Michael Grogan is a Personal Trainer/Movement Coach in Melbourne CBD & South Yarra, Australia. He uses a combination of Gymnastic Strength, Advanced Mobility and Barbell Strength & Power exercises to achieve increased levels of performance and body composition with his clients. For more information follow him on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaelgrogan_movement/ facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MichaelGroganMovement and for enquiries contact [email protected]
I was there, I was all over it, I was ‘the man’ at it, working that Monday-Friday grind and then the weekend was mine. Buy general access tickets to the latest club Dj’s and get absolutely paralytic on Friday and Saturday night in order to forget the dismal routine of the 9-5 world…that was until Sunday night reared it’s ugly head and remind me of how empty and unsatisfying my Monday to Friday life was. But hey it was only 80% of my week (and life) that I hated.
I was stuck in a routine of what I would now define as the Distraction Cycle. This cycle has 2 elements to it – 80% of it was a monotonous 9-5 job with no excitement and extreme routine in all aspects of my daily tasks. The other 20% was spent chasing the easily obtainable goals of drinking enough alcohol to forget the Monday to Friday (for a whopping 48 hours) and hitting expensive nightclubs where my reputation for partying superseded my identity as a 9-5 clock-puncher.
There are other ways to keep yourself distracted while you live an excruciatingly unfulfilled existence for 80% of your week, including purchasing expensive holidays to give you a 2 week hiatus from your monotony, over-eating with fast food and sugary treats every night of the week, spending your free time watching whatever is in the TV and of course consuming drugs and alcohol to temporarily disconnect from your existence. These hobbies, or cycles of distraction, are all what I would call easily obtainable goals to fleeting happiness.
What this article is aiming to do is to give you a 5-Step guide to overcoming your habit for the easily obtainable and put you on a pathway to a higher purpose and overall fulfilment through your daily rituals.
1. Challenge Yourself
Chase what Challenges you, not what is comfortable
The real secret to happiness and fulfilment is growth. If you’re standing still you’re going to be heading backwards in all areas of your life.
So how do we ensure growth? Challenge yourself! Physically, mentally and spiritually!
Every year should be a reassessment and calculation of what new skills you can add to your human machine. Instead of nights in front of the telly, have nights learning a new language or expanding your mind with reading about a new hobby you want to pursue.
Physically you have the potential to be the fittest & strongest you have ever been every year! If you buy in to the misnomer that you are already ‘too old’ for this then think about different aspects of fitness you can still attain like flexibility or skill based activities like juggling. The body is highly adaptable at ANY AGE.
2. Set the Bar at the Correct Height
The greatest tragedy in human existence is not that we set our goals too high and miss them, it’s that we set the bar too low and hit our goals!
There are two common errors people tend to make while goal setting:
1. We set the goal way too high and set ourselves up for failure.
2. Our insecurity and lack of confidence in our ability lead us to set goals so easy to achieve that we hit them easily and without going through the growth and experience gained by achieving a worthy goal. (Easily obtainable goal)
What we need to do is set worthy goals that result in us constantly leaning over the edge of our capabilities. This way we are always striving for worthy & attainable goals while consistently compounding the skills and experience gained from our goal attainment.
3. Do What’s Hard
Do whats hard and your life will be easy
When it comes to making decisions in life, you will likely always come to a crossroads between 2 options:
1. The path of least resistance (the easy way)
2. The hard way (the correct way)
For example: we get home from a hard day at work and haven’t exercised for 7 days. The hard thing to do would be to haul yourself to the gym and make sure you are looking after yourself physically, but the easy thing to do is to slump into the comfort of the television until we fall asleep. There is only 1 option you will end up regretting out of these two.
If you do what is hard in life, like look after your body and eat well instead of endless nights watching TV, your life will likely be easy in the future, for instance a life less likely to suffer from weight problems and obesity.
Conversely if you always choose the path of least resistance your life will turn out quite difficult for you in the future.
4. Spend Time in Solitude
Isolation is the Gift
“A person seeking a higher sense of fulfilment should always be wary of those who constantly seek crowds, for they are nothing alone without the energy of others”
To seek higher fulfilment you must be capable of spending time alone and gaining energy from your innermost thoughts and desires. Time in solitude is where you really begin to figure out what you need to be doing in your life to get to where you want to get. This is the reason why meditation and isolation tanks are commonplace among highly successful people.
5. Assemble Your ‘Zero Tolerance for Bull$*it’ Squad
Be your own light
“You are the sum of the five people you spend the most time around”
This means that if you spend the vast majority of time around four losers, I’ll let you guess who the fifth one will be.
Hang around people who won’t put up with your excuses or your inclination to gravitate towards the path of least resistance. You need to get around people who help you with what you are trying to achieve.
Hand pick five people you can bring into your life who will elevate you to greater heights and swiftly eliminate those people who always seem to try and sabotage your progress.
This may sound harsh, BUT if someone in your life does not have your best interests at heart then you really need to think about why that person is in your life!
To Conclude:
So there we have it! Our Five Step Guide to breaking our addiction to chase the easily obtainable.
Not all things that are easily obtainable are bad. Things like TV and alcohol in moderation can provide us some valuable time to ‘switch off’ and recharge our batteries after periods of stress and hard work.
What this article is trying to say is that the easily obtainable should not make up the majority of your time, like it was doing for me in the past, because this will result in a cycle of distraction and ultimately unfulfilment in your everyday life.
For all those wanting advice on setting their own structure with their lifestyle balance please get in touch: [email protected]
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