Motivation

Are you sick of your job?

Are you tired of dealing with the boring and lifeless existence you have? 

Do you have a small glimmer of hope in your mind when you go to sleep at night knowing that something better is out there for you?

You are right.

There is.

The only thing standing in your way is you.

You and that self-doubt and fear that you put into your own heart and mind.  That feeling of being powerless to change your life and the situation you have been dealt.

Though if you are looking for a sign or permission to do the thing you want to do, THIS IS IT, and I am your guy.

I hereby grant you the permission to change by the power invested in my by the state of ThE INt3RwebZ.

That was pretty easy right? Now go and do it.

What is the holdup now? You are scared? You don't know how to start?  You don't think you have the money you need or the guidance needed to begin your journey?

I have the simple advice for you to get over that initial hump.

Just do it.

Don't have the money? Earn it any way you can with the skills you have. Don't have direction? Stumble around, try different things and find it. Don't have the balls to start? Realize that no matter what happens you will be developing and changing along the way.  Do not be afraid to fail because failure is the fertilizer of opportunity.

You see, if you really wanted this goal of yours, and if you really wanted to change your life, you would do everything in your power to get it.  Take on any task and fight your way through the fear of the unknown.  You see that fear you have in your chest, that pressure that builds and almost suffocates you when it approaches time for action, is exactly what you need.  That feeling is your body resisting change.  The body that is more comfortable in your current situation.  The body that would rather slowly wither in comfort, than truly live in the fires of your happiness.  You are in control of your body, and you tell it what to do.  Start being the damn boss for once.

Nothing that is worth it in life is going to come easy.  The unknown is a scary place.  It is the demon that we all have in our minds that tricks us into never reaching our highest potential.  You see the only way to beat that feeling, and to ascend the weakness we have today is to face that feeling head on.  You need to be able to step right up to "that thing" that scares you and fight.  Understanding that you may fail a few times or a few hundred times before you find success.  But by putting in the hours and days of effort of trying to understand what it takes to succeed, you will find success.  You will find your way through to the next challenge in life, and you will look back at the person who you used to be and feel proud of what you have become.

All it takes is that first step.  Then the rest will come to you.

Lift Heavy.

Laugh Hard.

Live Your Damn Life.

-Sam

The One Thing You Neex To Know To Lose The Weight You Want

One simple search in Google will bring up an endless amount of information about how to lose weight. A lot of it is really great. There's one large component of weight loss that is ignored 99% of the time: your 'AH HA' moment, your watershed moment, that moment where you realize you have to get started. It's that moment in your life where you realize it would be far more painful not to do it, and it comes in different forms for everyone.

Mine came when I was 19 years old. At the time I weighed nearly 300lbs and had just started training in mixed martial arts (MMA). I started training in MMA because I had always been a martial arts geek, not to lose weight. That goal came after.

I knew almost immediately that I wanted to fight. I fell in love with the sport and the art my very first day on the mats. The issue was of course that I was morbidly obese. Cerebrally I understood that fighting wasn't going to happen for me at my weight, especially at first when I was just enjoying training and fighting was this vague, ambiguous goal on the horizon. What ultimately pushed me to shed the weight was when I would talk about training and my goal to be a fighter I was mostly laughed at by people, and when I would look in the mirror, if I was being honest with myself, I didn't see a fighter there. It was at that time that I knew a major change needed to happen. That accumulation of both internal and external negativity drove it. It created a scenario for me where it would've been far more painful to not lose the weight than it would be to lose it. I wanted to be proud of who I saw in the mirror.

That 'AH HA' moment is critical to getting you started and motivated on your weight loss journey. If you're overweight, you know you are. You know intellectually that you need to lose it but that's usually not what gets you going. That spark needs to come from somewhere deep inside from a place of feeling. In my case, I felt like a fraud playing pretend at something I loved, some people experience it when they find out they're sick, others on the heels of a relationship ending. Sometimes it's just that the person doesn't feel comfortable in their own skin, which I'll admit was most of my pre-MMA life. The point is that moment can take many forms, you just need to take action when it comes so you can be proud of who you see in the mirror.