The 40 Percent Rule

This is an explanation of the 40 percent rule found on the internet. “The 40 Percent Rule is a mindset that Navy SEALs use to push through physical and mental pain when they think they have reached their limit. The idea is that when your mind tells you that you are done and can't go any further, you are only at about 40 percent of your actual capacity” I use this rule to motivate me to push myself further than I thought possible. When I started working out I was 254 lbs. I hadn’t done exercise in well over a year. I heard of this rule before starting to work out again. I used it to fuel me to go even further than I thought possible. I started off doing 15 minutes on the stationary bike. That seemed too easy to me, so I upped it to 30 minutes. That was a little bit more trying for me but I did it without reaching my limit. I pushed it to two 30 minute sessions and felt that I was cheating the rule by breaking it up. So Then I tried an hour at once. By the end of the first week I was riding 90 minutes and going 25 miles on the odometer! I have yet to reach the point of which my mind says give up. However my butt certainly complains. This has made me want to find out where my mind will say I’ve had enough. I want to go beyond that 40 percent! I need to see for myself if I have that 60 percent reserves in me to go on. I have a goal of riding my bike 100 miles. Not just my stationary bike but my real bike. Knowing this rule I know that I just have to reach 40 miles without my mind saying I’ve had enough. Then I can tap into those reserves and prove that I can do the 100 miles. I recommend you think of this rule anytime you are working out. Let it be a driving factor to pushing your limits. It will allow you to go the extra mile, or in my case the extra 60 miles. Set a goal for yourself in your workout routines and break it wide open!

Solitude

I’ve heard it said in a couple audiobooks that there is great benefit from sitting in solitude. What is sitting in solitude? It’s sitting with no distractions at all in silence with your own thoughts. No music, no kids, no phones, no taking notes, no reading, etc. The recommended time for this is 1 hour. Holy cow! You might say. A whole hour of doing nothing? Yes. Now we are not calling this meditation because it isn’t. It’s just letting your mind wander and think about things. Good things to think about are how you are going to achieve your goals. Maybe think about some of the tasks you would like to get done. Or just thinking about the future in general. Someone once said we live in the future. Or something like that. Why do this? There is something that many believe is our superconscious. This is the part of our consciousness that when tapped into can help you along your journey by giving you the answers you need without thinking about them. Let’s say that you are trying to reach your goals but you don’t know how. If you can tap into your superconscious it will give you the exact answer you need. Have you ever had a light bulb moment where an idea comes to your head unexpectedly and it’s exactly the idea you needed or didn’t know you needed? That’s your superconscious talking. One way of tapping into this superconscious is to sit there for an hour doing nothing. I thought this was a bunch of mumbo jumbo until I gave it a try. I told my family I didn’t want to be disturbed. I sat in a comfortable chair in my office. I put my phone in airplane mode. Then finally set a timer for 1 hour. I didn’t touch the phone or look at the clock the whole time. I just sat there with my thoughts. The results were amazing! I was able to come up with ideas to get me to my goals with plans that were perfect. I didn’t have to think about coming up with a plan, the ideas just came to me. After a while I was beginning to enjoy myself in solitude. Like I said, you don’t take notes. But the ideas were so good that I didn’t need to. I just knew what to do. Before I knew it, the alarm went off and I was refreshed and ready to implement my ideas. Another benefit I found is that I was able to fall asleep faster at night. I have always had a hard time going to sleep because of racing thoughts. The solitude seems to have cleared this up for me. It’s like I took care of all my racing thoughts before I go to bed so that my mind can quickly shut down and go to sleep. I will attempt to do it daily if I can. I put it on my task list every day and make it one of my top priorities. I find that doing it after work was the best time for me. It is kind of like a barrier from my work activities to my home activities. It allowed me to leave work behind and focus on other things. So make time in your schedule to practice solitude. Just try it a couple days and see if it helps you. It will especially be beneficial if you have goals written down that you want to accomplish. This is kind of like a funnel for your superconscious to focus on. So get to doing nothing!

My Father in Law’s Advice

As I go on my journey through life I am reminded often of my father in law’s advice on money. He always said, “You’ll never make a lot of money working for someone else.” I agree with this in most cases. For example there are many people who make a lot of money working for other people, but the good majority of people will never do so. This is when you have to tap into your skill set and figure out what you can do on your own. My father in law was an industrial plumber with less than average education. He early on went into business for himself and started doing large industrial jobs for places like steel mills. He made a huge success out of himself by daring to go off on his own and be his own boss. I have heard that a very small percentage of people realize that no matter what, they work for themselves. Whether they have a job or not they are in charge of their own lives and are the CEO of their own company. That company being themselves. When we approach life thinking in these terms it doesn’t really matter whether you are working for someone else or yourself. You have or can develop the skills necessary to branch out on your own. Dictate how much you make and how often you work. It will be a lot of work at first trying to get going on your own and you may fail many times. But the key is to learn from your failures and think forward to the next endeavor in your life. If you want to make the income you had always dreamed of, then you have to do it for yourself and not wait for someone (i.e. your boss) to do it for you. If you start your own business and work at something you love then the hard work will not seem that hard at all. It has been said repeatedly that if you do what you love then you’ll never work a day in your life. This post is not about teaching you how to be a success, it’s simply to give you the encouragement to be a success in what you want to do. So go to work for yourself and eventually you will start to make the money you have always wanted.

Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali said, “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, your hands can't hit what your eyes can't see.” This is an amazing quote not just for boxing but for life as well. Now in this case we are not taking this as a boxing analogy. I don’t want you to actually hit someone (i.e. sting like a bee) but I do want you to be adaptable and take advantage of change. Floating like a butterfly can be thought of as being prepared for change. A butterfly flutters and changes direction with the wind. Change is inevitable, it’s going to happen. Even though a butterfly seems to flutter with the wind it survives the changes with the wind and still gets to where it wants to go. You need to be able to adapt to change and get to where you want to go. Sting like a bee is striking while the iron is hot so to speak. When change comes your way, look for how you can take advantage of it and grow. All change is an opportunity for growth. If you sting like a bee you will be in charge of change and not have change in charge of you. Now for the meat of the quote! “Your hands can’t hit what your eyes can’t see.” How do you survive change? How can you get to your goals if things are constantly changing on you. The key to this is having a vision of who you are, where you will be, and what you will be doing in the future as your goal. Let me repeat the important word here, “vision”! If you don’t have a vision of yourself you’ll not be able to see what you are trying to hit. This is why we all must envision who, what, and where we want to be in our future. Let’s say 5 years from now. Can you picture a vision of yourself 5 years from now? I can guarantee you successful people can! The people who can’t will not be able to control change to their benefit, but change will be in control of them. So just like goals and values you need to write down a vision of what you are going to be in the future so you can hit it. Take the time to write out a few paragraphs of what your who, what, and where you want to be in the future. Writing it down is the key to crystalizing it in your mind. You need to weather the storms of change and always keep your eye on the flower that the butterfly wants to land on.

Daily Tasks (Mini Goals)

In my previous post I wrote about goal setting. I explained how you need to write your goals down in order to solidify and act on them. Today is similar except we are talking about task lists and the benefit of writing them down. A task list is just a list of things you want to accomplish for the day. You check them off as you go along and by the end of the day you will have accomplished all that you wanted to do. Sounds like another thing you don’t really need to do, but I tell you it works. It makes you feel good at the end of the day when you have finished all the items. You don’t feel like you wasted the day. It kept you on top of yourself all day so that you were not distracted. It’s a general all round good feeling to have done it. Now here is the secret, and it’s not my secret. You write your tasks for the day down the night before. This is so that you can go to bed not thinking of all the things you need to do the next day and try to keep them organized in your head when you should be sleeping. You also won’t wake up trying to organize your day in the morning opposed to doing more important things that should be done in the morning (that’s for another post). I’ve started writing down my tasks for the day and find that I didn’t write enough tasks! Because I wanted to get them checked off as quickly as possible I just went and got them all done. This gives me more time to focus on my longer term goals. Ever since I’ve started doing this I’ve felt great! I have less clutter in my mind, I don’t feel overwhelmed, I have a clearly defined day ahead of me. It has been said that the most successful people in life have a plan and follow through with it. They make these task lists every day. They put time in there to work on their goals and add them to the list. The overall theme here is to set goals and accomplish them. You should always be working on your long term goals. By managing your time with these task lists you are assuring yourself the time to fit in those goals.

Set Those Goals

I’ve been listening to a lot of audiobooks on mental toughness as well on the psyche of successful people. A very common theme throughout all of them is actually writing down your goals. It sounds trivial and useless but it really works. It has done wonders for my focus for things I want to do. Whether it be long term goals like years, medium term goals like months, or short term goals like a week or a day. Writing them down helps you solidify what you are going to do and gives you a way to plan on how you are going to act on them. For example, a coworker of mine writes down his tasks for the day every morning. He tries to get every task done on the list by the end of the day. He is basically setting goals for himself every day. It helps him remember what the important things are and not get sidetracked. I’ve started doing this and you wouldn’t believe the results I’m getting. Even if it is as simple as getting a load of laundry done. Let’s focus on long term goals. The big aspirations in your life. It’s easy to say I want to be debt free or lose 69 lbs, but until you write it out it doesn’t solidify. It doesn’t allow you to plan. Now I’ve heard that goals need to be S.M.A.R.T several times, even my boss told me to use it. It means Specifice, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. This is where your goals become a plan. To be specific you don’t just say I want to get healthy or lose weight, you say you WILL lose 69 lbs (side note, say will not want). That is something that is measurable. You can weigh yourself once a week or daily if you like and keep a chart of your progress. Achievable is being realistic. I could say I want to lose 100 lbs but that would bring me way under my ideal BMI and I’d have to continually starve myself to get there and maintain it. Then make it relevant to why you are doing it. For example, so that I can live longer. Finally time-bound. It shouldn’t be a goal that goes on and on. You need something that you can finish. It is reasonable to lose a pound a week so the time-bound could be 69 weeks. This is what the final goal looks like. “I will lose 69 lbs, at 1 pound a week, for 69 weeks so that I can live longer.” Now that’s a S.M.A.R.T goal. It basically tells me the plan within the goal! Now do you see why writing it out is so important. Because it’s a mouthful! Now that you have a goal or goals written out you need to do something else every day. This is not my idea. I heard it in an audiobook (sorry I don’t remember which). Now you get a notebook and write out your goals every day. You are tattooing them into your brain. It makes it so you don’t forget them. You won’t simply write them down once and never look at them again. If your goals are important to you then you write them down, every day. It only takes a few minutes, so what’s the harm? Finally, keep your goals to yourself. Yep! They are your secret. The reason is you could get goal fatigue. Your character is judged by what you do, not what you say you will do. Let it be a surprise to people when you hit your goal. Don’t forget to celebrate your goals as well!