There’s always something crazy going on in this industry. At any moment, there’s a maniac in a weight room taking a dangerous lift and a shady businessman in an office finding a way to turn dirty profits. The posts you find here in my log are the musings of a mashed-up meathead — the reactions I have as I spend my whole life watching this industry. I will share my thoughts with you here, unedited, uncensored, unfiltered, and Under The Bar. If you are offended by profanity - do not read this.
Sometimes I get asked some very interesting questions. This one I've been holding back on a little bit, because I really didn't know how to answer it,
and that is...
How can you become more relentless?
When I first heard this, the first thing that went through my mind was, how can you even ask such a question?
To me it seems more like a personality trait that one would have, than something that would be developed, but then the more I thought about it the more I realized that it is something that is developed, and can be developed, so I threw together a list of a few things that came to mind.
Know Your Limitations
The first thing is to know your limitations. If you're going to be relentless you're going to have to be able to take risks, and jump on opportunities. To basically go all in as Clint Darden would say, and to know that and to know what your all in is, you need to know what your limitations are. As I've written before, you need to know what you don't know, but at the same time you need to know what your body is capable of, and what it's not capable of.
You can push your body much further than what you think you can, but everybody should know that there's a limitation there as well. If you're a 500 pound squatter, maybe in the right conditions with the right mindset, going balls out and having everything right, you might be able to hit a 525.
Maybe on a great day with super coaching and technical changes, and everything right, and the stars aligned, 550, but I can pretty much guarantee there's no way in hell you're going to squat 1000 pounds. You need to know what the limitations are mentally and physically, and an offshoot of that is, one limitation immediately is ...
There IS always a point in time where you quit. A statement that just drives me fucking crazy is "Don't quit." It's the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard in my life. Everything you do, everything anybody does in life at a certain time, you fucking quit. You stop. You have to stop. We die. In life we get to a point where we die, so that's like quitting life. Even if we are doing work there is always a time where we have to stop (or quit).
The "Don't quit" stuff is just fucking stupid. Just be relentless in the pursuit, and go with everything that you possibly have, and then you go until your body can't go anymore. The quit thing, I don't get that. I understand what they mean, don't mentally stop because you're scared or your afraid, or you're tired, and all that other kind of stuff - but what I don't get is if you are really working, focusing, driving, pushing and giving your all - you do not have time to think "should I quit", the only time that enters your mind is when your focus is no longer on what you were doing and you begin thinking about the future or the past - it is certainly not on what you are doing at that moment. You can succeed, progress or fail. Quit? That could be any of those three, right?
All that stuff aside, that's bullshit. Don't even get into something if you think that you're going to stop because you may quit. You shouldn't even start it. That's not being in a relentless pursuit to begin with. That in mind, know the limitations, and if you're going to go, go all in, and go without doubt, without fear, and go hard.
Control your Emotions.
You can't be relentless in a pursuit to anything if you can't control your emotions. Even lifting heavy shit, or going for max effort weight, you can become over aroused, and get hurt because of that. You could be under aroused and not have enough psych to be able to get it done.
If it's a negotiation, and you let your emotions get involved, you are going to lose. There are very few things in life, in sport, and in business where if you let your emotions get too involved you're going to win. In most cases, if you become too emotional, and let your emotions become too involved, you've already lost.
You didn't lose because somebody else beat you. You lost because you beat yourself. You need to control your emotions if you want to be relentless and have a relentless pursuit for anything.
Control the Story
By that what I mean is control the story you're telling yourself in your head. Before you begin anything with a relentless pursuit, you want the story in your head to be as close to real as possible.
In any conflict, and in any adversity there's going to be the story that's on one side, and the story that's on the other side, and the truth is typically going to be somewhere in the middle. The story that you typically tell yourself, or we typically tell ourselves is usually not even close to being right.
Think of any adversity that you've gone through, and when it first hits, you're lying awake and you can't sleep at night, and you just keep running over, and over, and over in your head, "This could happen," or "This could happen," or "No, maybe this will happen. Oh, no! It will be this."
When you think about it, when it's all said and done, and you go back and look at the final outcome, most of the time it wasn't any of the stories that you told yourself. When you can learn to control the story in your head, you can learn to become more relentless in the pursuit, because you're not going to be bullshitting yourself. You're not going to be scaring yourself, and you're not going to be building your ego when it shouldn't be built.
Fuck it. Do it anyway.
This ties into the story that you tell yourself in a way. In a different way you can't be hesitant. If you made the decision to act, and to do something, do it! Don't just stand there and wait and think about it. Fuck it! Do it anyway. Otherwise it may never get done. How many times have you thought of doing something that you really wanted to do, and then didn't do it?
How many people do you know that talk about all these things they want to do, but they never do it? Fuck it! Do it anyhow. Just start. Don't sit there and hesitate and wait. You can't be relentless sitting on the fucking sidelines talking about what you want to do, or what you want to be. The only way you can be relentless is getting out and doing it.
I've said many times there is rarely a "motivation" problem but an "execution" problem.
When you hit the objective find a new one.
If you set a goal for yourself, and you use this relentless pursuit to drive, and to push, and to move toward, and then you finally achieve it, think of a new one.
Build on it.
Don't be content with where you are when there's more you can do.
I'm going to write that again.
Don't be content with where you are when there's more you can do.
Push yourself.
Being content is not relentless.
Relentless is the opposite of being content, so drive, strive and push forward. Achieve the objective, set a new one, and repeat.