Age: turning 20 in a month
Bench: 1.8x Body Weight
Height & Weight: 5'7 ;150 lbs

TL;dr Motivational Reflection Post About The Gym

Wanted to make this post because the girl at my gym reception told me it was my 2nd year anniversary at the gym and it made me reflect a little.

Not really a story about how I was a skinny little kid who got bullied in highschool and now gets all the pussy, just some man thoughts.

Fall in love with your approval

I knew this guy a few years ago who wanted to join the gym and get big. On a drunk night he told me he saw how his girl would change her demeanor around ripped guys and he hated them for it. Soon after he said this she left him for a much better guy. This apparently "pushed him over the edge" and he joined the same University gym as me around the same time. He came in saying he wanted to look like Brad Pitt from the fight club.

I saw him the first couple of week, 4 days a week. Super motivated. Then he said he had cramps and I saw him twice a week. Then once a week because his “schedule is so full bro”. He had a few sporadic bursts of energy and he quit officially after a couple of months. Around the time he got a girlfriend who he knew was fucking other dudes but that's another story.

His story taught me a valuable lesson. I realised when something drastic happens that exposes our weaknesses, we have a sudden motivation to change it. Whether it being your unicorn leaving you or your friends having more money or anything. The guy came in wanting to change himself not for himself but because of things around him.

From him I learned that whenever I want to achieve something greater than myself to first realise that I'm not shit. This will give me the solid platform to build from. And then from there set small defined goals and crush them with honesty. This will eventually snowball into something greater.

Seek approval of yours only because the mirror cannot judge you, you judge what's in the mirror. But 99% of us can't do this which is why we turn 40 driving our ugly wife and 3 stupid kids around the city in a station wagon.

Fall in love with your failures

I "relapsed" from the gym many times. Once it was because of "stress" from my part time job, another because I lost my parttime job and was broke and another because of exams. Each day I was depressed because I couldn't believe I wasn't making progress in some way.

But each time I came back and I fell in love with the weights again. Last time after my gym break, I remember not being able to even bench my weight. But I remember me putting it back on the rack and being excited like a kid again. It was something to work towards again. I was focused.

Even though something small, I remember having the extra step in the gym because I had a purpose. I learned that even though this was a small failure, falling in love with the come back is what truly matters.

Fall in love with the process

When I first started I had no idea how much of my life would have to be restructed to accomodate lifting. As I said, gym was just somewhere to relieve stress and skip classes in. But after a month, I fell in love with waking up at 5AM to make my pre-workout coffee. I fell in love with catching the bus before the sun was up. I fell in love listening to music as I was commuting to the gym. I fell in love with going into the cornerstore after I got out of the bus to buy my energy drink. I fell in love with sweaty smell of the lockers as I changed out of my fatigues. I fell in love with filling my bottle and making my whey shake after the workout.

Making way for this whole process forced me to quit waking up and smoking weed, so that I can find the best porn that I can jerk off to. It forced me to have more discipline. It forced me to force myself into becoming better.

And the best part of it is that none of it feels like work. Gym wasn't just lifting weights for me, it was the whole journey to it. The lifting is only the 1 hour, the time before and after is what I really love. From this I learned to always fall in love with the process. It could be the smallest of things, but if you truly enjoy it then the rewards would just be the secondary goal.

Summary

  • Seek your own validation. Don't do anything because you want to compete with others. It won't ever last.

  • Failures help your find your purpose. You learn what you did wrong and don't do it again. It will also help you push yourself harder.

  • Enjoy the process. It will make work feel like pleasure.

Edit: We use kgs where I'm from, I'm 70 kgs bench 125 kgs max 1 rep on a good day in the right mental and physical conditioning. Just made a rough lbs conversion when making the post.