I was in conversation today with a client about how important it is to monitor the way we talk to ourselves which made me think of this blog I wrote quite a while ago, resulting in me re-reading through this blog. I thought to myself I need to share this! Not only because it has a lot of great info but also because the girlfriend I speak of at the time is now my wonderful wife!

I got home from the gym the other day and sat down with my girlfriend to have some Sushi at Sakari which by the way is the best Sushi place in Des Moines .

“How was your day?” I asked her. She proceeded to tell me about how her day went.
So, I asked her, “Did you get to workout today?” As a bit of background, my girlfriend works at a job where she needs to be in good physical condition, or may lose her job. No she’s not a exotic dancer! She works for me as a Personal Trainer!

“No Joe. I didn’t have time,” She replied.

Now this, unfortunately, is NOT an acceptable answer. In fact, according to Napoleon Hill, author of the famed book, “Think And Grow Rich,” what my girlfriend gave me was an alibi (or excuse) for not succeeding. Now I am not picking on her, we have all made excuses and Alibis before even me…. but……

In his final chapter, Hill listed 57 alibis for not succeeding. The list started with the following:
IF I didn’t have a girlfriend and family . . .
IF I had enough “pull” . . .
IF I had money . . .
IF I had a good education . . .
IF I could get a job . . .
IF I had good health . . .
IF I only had time . . .
IF times were better . . .
IF other people understood me . . .
IF conditions around me were only different . . .
IF I could live my life over again . . .
IF I did not fear what “THEY” would say . . .
IF I had been given a chance . . .
IF I now had a chance . . .
IF other people didn’t “have it in for me” . . .
IF nothing happens to stop me . . .
IF I were only younger . . .
IF I could only do what I want . . .
IF I had been born rich . . .

Since I had just finished listening to Think and Grow Rich in my car or as Jim Rhon would say “Automobile University” (I constantly listen to books on my Ipod while driving which by the way is a much better and more productive idea than listening to Ryan Seacrest or the next insane thing on the radio…but I will save that talk for another blog) the alibi “IF I only had time” was fresh in my head.

So, the correct thing to say to her would have been, “You didn’t have time. That’s not an excuse. If you really wanted to get a workout in, you would have made time.”

But, I didn’t say that for one simple reason. And that reason is she is my girlfriend not my client or student so if that comes from me, her auto response is “Are you calling me fat!” And we all know where it goes from there! Right?

But you, each of you reading this today, to you, I will be giving you a hard time for making any of these alibis. And as importantly, I hold myself accountable for every time I say I don’t have time or “if” this or “if” that.
I want you to take a minute and think of why you don’t do things? What’s the story you are telling yourself? What’s the excuse you are using? And you might not call it an excuse you might define it as a…. “reason”. So think what it is that consistently makes you flake out on yourself?
Ok so Im going to use my psychic powers and guess you said that Time was probably your #1 “reason” why you can’t make it to the gym right? If it wasn’t your #1 it was in the top 3. And I am also going to use my psychic powers and guess that you are making this workout way worse in your head than it will ever be in reality! So….it is true you are going to be huffing and puffing and sweating all over yourself like a hot mess! So what! That’s fun!
What I learned from being a professional athlete, trainer, sports nutritionist and mma fighter is that when it comes to getting in the gym most people lie to themselves and those lies are sucking the power out of your life! You are focusing too much on the pain of the workout, what you need to do is focus on the feeling of pleasure, power and passion you get from a great workout!
And even if you don’t have an hour to come and do a whole Boot Camp Class you can go outside and run for ten min, or do pushups and situps in your bedroom. I have done this plenty of time’s, I thought I would just go in the gym and jump rope for 25 min. But you know what happens, once I get going and get momentum going and the endorphins start flowing I end up jumping rope, hitting the heavy bag, sparring and taking a lot longer than I “had time for”. So tell yourself the truth, get moving and act on it quickly!

These “ifs” are unacceptable. If each of us are going to achieve our goals in the gym and in life we need to remove these excuses. We need to envision success, and create action plans to achieve it. And we must not stop there. Because our original plans most likely will NOT succeed.

Rather, we need to keep assessing our progress and modifying our plans until we achieve success. And never ever, along the way, can we get caught up in alibis. Since these alibis will kill our positive energy. They will take us down the wrong paths. And they will prevent us from achieving our goals.

For you and me, let’s put our alibis behind us. And focus our energies on achieving massive success and smashing our goals in the gym! And then, making sure the people we know and love also do the same.