• Reality Check: The Implications of Elite Training

    by Alexander Becker

    Is it possible to be in top physical and mental condition while at the same time participating in life with all its seductions, influences, and an environment that is, if not negative by definition, at least neutral, neutral as opposed to the maximum goals and achievements that are so not-average and pursued while training for life?

    Coming out of a controlled environment, mind and body, discipline and willpower are finally allowed to show what they are really able to achieve.

    Yet it seems that only in a controlled environment, it is possible to train and prepare yourself for heights formerly unknown. This creates a dual environment problem, where you train for the outside world but not within that world. I'd love to promote training for the real world in the real world but it doesn't work this way.

    You train with amazing results, you eat perfectly healthy, your thinking is positive and untainted, only to emerge from your laboratory immediately starting to effectively de-train your mind and your body. Life is cyclic.

    I'm still striving to attain the heights of the monk, always, and continuously, although I do not recommend living completely ascetic. Life has to be instinctual -- to a certain degree at least -- it encompasses ups and downs, exceptions, successes and failures.

    After a certain point, after accomplishing your goals for yourself, to go even further, to reach for the next impossible, the unreasonable, you have to decide whether to drop everything incompatible or accept satisfaction with what you have within easy reach.

    This is what is meant when the best is being defined as the enemy of mere good.

    WOW! You look like you're not from this world is not an exaggeration but a perfect truth.

    We're talking about the training of elite athletes here, with goals hard to attain, training levels hard to maintain, and rewards hard to believe but why not adopt some of the methods and include them in your everyday mindset.

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  • How to Motivate Yourself with One Word

    by Alexander Becker

    Your own word: give your word. If you are a person of honor and integrity, you know what it means to give your word.

    One method is emotional motivation, pumped up at seminars or at group meetings where the participants leave with that smile on their face, only to have their motivation literally fade away over time, another method is Steve Pavlina's "sans chest-pounding motivation for smart people," intellectual motivation with the main idea to always set unreasonably big and thus intellectually challenging goals.

    There are ends to achieve that are important and may be emotionally lit brightly and furthermore intellectually founded and held up by logical reasons and even some scientific evidence... Some goals, the really big ones, can't get enough motivational support to be pursued and focused on, no matter what.

    Give your word to someone in order to complete and deliver on the promise whatever it takes. There are not many events that would make an acceptable excuse for yourself showing up with empty hands.

    This goes beyond intellectual or emotional motivation. If it is promised, it has to be done. Motivation through honor.

    Now, if you develop a similar sense of integrity in dealing with yourself, you may give your word to yourself in order to accomplish any given task even after emotional or logical motivational means are not available for some reason. The emotional momentum may be long gone and logic is hard to employ under certain circumstances.

    It doesn't matter why exactly you have to do it, you gave your word and that is more than sufficient to change the world around the issue at hand.

    Develop that sense of integrity and give your word to guarantee that things get done. Just make sure to be absolutely convinced that you are not going to give up before the defined and promised goal is achieved. Do not give your word if you are not willing or able to invest whatever you have in order to succeed.

    The beauty of this approach is that you do not have to continuously invoke the whole array of "whys" and "what ifs" and "what if nots" in order to stay focused. Your word is a shortcut that let's you switch to autopilot and enables you to work without any doubts or any further questions on the current obsession.

    The phrase because I said so now takes on a completely new meaning.

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