The Secret to Success is Obsession
The secret to true success is that you have to truly enjoy what you’re doing - and if you do, you’ll sort out everything else along the way. If you want to succeed, finding the enjoyment in the things that you do is often more important than perfectly optimizing your approach, and will result in better results in the long run.
A Less SMART Approach to Goal Making
Often we make goals when we are feeling the most ambitious and motivated. These often end up being too strict or unrealistic in timeline, scope, and our current abilities. We need to take into account that life rarely goes smoothly and make sure that there is enough room for bad days and life changes to still be successful. Focusing on goals that have personal, intrinsic value and are more process over result based helps working toward your goals fun and achievable.
You Can't Teach Passion
Passion is a key element of success in any endeavor - in general, passionate people rise to the top, and passionless people struggle to keep up. How can you identify your passions? How can you focus on the things that are important to you, and learn to avoid or minimize the things that aren’t? Each person is different, and that’s ok - your passions may not align with somebody else’s, and all you can do is try to find passion where you can and pursue it.
How Beginner Lifters Mess Up Their 1RM Attempts
Testing your one rep maxes (1RM) is a way to measure strength progress, but there are a lot of wrong ways to go about them. Attempting maxes too frequently or too soon, wasting your energy during a warm up, or not tapering/peaking beforehand, can all lead to 1RM that aren’t representative of your strength. It’s extremely important to take proper precautions when doing 1RM because the heavier the weight, the more likely it is it’ll cause a serious injury if something goes wrong. Remember that there are many other ways to measure strength and progress, and not meeting your goal on a 1RM is not the end of the world, nor proof that your training isn’t working.
Process Vs Outcome Based Goals
Outcome based goals, like SMART goals, can be useful in goal setting, but can also lead to a negative feeling feedback loop when outcomes are not met. Process based goals focus on building and maintaining habits as the goal, which alleviates the pressure of a specific outcome being achieved. It’s a method of goal setting that takes into account the differences between genetics, environmental circumstances, and fact that people are imperfect and have bad days. Process based goals more often lead to long term success because they help people learn to enjoy the practice and decouple the feeling of accomplishment from an ultimate outcome.