Change needs to be effective to be valuable.
Effective changes are changes that are important and have a long term, noticeable difference in how you live your life.
Most skinny guys looking to get stronger make ineffective changes to their life. Choosing to lift 1kg dumbbells and doing the occasional push up. This is wasted effort.
The key to making long-lasting, effective changes that truly matter involves:
- Deciding what’s important to you.
- Choosing the few simple actions that will get you to where you want to be.
Let’s break both of those ideas down.
Deciding what’s important to you
I don’t want to be the incredible hulk, which is the exact reason you won’t see me at the gym, or even eating ungodly amounts of food (at least not constantly). All that’s important to me is that I feel great, and am eating and moving enough to maintain high energy levels.
What’s important to you? How do you want to feel when you wake up in the morning? What do you want to do with your day?
That last question is really key. It’s simple, but key.
I’ve never been much of a beach person, but I love the idea of strolling down to the ocean every morning, going for a slow, almost meditative swim and then strolling back home, but taking the long way back.
Once I committed to this reality I knew I could make it happen, and over the past week I have started doing it (not every day, but I’m geting there). As soon as I understood that this mattered to me I was able to accept that being bulky would be a waste of time. The path became clearer.
Choosing the few simple actions
There’s an overload of tactics to get from A to B. Every little supplement or obscure exercise claims to be “the” key to your success. They’re not.
In any area of your life there will be the 2-3 actions that have the most noticeable effect. The most improvement in my health and well-being comes when I’m pushing myself with pull ups, eating plenty of protein (especially as the first meal of the day) and sleeping for a full 8 hours.
Beyond those actions the effectiveness dips and I fall down into the land of wasted effort.
Look at your situations, and your wants and ask yourself: what are the 2-3 things that will really help me get to where I want to be? You may not always like the answer, but once you’re dealing with reality you’ll make progress and build momentum.
