Earlier this week, I listed 11 fitness skills that can help you grow your business.
You acquire these skills training in the gym, but they’ll help you when you put your CEO hat on—if you know how they transfer.
You can see the full list here, but I want to dig into one skill in detail today: resilience.
Resilience—and Willful Ignorance
In the gym, you build resilience in every workout.
Sometimes, you get very stern lessons, like when you get buried under a PR squat attempt and have to escape a heavy bar. Other times, the lessons are smaller: You learn to get off the floor to complete the burpee even though your lungs are burning.
I love the iron will that’s forged through stuff like this. Every time you push through discomfort and difficulty, you become more prepared for it in the future—and in other settings.
But let’s not confuse resilience with stubborn pigheadedness.
It’s one thing to miss a snatch and come back to that same weight a few weeks later with a better plan. That’s resilience infused with intelligence.
It’s another thing to miss, then keep missing, then miss some more until your hands are bloody and your back is injured. That’s resilience with a self-destructive flavor. Yes, you’re refusing to give up. But you’re also wasting a lot of time and doing a lot of damage to yourself.
You can find both kinds of resilience in the business world.
Intelligent Resilience
As a gym CEO, I’ve “missed a lot of lifts.” In my early days, I just worked harder and longer. I kept pulling and pulling. I thought that would get the bar off the ground, but it didn’t work.
One day, after 13 or 14 hours of back-to-back PT sessions, I was forced to admit that I couldn’t work any harder, and I wasn’t making any progress in the business. I was broke and depressed.
So I swallowed my pride and asked a mentor for help.
My first mentor recognized my resilience and willpower but helped me start using it on the right projects at the right time.
I didn’t need to scrub the toilets at 4 a.m. to show my toughness. I needed to hire someone to do that so I could put all my effort into systemizing and marketing my gym.
As I started addressing “the right stuff,” I still screwed up and met stiff challenges. And that’s where my resilience came into play. I worked harder and smarter, and my results improved exponentially. I wasted less time, I made more money, I spent more hours with my family and I was happier.
Had I stubbornly decided to beat my head against the wall, I would have broken before achieving any breakthroughs.
When I asked for help, my mentor helped me use one of my greatest qualities—resilience—to move faster than I ever imagined possible.
I want the same thing for you.
I already know you’re tough. I know you’ll get up when you’re knocked down, and I know you’ll show up at 4 a.m. to grind. I know you’ll pull on the bar until it moves or come back to pull again tomorrow.
But if you want to amplify that determination by skipping a lot of trial and error and misery, let’s talk about working together.
Just as you tell clients exactly where to put their feet before a deadlift, I’ll tell you exactly what to do to get the business results you want.
I can’t do the work for you, but I don’t have to. You’re already great at doing work.
Let’s do the right work together.
To talk about that, book a call here.
