You Should be the Hardest Worker in the Room

Why you should be the hardest worker in the room

Listen, no one is going to do the work for you. Every day is a new day and trust me, it doesn’t always feel like it’s getting easier. In fact, some days it can feel like you’ve taken 3,000 steps backward and it’s harder than it’s ever been. Feeling that? Why put in so much work then?

You put in the work because it DOES get easier. You put in the work because the bad days are just that… bad days. Even when you are feeling like you haven’t made any progress whether it’s in the gym, in school, or at your work, you’ve made the progress.

I like to talk about the power of compound interest. Compound interest is a great financial tool, but you’d be surprised how much you can leverage it in your daily habits and life as well. All it takes is a little more effort today than it did yesterday. If it’s harder than it was yesterday to do half the work, so what? If it feels hard, then you’re doing something right, just keep at it.

My promise to you is that if you keep up the hard work, even when it feels like it’s too much, you’re going to cross over that hump and you’re going to enter into a world of infinite possibility.

How to Leverage Compound Interest in Life

Ok, so how do you leverage compound interest in life? The math on this is easy.

If you are working an 8 hour day, work 1 more length longer. Maybe you work 15 minutes more today than you did yesterday. The next week, work 30 minutes longer. I guarantee you that extra work doesn’t feel as hard as it did when you first tried it.

Just tell yourself… one more.

How about at the gym? If you’re doing 20 reps, I want you to do just one more! Go for 21. Does it burn? Does it feel like too much? Great! It’s not too much, it’s just one more!

Being the hardest worker in the room means you have to be willing to cross the barrier of what you thought was possible. Remember, it’s not what you were born with, it’s all about what you’re mindset is and how hard you’re willing to work for it.

I’m going to give you my secret to staying motivated. Watch this video. In fact, save this video and play it every day. Maybe you move on to other motivational videos after that, but I can tell you that if you put the time in to grow your mind and change your mindset, you will change your life.

Ben Lionel Scott on YouTube

Affirmations to Work Harder

Looking for a way to challenge yourself to work harder? Try these affirmations to work harder and see where they take you…

I AM the hardest worker in the room.
I AM embracing pain.
I AM unafraid to grind everyday.
I AM doing one more of everything I do.
I AM pushing past any limits.
I AM enjoying the process.

Stay motivated and stay strong. Remember, not every day is going to feel like the best day. Those are the days that you will progress the most.

Join the 5 AM Club – How to Make Waking Up Earlier Easier

Hey everyone – I’m recruiting! Really… it’s for this cool new club that gets the day started before the sun even thinks about rising. We do fun things like workout in a quiet gym, grab coffee in an empty coffee shop, get emails sorted before anyone has a chance to fill up the inbox, and most importantly, we spend time with ourselves.

Waking up earlier doesn’t just literally add hours to your day to get things done, but it also is better for your health. As an early morning workout enthusiast, I find that my body actually burns more calories throughout the day. I’m more energized, more alert, and I’m not as frantic trying to pack in all the important tasks while juggling work.

So, this is my recruiting pitch. If you’re not open to it now, I hope you’ll take some time to consider. Maybe even just start small – it’s amazing what 15 minutes can do!

Tips for Waking Up Earlier

So, you think it’s too hard? Well, maybe you haven’t found the right method to help you get started. I’m sure you’ve heard people say, just wake up 5 minutes earlier every day. Eventually, your body will naturally begin waking up earlier. While yes, it can be that simple, we all have those days where it just isn’t enough. You have to dig deeper, have a better strategy and be ready to fight the mental fog that will inevitably try to convince you to stay in bed.

Find your why.
Develop a routine.
Create a mantra or adopt a strategy.
Stick with it for two weeks.

Your Reason for Waking Up Earlier

I’m a big a fan of finding your why. Whether it’s a purpose for working out or purpose for getting more time back in your day, the reason for waking up earlier is the most critical to finding success. So, what’s your why?

Figure out the why that motivates you to move. Something has to rock you out of bed every morning, even on the days when it’s too difficult to get up. My why is made up of a few things that leads to a talk track in the mornings. See, you are your worst enemy every morning. Either you wake up with a positive mentality or you fall prey to a mindset that will slow you down.

When I wake up, the first thing I think about is what happens if I don’t. The implication of not getting out of bed when my alarm goes off at 4:15 is that if I stay too long I may miss a workout for the day, I may not get in those good feelings I get when I’m done with the gym, but most importantly, I may not get time to do something I love. I may not be able to go for a run or sit down and write a blog. Some days, I have a lot of work to do and my career, plus my side hustles like this blog and another business I’m helping to build may not get my attention because I have other priorities.

I’ve found my flaw – I’m inherently a person who hates letting other people down. And even worse, I hate letting myself down. So, I MUST wake up. I MUST get started early. Find yours.

An Early Morning Routine and Your Strategy

In addition to finding your why, make a routine and have a strategy. One of my favorite quotes says, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” My way of looking at life is all about strategy. When you don’t have a way to tackle a challenge or a method to follow, you are likely going to fail. If you need a strategy for getting out of bed try following this sequence:

Alarm Goes Off
Talk Track: Tell yourself your Why.
Strategy: Avoid negative thoughts by counting backward from 5.
Movement: Stand up and get out of bed.
Talk Track: Tell yourelf your Why.

From there, you are well on your way to the rest of your day. Remember, what you tell yourself and the words you use are critical. If you let a negative thought creep in, then you’ll be a victim to your own mind. You must battle it and having a strategy is the only way you’re going to win.

Forming an Early Morning Habit

When you’ve developed your strategy, you’ve honed in on your why, and you’ve identified all the ways you’re going to make yourself successful at waking up earlier, the next step is creating a habit. The only way you’re going to make this last is if you do the work to stick with it for two weeks.

These are going to be the hardest two weeks, but it’s so important to not give up. Two weeks or 21 days is all it takes to form a new habit. Then, it gets easier. In fact, once you stick it out, you should be able to make your routine stick through even the toughest, darkest, coldest days. Just remember to follow your strategy.

What are you waiting for? Write down your strategy today when you have a few minutes, then get started tomorrow. There’s no time like now!

75 Hard Challenge – Day 35

I’m about halfway through the 75 Hard Challenge, so I thought I’d share my progress and thoughts on the program so far. For those of you who haven’t heard about Andy Frisella’s 75 day plan for getting strong. I wrote a bit about the intensity of the program and an overview in a blog post a few days ago. If you’re interested in learning what it’s all about, check that one out first.

So, now to the progress. 35 days into this and I have a lot of adjectives to describe how I feel. Here’s a general list:

Amazing
Proud
Influential
Big
Improved
Achy
Fit
Better

As I mentioned in my original post, it’s definitely not easy and there are a lot of aches and pains that accompany this program. But, those aches and pains are indicators of growth and that’s exactly the goal when you start 75 Hard. I’ll get down into the detail of those adjectives I’ve described above in my progress update below, but one question I have for you is – if you could consistently do something for 75 days knowing that at the end of it there’s a 100% guarantee of even a slight improvement in your mental and physical health, would you do it? I’ll let you think about that for a few minutes.

Physical Progress on 75 Hard

According to a lot of articles out there, working out twice a day is not always the best for your body. And I agree! You have to listen to what’s going on with your muscles and you need time to recover. It’s proven that during recovery is actually when your body is doing the most growing. But, don’t for one moment think that it means you can’t be active more than once a day.

Sometimes low-impact, easy activity is better than nothing. Also, with the right alternation of muscle groups, you can workout pretty much every day twice without working out the same muscle group too soon.

Physically, I think I may be in the best shape I’ve been since high school. I am more of an athlete than I ever was and I’m leaning into that belief. Part of this program is that it reprograms you to think differently about what you’re doing to and for your body. Eating has become a science. Working out has become a career.

When I say I feel amazing – I mean I feel clear of mind, focused, energized, more capable and stronger than ever. When I say I feel proud – I feel like I am confident and able to showcase the hard work I’ve put into my body. Sure, I’m achy, this is super tough. I have to refuel and think about vitamins and foods that are going to help me replenish and rebuild. These are all ways that in just 35 days I’ve experienced complete transformation. And I say transformation because honestly, I never had this will power before. I’m consciously noticing my body changing, my fat melting, my muscles becoming more visible, and my eating habits becoming more of unconscious decisions.

Mental Progress on 75 Hard

What’s even better about the impact that 75 hard has on our bodies is that it truly impacts our brains. I crave the motivation and the hype I get from reading and improving my mentality. Each day I wake up ready to read my identity statements, watch inspirational videos and get motivated to improve.

I’m currently reading Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill. (Side note: one of the requirements of 75 Hard is to read at least 10 pages a day.) Hill expresses one way that people are capable of achieving more money and more success that is probably the number one thing I’ve struggled with my whole life – belief.

What’s amazing with 75 Hard is that I’ve really changed my mentality to accept what is mine. I have cast aside any negative self talk and replaced it all with positive self talk. This positive self talk has led me to finally figuring out how to believe – really believe. I’m not talking about the type of “wishful thinking” belief that most people go around claiming to have. I’m talking about “deep down, I’ve got a fire within me, this is an unshakable truth” kind of belief.

It’s been 35 days and I SWEAR, I’ve affirmed and manifested a completely new life. I undoubtedly look back at my life just last month and think to myself how drastically different it is compared to this moment. I do plan to go deeper into this topic in the coming weeks, but I will leave it at this.

When I say I feel influential – I mean I feel like I have the power to change the world. When I say I feel big – I mean I feel like I am the greatest, no one can knock me down. When I say I feel better – I mean I feel like I’ve reached a wonderful place in my life where I am improving every day.

The progress I’m making on 75 Hard is just that. It’s progress. Isn’t that what we’re all after? Wouldn’t just some progress every day make you feel good about your life?

Change Your Perspective: Ask Not What Should I Do, But What Shouldn’t I Do

The best question you can ask yourself today is “what remarkably stupid things am I doing today to ruin my life?” Is that dramatic enough for you? Ruin is BIG word, but really we don’t fully understand the impact of our decisions until they’ve slapped us in the face. As I reflect on this question, it’s actually really simple for me to see that a simple change in my perspective can completely change myself.

This whole internal conversation was spurned by a consideration I had about what the difference is between perception and perspective. Perception is your interpretation of a situation. Whereas perspective is your view on a situation. Perspective is guided by your beliefs and attitudes and isn’t what you take away but rather what you bring to the table.

Consider what it takes to get motivated to accomplish your goals. Let’s use fitness as an example. You see that super fit, healthy image of a person that makes you feel a lot of different emotions. Perhaps, you see that image or person and think to yourself how badly you wish you could look that way. Maybe it evokes want, or guilt, or shame. Maybe it inspires you to go for a run or hit the gym. But, rarely are we thinking about that positive image when we’re in a compromising situation that we know will keep us from hitting our goals.

Instead, during those moments when we’re tempted by a donut or a big, unhealthy pizza that we know will just sabotage our diet, our will power crumbles. I don’t about you, but I don’t just carry magical motivation cues everywhere I go. Finding motivation in a time of what feels like crisis isn’t really my go-to. But, what if we were motivated by what we don’t want and our perspective is just skewed.

What if we saw these unhealthy habits and our view on it wasn’t that it was a delicious meal guaranteed to deliver a hit of endorphins and make my tastebuds explode with flavors? What if we thought instead that the pizza or donut is going to RUIN MY LIFE. How? Well, first it will clog my arteries or inject me huge increase in glucose levels. Then, I may get diabetes or start to gain fat around my belly that eventually causes a heart attack. That could lead to me in the hospital or maybe even premature death.

Ok, this is a very extreme example that doesn’t happen that fast usually, but let us for a moment think about how our brains are wired to think about the foods we eat in those moments. Shifting your perspective and asking yourself simply how you’re contributing to negativity or life-ruining consequences could save you from the rollercoaster of pleasure-seeking decisions that actually in the end do not provide you with any true value.

Sticking with the fitness example, now imagine looking at that desirable image of what you wish you looked like and thinking to yourself that it’s not too far off from reality. Your perspective shifts and now you’re not thinking about all the hard things you have to do to achieve that – lift weights, workout, eat healthy, but rather you are looking through a new lens of what you shouldn’t do. Suddenly, you’re making better decisions by recognizing that donuts are actually not all that good, pizza is kind of greasy and makes you feel bloated, sitting down all day makes you feel more tired, drinking a soda gets you all jittery and then makes you crash.

You simply asked yourself – what remarkably stupid things am I doing today that could ruin my life? Suddenly those things seem silly and unimportant. The best takeaway I had from reading that question to myself is that sometimes it’s just too hard to resist temptations thinking about the ways that I could make better decisions. But, when I look at it in terms of what stupid decisions I’m making and their consequences, it can be very eye opening and inspiring.

If you’re interested in exploring more on “changing your perspective”, check out this powerful other example.

I hope this helps you too! Share your thoughts in the comments or drop me a DM on Instagram @IntentlyAmy.

75 HARD: 75 Days of Mental and Physical Growth

When I first learned about 75 Hard – a super 75 day challenge created by Andy Frisella – I didn’t actually stop to look up how it was supposed to work. I simply learned about the rules from a friend, made up some of my own rules, and dove right in. It wasn’t because I wasn’t interested in the real rules, rather I was so excited I didn’t even realize that it was a legitimate program that people are doing all over the world.

So, about 14 days into my new life, feeling empowered, kind of achy, and mentally fresh, I looked up the “the 75 hard challenge” and the first link I saw was Frisella’s text heavy explanation. It felt a little dicey at first, with big disclaimers and a sort of raw web page that didn’t feel legitimate. But, then I realized, this program is so much different than I thought. The words that stuck out to me at the very top of his website say:

“THIS IS NOT A FITNESS PROGRAM
75 HARD IS A TRANSFORMATIVE MENTAL TOUGHNESS PROGRAM”
Source: https://andyfrisella.com/pages/75hard-info

Well if that doesn’t pique your interest… So, I dove deeper and what this program claims to do is change your life completely. And, who wouldn’t want that? Things from being better friends and family members, to getting raises at work, and becoming more confident, are the outcomes Frisella says are possible when you take part in the 75 Hard program.

Opinions on 75 Hard

Then something interesting happened. I continued my research, scrolling down the search results page only to find one negative article after another. Now, I’m 23 days into this program and yes, it’s hard. I’m tired. My body is sore all over and I can’t get enough sleep right now. But, I feel amazing! I am balancing everything in my life to a point where I’m able to do more, I have more self-confidence than ever, and I actually wake up and crave my daily routine of positive affirmations and motivational “priming”. I’ll get to my routines in another blog.

So, why are all these big media sites bashing the 75 hard challenge? I’ve concluded it’s because people don’t understand what it takes to transform yourself. One of the caveats of the program is to select a diet program and stick with it for the 75 days. Now, when people are desperate to make changes, they sometimes rush to do the most drastic thing they can. Well, that’s a surefire way to get yourself into a mess fast. Everyone is well aware that yo-yo dieting is a real thing and that intense changes to your diet or fitness routines are not sustainable. They can lead to health problems and opposite intended effects on your body like fat and weight gain.

Hence, the negativity surrounding 75 Hard. Since you get to choose your own diet, you can be make this terrible decision and it’s easy if you don’t do your research first! If you’re choosing a drastic diet plan and a drastic fitness plan, then yes you may be making this 75 days more dangerous than it needs to be. However, that’s not the point of a 75 day challenge. So, there are some different ways to think about it and make this a more positive, safe program. (Why don’t writers ever speak to the positive things?!)

Forming Life-Long Habits

75 days is a long time! That’s over two months of consistently doing the same activities day in and day out to expand your mind and grow your mental fortitude. They say it takes just 21 days to create a new habit… well that’s actually a bit of a myth. There are several articles now backed by scientific studies that prove it can take about 66 days or 2 months. So, during this 75 days, you’re creating completely new habits for yourself. Imagine, just 75 days and even if you just wanted to make one positive change – you can do it. That’s so empowering to think about!

The most important thing someone could do when preparing for the challenge is decide on the most sustainable habits to create life-changing results and not contribute to dangerous behaviors. I mean let’s be honest, if you do something consistently for 75 days, there is no doubt you’re going to see some change! But, you also must be able to stick with it.

So, my positive spin on the 75 Hard challenge isn’t to warn people of the potential dangers and pitfalls. I’d rather encourage people to choose something that’s simple and accomplishable in 75 days. Remember, it’s every single day for over 2 months. You have to mentally commit to that change and when you do, it can be so powerful. It doesn’t have to be a crash diet or impossible calorie restriction because 75 days is enough time for any small diet changes to show big results.

Plus, you’ll get so addicted to the feeling of just being stronger, smarter, clearer in thought, that you’ll want to do more than 75 days anyway. Think about this for the long haul…

I’m interested in your opinions! Leave a comment or let’s chat on Instagram @IntentlyAmy!