I almost didn’t do it as I had a bunch of other things going on and wasn’t quite sure if I could pull it off in time. But, sure enough, I was taking a cold shower one day – and I suddenly knew exactly what I had to talk about.

It’s not my first speaking engagement (I’ve spoken at Target and several colleges), but it’s one of the first that I’ve had recorded. There’s not much else to do here other than link directly to the video, so click here to watch the short video (10 minutes) and take a listen.

TEDxLUC – How Cold Shower Therapy Can Change Your Life

[click here to watch video on the site]

Of course, this is going together with everything else I’ve written on cold showers on this page.The essence of everything about CST really boils down to this one thought that I summed up the TEDx talk with:

I said to myself, “If you’re not willing or able to be the type of person that’s willing to be uncomfortable for five minutes alone in the shower, where the only negative outcome, is you being cold for five minutes and the only person affected by that decision is you.Then how will you ever have the strength or courage to be uncomfortable in a situation where the outcomes are much much greater and the people affected by your decision far outnumber just yourself.”

If you took a few minutes to watch the video, I would love to hear your thoughts on it below. And, as always, instead of just saying “that’s a great idea”, I’d love it if you’d actually try it for yourself.

The post My TEDxLUC Cold Shower Therapy Talk appeared first on Impossible HQ.

Of course, I’ve never done done anything close to 100 before and this was my first time on the bike this year, so this seemed like a great idea, but I’ll get to the full story in a second.

I did an interview the other day and had someone ask me “Not everyone can do what you do, what’s your secret?” I usually laugh at those questions as there’s nothing about anything I do that’s particularly special. I just don’t quit very often.

This past Saturday presented me with a lot of opportunities to quit (and I really, really wanted to take them), but, I simply decided not to. I imposed my will the race and I beat it.

There’s a few techniques I used to do so – which might be considered “secret”, but I don’t think there’s much beyond simple perseverance  Regardless, hopefully this is entertaining, helpful and useful the next time you run into a situation that simply needs to be “willed” into completion.

How To Impose Your Will On A Situation

Throughout this, I’ll be referring specifically to my century ride experience but you can use these techniques in almost anything you do.

Decide That You’re Doing It

Do or do not. There is no try - Yoda

The biggest decision is when you start. I decided that I was going to do it from the get-go. I could have said, “I’ll try to do it”, but in my mind when I set out that morning, I wasn’t going to “try”, I was going to do it.

Recognize & Embrace The Suck

Riding a century on a whim as your first ride of the season with zero training is not a “smart” idea. I just wanted to do it so I decided that I was going to do it. I realized quickly that it probably meant I’d be sore by the end of the day, but going into the race, I knew that it was going to suck. There was no getting around it.

I already accepted it and realized that was part of the deal of me signing up. That made what happened later during the race (slightly) easier to accept.

Break It Down

The first 56 miles of the race were relatively easy. But, while we started out in a large group with a bunch of other riders doing different distances, by mile 56, there were only 20 or so people left riding the full century ride and they were pretty spread out at that point.

At mile 56, my riding partner cramped up and headed home. At that point I didn’t really want to think about doing another cold, hilly, 56 miles by myself. We had already had some intense hills and a little rain and I was already cold, tired and wet with my nose dripping constantly, but I kept going.

However, I didn’t think about going another 56 miles in one set, I just thought about going 10. Then, every time I did 10, I mentally reset and did another 10. Over and over and over. No, it wasn’t anything crazy, but every 10 miles was a mini accomplishment and made it feasible – whereas 56 miles seemed much, much tougher.

I did the same thing when I was climbing some of the steep hills that seemed to take forever. Instead of worrying about the whole thing, I just focused on making it to the next tree, and then the next one. The cute butt strategy didn’t work in this scenario since I was surrounded by cows & sheep, but I could still use the same principle.

Say What You’re Willing To Give Up In Order To Accomplish What You Want

There’s one thing about knowing that whatever is coming up is going to suck & there’s another thing to actually say it out loud.

When I ask people “how bad do you want it?” – a lot of times they get offended because they think I’m saying they don’t want it bad enough.

Well, that’s exactly what I’m saying.

“Wanting it” isn’t’ very specific and whatever you want probably requires something more sacrifice than you anticipated at first. In order to get what you want, be very, very detailed about what you’re willing to give up in exchange for that. Because, you will be tested and asked for every single thing in exchange for what you want.

I literally started talking out loud to the “race” about what I was willing to give up in exchange for finishing the race.

• I’m willing to be cold.
• I’m willing to get rained on.
• I’m willing to put up with all the wind you got.
• I’m willing to bike endless hills.
• I’m willing to ride the rest of the way alone.
• I’m willing to do all of that…

But you will not beat me…so bring it.

Expect The Pain

Well…it was brought.

When you tell the world what you’re willing to be tested with – the world will be sure to test you with it. You better be expecting it to show up.

Not long after I left my riding partner,

The wind started to gust as a support car came up next to me to tell me to expect a thunderstorm bringing 30-50mph winds.

Great.

The temperature dropped about 10 degrees and the rain became more constant. The wind started to come on full force and no matter which direction I headed, it always seemed to be a headwind. Somewhere in all of that, I found my face kept getting continually pecked with what I thought was dirt or gravel. Confused, since there weren’t any dirt roads around – I quickly realized what it was – hail.

Awesome.

Miles 60-90 with no one around me. Completely alone – I nicknamed this part of the race purgatory.

Become Indifferent

Something happens when you expect the pain.

It’s not a surprise anymore.

It might be hard, it might hurt – but you can’t say you didn’t expect it.

It actually makes things easier because you get rid of the fear & anticipation of what might happen.

Instead of having to battle fear AND the actual work, all you have to do is deal with the work. That work might suck, but you can’t say you didn’t know it was coming. All you have to do now is put your head down, pedal, and focus on the doing the work.

Never Stop Moving Forward

It doesn’t matter how fast you go, as long as you do not stop

There were a couple of times where the wind was blowing so hard it almost blew my bike wheels out from under me. Race organizers would have pulled us off the course if they had been able to find us out in the middle of no where Indiana, but I kept going.

When that happened, pedaling was futile, but I’d get off and walk until that storm died down.

Realize No One Cares About Your Excuses

Somewhere between miles 70-90, I had missed my last rest stop had about 15 miles left to the next one and hadn’t taken any sort of break in about 45 miles.

At this point, I was mad (see above) and talking out loud to myself about all the reasons why I deserved to be mad.

I’m tired, I’m cold, I’m wet,  I’m hungry, my legs hurt, I’m all alone, and no matter which direction I go there’s always a headwind.

And then I looked around.

There was no one even remotely in sight except for a few dumb looking cows staring at me chewing grass.

I had to ask myself: Who are you talking to?

The cows don’t care about your excuses

No one cares.

No people.

No cars.

No bikes.

Literally no one.

Just some stupid cows.

There’s no one you have to justify your reasons for quitting out loud to. You’re all alone – you’re the only that gets to decide.

So, if you want to quit, go ahead and quit.

Otherwise, get back on your bike and start pedaling & stop trying to convince yourself of all the “acceptable” reasons you should quit. Stop whining. The cows don’t care about your excuses. They’re too busy being distracted by the strange human in tight shorts & weird shaped hat.

Quit or don’t quit. But the cows don’t care. So stop trying to convince them.

I shut up and got back on the bike.

Create Imaginary Enemies

I couldn’t get mad at the cows, so I made the race my enemy.

The event wasn’t even about 112.5 miles anymore. It was a personal competition between the race and it’s friends (wind, hail, and rain) and myself.

This let me create a “tangible” something that I could push back against.

Make It A Game

There were times where I was laughing out loud because the “race” seemed to be personally invested in getting me to quit and delivering one massive middle finger to my century ride attempt.

In response, I tried to laugh it off and ask out-loud, “is that all you got?” – only to see that – sure enough – it wasn’t.

Cue hail. Stronger winds. And lower temperatures.

Are you kidding me?

If it was anyone else it would have been funny.

Refuse To Lose

At one point inside of 85 miles, I determined that the only thing that was going to stop me from finishing this event was a broken leg. I figured I could walk the last 20 miles if my bike broke down and I had to.

But I was not going to quit.

In my mind, failure wasn’t even an option.

Get Angry And Yell

Seriously, this works better than you think it would – especially if you’ve already made your goal your personal enemy that will be conquered.

You need to get mad at your goal & make it personal. Because, if you really, really want something, sometimes it gets ugly.

When your imaginary enemy starts blowing you around the road, get mad at your goal. Get angry. Then fight it and beat it.

Sometimes, getting mad is better than getting positively motivated. Kick your goal’s ass and call its mama names.

— Chris Shugart (@ChrisShugart) May 12, 2013

It works for the hulk. It can work for you.

Go Crazy

In a sense, I’m glad I did most of the second half of the race alone. Mainly, because if other people saw me yelling out loud & laughing at the wind in the middle of a thunderstorm, they’d probably think I was nuts – which at that point – I probably was.

But, as strange as it sounds, going crazy allows you to escape a little bit of the insanity going around you in a 40mph wind/hail storm.

Remove Yourself From The Situation

This might be the most “zen” recommendation here, but remove yourself from the situation. Forget all the pain, all the hills, and the storm (literally) happening around you. Pull yourself out of the situation and look at this from a third person perspective.

If this was a story (and you were the character), what would you root for the character to do? Do that.

Recognize Opportunities To Quit For What They Are

I finally hit mile 100 and the sky started to break. The rain was letting up & it warmed up slightly. 12.5 miles to go and I’m home free…or so I thought. Around mile 102, I was coming off a downhill and slowing around a corner when I realized there was about an inch and a half of gravel that I was about to hit.

Uh oh.

In slow motion I could feel the bike sliding out from under me as I crashed down on my left side.

I let out a yell – more from anger than pain. 10 miles to go in the race and I crashed – I should have figured as much with how things were going. At least my bruised hip took the soreness away from my legs.

As I dusted myself off  and looked at my bike, it would have been easy to give up at 102 and go home. I got the century – that’s what I wanted – plus a couple. But at that point it was personal. I recapped the race quickly and realized that all of the things that I had said “out loud” to the “race”, happened.

• I’m willing to be cold. Okay, how’s so cold that you’re constantly shaking sound to you?
• I’m willing to be rained on. Done. Plus how did you like the hail ?
• I’m willing to put up with all the wind you got. Done. How’s 40mph sound?
• I’m willing to ride alone. Done & done. Have fun out in purgatory?
• I’m willing to ride hills. Good, cause you’ll have to bike ALL THE HILLS.
• If you’re going to stop me, you’re going to have to break my leg. Well, we tried.

It would have been easy to quit. But I was 10 miles away from finishing what I started. I could walk that if I needed to. The crash was just the race’s final attempt at getting me to quit.

There was only one option.

I jumped back on my bike.

——-

In order to pre-empt many of the comments I know are coming:

I realize a century ride is NOT that far. Heck, the 112.5 miles was only 1/3 of the 3 legs to an Ironman. I thought it was going to be a nice leisurely ride that I’d be able to kick back and relax on with a few friends as we rode through the plains of Indiana relaxing and enjoying the view.

But, as things go, something unexpected happened and changed the game entirely. It became much less about a certain distance than it was a battle of the wills between me and the storm.

I wasn’t fast and I definitely wasn’t looking very pretty by the end of it, but after climbing a few hills for a few miles after the final crash, the course from from 108-212.5 was all downhill and as I zoomed around a few hills as the sun went down, I don’t know if I’ve ever been so happy to see a finish line.

THE POINT OF THE STORY

When things get bad, and you get rain, hail, wind and storms when you’re expecting, you can either quit and go home or you can push through it, impose your will on the situation and do what you came to do. If you do, eventually, the clouds will break and the rain will stop and the bruises you get will fade and you will finish.

Do something difficult – it’s worth it.

Please don’t take this as woo-woo fluff fluff mental crap either. Actually get on your bike and ride it. Ride through a storm. Take a cold shower. Have a real physical experience. Experience it for yourself. Let it make you stronger.

Do something difficult. It’s worth it twitter.com/joelrunyon/sta…

— Joel Runyon(@joelrunyon) May 13, 2013

The post How To Impose Your Will On A Situation appeared first on Impossible HQ.

I talk quite a bit about the paleo diet & I get a lot of questions about the paleo diet.

Rightfully so - Impossible Abs is a variation of the paleo diet with several tweaks and I recommend it as the go-to diet of choice for people looking to lose weight without having to calorie count all day, every day. Why? Because paleo focuses on eating real food – something so important, it seems laughable to suggest, but is so basic that it’s often overlooked.

Now, people tend to get hung up on the name “Paleo” a lot and ask if cavemen really did eat bacon (answer: I don’t know, but I bet they would have if they had it available). But I think they’re missing the point and simultaneously miss out on a lot of it’s benefits of paleo.

To be honest: I don’t think paleo is the end-all, be-all of nutrition, but for 95% of people, it’s a great start. I’ve seen people lose 70+ pounds, reverse diabetes and change their entire lives with the paleo diet. It’s not perfect (there are some adjustments you can make to it depending on your individual goals), but the reason I talk about the paleo diet so much is that it works – plain & simple.

And so, while I’ve talked about it here & there and done some video posts on it, I wanted to do more. So, quietly, in the background I’ve been working on something bigger – much bigger.

Enter Ultimate Paleo Guide

Over a year ago I started working on a project that would eventually morph into Ultimate Paleo Guide. As you can probably guess, it’s designed to be the ultimate guide to the paleo diet that you can find anywhere on the internet. While it started with just a few posts from my own experience, it quickly expanded more & more as I continued to detail out the intricacies, benefits & variations of the diet through my own experience & research.

Now, over a year and over 200 articles later, I feel Ultimate Paleo Guide (UPG) is finally starting to live up to it’s name and I wanted to share it with you. It’s not quite done, but it’s getting close. Think of it as a better-researched, more in-depth, & more entertaining version of the encyclopedia entry on the paleo diet. Forget wikipedia & google, we’re aiming to have all your answers on the paleo diet available on UPG.

I’ve referenced it here and there in the No Excuse Workout, blog posts & other materials unofficially before, but today we’re officially putting UPG out into the world along with a flagship product launching today as well (and I’ll tell you about in a quick minute).

Los Paleo Recipe Book: Mexican Paleo Recipes

The site is packed with paleo food lists, meal plans and other resources on the paleo diet, but there was one thing I was missing…

RECIPES.

The call for more recipes has been almost deafening. Honestly, it’s not something I quite understand as I’m perfectly happy to eat chicken and broccoli 5 days a week, but apparently most people don’t feel the same way. So, while it might take a few repetitions to get something through my head, I finally started to listen.

Meet Los Paleo.

Los Paleo is the first response to the call for more delicious paleo recipes as the first flagship project of Ultimate Paleo Guide. While I’m still working on my cooking chops – I’m still woefully uncreative when it comes to cooking creativity (I tend to focus on efficiency) – I partnered with the wonderful & talented Marla Sarris (1/3 of the Spyr Media crew) to created & design these paleo recipes. Inspired after being challenged to make 100% paleo versions of her local Mexican favorites, Marla got to work & Los Paleo is the result of her culinary genius.

I could fawn over Marla’s work in the kitchen all day long, but it’s much easier to just show you. This is just a short sample of what you’ll be finding inside Los Paleo.

That’s just the start. Los Paleo has 42 full-color, delicious Mexican recipes waiting for you to try & experiment with. Pick up a copy of Los Paleo today. You mouth & your eyes will thank you for it. This is just the beginning.

 TLDR

>>> Learn to make ridiculously delicious mexican paleo recipes with Los Paleo

>>> Check out the #1 resource on the internet for the paleo diet –> Ultimate Paleo Guide.

>>> Subscribe for updates from UPG & get your paleo starter kit here –> Subscribe

The post The Ultimate Paleo Guide: Everything You Could Ever Want To Know About The Paleo Diet appeared first on Impossible HQ.

Cutting out these two food groups can help regulate your hormone levels, make it easier to lose weight, improve gut health, normalize blood sugar levels & even improve allergies. If you take a look at food groups through the lens of the 80/20 Principle, these two foods would be the 20% of foods that cause 80% of the problems in most people’s diets.

So what are they? Well here are the two foods you should stop eating – yesterday preferably. Here we go.

Dairy

What Standard Nutrition Advice Would Have You Believe:

“It’s great for you! It’s got calcium! But be careful of that fatty, whole milk. Better drink either skim or 1%, just to be safe – and try to forget that 1% tastes like water. I mean it has to be good for you right? Besides thousands of terrible milk mustaches & “got milk” campaigns can’t be wrong – can they?”

Well…actually…

Why Dairy Is Actually Terrible For You

Dairy has different levels of bad, but particularly low-fat, 1% and skim milk are highly insullogenic – that means they cause your insulin levels to spike and causes your body to stop burning fat.  And don’t get me started on the fact that it’s nearly impossible to find chocolate milk without HFCS and corn starch in it. Really, corn starch in your milk? When’s the last time you said “yum” to corn starch? Toss in the fact that a huge portion of the population is lactose intolerant and the links to cancer that milk is known for and the picture isn’t looking too pretty.

If you’re going to have dairy, make it either fermented (cheese, whey protein, grassfed butter, or yogurt – without a ton of a sugar). Sure, ice cream is delicious  but there’s really no need for a daily shellacking of dairy in your diet.

Grains

Standard Nutrition Advice:

You need grains more than you need oxygen – they’re that important! Why else would we need 6-11 servings a day? I mean, just look at this chart!

“They help with digestion & give you fiber! Not to mention, it’s completely UNREALISTIC to actually cut out ALL grains from your diet. I’m Italian, I can’t live without grains – we’re not animals, you know?”

Well…actually…

Why Grains Are Terrible For You

Grains are actually pretty unnecessary. They contain gluten, lectins and phytates that make minerals unavailable to your body & create situations prime for obesity.

Oh, and that’s just the start. It can lead to leaky gut, weight gain and even cause type 2 diabetes. That’s before we get into how these simple carbohydrates affect your blood sugar & insulin levels and cause you to store fat instead of burning it and using it for fuel. Whether you’re into paleo or not, when you look at grains (and wheat especially), there’s a ton of really, really good reasons not to eat them.

Despite all of this, 6-11 servings of grains was common nutritional advice from the government up until 2011!

The truth is, for most people, there’s really very little reason to include many (or any) grains in their diet on a regular basis and once you try it, they’re not so “impossible” to cut out of your diet either. If you need a substantial amounts of carbohydrates (endurance athletes or power lifters come to mind), you can get them from vegetables & squashes that give you the energy sources you need without the added side effects of feces in your blood stream & type 2 diabetes (sounds like a good tradeoff to me).

—

Note: It’s funny that somehow both of these have made it into a standard american breakfast of cereal with milk – which is the absolute worst time to do this as the morning is your body’s prime time to burn fat and both of these “foods” bring that process to a screeching halt. Do yourself a favor & choose eggs & bacon for your morning breakfast instead.

—

80/20 your diet and take out these two foods from your diet. You might be surprised at the results.

Want to clean up your diet? Start with these two foods & cut out dairy & grains. Notice how you feel and see what happens. 

photo credit: Dustin Diaz

The post Two Foods You Should Stop Eating Yesterday appeared first on Impossible HQ.

I’m finally getting my butt in gear and announcing our winners for the New Years contest. We had so many entries – it took me a while to get through them all. It’s been a big process, but it’s been really cool to see some of these transformations happen in real time.

It was tough to narrow them down, not only going through physical changes, but also the stories of the people behind them but after much deliberation, we narrowed it down to our top 3 (with 1 runner up).

We had some big prizes at stake, but some of the biggest transformations actually actively turned down the prizes. While they started because of the different prizes at stake, they realized in the middle of the challenge that they were doing it for themselves – not some prizes – no matter how awesome they may be. And so while I’ll be sharing their stories coming up in the next few months, there were a ton of people who finished out the contest and deserve the swag. Here they are:

Here are the results of the winners in their own words.

Honorable Mention: Alessandra

24 year old, Quality Assurance Manager

Lost 7 pounds in 8 weeks, but gained a six pack and one cool pair of sunglasses.

Before

After

What’s Your Story Allesandra?

I’ve always been pretty fit, but got to a space where I was teetering. I just thought that was where I was going to stay. I made tiny strides of progress, but then would fall back at square one. Basically I was good, but not great.

I started off at 140 lbs (I’m 5’4”) and measurements of 37:28:40. I’ve always been in decent shape and loved my curves, but there was no reason why my stomach shouldn’t be totally flat. There were a ton of reasons why I wanted to get fitter and stronger and I just needed and excuse to do it. Honestly, I never realized how much social pressures affected my lifestyle. I was weeaaaakkkkk.

What type of Results Did You See?

Every week I felt some sort of change. First, it was endurance. I realized that I suck at starting a workout, but once I got into the groove, I could go forever. That’s when I started doing back to back MMA classes so I had 2 hours for ass kicking. Then, I felt my core get stronger. I was in better control of all my movements, especially headstands and handstands. I’ve always been an excellent yogi, but the extra arm and core strength had me pushing harder and finally getting into the full expression of some of the most challenging poses. Finally, my cardio started improving. I live in a 4th floor walk up and while getting up the stairs has never been an issue, these days it’s like NOTHING.

I hesitate to give final weight and measurements as I went on a bit of a bender during my last week, so this is in no way final, but here it goes: 133 lbs; 34.5:27:38.5.

Mental Clarity

I realized that a really hate starting an exercise on my own. If I’m in a class, I can jump right in, but that first bit of motivation (I mean, discipline), is hard to muster. Getting past those first ten minutes is the worst, but after one circuit, I didn’t want to stop working out. I’m still working on getting rid of the fear of the first ten minutes, but I’m definitely better prepared to face them.

As far as eating goes, “I don’t need it” became a sort of mantra. And I don’t. I don’t need bread. It was such a staple and it can be annoying not being able to eat sandwiches and other convenient gluten wrapped foods, but I don’t effing need it!

Any Words Out There For People Thinking About The Challenge?

I’ve been toying with the idea of going paleo for awhile, and this was the push I needed. Having the excuse of a contest to decline alcohol really takes the social anxiety out of the equation, and now that I feel amazing, I don’t even care about the social implications of drinking less and cooking more. I also can say, I can’t meet you out that night, I have an MMA class, and not feel guilty. Feeling better in my own skin had killed my FOMO (fear of missing out).

Five stars. Highly recommended. Just try it already. NOW.

Third Place: Josh

27 year-old Australian. Former fat guy.

Total weight loss = 17.6 pounds

What’s your background Josh? Tell me a little bit about your story:

I come from an overweight family. I’m not sure how much genetics has to play in it, but inactivity, good food and too keen an interest in bright colours and flashing lights (read: TV) had some input I’m sure. Being of the build I am, weight was extremely easy to put on, and it seemed the family way of life and the path down which my life was headed. Fast food, soda, junk food, and binges on bread and sweets was almost a weekly occurrence.

For too many years this has been going on. I graduated High School 9 years ago at a weight of 85kg, and since then I’ve seen it fluctuate from 79kg (working as a dishwasher in a restaurant and being poor will do this), all the way up to most recently a whopping 104kg. That was in September 2012.

104kg in September

Since September I’ve been following about a 75% paleo diet, with the odd bit of exercise in there when it was convenient to do so. I noticed some of the weight simply melt away and by New Years i was a decent 94kg.

I’ve been a reader of Impossible HQ for the last 10 months, give or take a few, and I’ve owned a copy of the Impossible Abs program since it was released. And I am super encouraged by the honesty, badassery and constant pushing that is dished out on the blog and through email correspondence.

Before Christmas, I took a leap of faith (decided to blackmail myself) and signed up and paid for a Tough Mudder event. All I needed now was the kick in the butt.

Okay, so you took on the challenge, right around New Years. What types of results did you see? How did you not fall off the wagon like so many people do?

The biggest result I noticed was only a moderate drop in weight. At the start of the competition, I weighed in at 93-94kg and at the end I struck in at 86kg. That’s only 7-8kg lost (~17.6 pounds for us state side). It doesn’t sound like much, and I really thought I was going to lose more. However, I gained a lot more than I anticipated.

Core strength is the largest improvement I noticed. Obviously improvements in numbers of repetitions of exercises and the depth or intensity at which I do them were noticeable as well. But, the biggest, especially coming from a life lived mostly on the couch, was definitely core strength. The power and control  that I now have over how my body undertakes movements was the best realization I had.

I’ve been getting comments from all sorts of people about how much better i’m looking, which is always great to hear. It’s also great being able to fit into better clothes. I even found a pair of pants that I put away because I was too fat to fit into them (I’m now too thin to wear them – they practically just fall off me!). I’ve also moved down about 4″ in pants and belts size since September.

It’s cool to see the physical changes, isn’t it? How did the challenge change you mentally?

This was also one of the biggest improvements I noticed. Mental Grit, is the term I believe. Obstacles seem a lot smaller and more easily tackled. My optimism is through the roof, my confidence is up and all bets are off as to what the future holds.

Yes, it was quite difficult at times, and there were certainly days where I thought about skipping a workout (and I’m not above mentioning that, yes, there were a few days where i did skip the workout, but for the most part, I stuck it out (and  some days where I ended up outside the house doing exercise at 10pm).

Killer story Josh, what’s next for you man?

The overall result is that I want to continue down the path i’ve been on for the last 2 months, I have the tools to continue and mental determination to keep going. Self-discipline is better than it was, and there is definitely room for improvement. One day i will finally have the 6 pack abs. I don’t want them for looks, or vanity, i want them for the sake of it, to prove that i can do it, that i can take something to it’s full end.

BOOM

• Race entry  of your choice to one of the following (Spartan Race, Warrior Dash, Tough Mudder, GORUCK)
• Primal Fuel from Primal Nutrition
• The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson
• Pigskin Paleo by Marla Sarris

Second Place: Kiernan

42 year old mother of 3.

Total weight loss = 15 pounds.

I am a 42 year old mom of three. I am a yoga instructor, and I “live” yoga but I workout by running. Most of what I do for fitness revolves around being in shape for half marathon or marathon distance events. By 1/1/2013 I had fallen out of shape though. Lots of things conspired to create a perfect storm of self-medicating. A big part of that was 12/14. My kids go to school in Newtown, CT – they have for their whole lives. The shootings have turned my life upside down.

By the first of this year, I knew I needed to grab control of SOMETHING. I decided to make it the hardest thing I could think of. I had read about Impossible Abs on the blog, and I had dismissed it out of hand. Paleo eating is kind of contrary to my endurance runner/plant focused way of eating. Plus, an 8 hour window just seemed ridiculous. The workouts didn’t “scare” me but they did seem like something I would absolutely hate and dread. So – I decided to change the meaning of “Impossible” into something good. If something impossibly horrible like the Sandy Hook shootings can happen, then so can things that are impossibly great.

All right, lets cut to the chase – what types of results did you see?

I lost 15+ pounds. I am close to 5’6″ so that’s a pretty significant difference. My final weight is 137 and that’s within a pound of my lightest weight ever. I went from needing to go get size 6 jeans to having my size 4 start to fall off. Even my yoga tights are roomy! I also got back my upper body definition, not seen since I did Insanity a few years ago. I have better leg strength than I can get just from running. My sleep has improved, my skin and hair has a significantly healthier look. My belly is calm ALL THE TIME.

I have basically lost my taste for sweets. To me, this is HUGE. I take my coffee black, I don’t look twice at cakes and cookies. I see these changes as maybe more important for the long run than the burgeoning six-pack. I am eating so clean now, and I plan to continue to do so. My next challenge is to run a marathon in May at a light weight and see how that affects my performance. My kids are eating better too! What a bonus. Also, in the photos you can see my guns!!

So what about the mental aspect of the challenge?

The challenge was really all mental for me. And I am a tough person. I’ve done drug free childbirth three times. I’ve done GORUCK and other all night physical tests. I’ve run marathons. I embrace hard workouts and I know how to lean into the sucky parts. The diet was tough, since I love toast and peanut butter! The workouts were tough because I really dislike pullups and burpees. But I just embraced it.

I am SO fortunate that my boyfriend did the program along with me. He is truly tough mentally. He never even seemed to want to waiver or complain. Together, we ate kale and fish and eggs and greens and fruit. We drank water and black coffee. We did not have even a cheat “moment” for eight weeks. Carlos managed to lose over 30 pounds during the challenge!

Awesome! We need to get Carlos’ story on here. Any additional thoughts on the challenge in general?

I learned from this. I read a LOT about fitness and diet, I’ve done P90X and Insanity and Asylum. I live yoga. I know my body and I know what I’m doing, yet I learned from this. I learned about how making a few seemingly impossible moves to clean up my diet could make a very big difference. I learned about how I can maintain and build fitness doing things that take less time! I learned big things about myself too – about what I can give up and what I need. About how much I’m willing to do things differently than those around me.

I think the best thing I can say about this program is that I am going to make a LOT of it my lifestyle. Specifically, the clean eating (I’m not staying Paleo, can’t give up grains completely and don’t really like to eat much meat). But no processed food! I won’t buy dairy – just have it out at a restaurant once in a while. AND – Monday thru Friday we continue to eat Impossible Abs style completely. I also plan to incorporate pushups and pullups consistently even when marathon training.

Prizes Kiernan Is Going Home With

• Her Choice of Vibram Five Fingers Shoes
• $50 giftcard to Grassfed Wellness meats.
• Race entry of her choice to one of the following (Spartan Race, Warrior Dash, Tough Mudder, GORUCK)
• The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson
• Pigskin Paleo by Marla Sarris

First Place: Brock

29 years old. Full time desk jockey, full-time student, family man, and father of 3.

Total weight lost = 25.5 pounds

Before

After

Brock, what’s your story?

Well, I guess I should tell you a little bit about myself. I’m 29 years old, I have a family with three kids. I work full time, and also go to school full time (going to graduate with my BS in Accounting in December). I’m 6’1″ and when I started this contest I weighed in at 193 pounds with a 42.5″ Chest and 40″ waist (measured at the belly button). I started this challenge a week late and didn’t start exercising until a week after that, but did reign in my diet for the first week. I used your free No Excuse Workout for 6 weeks and no other exercise. I found it pretty challenging to get it started. I didn’t realize how out of shape I really was! After spending a year in Iraq as a Calvary Scout with the Army National guard I really started packing on the pounds over the last couple years. I also quit working out after I got back. I pretty much did the bare minimum health wise, no exercise and eat anything and everything.

What Type of Results Did You See?

Here are my weekly weigh-ins

Weigh Ins

• 3-Jan  – 193
• 10-Jan – 185.2
• 14-Jan – 183.5
• 19-Jan – 180
• 27-Jan – 179.2
• 3-Feb – 175.7
• 12-Feb – 173
• 19-Feb – 171.8 
• 3-Mar – 167.5

That is a total weight lost of 25.5 pounds, 3.5 inches off my chest and a whopping 5 inches of my waist!!!!

Besides looking better, most importantly I feel great! I’ll admit that it was extremely hard to keep going the first couple weeks. I was tired, sore and wanted to give up. I knew that it would eventually pass when I was in shape for the Army. And it did, once that initial stage of pain was over I looked forward to working out. Plus when I was finished working out I felt great when it over. I wasn’t as tired or sluggish at the end of the day and fell a sleep quicker at night as well.

Was There A Mental Barrier To This Challenge At All?

I think the challenge really helped me break past that mental barrier and give me an end date to work towards. The hardest part is always starting out. Now that I’ve been in the swing of things it much easier to keep the momentum going. I plan on upgrading to Impossible Abs when I get my tax money back. I’ve also started training for a GORUCK Challenge, which is what I will pick if I happen to place in the top three. Even if I don’t win I plan on pursing the challenge anyways and earning my patch!

1st Place Prizes He’s Going Home With

• 16GB iPad Mini.
• His Choice of Vibram Five Fingers Shoes
• $150 Giftcard To Grassfed Wellness meats.
• Race entry of his choice to one of the following (Spartan Race, Warrior Dash,Tough Mudder, GORUCK)
• The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson
• Pigskin Paleo by Marla Sarris

BOOM!

Josh, Kiernan & Brock – shoot me an email & lets get in touch & I’ll ship you your prizes. Nice work.

These are just some of the few of the stories we got in. It made me incredibly proud to see what people could accomplish in just 8 weeks – AND how their entire trajectory for the year changed because of the habits they made in the first two months.

This is the part where I’m supposed to tell you that results are not typical – but I’d really hate to do that. Of course, these results aren’t typical if you just buy a book and expect it to transform your life. You have to take the time & energy to invest yourself in actually doing the work. If you do that, sure your mileage may vary, but the physical results will come along & the mental ones might be even greater.

What’s cool is that the results came came from about an even 50/50 split between the programs.. About 50 percent of the participants used impossible abs. & 50% just used the free no excuse workouts. You won’t hear too many fitness people tell you this, but you really don’t need the latest & greatest gear, equipment or programs to do what you really want to do. While solid info definitely can give you a boost, the real secret to fitness is this:

Half the battle is doing the work.

All the fitness secrets in the world won’t help you if you don’t get that foundation down.

So congratulations everyone. I’ve never been happier to spend a few thousand dollars on things that for other people that I want badly for myself (but hey, at least I’m racking up miles). I think this was a lot of fun. It was cool to see how many people got jumpstarted by the bribery, but once they were in, they kept going for themselves (I even had a few people voluntarily disqualify themselves from the prize because “they wanted to do it for themselves, not a prize.”) That’s what it’s all about and I can’t wait to share some of those stories .

Again, thanks to everyone who participated in the Impossible Abs challenge. I keep coming back to the fact that Impossible Abs is different from a lot of fitness programs for a reason. It’s not about shortcuts. It’s not about vanity. It’s not about crash dieting. It’s about taking control, creating habits & making a change.

I loved this quote from Josh (down 40+ pounds since September) that he presumably thought up while climbing the mountain he’s photographed in below:

One day soon, I will finally have 6 pack abs. I don’t want them for looks, or vanity. I want them for the sake of it, to prove that i can do it, that I can take something to it’s full end.

That’s what it’s about.

—-

Impossible Abs Updates Are On The Way

I’ve been getting a lot of queestions about Impossible Abs lately. I’ll be releasing an update in the next 10 days to address a ton of questions I’ve gotten that are really easily solved. and should put your mind at ease. I’m not done with this yet. We’ve got a TON of more great stories on the way & I’m still working on making this the best resource out there. If you already have it, don’t worry, you’ll get an email notification when the update is ready. If you’re about to pick up a copy, don’t worry – you get free updates for life (cause I love you like that) so you’ll get the updated copy when it’s live.

Note From Joel:

I literally just got off a google+ hangout with Vic Magary (my co-author for Impossible Abs) at 7am this morning. After showing him the stories listed above, he wanted to do something to really get people pumped about Impossible Abs and offered to throw in his course – 40 days fit - to whoever picks up the program in the next 72 hours. If you’ve been around the blog much, you’ll know I don’t really do promotions like this ever – seriously ever – so if you want to get started this weekend, pick up a copy of Impossible Abs + forward your receipt to vic (vic@vicmagary.com) to get your f*ee copy of 40 days fit as well. This is good until midnight on Sunday, CST.

Boom indeed.

Fitness Resources

• Impossible Abs 
• Download Your No Excuse Workout Here (f*ee)
• 40 Days Fit (free with Impossible Abs for the next 72 hours)

Look like a bad a** and do impossible things in your Impossible Gear (Available Here).

Want to be featured on the blog? Cross something off your impossible list while wearing your impossible gear & send it in!

The post The New Years Contest Transformation: 3 Incredible Stories appeared first on Impossible HQ.

Note: This is a more personal post than I typically write. Maybe it helps explain the reasoning behind what I do.

Every once in a while someone asks me to change the way I write.

“I really like your site, but if you could just change xyz then I think you’d really be more appealing.”

These comments are usually meant in good faith, but the message is still the same.

“If you weren’t so extreme, then you could bring in more people. You could expand your audience even larger. You could help more people!”

We’re in an interesting place. The site has about 10,000 subscribers and ~100,000 visitors/month these days. Considering when I started this thing 3 years ago, I was living in my parents basement & just wanted to run an indoor triathlon, I’m still in awe of what this has turned into.

Complete world takeover is on the horizon

But we’ll come back to that in a second…

The Domino Effect

If you’ve ever watched a domino world record – they’re pretty intense. You can get an idea of the scope of some of these events by watching this video

But you can also learn something about maximizing your impact from dominos. See dominos don’t try to knock over everything at once. In fact, if they do, they usually fall flat and don’t. They can max out at knocking over 2 or 3 other dominos. That’s about all one domino can really handle.

But that’s not why people find domino world records impressive. Nobody watches a domino setup to watch 1 domino knock over 1, 2 or even 3 other dominos. Honestly, that would suck, take only a fraction of a second and be boring as all get out.

People watch domino setups to see the effect that knocking over 1 domino has on another and then another and then another – a thousand times over. It’s the consecutive nature of one domino after the other that’s the real show. That’s what people come to watch.

I’m always trying to grow, expand and reach more people with the site and various projects we’re working on – but the end goal is not about how many people I reach on my own. There’s some out there that simply won’t get me, my style or my approach on life.

And that’s fine.

Because it’s not really about me. I’m just a domino. I’m doing the one thing I’m supposed to do.

I write about pushing your limits and doing the impossible. I’m not going to temper that to make you feel good about cheating yourself, or tell you that we should all sit in a circle and sing kum-bah-yah. If you have a problem with that – please do both of us a favor and unsubscribe. There’s people on the internet that do that – but that’s not me.

See, I’m not really interested in just having “readers.” They’re great, but what I enjoy even more are “doers.” People who take the things they read and implement them in their lives – try them out on their own, experiment & share it with their circle of people in their own way.

I can’t reach everyone – but if I can reach someone who can reach someone who can reach someone – that’s still something. And that’s how you really influence people.

Besides: who knows what the people around you need better than you?

So when people say: ”I really like your site, but if you could just change xyz then I think you’d really be more appealing.”

My response is: “that sounds great, why don’t you do it?”

Because, if that’s what you think the world needs – then that’s what you should go and create. Don’t wait for someone else to do it for you – don’t try to convince someone else to knock over the domino in front of you – that’s lazy – that’s your job.

Because I’m just a domino – I’m just doing what I’m supposed to do.

So sorry:

• I’m not going to do life coaching.
• I’m not going to tell you to follow your passion (in fact, you should do the opposite).
• I’m not going to tell you to stay comfortable & make the easy choice.
• And I’m definitely not going to sitting in circle singing kum-bah-ya with you.

So sorry, but I’m not sorry. That’s not my role.

I’m going to talk about pushing your limits, doing stuff that’s hard and doing what’s never been done before. The impossible.

If you don’t like that – there’s lots of other places on the internet to hang out .

—-

Be A Domino

You have your own message. Your own job. Your own domino to knock over.

Be a domino.

Do the one thing you’re supposed to do.

Knock over the next domino.

The ones you do might have a different job and fall in a different way, but you can’t control what they do. All you can control is you.

Do the one thing you’re supposed to do.

Knock over the next domino.

Then stand back & watch the domino effect happen.

(If you enjoyed this post, be a domino & share this with someone in your circle of influence).

—-
photo credit: photography.andreas
—-

p.s. If you’re still interested in why I take such a strong stance, this is why I write.

The post The Domino Effect appeared first on Impossible HQ.

We’ve got a lot of really intriguing announcements, meetups, races and job postings (yes jobs!) in this post. I could come up with a fancy title for all of this, but just read this post.

RSS –> Email

RSS is dead (mostly). If you’re reading this via email – relax and move on to the next item. If you’re reading this via rss on the blog – this is for you!

You might know that google recently killed google reader and if you’re reading this via GReader, as of July 1, you won’t be able to anymore – they’re shutting it down. Essentially, RSS is dead. If you really, really want to use RSS going forward, I recommend feedly.

However, the best way to stay up-to-date with everything is to join ~10,000 other really awesome people and subscribe via email right here. You also get a ton of really great stuff when you sign up (I like to bribe you). Not to mention, I’m doing a ton of new stuff with email in the next few months, so it’s going to be an even bigger deal than before. If you’re reading via RSS and want to keep up with everything we’re doing here at Impossible HQ after Google Reader goes to technology heaven, email is the way to go.

–> Subscribe here <— Get in on this.

Impossible HQ is Hiring An Editor

Big News –> I’m looking to hire an editor here at Impossible HQ. For the last 3 years, I’ve been running everything myself + a very tiny team of on/off contractors of mostly graphic designers.

As things continue to grow, I’m going to continue to expand (we have two big projects in the works as we speak). That stats with making sure everything on the site is high-quality, helping schedule & plan out content strategy as well as do some copy-editing to fend off the extra commas and missing words that sometimes creep into the site. Ideal candidates are great writers & highly organized but can deal with someone who is not (mainly me).

Note, this is a part-time position and you’re not going to make google money, but it is a paid position. You also get a first-hand look at what I’m coming up with next and other projects before I launch them publicly.

If you’d like to apply send an email to joel [at] impossiblehq [dot] com.

Please put “Editor Position” in the subject line and answer the following questions:

• Name & Location (virtual position, but time zones are important)
• What’s your relevant experience as a writer/editor? What should I know about you?
• What type of time availability do you have on a weekly basis to dedicate to Impossible HQ?
• How long have you been reading Impossible HQ? What’s your favorite article?
• Why are you a good fit for this position?
• Why do you want to do this?
• What’s the one thing you’d like to influence about Impossible HQ?
• What’s the next thing you’re crossing off your impossible list? When are you going to do it?
• When was your last cold shower?
• Is there anything else you want to brag about/I should know?

Applications need to be in by April 5th (10 days). Once I get them all, I’ll be reading through the apps, pick out the best to do an interview and a few test projects. If we find a good fit, we’ll run a 90 day contract (3 months) to see how it goes and hopefully move full steam ahead if things go smoothly. If you’re interested, I’d love for you to apply – just remember applications need to be in by April 5th.

Chicago Meetup

Chicago area people.  We’re having a small meetup next week on Wednesday at 7pm(ish). We’re still finalizing venue details, but if you’d like to come, simply RSVP and click here and fill out the form below.

Chicago Tough Mudder

In another case of “I’m doing X, who wants to come with me?“, I’m running the Chicago Tough Mudder on May 18th & 19th…who wants to come with me?

If you want to get in on it – put your details in here. I’ll be sending out an email asap, pick our date and get a team together. If you’re in Chicago and think you’re tough enough to give it a shot, lets go.

*note, you’re going to have to be in decent shape to pull this off. It’s a 10-12 mile obstacle race with 20+ obstacles, so if you’re still struggling doing a couple miles, we’ll be doing some other events down the road. You might want to start training now.

To RSVP to the Chicago area Tough Mudder, click here and fill out the form below.

Non-Chicago & International Readers

Don’t worry – we’re working on a few solid meetups outside the Chicago area. Later this year, we’ll be doing more & more meetups around the U.S. and hopefully interenationally as well .

—-

Random Fun Fact: Last weekend I gave a TEDx talk here in Chicago. It should be online in the next few days & I’ll be posting it as soon as it’s live. Stay tuned!

—-
Whew! I think that’s it….

I’m constantly working on new stuff around here and I’m pretty excited about what 2013 has in store. I’m always working to make things bigger & better and as I do, the simple limits of what I think is impossible keeps moving further away.

As always, thanks for being a part of this . Keep doing something impossible.

photo credit: the bbp

The post Read This Post appeared first on Impossible HQ.

Do you suffer from shiny object syndrome?

Are you easily distracted by “shiny” new ideas?

Are you constantly starting new ideas only to move on to the next one as soon as it gets hard?

Do you only ever make it through 50% of a fitness program, before ditching it for the bigger, better, coolest program out there (only to do the exact same thing 50% of the way through).

Well, chances are you have shiny object syndrome. Don’t worry, it’s not fatal, but it can cause you to run in circles while feeling constantly busy and never quite achieving anything.

Never fear, as a former sufferer, I’ve beaten this incapacitating sickness and I’ve got you covered.

What Is Shiny Object Syndrome?

Shiny Object Syndrome (Objectivius Shinium Syndromus) is defined as the attraction to objects that exhibit a glassy, polished, gleaming or otherwise shiny appearance. Something as simple as a reflection in your peripheral vision may easily distract your attention. Over time, you’ll find that your attention to said object is directly correlated to it’s shininess and your attention fades as the shininess wears off.

How Do I Know If I Suffer?

Here’s a list of characteristics associated with shiny object syndrome. Keep in mind: this is not an exhaustive list, and this isn’t the end all be all, but it is a start.

• You have 100 domain names and no built-out websites.
• You train for 2 or 3 big races a year, but always end up having something else come up at the last minute and don’t do the race.
• You have 20 business ideas on paper, but no businesses.
• You go to hackathons and startup weekends, but you never build a product.
• You work change workout routines every two weeks, because you gotta keep yourself on your toes and there’s no reason to stick a workout regimen for more than 3 weeks…ever.

You constantly start things, but never finish them.

Is this you? Well, you’re not alone, MILLIONS (probably closer to BILLIONS) of people suffer as well. You don’t have to go through this alone.

How Can I Prevent It?

So, you want to prevent SOS? Here’s a step by step guide to avoid and prevent this very real and contagious condition.

Start

Chances are you’re probably already good at this, but it’s important that you need to do this anyways. You can’t stop if you don’t start.

So freaking start already.

Keep Going

Victims who suffer from SOS often find themselves continually “starting” things – doing the easiest possible thing to constitute “starting.”

Unfortunately, too many sufferers of SOS get caught in the starting spiral which looks something like this:

Start –> Start Over –> Start Again –> Keep Starting

Don’t get caught in the starting spiral! Keep going and then you have to do something really, really important.

Decide

This is where most people screw up. They don’t mean to really, but often this mistake is made more through neglect than intentionally.

The mistake made is the lack of decision. They never decide what they’re going to do.

This frequently causes indecision, paralysis and uneasiness of the future, since you’ve left it up to chance.

The failure to make a decision is often followed by bouts of procrastination, followed by guilt of said procrastination, followed by even more procrastination.

To cut of the head of this ugly beast, simply watch this video and follow the instructions.

The #1 Productivity Hack In The World

[click to watch video]

Make a decision. Decide what you want to do, then decide to do whatever it takes to actually do it.

Commit
This follows the decision immediately so much so that it’s not always recognized as a separate fact.

The main factor here is action.

Do you follow your decision up with action or not?

You’ll find that as soon as you take action on a goal, you’re committed.

If you decide but never do anything about it, you might as well not have decided to do anything at all (because you’re not really doing anything at all), you’ll find shiny object syndrome will continue to ravage every aspect of your life.

Embrace The Suck

If you’ve miraculously made it this far, guess what?

Things are going to suck. Like really suck. Like make you want to go back to the starting days. You’ll long for the shiny happiness of shiny objects and the happiness it brings.

If people ever make it to this point, this is where they give up…

You know…because it’s hard…and hard things aren’t meant to be done. And you’ve got a really good story on why it’s hard – why it’s impossible.

OF COURSE ITS HARD

[click to watch video]

If it’s worth doing – it SHOULD be hard. IT’S MANDATORY.

If you quit here, you’ll never really be cured of SOS and you’re doomed to it’s lifelong sentence. However, if you decide to embrace the suck, you’ve got a chance to beat this terrible, terrible disease.

Keep Going

Yup, this again. it’s that important.

Once things suck, it’s not enough to embrace the suck and lean into the pain.

YOU HAVE TO KEEP MOVING FORWARD.

Make forward progress – no matter how slow. As David Goggins likes to say: Find a door, go through it and keep going.

Push through it all, and keep going.

FINISH

This is crucial.

FINISH. Work to an end point. Don’t leave something half-way done. FINISH IT OUT.

Now, this doesn’t mean everything is going to be a smashing success, but it does mean you’ll have a finalized product.

• If you’re building a product, get an MVP out the door. Don’t settle for a bunch of a code and a few unfinished web pages. FINISH THE THING.
• If you’re doing a fitness program, finish the 4/6/8/12 weeks it’s prescribed for. Don’t quit half-way through. If you skip a day, or screw up the diet once, don’t let that derail you. FINISH.
• If you’re running a race, get across the finish line. If you just tap out at the 3 mile marker on a half marathon, why even sign up? Run, walk or crawl if you have to, but cross that finish line.

Once you do, you’ll find that the shiny newness of a project doesn’t really compare with seeing it through to the end. Sure, it’s a quick and easy high, but the payoff of doing something for the long haul is not easily beaten. Once you do this, there’s only one thing left to do.

Repeat

Once you finish your project – really finish it – chances are you’ll repeat some version of this:

“That sucked…but it was totally worth it.”

You might even want to do it again. So go. Do it again. And again. And again. You’ll realize that it’s much more rewarding than the cheap thrills of “starting.”

The real key to beating SOS is continually repeating the process as it’s quite easy to relapse into speculating on small mirrors and other shiny reflective items.

Shiny Object Syndrome

So, you might have shiny object syndrome. It’s okay. It’s not a permanent condition and it’s not fatal, but you do have to treat it.

Remember:

1. Start
2. Keep Going
3. Decide
4. Commit
5. Embrace The Suck
6. Keep Going (Again)
7. FINISH!
8. Repeat

Do what you say you’re going to do. Finish what you start. Make it happen. Get after it.

—
I’m back in Chicago catching up from a busy couple weeks of travel & sxsw. As I’m catching up, we’re allowing for a little bit more time if you still want to submit your 2013 New Years transformation entry.
—
photo credit: Images by John ‘K’

The post Do You Suffer From Shiny Object Syndrome? appeared first on Impossible HQ.

Today I want to talk about those people that don’t get a lot of mentions here on the blog.

The unsung heroes.

The ones who are always right.

The ones that never get enough attention.

The realistic ones.

The quitters.

This ones for you.

And for all of you doers out there – maybe you can pick up a lesson or two from these 7 Habits of Highly Effective Quitters

7 Habits of Highly Effective Quitters

1. Don’t Even Start

The best quitters never even start. After all the best way to quit is to quit before you even start. That way you leave no question about things. If you don’t start anything, you’ll have so much more room for other activities!

Seriously, the more time you waste on doing something or pursuing something you want, the less time you have for important activities like quitting projects, complaining and generally talking about how lame it is that nothing ever works out.

2. Get Really Good At Explaining Your Excuses

Now, if you’re really unfortunate, you might have some friends who want you to make yourself better.

STOOOPID.

Work on your quick draw. Have at least 5 really great excuses ready for why you didn’t start.

• I’m tired.
• It’s hard.
• It’s complicated
• It’d easy
• You don’t understaaannnnnnnd (best one ever)

Remember, use the last one only in emergencies. Or every single time you’re questioned. Either way. Unstoppable. Win!

Another stellar option is any time someone does something they’re proud of quickly dismiss this with a flip “I could totally do that”, quickly followed up by a short list of totally legitimate reasons why it’s not worth your time because you’re better than them.

It simultaneously lets you be egotistical, diminish others accomplishments without making you actually have to do anything. 3 birds. 1 stone. Boom.

3. Believe Your Own Stories

It’s not enough to convince others about your excuses. You need to sell it to yourself.

COMMIT TO IT

You know how Christian Bale lost 60+ pounds to be in the Machinist? You need to do that. Become the person you need to be in order to sell yourself on your inability.

Forget all of your natural talents, abilities and potential if you actually applied yourself. Focus on the obstacles and convince yourself how hard you specifically have it.

Remember, the key to this is maintaining a vacuum. Here’s a few tips.

1. Believe the world revolves around you and your happiness. If you do, life will make more sense and you can become more easily outraged at the fact that traffic doesn’t stop when you need it to and that the billions of people for some strange reason aren’t acting with your specific intersts in mind. For some reason they’re not considering YOUR NEEDS while going about their 7 billion other lives. WTF?
2. Do your best to forget the fact that you have more opportunity and technology available to you than 90% of the world and pretty much all of human history.

Remember, your life is hard because

• you don’t know what terms to google to figure out just about anything you could want to learn.
• the gym is like, at least, ten minutes away from your house.
• people might look at you weird if you try something different
• flying around the world takes all of 12 hours. 
• candy bars are really tempting.

Life. Is. Rough.

Stay away from news about wars, poverty and other basic things like water or education that other people struggle with on a day to day basis . Those might tempt you to think that your definition of “hard” might be slightly relative.

Lies.

Remember, this is about all about you. Whatever you do, remember that it doesn’t matter how thin the pretense for your excuse is. If you believe it to your core – it doesn’t matter if others believe you or not. You’ve already won.

4. Make Sure To Tell Others

It’s not good enough for you to quit. There’s strength in numbers so make sure to spread it around. Surround yourself with other quitters.

Hopefully, these are people who are well practiced in the art of giving up before they ever started.

If you’ve got friends who are actually trying to do something, be sure to tell them them to give up as soon as possible. Encourage them to quit quit and remind them of how hard it is. Focus on why they can’t do it and why the idea is dumb and the other countless reasons why action is pointless. Offer unsolicited advice about why it’s impossible.

If you can make them discouraged, you’ve got a good chance.

The louder you are, the better. If you have a whiney voice – practice it in the mirror. It will let people know that your reasons are really serious and emotional. Bonus points if you throw in: “I used to think that too but then I became [smarter/faster/older/wiser/better] than to believe such things. Condescending sneers are encouraged.

5. Spend Lots of Time Consuming

Every once in a while you might feel like doing something yourself.

Screw that (see item #1).

Never create anything yourself. This is a gateway drug. If you do this, you might create more things, find that they’re useful and get addicted to making things and impressing your will upon the world.

Stop. 

Fill any and all free time with mindless activities. Ideally these include Netflix, Reality TV, Celebrity Gossip, Video Games, YouTube videos and Cat GIFs.

Whatever you can do to numb your mind – do it.

If you feel the need to satisfy doing something, here’s a quick fix.

1. Don’t do it (this is important).
2. Google “person doing X activity”
3. Find a website/youtube channel or other outlet of some person doing X activity.
4. Read & Watch everything they’ve ever written. Once you’ve gone through all their content, go through it again.
5. Breathe & Relax. You’ve successfully avoided the temptation to do something yourself. You’ll notice the dopamine start to fill your brain as you reassure yourself that, “I’m reading about people doing cool things – so I get partial credit for doing them myself.”

6. Never Try Anything New

Pick one language in one town and one thing and stick to it. Go on vacation one time a year – hopefully on a cruise so you can go to a lot of different coutnries but still experience all-you-can-eat-buffets, casinos and ‘MURICA! while never getting off the boat.

If you start to think about doing something new: immediately pre-disqualify yourself (use imaginary reasons if necessary). These new ideas are dangerous and if let them progress too far, they may lead to action. Don’t let this happen (again, see rule #1).

7. Be Really Defensive

No one has the right to challenge you. No one.

They don’t know what you’ve been through and they’re not you – so how dare they try and challenge you to change something and do it better?

It doesn’t matter if they have a good point, a different point of view or other experiences that might be beneficial to you in some way/shape/form and it especially doesn’t matter if they care about your or not.

Don’t try to listen. Instead defend your status quo to the death. It can’t get here fast enough!

Be as easily offended as possible. That way everyone will know you’re right by how outraged you get. Never even consider thinking about another point of view. That will make other people think that you think you’re wrong – which you never could be. No one can understand your unique position in life, but through sheer cunning and ingenuity, you understand everything perfectly and can dissect world problems with surgeon-like precision.

Remember: your rightness is directly correlated with how angry you can get.

If possible, avoid any actual discussion as much as possible. Better yet, if you’ve done your homework on step #4, you should be surrounded only by people who only approve of your current lack of activities – that way you never have to question yourself.

If you do this right, you’ll never even even have to interact with any of these “offensive” people, but you’ll always feel like you’re being actively persecuted by them (so you get the best of both worlds!).

Above All

Above all, remember that anytime you come to a crossroads, just quit. It’s the easiest thing in the world – and after all – life is about making things easy. I mean seriously, if it’s hard, that must mean it’s probably not worth doing.

And remember: the easy choice is always the right choice. Always.

—

Or…you could suck it up, decide that what you want is worthwhile, realize your excuses suck and that it’s not all about you, decide to do the hard stuff anyways, put your head down, persevere and go for it….but that sounds way too hard.

—

Reminder: If you want to submit your New Years transformation entry, you can do so here.

The post 7 Habits of Highly Effective Quitters appeared first on Impossible HQ.

Almost exactly two months ago we launched the New Years Contest To End All New Years Contests.

If you don’t quite remember it, the gist is that EVERYONE wants to use the New Year to start getting in better shape. I wanted to help people actually DO that. So I decided to bribe you.

More and more I’m realizing that my real goal is to remove any and all excuses you have from working out and/or doing the things you really want to do be doing. If that requires bribery, than so be it. So I bit the bullet, and launched a contest featuring a slew of ridiculous prizes.

And…the response has been incredible. Hundreds of people began Impossible Abs and thousands (yes, thousands with a T), picked up the No Excuses Workout. Not only that, but halfway through the course, I sent out an email just checking on people and surprisingly people were sticking with it (unfortunately many fitness programs have an incredible fall-off rate of people picking up and stopping as soon as it gets hard. Case in point: is your gym empty yet? Surprisingly, we’ve seen an incredible amount of people sticking with the program – which is about the best thing a program creator can hear .)

But, now the 8 week challenge is over. It’s time to share your story (if you stuck it all out).

Prizes Up For Grabs

First Place

• 16GB iPad Mini.
• Your Choice of Vibram Five Fingers Shoes
• $150 Giftcard To Grassfed Wellness meats.
• Race entry of your choice to one of the following (Spartan Race, Warrior Dash,Tough Mudder, GORUCK)
• The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson
• Pigskin Paleo by Marla Sarris

Second Place

• Your Choice of Vibram Five Fingers Shoes
• $50 giftcard to Grassfed Wellness meats.
• Race entry of your choice to one of the following (Spartan Race, Warrior Dash, Tough Mudder, GORUCK)
• The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson
• Pigskin Paleo by Marla Sarris

Third Place

• Race entry  of your choice to one of the following (Spartan Race, Warrior Dash, Tough Mudder, GORUCK)
• Primal Fuel from Primal Nutrition
• The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson
• Pigskin Paleo by Marla Sarris

How To Get In On It

Submit Your Story

First up, submit your story here

http://impossiblehq.com/story

We’ll be considering entries for the next 7 days – until March 10th, 2013 at Midnight EST). After that, you can still submit your story, but it won’t be eligible for these prizes (although I’d still love to hear them). Please note: for the sake of our sanity & keeping track of everything, we’re only considering entries that are submitted through the above link.

Tips on Submitting Your Entry

I’m expecting a flood of submissions. I’m going to read every single one, but if you want, here’s how you can stand out from the crowd.

Your Physical Changes

How did you change physically? Did the program actually work? Remember, details are good and photos are great. If you have numbers as far as weights/measurements, etc – even better. Also, if you’ve noticed energy level changes or other physical-related changes or improvements, this is where you let me know.

Beyond The Physical

One of the reasons I focus on physical challenges is because I believe they have the greatest ability to help shape, impact and change people in a real, undeniably, visceral way. If the 8 week challenge has been challenging you beyond just the fitness component, be sure to let me know.

What’s Next?

8 weeks is a good start, but the contest isn’t the end – it’s just the beginning. What’s next for you and your story? What are you going to be relentlessly pursuing from here forward? How has Impossible Abs helped you forward in that respect?

The Ripple Effect

Who’s going to be different because you’re different? How are you going to pass it along?

Details & honesty are more important than creativity or clever phrases. Results of course, speak the loudest of all.

Thank You

Again, to everyone who participated in the contest – I want to say thanks – not only for taking me up on this challenge – but for putting action to the words that people so easily toss around.

Remember, you have the next 7 days to submit your story here.

Share Your Story Here

BOOM.

The post How To Submit Your 2013 New Years Contest Entry appeared first on Impossible HQ.