Adam Poehlmann 2/19/19 Adam Poehlmann 2/19/19

The Secret To Success In Your Health and Fitness Journey

There is one secret that all successful people share in common; one secret that gets them to their goals.

One of the many blessings that I have been given during my personal training career is the opportunity to meet and train hundreds of people in all walks of life. I truly believe that there is something I can learn from every human being on the face of this earth, and I’ve been lucky enough to experience that truth through the people I train.

My clients have come from all walks of life; young, old, wise, moms, dads, husbands, wives, all of which are extremely successful in at least one aspect of their life. When I train people like this, I try to remain as observant and open as I can in order to take note of what makes them so successful. In doing that, I’ve come to realize that the reason they are successful in their home life or career life is the same exact reason they have success in their health and fitness. This secret that they all share in common is what I am here to discuss today.

THE SECRET

As I said, all of these successful individuals share something in common, and they use it to create success in their health, career, family life, relationships, and more.

Before I go any further, let me be clear. This secret isn’t going to give you the answer to all of your problems. You’re not going to read this article and as a result find immediate success. The secret discussed in this short article only works when it is applied. So, I encourage you to pay attention. Reflect on the words you’re reading and take note of what that means for you in your life. This secret is not an answer to all of the holes in your life. However, the two-part secret will nudge you in the right direction, as log as you are willing to be nudged.

Onward.

Regardless of anything you do in life, there is a process that takes place. There is a plan, an order of operations so to speak. When you eat cereal, you don’t just get to enjoy eating the cereal without going step-by-step through the process. You pick your bowl, you pick your cereal, you pour your cereal, you pour the milk on top (if you put milk in first you’re a freaking weirdo), you get your spoon, and THEN you enjoy all the goodness cereal has to offer.

If you dig deep, you’ll discover that there are two elements to the process of eating cereal that allow it to come to fruition. These two elements make up the secret that most successful people share.

Part 1: Trust

Back to the cereal. Before you execute the steps required to make a great bowl of cereal, you have trust that it’s going to work. You trust that after each step, you’ll be able to really enjoy that cereal. The same goes with your health and fitness. You must trust the process.

Trusting the process isn’t as abstract or generic as it sounds. It’s pretty simple, really. Trusting the process along your health and fitness journey means you are trusting that the food you are eating and the training plan you’re following will get you to your end goal if you adhere to them consistently. But before you can have trust, you need to have a certain level of understanding.

The more you know someone, the more you can trust them depending on their character. The more you understand about your training and nutrition plan, the more you can trust them. Whether you hired a trainer or cooked up a plan on your own, you need to understand why you are doing it. If there are any elements of your process that you do not understand, find the answer. If you don’t know why you need to eat so much protein in a day, ask. If you don’t know why you’re lifting 4-6 reps instead of 12-15, find out why.

Once you understand why each part of your process is helping you get closer and closer to your goal, you’ll be able to place an immense amount of trust and confidence in your plan. The confidence and trust you will have will keep you from wavering. It will keep you from quitting. It will keep you from slipping. It will keep you determined and ready.

Every single one of my clients that have found success in their lives get this. They understand it and they implement it to the fullest. They develop a plan that they understand and believe in. With that belief, they place their trust in it and enjoy their daily walk towards success.

Part 2: Enjoy It

I have never had one single client that reached their goal without enjoying a part of the process along the way. Think about it, have you met someone that is extremely successful that hated every single minute of every single thing they were doing to get there? I don’t.

A key part of this secret is enjoying the process.

Trust and belief can get you a long way. In fact, you can certainly reach your goals with trust, belief, and determination. But think about this for a second: how much easier is it to do something that you want to do, versus something that you have to do?

When you get home from a long day of work, it’s way easier to watch Netflix instead of getting ahead on emails because you want to watch Netflix. Imagine if what you wanted to do is also what you had to do in order to achieve your health and fitness goals?

I’m not saying that you need to enjoy every single part of the process in order to reach your goals. That’s not at all what I’m saying. What I am saying, however, is that it is extremely important to find at least one part of the process that your thoroughly enjoy. If you enjoy cooking, find some fun and exciting recipes to try out that will help you eat the right foods. If you enjoy lifting weights, program some of your favorite lifts into your routine. For me, I thoroughly enjoying lifting super heavy. Although I am prioritizing slightly higher rep ranges for my goals, I’m still doing heavy squats and deadlifts here and there. Whatever it is, find a way to incorporate something you love into your process. You’ll see you will, determination, and consistency increase tremendously.

THE TAKEAWAYS

The first step of finding success and reaching your health and fitness is goals if fully believing and trusting in the process/plan you have created for yourself. If you don’t know why you’re doing something, find out.

The second part is very important, and that is finding at least one part of the process that you thoroughly enjoy. Whether it’s preparing healthy meals or lifting heavy weights, you must do something you love that will also get you to your goals on a consistent basis.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adam is a fitness professional, baseball fan, and cookie fanatic based in Fort Collins, Colorado. After hanging up the cleats, he found a strong interest in the human body and how it performs. Since then, Adam has been transforming lives through fitness in a fun and encouraging atmosphere. As an ACE CPT and Fitness Nutrition Specialist, he is constantly moved to help people improve in all walks of life. If you’re interested in hiring Adam as your coach, fill out an application here.

Adam Poehlmann 12/11/18 Adam Poehlmann 12/11/18

How to Trust the Process

Whether it's building wealth, building relationships, doing well in school, or improving our health and wellness, we've all experienced this cycle that doesn't seem to end. So, how DO we end that cycle?

Trust can be a difficult thing to explain.

One of the things I talk about often is trusting the process. Whether it's my audience on Facebook, YouTube, the blog (hey, that's you!) or my clients, I talk about trusting the process and what that may look like for that audience.

I most often bring this up when talking about the health and fitness journey that all of us are on. Similar to many other things in life, a health and fitness journey is a lot like a path in the forest. We're walking along a path, hoping that it leads to the right destination. At times, we lose faith in the path and find a different path to go on. After taking that new path, we lose faith in it once again, and make a change. After doing that over and over, we realize that we've been moving, but we've been moving in a circle and really haven't progressed.

Whether it's building wealth, building relationships, doing well in school, or improving our health and wellness, we've all experienced this cycle that doesn't seem to end.

So, how DO we end that cycle?

Trusting the process, that's how.

As I said, trusting the process can be a difficult thing to wrap our heads around. Trust itself can be hard to explain or define. So what I'd like to do is work through a few different things we can do to make this whole "trust the process" thing a little more tangible.

FIRST, WE NEED A STARTING POINT

I'm sure you're sitting there thinking "Duh, Adam. Of course we need a starting point." You're right. We do need a starting point, but it's not just the starting point that we need. It's really the mark of the starting point on our map that we truly need. If the map is our process, we must know where we're starting.

Here's why. Knowing where we're starting is one thing, but having the ability to look back and see where we started is something really special. I know, looking back isn't something we've been told when it comes to moving towards a goal. We've been told to keep moving forward. "Never look back", they say. In this context, I disagree. Having the ability to look back gives some positive perspective. Marking a starting point gives us the ability to see how far we've come. Whether it's 2 steps, or 100 steps closer to the goal, we can see actual data that shows progression.

One way this plays out with my coaching clients is through progress photos. Regardless of how uncomfortable my clients are about sharing progress photos, I always encourage them to do it. Obstacles arise, down periods are going to come and they are going to get discouraged. However, if they have the ability to look back and see how far they've come, the inspiration comes back and once again they have a fire under their butt to continue taking steps forward.

We must never forget where we came from.

SECOND, WE NEED A PATH

Just a few lines up, I was talking about this path in a forest. In this context, the forest is the world of health and wellness, and the path is what we need to follow to get to our desired destination within the world of health and wellness. As I said, following that one path is extremely difficult at times. It's easy to take turns and go a different direction when hard times come up due to a lack of trust in that path. Put yourself in that situation for a second. If you were on a trail in the middle of a forest, what would make it easier to trust and follow?

A map with a clear path that leads to the destination.

Having a map in the middle of a forest is great. But it's even better if we can have a map that has trails and paths on it. Trails and paths serve as a clear, tangible way to get from the starting point to the destination. Being able to look at a map and say "ok, if we walk this path, it will take us to the final destination. That builds a massive amount of trust.

The reason we have a hard time trusting our health and fitness process is because we don't take the time to clearly map out what we need to do to get to the final destination. Often times, we say that we need to exercise more and eat healthier.

I say no. That is laziness, and a great way to set ourselves up for failure.

We MUST take the time to sit down and create our path in extreme detail. That path must include proper programming (how many days per week? What exercises? How many sets and reps?), proper nutrition tracking (how many grams of protein, carbs, and fats should I be eating?), as well as an extremely realistic idea of what's to come.

There's no doubt about it; when we are along our health and fitness journeys, obstacles will come up.

travel

kids

work

busy schedule

time constraints

When we're walking down our path through the forest without a map, those obstacles will come up and KNOCK US OUT. However, if we prepare for those things ahead of time, we'll feel extremely confident that we can work around them.

A good example of this is travel. Ask yourself, "Are there any trips coming up that will make it harder for me to be at the gym? Will these trips make it harder for me to stay consistent with my training and nutrition?" You'll quickly realize that the answer to those questions is yes, and you'll begin to make adjustments/preparations like purchasing a set of bands to get some resistance training in while traveling. You'll figure out what you can control while traveling, and capitalize on those opportunities when they arise.

We must be aware of potential obstacles. We must prepare in order to win.

LASTLY, WE NEED A DESTINATION

Before I get into the last part of our process that we're building, I want to make something clear. Once a destination is reached, the process is not over. The destination your reach at the end will simply become your new starting point.

Just like business, if you're not growing, you're dying. There will ALWAYS be something to work toward. Big or small, there will always be something you can improve and build on.

The destination is an extremely important piece of the puzzle. Whether it's 50 pounds lighter or 2 pull-ups stronger, we MUST have a destination to work toward. If we don't, we're simply walking up a mountain for giggles with no hope that we're making progress.

That's stupid.

Notice how I gave concrete goals as destinations. Although I love concrete goals, they're not the entire destination. When obstacles come up along the path, it'll be easier to give up when the going gets tough, because goals that have no depth really don't mean much. Goals like losing 50 pounds are child's play.

BUT... there are things we can do to make our destination have more depth.

Want to be able to 2 pull-ups? Fantastic, but WHY?! Why do you want to do 2 pull-ups? Why do you want to lose 50 pounds?

Is it because you're insecure about your image? Is it because you're afraid of your health ending your life earlier that you'd like?

Good. Now we're getting somewhere.

We all have a "why", but only a few of us have what it takes to dig deep and bring it to the surface. Those of us who do, are the ones that succeed 99% of the time. Why is that?

When we discover our "why" we discover that we have a deeper purpose on this earth that must be fulfilled. Bringing the "why" to the surface attaches meaning to the goal. The "why" allows us to fight not for the goal, but rather for the future self that we are building.

Our destination must have depth.

THE PROCESS

Trusting the process can be difficult, but only when it's not constructed properly. If you want to create a process that can truly be trusted, you'll need to create the following:

A starting point
A path
A destination

And all of them must be taken seriously. Approach these three steps with an open mind and an open heart. Be realistic, and prepare.

You'll trust, and you'll win.

THANKS FOR READING!

I love you guys. Thank you for taking the time to read.

Spread the love by sharing this with friends and family. I know it sounds crazy, but making a small touch in their life can create a ripple that may positively impact them for years to come.