ZEN OF LIFTING IRON

We all are living a purposeful life, whether you doing that consciously or unconsciously, or subconsciously. But we live purposeful life and life without purpose is meaningless. Purposeful life doesn’t mean what you do with your profession but also what you do personally for your inner growth. And My purpose in life:

“To Get inspired, evolve and go higher & beyond”

Lifting iron is one of my sources of inspiration aside from books & music

I love lifting weights?and I’m lifting for almost 15+ years of my life and it has become an 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 learned from it? It is bizarre though but when I pen down my thoughts I realize it has taught me so many valuable lessons of life like so many but I want to highlight six of them which has impacted me. Before that let me tell you lifting weights are 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 sport, lifting weight requires a tremendous amount of dedication and the spirit of a fight - a fight within.

So lessons that I have learned from lifting iron are as below:

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

When you enter the gym for the first time it is all about taking those baby steps to achieve small success because to be regular in the 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.

The 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 to get to a certain point, aka success. The nature of progress depends on the kind of training you do and training is a great teacher for it.

Lesson 2: Failure is an 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 sometimes weights do defeat you. But it is completely natural and part of lifting. But you have to little step back and redesign your lifting strategy. Finally, you’ll get there but this will not happen till you fail and forces you to 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, analyze 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 are the foundation of a great body and of a happy life too.???

Lesson 3:?Long-term investment beats short-term Gain.

Gym training can sometimes 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 food and track what you put into your body. The Urge to cheat and have some sweets or things 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 like for the long-term benefits or rewards. The ability to choose the long-term reward and ignore the short-term satisfaction differentiates the average person from a successful individual.

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

Don’t underestimate the power of cynic’s they can do wonders in your life. There will be always a 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 because they gave you another reason?why you can or why you will.

Lesson 5: Comfort zone – The biggest disease of the 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 to.

Doesn’t it simply apply to our life??? Because if you need to grow you need to step out of your comfort zone. Great experience comes when you experiment and for which 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 workout 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 to the ultimate destination.

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

Normally I have seen lifting iron is not considered a great sport or test of physical limits especially if somebody from the corporate world does it or probably it is been believed that it is only for people related to the glamour world (which is nothing but an utter myth) unlike if he or she is running in a marathon once in a year consider more inspiring?INDEED IT IS?INSPIRING?but lifting iron test your inspiration at a different level altogether and motivation to lift daily. It’s also important to know that your purpose in life and your job are not the same things. Too many people look for a job that is simultaneously something that can fill their purpose in life. A very small percentage of people find actual purpose in the work they do Like I mention earlier lifting iron requires a tremendous amount of dedication and more importantly self-motivation to hit the gym floor on daily basis and in all the seasons and with the right food habit that to a 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 a game for anybody.

Lifting Iron requires immense out of passion and passion is not common.

Most importantly lifting iron has endorsed my years of own belief system

“If you think you can! Then you can “

Stay inspired