligent or average ~ Entrepreneur or doing job being humble will not only make you better person but sexy too #Beinghumble

Normally I have seen lifting iron is not consider a great sports or test of physical limits specially if somebody from corporate world does it or probably it is been believed that, it is only for people related to glamour world (which is nothing but utter myth) unlike if he or she is running in marathon once in a year consider more inspiring INDEED IT IS INSPIRING but lifting iron test your inspiration at different level altogether and motivation to lift daily. Like I mention earlier lifting iron require tremendous amount of dedication and more importantly self-motivation to hit the gym floor on daily basis and in all the season and with the right food habit that too day in night out. If doing 100 kgs squats or 150 kg bench press was so easy and that too without any physical/Mental strength it would have been game of anybody.

Lifting Iron requires Madness and Madness is not common.

And most important lesson I learnt from my lifting iron experience:

“If you think you can! Then you can “