Pick your personality

Another fun motivating story from the book "Winning Ways: How to succeed in the gym and out"

This is how to build a winning personality.

Go in a gym and you'll see people who you just know are going to make great progress: they attack their workouts; they don't coast through the tough exercises; they make each set count. And they have an air about themselves- it's as if they expect to succeed and you can almost feel it. They talk about how these people are winners, attributing all manner of good things to them and summing it up by saying they have terrific personalities.

You know the other half of this story: the people who seem destined to lose at everything they try; the people for whom failure seems to be a required result no matter what they are doing. Building biceps, taking a test, handling a job: it's always the same and it isn't good. Once again, others mark them as perennial bottom feeders.


The truth is that what we often take for permanent personality characteristics are extremely malleable; these are usually things that can change with the social situation we're in; things that we can help control. This means that what your are isn't what you have to be. You can change who you are and become what you want.......

The first step in your transformation is to pick the the type of personality you want to have. In our example, you would want to be someone who isn't just enthusiastic about training when he's lying on a couch watching his favorite muscle video. You would want to be the type of person whose deep-rooted enthusiasm motivates and sustains each workout. You look forward to training and can't wait to get started when it's time to do your first set.

You can't wait to get to your heavy sets and you welcome the chance to set a new PR, no matter how hard the required effort or how small the step forward. After training it's an automatic, natural reaction to get the nutrition and rest required for optimum recovery and progress. You're brimming with energy and it seems as if the harder you train, the harder still you want to train. It's great- you've become a self-sustaining automatic training machine.

To reach this state you need to cultivate the right thoughts and behaviors. Gone are the people who liked to tell you that lifting weights was a waste of time. Gone are the people who tell you that you're genetically suited to be a wimp. Gone are the people who say that they never built more than a 16" arm so why should you expect any more. Gone are the people who always say "no," "can't," "never." Gone are the thoughts of everything that could possibly go wrong along the way. Gone are the late night binges that cripple the next day's training. Gone are the junk food diets that can undo the best efforts in the gym.

In the places of all these downers are the elements you need to build the successful you. What are some of the pieces you'll find helpful? Here are the people who have always believed that you can do what you dream about. Here are the people who are in charge of their own lives. Here are the people who like to challenge themselves and never settle for yesterday's best. Here are the people who do the things that others said were impossible. Here are the thoughts of how to make the next step forward, to make the next round of progress. Here is the discipline to eat, sleep, and think in a way that almost guarantees success.

As you can see, building a winning personality isn't just a bunch of emotional cheer leading or fanciful visualization- it's serious work. Along the way, you have to keep your eyes and ears open, trying to learn things that will help you reach your goal, many of them hard facts, and you have to keep your sleeves rolled up to do the work that will get you there. It's a challenge, but look at what you stand to gain.

It's your choice, winner or loser; pick your personality.