Satisfaction is The Death of Desire — Part Three of Why Being Fit Will Make You Succeed in Life
We are all born weak, physically and mentally. Hence, we all strive to become stronger, a stronger version of ourselves at least.
That’s how we begin our lives (weak), and that’s how we continue to grow up (becoming stronger).
If there’s anything that we understood or concluded from the previous two parts “Why being fit will make you succeed in life — part one” and “The joy of life in its obstacles — part two” is that from the get-go, from the moment we are born we are looking to overcome that sudden obstacle that hits us called life. I also shared my opinion of what being fit means to me.
The Beginning
Put it this way, I’m not even going to say that we were living, but rather chilling in a warm dark womb, having food being delivered to us for about 9 months, with no worries or what so ever.
From that state to suddenly being ‘born’ and shivering to unexpected cold weather while being confronted by the gaze of light.
We were mentally unaware of what was going on, but physically and confidently, we sent waves of screams in signatures of “hey, I’m not fit to do this, help!”
That was the beginning of our story with life, it began with fear of light, and it carries on by looking for more light. In other words, it began with a fear of an obstacle, and it carries on by looking for more obstacles.
Sum of Part One & Two
I mentioned in my previous two articles that every time we surpassed an obstacle we felt the euphoria of living the life, that’s because at the end of each obstacle we unlock a new achievement and find more light by overcoming a new challenge.
And I also asked and mentioned that at one point in our life we get used to living life, in the sense that we have learned all the basic tools to live it like walking/running, sitting, eating, listening, talking, etc.
So what happens next? Do we simply live ‘our’ life?
If you answered that question by looking for new obstacles and challenges, then, my dear friend, you are on the promised path. SO BUCKLE UP!
Satisfaction is The Death of Desire (Intro)
Ladies and gentlemen welcome to the third part and final episode of why being fit will make you succeed in life.
I have to warn you that is going to be slightly longer than the previous two articles, but what I’m about to reveal is how not to die without living your life.
So please, bare your precious time and patience with me because I’m only doing this for the benefit of everyone.
The Truth
Let’s be real and honest here, the previous two articles were a bunch of circles and questions, and I know that many if not everyone when they first clicked on the article “Why being fit will make you succeed in life”, have envisioned a topic that was going to be revolved around the physical aspects of being fit.
So in the process, I was expected to be writing about fitness life which involves the importance of working out, exercising and eating healthy, and guess what, you were all right. I don’t, and I can’t blame anyone for having such a healthy mindset, to begin with.
Now the goal of my articles is to make them as practical as possible, therefore I purposely made it a point to not straight dive in into the topic running across your mind.
However, I was just preparing you mentally by testing your patience and level of ‘desire’ on how much you really want to succeed in life
I’ll be lying to you if I somehow decided to give you some sort of a quick magical formula into how to succeed. Maybe I can trick you, but I can’t tick nature. Because as I mentioned earlier, we are all born weak, and it takes time before we can develop a strong streak to succeed.
So enough with the mind games let’s cut down to the chase, quench your thirst and share with you my top 7 points on why being ‘physically’ fit will make you succeed in life, and how fitness saved my life.
1. “The healthy mind in the healthy body”
I can sum up all my points with this quote, I began this series with this quote, I’m a strong believer in this quote, and there’s no way around this quote. This quote is everything, this quote is life, and this quote is the purest definition of anyone’s successful life, no matter what is your definition of success in my very humble opinion.
You can build or develop the best engine in the world, but if the vehicle you want to fit that engine into is not sharp or in shape, that engine will never operate.
2. Learn how to be consistent and goal oriented
All successful people are goal oriented and follow specific paths. So we want to lose weight we have to be consistent. We want to gain muscles we also need to be consistent.
Now when it comes to working out the goal is progression, especially at a young age. I’m not necessarily going to tell you that you need to hit the gym because you can pretty much play any type of sport.
But, while there’s no harm in playing to have fun, it’s really important to have a set of goals that will further progress your skills in that particular sport in order to learn how to become consistent and goal oriented, other than that if you are playing plain flat just for fun, good for you, but in my opinion you are just wasting your time.
While on the other hand lifting or at least adding resistance to your workout routine is vital for my next point.
3. Boost of Confidence
I think we can all agree on this, for one to be successful they need to be confident in themselves. But the question is how do lifting or at least adding resistance to your workout routine, helps in that?
Let’s take two examples.
At the gym, squatting is a crucial component to develop the overall strength of our legs. If you are a first-timer, it’s going to be challenging to rack the bar with your body weight and squat it. You also fear that it might squash you down while people around may be looking. So the point is to build enough confidence in your strength to be able to do it.
If you play basketball or football, you can have resistance in your work out by trying to make the best out of 100 shots for example, within a limited time while having 5 pushups between each set of 10 shots. You might be fatigued halfway and start losing focus, but the point is to build enough strength to be confident and focus in taking your shots even at your weakest point
Therefore, if lifting and having resistance in our workouts is incorporated and done properly, it can do wonders for us, in aiding us, to go through many obstacles on the path to our success.
BUT! We’ll never be able to build our confidence without the next point.
4. Increase your will and ability to be patient on achieving results
I’ve been playing sports all my life, basically, just for fun, but I only started taking it more seriously about 7 years ago, and this what I discovered.
Results, in anything that you are going to pursue, really need time and patience.
Pretty much anything you are going to do is going to have some sort of quick results that will instantly gratify and satisfy you. But if we are going to talk about those long-term last affecting results, it’s going to take time.
That’s why when it comes to working out or playing any sport, and you want to reap the benefits of it to help you succeed in life, you don’t want just to work out or play for fun, no, you want to excel, work out, and play hard, to become the strongest version of yourself. Just like how hard we party, we work out and play hard. This leads me to,
5. Stress control and better energy flow
In today’s fast-paced world we can easily get stressed out, which leads to many anxiety disorders. I recognize that there are clinical ones that require medical attention, but there are temporary ones as a result of drained energy and being over-stressed.
A steroid hormone called cortisol is responsible for regulating our energy flow throughout the day. Normally, it peaks up in the morning to get us flowing and going, while it declines throughout the day leaving us drained out and sleepy.
In return, to tackle those temporary issues, we reach out for junk food, sugary snacks, and energy drinks. Months of this routine and eventually we find ourselves completely exhausted and chronically stressed. But most importantly we become less productive, and worst of them all is sleep deprivation, the roots to many health problems.
Science has four words for you “exercising will rescue you”
There are many ways to do it, start by exercising for 10 minutes regularly every day and gradually increase the intensity of your workout as you progress.
And if we are stress-free, we can…
6. Focus
How many of us out there suffer from lack of focus?
Well, working out is a solution, but this time, only high-intensity exercises are going to be the solution in upping our focus game and increase our attention to details.
Let's take the following example.
You are at the gym for your chest day, and you just racked up the bench press bar with let’s say 100 kilos worth of weight. Or, you are about to hike one of the most dangerous hills. Or, you are a fighter or a basketball or a football player and about to face your toughest opponent.
We will consider the following, you are in a healthy mindset so, you are consistent with your workouts, confident in your strengths, a player with a great will to face new challenges, and most importantly you are stress-free, and now all you need is to focus on beating the challenge in front of you.
The point is when you are lifting a heavyweight, or hiking on a dangerous hill, or facing a tough opponent, you have to focus, and you do that by engaging all your senses.
One second of focus determines whether you lift or get squashed, whether you live or die on that dangerous hill, and whether you win or lose against your opponent.
Through focus, you activate the attention to details skill. You learn about that small muscle you need to activate to help you in lifting a heavyweight, about that dangerous slope that might kill you if you are not careful, and about the weaknesses of your opponent that you can exploit to beat them.
Eventually, you’ll be able to…
7. Enhance your inner artist creativity and problem-solving
We are all artists with problems; our life is the canvas while our choices paint how we solve our problems.
Artists paint their canvas or produce music through their feelings. And what better way to project those feelings other than listening to their bodies.
When it comes to art, everyone has their own taste. For some, they might like this type of music while for some other they may prefer another artist.
The same concept can be applied to our physical aspects and how we prefer to look, while not every sport is for everyone.
Not everyone wants to be jacked and loaded with muscles, some want to be slim, others may want to have an aesthetic physic, some prefer speed over strength.
But whatever is it, people do judge a book by its cover. True, good from outside doesn’t mean good from the inside. And we all have flaws and things that we can’t change because they are out of our control which is fine, but we will be judged by what we can change for the better. There is a reason why we avoid an apple with a black spot although the rest of it could be completely fine.
At the end of the day, psychologically, how we project ourselves from the outside will usually reflect our inner feelings. So if you look confident from outside you’ll be perceived as a confident person even if you don’t feel confident from the inside, but it’ll help.
“Become the master of your own piece, how you sculpt yourself is how you project your masterpiece”
To sum up, first, there are many scientifically proven points that I could have discussed and mentioned in this article. But instead, I only focused on the ones that personally affected me and saved my life. I would like to add one more crucial point that didn’t need much explanation which is good habits. Being physically fit can help in accommodating good habits.
Second, we need to remember that we are born different, and our definition of success may vary. So regardless of how we define it, for some, they might need one month to achieve their definition of success, while for some others they maybe need 1 or 5 or 10 or 20 or even 50 years, the point is, everyone, have their time to obtain or achieve what they best describe as success. But the common ground between all successful people is that they are physically fit to live, while mentally their desire is stronger than being satisfied with instant gratifications.
Lastly, I want to share with you something that I discovered through my past years of experience with fitness,
“Fitness has saved my life; I strongly believe that you can solve half of your life problems through fitness, the other half lies in your choice of lifestyle and life partner.”
