True Strength: The Difference Between Success And Failure

Over the past weekend, I attended my first ever Perform Better Summit in Orlando, Florida. If you don’t know anything about Perform Better, they’re a fitness equipment company that hosts seminars on the side. They heavily emphasize education for health and fitness professionals.

Since I had never been to one of their events before, I didn’t know what to expect. The speaker line up looked great on paper, so I figured it wouldn’t disappoint. And truth be told, it surpassed all my expectations!

A couple of the big ideas at the summit were on your mindset and the way you live your life. Although this was geared more towards fitness professionals, I think a lot of the information presented could apply to anyone.

With that in mind, I wanted to give you a few of the biggest gems I took away from the presenters. I believe if you implement these ideas it can mean the difference between success and failure.

1. Focus on success

On Friday, I went to watch Alwyn Cosgrove speak. Alwyn owns one of the most successful gyms per square foot out in California called Results Fitness. He is a very entertaining speaker and you can tell he truly loves what he does.

In his talk entitled “10 things I wish I knew”, he covered 10 big points he wish he’d known when starting out in the fitness industry. This idea of focus on success was one that really hit home for me.

He shared this story of two shoe salesmen. They’re both dropped on an island out in the middle of the ocean where the inhabitants don’t wear shoes.

The first salesman calls his boss and tells him that he won’t be able to sell any shoes because the people living on the island don’t wear shoes. The other salesman calls his boss and tells him to send him all the inventory he has because no one is wearing shoes.

Theses two salesmen saw the exact same thing, but they drew different conclusions. The second one saw it as an opportunity. He was focused on success.

How you can apply this: In life, we are constantly going to have goals and aspirations we want to achieve. Whether we achieve it or not will come down to how we view our situation. Will we focus on success and not let anything get in our way or will we view things negatively? This simple switch in mindset can be the difference you need to accomplish any goal.

2. Goodwill never runs out

On Saturday morning, I started the day off by viewing Eric Cressey’s talk entitled “10 years, 10 lessons”. Eric owns one of the premiere baseball training facilities in the world, Cressey Sports Performance. He has been speaking at Perform Better events for 10 years now, which explains the title of his presentation.

Though his talk was geared toward trainers and business owners, his point of goodwill never runs out really caught my eye. He talked about how one of the ways he built his business was going above and beyond for his athletes.

He owns a house right across the street from his facility. A lot of his athletes travel from all over the country to train with him. One of the things he does is provides housing to these players. He also takes them out to dinner, and attends many of their games. And he consistently gets new clients month after month because players talk about how much they love working with him.

How you can apply this: It’s so easy to be negative all the time, to look at the glass as half empty. But many times we don’t understand that our actions can affect another person. Make it a point to do something nice for someone each week. You’ll be amazed at how much it can improve your outlook on life and your attitude.

3. Create rules for your life

In the final presentation on Saturday, I was fortunate enough to listen to Todd Durkin speak. Todd Durkin trains several NFL players like Drew Brees and he was one of the coaches featured on the hit TV show Strong this year.

Todd is an excellent motivator and a genuinely nice person. His talk was entitled “Strong: What it takes to win in business and in life”. One great piece of advice I picked up was to create rules for your life. I had never even thought about this concept before, but it makes sense.

He mentioned how he set up 13 rules for his life and they govern the way he lives. Some of these rules include:

• Go to bed before 11pm every night
• Workout 45 min every morning
• Create positive interactions and communication
• Motivate and inspire
• Live a life guided by purpose and passion
• Understand that you cannot and will not please everyone

These are just a select few, but he spoke on how he lives these rules out each and every day. They help him stay accountable to himself, impact the people he’s working with, and love his family better. They allow him to make a difference in this world.

How you can apply this: Create a set of rules that you want to live by and follow those rules to accomplish any goal. For example, if you want to lose weight create a rule to get in a workout in the morning. And if your friends try to persuade you to go out and skip your workout, you have the rule set in place to keep you on track.

*****

This post is much different than what I usually write on. However, I benefited from the conference so much that I wanted to share a few of my big takeaways.

These three things can not only help you accomplish your goals but they can make you a better person. Remember, true strength isn’t about what you can do in the gym. It’s about how you live your life and impact the world. And these two things can be the difference between success and failure.