The most important habit for getting lean and strong isn't diet or exercise, it's integrity: brutal honesty about your current body, your real motivations, and where you're lying to yourself. Most people fail because they chase goals they think others expect, not what they actually want.
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Now the truth is, if you want to burn the belly fat, lose the love handles, and build essentially what I would call a bulletproof body that is both lean and strong in this coming year, there are going to be several habits that you need to adopt. Now you know this, I know this, none of that is new. None of these things are new to us. We know that we've got to eat better, we've got to move more, and things like that are generally going to be needed. They're habits that are going to be required in terms of the actions we need to take that are going to help us get to the goal. The catch is there's one particular habit that governs all of this and dictates how well you will stick to all those other habits and also how likely you are to be successful. Now, this one habit comes down to your ability to be integral. Now, when I say that, I mean your ability to live in integrity with not only what you say you want, but also where you currently are right now and how you're living, acting, thinking, feeling in relation to where you're at and also where you want to go. Without integrity— and now when I say integrity, essentially I mean honesty— you need to be honest with yourself about where you're at, what you think about it, how you feel about it, and then what you're truly going to do about it. The catch for most of us is we'll have this kind of rough idea, oh, you know, well, I'm overweight, I don't like it. And we'll kind of leave it as that. But we never really get clear with ourselves about how we truly feel about the fact that we're stuck in this fucking body that's overweight, that's tired, lethargic, makes us feel like shit, lowers our self-esteem and our confidence and our ability to show up for ourselves. But we just brush it off. We use excuses like, "Well, everyone else is fat, so what difference does it make if I'm fat too?" And we kind of hide behind ideas like this when it's not really what we want, but we allow ourselves to stay stuck in this mediocrity that we see within ourselves because we're worried about, oh, well, what if I fail? Or what if I'm successful? And then what would that mean for me? And so on. And we get stuck in these ideas and these uncertainties. So it becomes easy to not live in integrity with what we want, and instead we end up settling for what we currently have, even though it's not what we want, which obviously is crazy when you think about it. But unfortunately, there comes a point where it seems easier to settle for what we have, even though it's what we don't want, than it is to actually step up and start doing the things we know we should be doing in order to have the outcomes that we want. So the first thing, as I say, is learning how to live in integrity is number one. We have to stop fucking lying, lying to ourselves, lying to others about how we feel, how we're showing up, and what it is we truly want. Because we have ideas about, oh, you know, well, I want to look like this, or I want a body like that. But 9 times out of 10, for many of us, what I found with my clients and even myself in the past is the goals that we set for ourselves and the things that we say we want are not really our goals. They're the goals that we think others expect of us. So therefore we set them for ourselves with this idea of, oh, if I achieve this, other people will be happy with that outcome. And the truth is, it's not really what we want. It's what we think others expect of us. And what we think others think we should achieve, and therefore we find we can't ever follow through. And of course you can't, because it's not your fucking goal. It's someone else's. So what we need to do is, as I say, learn how to be integral with self. Get ruthlessly honest. We need to get clear with ourselves about exactly where we're at now. What's going on in your body? What's your current body weight? What's your current body fat percentage? How do you feel on a daily basis? Does your body ache? Are you in pain? Are you stiff? Can you move well? Can you spend time with your kids playing and so on? Can you do physical things that you used to be able to do 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and so on? We need to get honest about how far we've gone away from where we truly want to be, because only from this clear point of now can we truly project a vision of what we want to achieve. Until we've gotten clear on where we are right now, it's impossible to set a goal that's realistic. We can set ideas and hopes and dreams and wishes, but we can't actually set a vision that can become a reality without knowing exactly where we are now, because that vision means nothing if we don't know where we are because we don't know what steps we need to take first. Now, the first one, as I've just told you, you do now know, is to learn how to get integral with self. So my question for you today, guys, before I wrap this one up, is where in your life do you know that you're currently not being in integral with yourself? Where are you not living in integrity? Where are you not showing up as you know you should? And where essentially are you fucking lying? Where are you lying about what you want, how you feel about not having what you want, and then the fact that you tell yourself you're going to do all these things and then don't follow through. So that's my question for you today, guys. Of course, if you guys have any questions for me, drop them in the comments below and I will get back to you guys as soon as I can. And if you want to learn more about what we do here, check us out at strongerthanlife.com. Where you'll find plenty of information about what we do, who we help, and how we could possibly help you. Thanks for watching, people, and I look forward to chatting with you in my next video.
