We must give to get and receive to give. Energy expended during exercise can give back and generate more energy in return. The goal is to be consistent, persistent, determined, dedicated, and self-disciplined. Consuming healthy fuel and eliminating negative zapping energy are critical steps toward enhancing this give to get strategy.

“Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till tomorrow what you can do today” (Philip Dormer Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield). Procrastination and slothfulness contribute to our own expedited accountable demise. Hasten each moment toward growing healthier, wiser, smarter, wealthier, kinder, and better in all goodness that life has to offer. Let’s take care of ourselves being health gives meaning and purpose to everything else in life.

Whether we exercise to feel amazing, look incredible, lose weight, tone muscles, bulk up, build strength, generate a peak mental state, enhance endurance or agility, getting started is key. Focusing on the defined objective with a crystal clear vision is crucial toward success. Create the end result in your mind as a precursor to planning and doing. Contradictory to that aforementioned statement, just starting is crucial as well. Begin executing and let your mind catch up later.

As Tony Robbins advocates, “Turn your shoulds into musts and stop shoulding all over yourself.”⁸ Write down specific plans encompassing nutritional and caloric demands, aerobic initiation and culmination periods relative to anaerobic exercise sessions, durations, intensity; anaerobic exercises, strategies, sets, repetitions (reps), rest intervals between sets, and exercise groups worked during each session. Daily, doing calisthenics (using our own body weight), performing a few abdominal crunches, push-ups, walking briskly or jogging a block is all it takes to turn something we should do into action, which, in time, can produce a subconscious or automatic ritual.

“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times” (Bruce Lee). Purposeful activity and performing a minimum of five or ten reps each day is pivotal toward successful habit formation. That daily consistency and self-discipline truly will deliver amazing results forming the life most people only dream about.

Initially, more or less repetitions, heavier or lighter weights, varying sets and rest intervals, longer walks, jogs or bicycle rides may ensue depending upon where you are starting from. Building on and growing from your first action can help motivate you to achieve the fitness goals you desire because progress generates additional momentum that helps cultivate our lives. That first step forward is often the most challenging, therefore think less and do more.

Once a training regimen is underway, concentrate on positive thoughts backed with action, while striving to obtain more beneficial outcomes. Truly, practice writing aerobic activity durations and intensity, along with specific exercises, amounts of sets, reps, rest intervals, and weight lifted during every work out down on paper or using an app to observe and track progress. Being aware of improvement delivers additional motivation. Forward impetus produces growth that creates more self-confidence and inspiration, which cyclically repeats itself.