The Courageous Life

the courageous life

TRANSFORM

YOUR FITNESS AND MINDSET FOREVER

jam acero 1

Ta b l e o f c o n t e n t s Introduction ............................................................ 3

1 2 3 4 5

REFRAME YOUR MINDSET ������������������������������������6 Identify Your Emotions ................................................................8 Reverse The Frame ..................................................................... 10

GET COMFORTABLE BEING UNCOMFORTABLE ...................................... 16 Find your Groove ......................................................................... 17 Spend More Time Under Tension ............................................. 21

MAKE YOUR GOAL MISSION STRATOSPHERIC .....................................................25 Commit To A Purpose ................................................................. 26 Motivation Is Overrated ............................................................ 30 Stratospheric Intentions, Stratospheric Results ������������������ 31

GO ALL IN ..................................................................... 35 Limit Your Options ...................................................................... 37 Fight For Something Bigger ...................................................... 41

FEEL THE FEAR AND DO IT ANYWAY ...........................................................45 Failure Is Not Permanent ........................................................... 46 Sacrifice is Necessary ................................................................. 49 Passion Is Stronger Than Fear ................................................... 51

About the author ...............................................56 Testimonials ............................................................57

Introduction

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ave you ever had a moment in your life you wished you could do over? A decision you look back on with regret, knowing that if you’d found just an extra measure of

inner strength you would have chosen what you knew in your heart was the right course of action. Courage is that inner strength, and it’s a quality you can never have too much of in your life. It gives you the mental fortitude and resilience to follow your dreams despite the presence of fear and in the face of pain and hardship; it empowers you with the personal discipline to take on the best and worst life throws at you with equal candour. How do you develop courage, and most importantly how can you utilize it to improve your fitness and health? This short handbook will introduce principles that will help you shatter your perceived limits and mental barriers, then equip you with strategies to not only help you reach your health and fitness goals, but more importantly enjoy the jour-

ney along the way.

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At some point in our life most of us come to the realization that in order to pursue our dreams and find the things that make us happy, we have to make change happen. Whether it’s career, relationships or personal health, you must implement the right changes to bridge the gap between where you want to be and where you are at the moment. But change is difficult, often it’s painful and sometimes it feels downright impossible. This is when we reach a crucial crossroads; we either accept the fact that positive change will require a commitment to making difficult decisions, taking extraordinary action and persevering through many setbacks – or give up that goal forever. Over the next 5 chapters I will challenge you NOT to give in, not to take the easy way out or resign yourself to remaining the same in body and mind. Instead I’ll arm you with the tools you need to stay firm and focused on your goal, to keep your determination intact even with the toughest obstacles in your path.

This is the essence of true courage: not the lack of fear, but taking that first step forward even when you feel it intensely.

Courage isn’t always something you either have or don’t have.

Oftentimes it awakens when you least expect it, because you have no other option. For me this time came at 11 years old, when my mother passed away after years of battling breast cancer. I still remember that morning clearly: the overwhelming sense of fear I felt knowing that my life would be changed forever. The utter and complete hopelessness I felt from losing her, like my heart had fallen into a black bottomless hole…standing there in that quiet room I literally felt like I was free-falling into an abyss with no end in sight. But a few weeks later, after going through all the grief and self-pity a normal child would feel, something different 4

happened to me. A new resolve began to grow that I never knew I was capable of. Even at that age it dawned on me that I had to be strong for both my younger brother and for myself, and that we had to go on living life as fully as we could. I didn’t know at the time that was what courage was; I certainly didn’t feel very brave.

But just through the simple act of deciding to move forward and not allowing ourselves to be trapped by our circumstances, we began to exercise courage in our daily actions and this greatly helped my struggling family find happiness and fulfillment again at a time when these things seemed so far away. If positive thinking, effective goal-setting and productive action is something you struggle with, I go through specific strategies you can use to refresh your mind-frame in chapters 1 and 3.

A guide on building courage would not be complete without also exploring the nature of fear, discomfort, and sacrifice – and the value they can add to your journey. You can use these elements to help you turn your dreams into achievements, and in chapters 2,4 and 5 you’ll find detailed action steps you can start implementing immediately to support your goals. Courage grows when you allow it to become part of your life. You’re about to learn through this book how to do just that.

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1

REFRAME YOUR MINDSET “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson -

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ave you met or know someone who seems to always be bursting with life? Everywhere they go they move with vitality and a spring in their step; when they’re

engaged in conversation with you their body language is animated and their face colored with inner strength. Nothing seems to get them down for long. You can’t help but feel the positive energy radiating from their presence.

Now I’m sure you know someone on the other end of the scale.

This person is not so much living life as enduring it – going through each day disgruntled with their present circumstances and projecting their frustration onto those around them. He or she can often be heard complaining about the things that make them unhappy yet rarely take initiative to do anything about it; they’re quick to blame someone or something else for their misfortune yet never take responsibility for their own actions. It seems nothing you can do or say makes them happy for long, and indeed it’s almost as if they habitually go through life this way.

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One person lives with positive energy, the other is ruled by negative energy. What makes these two people’s attitudes and consequently their life paths so different? It’s the way they choose to look at challenging situations; whether they see difficulties as problems to be solved in order to open up greater opportunities, or whether they frame themselves as helpless victims of bad luck.

This contrast in mind-frame has a huge impact on how you approach important areas of your life such as your fitness and health. It can spell the difference between constantly falling on and off the bandwagon of a healthy diet and exercise routine, or being motivated to actually commit to making them part of your daily lifestyle.

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Identify Your Emotions Reaching and staying in a positive frame of mind doesn’t come naturally to everyone. That’s where the concept of Reframing comes into play. Reframing means to take a negative viewpoint you have on a particular area of your life, and turn it on its head. To unravel each situation from the fog of instinctive judgment and see it from a completely new light. This will involve you really making an active effort to first step back from the problem and resist the natural tendency to let yourself be overwhelmed by strong emotions. Raw uncontrolled emotion has its place, but it rarely helps with clear decision-making, overcoming setbacks and achieving a positive mindset that works for you instead of against you. If you let yourself be controlled by only one set of dominant emotions or thought processes, those feelings will restrict you to a limited selection of decisions and actions.

So it won’t just apply to that particular situation; all your future problems and aspirations would be locked into that same filter, and therefore the same negative patterns will be repeated leading to the same unsatisfactory results.

Learning to rise above overpowering emotions when faced with challenges not only helps prevent negative thoughts from taking over, but also allows you to utilize a different perspective which could turn the ‘problem’ into a potential opportunity. Imagine your current way of dealing with situations as if you were looking at yourself in a mirror; Reframing your mindset would involve detaching yourself from your body and objectively observing your thoughts from a third-person perspective. You’re still looking at the same reflection (the ‘problem’), but now you’re learning to see the problem from other angles and with more clarity than you would have had you been restricted to only one way of perceiving things.

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Let’s take this concept and apply it to a common scenario. You’re seated third in line waiting to be interviewed for an important position at a company you’ve always dreamed of working for. As the next candidate is called three overwhelming thoughts dominate your mind: 1) I don’t know if I’m good enough or have what they’re looking for, 2) I’ve never been good at interviews and will probably say/do something by mistake to stuff it up; 3) I don’t really care if I get this job anyway, there’s plenty of other companies out there that will take me! While it’s natural for us to engage in these or similar lines of self-talk, we have to identify this type of mindset for what it is: negative, self-sabotaging and driven by fear. It’s almost like this person is expecting/deciding to fail, has made peace with it and welcomes it!

Instead of this, I want you to Reframe your attitude from ‘I don’t think I’m good enough to pass this Interview’ to “I know I have a lot of strong qualities they’re after, that’s why they invited me here.

I’m going to show them the best I have to offer and prove why I would be a valuable employee for them.” You’ve thus reframed 9

At this point, standing there paralyzed like an idiot in the middle of a rapidly emptying bus terminal, my reaction to the situation went something like this: Confusion, followed by Anger, Frustration, Blame (on the thieving/incompetent porters, bus driver, myself), uncertainty about what I would do next‌.finally followed by Calm and Clarity. You see, in that moment when I felt entirely alone I also realized one very encouraging thing: I was still standing on my own two feet, right where I wanted to be. I still had my head up and focused on enjoying the trip, I was still doing alright on my own in a strange land, and whether I would encounter more misfortune or success I was still the master of my own destiny. Sure, losing a large amount of my funding and personal supplies was a major inconvenience, but I decided to refuse to let those negative factors affect my frame of mind. I simply had to adjust to my change of circumstances and alter my plan so I could make the most of what was available to me.

In this way, I handled this setback by Reframing my mindset from one that saw this incident as a disaster that would ruin the rest of the trip; to one that saw this unexpected outcome as just another twist of fate. It became a learning experience for me, another opportunity to explore different and maybe better possibilities.

So how can you apply Reframing in a practical way to your fitness goals? Simple. Think of a fitness goal that is or was important in your mind. It could be a recent goal or something you’ve aspired towards for quite a while, but make sure it’s one that you felt strongly about. Next I want you to identify all of the powerful emotions that emanate when you think of this desired

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Let’s break down the Reframing concept into a specific actionable process. Start with an area of your fitness goals where you’re currently feeling the most resistance; for example you need to lose weight but hate the idea of tracking your food intake everyday, or cutting down on certain foods in your diet, or giving up your weekly drinking nights. Maybe you want to gain some muscle and feel stronger and fitter but can’t motivate yourself to come to the gym more than once or twice a week. Next, you’re going to identify the negative emotions and thoughts that are obstructing the completion of that goal – for instance Fear of being accountable for your diet, Apathy or excuses for not making consistent exercise a priority. Put these mental blocks in a circle, but one that is separate from your goals, like the drawing I’ve done below.

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FEAR LAZINESS DOUBT

LOSE BODYFAT GET FITTER

It’s important to visually recognize that these factors are not necessarily connected to your goals and that any connection between the two is a choice made by you alone. Since you (consciously or unconsciously) are the one responsible for linking your goals with self-limiting thoughts, you also have the power to take that link away.

FEAR

LOSE BODYFAT GET FITTER

LAZINESS DOUBT

The best way to do this is to replace those negative feelings with ones related to your goal that are proactive, encouraging and above all positive! Create a new circle, and this time fill it with all the emotions that make you feel good about aiming for those goals. For example when you think about losing weight and slimming down, you could visualize fitting into the same clothes you wore on your wedding day and imagine the pride and inner satisfaction you’d feel when you get there. If your goal is to feel stronger and look fitter, consider all the opportunities that would open up to you when you hold yourself with the added confi14

dence of having the body you desire. Whatever your goal is, I want you to identify all the positive thoughts that achieving it would bring, and then create a strong link between the two.

LOSE BODYFAT GET FITTER

Self-Confidence Fulfillment

Finally, you’re going to complete the Reframe by taking the most important step; making your goal and the positive emotions associated with it one and the same. This means not thinking about one without thinking about the other. It means making the link between your positive emotions and your goals so close that they become indistinguishable. They become one Frame. By rewiring your emotional signals so that goals and Positivity are part of the same frame, you’ll be much more successful.

LOSE BODYFAT GET FITTER

Self-Confidence Fulfillment

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2

GET COMFORTABLE BEING UNCOMFORTABLE “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”

- Lord Chesterfield -

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e’ve all heard that well-known catchphrase ‘Get out of your Comfort Zone.’ It’s become clichéd advice, especially in the fitness and self-improvement industries

(images of bootcamp trainers trying to fire up their clients, or motivational speakers working the crowd come to mind). But is stepping out of this widely accepted ‘Zone’ every now and then really enough to make continued progress long-term? Or is this simplistic cookie-cutter solution just setting you up for a vicious cycle of onagain, off-again? I’m going to help you develop resilience and mental toughness by challenging you to free yourself from the need to have a comfort zone in the first place. Sounds outlandish, maybe more than a little intimidating – even a bit scary? Good. Now we’re getting somewhere. I’m about to teach you how to switch from “Get out of your comfort zone” to Leave Your Comfort Zone Behind…like those bad 80s hairstyles.

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Find your Groove Let’s start by defining exactly what it means to consciously live within a comfort zone. Your comfort zone is the set of daily activities, environments and even beliefs that you can confidently maintain without feeling much mental pressure or tension. They’re the things in your normal routine that cause minimal personal strain, and because of this it’s the default state most of us prefer to be in.

Here’s the problem though – very little growth happens when you stay within these boundaries. Progress by its very nature means to improve on a previous set-point; it requires one to move the goalpost one step further than before and therefore to initiate change. This requires discomfort, tension and yes, at times an extended pain period. Change rarely comes smoothly and stress-free, but without it we’re simply maintaining. We’re just spinning our wheels like the proverbial hamster, running in place on the treadmill to oblivion, stuck at Square One – ‘Do Not Pass Go.’ We’re remaining the same in body and mind, neither growing or deteriorating, just settling for average. Now this is fine if that’s your goal.

If maintenance level is what you’re happy with in life, the comfort zone is perfect for you. But let’s face it: if average was your aim, if there wasn’t an area of your life you feel you could improve on, you wouldn’t be reading this book.

Now that we’ve uncovered the importance of NOT being in the comfort zone, it’s time to explore why it’s beneficial to create a new and totally different Zone you should be spending most of your time and effort within. A zone where you can grow, gain valuable experience and make what you envisioned for yourself a reality. I call this zone the Groove.

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When you find your Groove and learn to stay within it, you’ll rarely feel comfortable the way you’ve been used to – the future becomes less predictable, you’ll be exposed to more instability and things will feel like they’re in constant flux. You’ll start noticing that you definitely have to raise your game to keep up with the pace. But as your mindset adapts to this new approach you will also start to feel a new sense of comfort: the feeling of accomplishment knowing that you’re actively striving towards your goals instead of just passively wishing for them. A renewed self-confidence and empowerment from trusting yourself to put more on the line, rather than taking the easy option of staying in your safe bubble to avoid difficulty. Sure things will get much more challenging, and you’ll often feel out of your depth; ironically this is one of the surest signs that you’re on your way to making progress. Because the comfortable ‘cruise-control’ path 18

ty and avoid encountering the same self-destructive conditions.

It’s as if one door had been opened revealing the consequences of staying comfortably mediocre, and another door opened allowing me to take a more difficult but ultimately more rewarding path. It was up to me to choose which door, which zone I wanted to revolve my life around.

Spend More Time Under Tension Alright, so you’ve decided that you want to progress in some area of your life and you’re prepared to change your mindset to get there.

How then do you not only step out of your comfort zone but actually be free of the need for it? How do you find your Groove and thrive on the pace it sets for your life? By actively spending more ‘Time Under Tension’ until your mentality adapts and enables you to operate at higher levels of action.

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Time Under Tension is a well-known key element for muscle development which we can apply to mindset to help you achieve your goals. The main concept is this: the body needs the balanced combination of a challenging weight lifted (Tension) for a challenging duration of (Time) to induce the muscles to grow.

In other words, you can’t simply lift a heavy weight once and expect your body to start growing; nor can you lift an extremely easy weight 100 times and expect any long-term muscular development. You need a challenging dose of both intensity and duration spent within that intensity level to spark muscle gains.

The same concept applies to your comfort zone and its inverse relationship with Progress. Where most people fail is in one or both of these areas: a) refusing to take action if there’s a risk of discomfort/pressure, and b) only leaving their comfort zone long enough to start feeling uncomfortable, then giving up and turning back the moment they meet resistance/obstacles. I see it in the gym all the time – people start a healthier diet to ‘get leaner’, but after a few weeks or months when the fat loss slows down they give up and go back to their old eating habits.

Guys start going to the gym to gain muscle and see some great beginner results initially, then when the gains plateau they lose motivation and stop putting in the work. They do this without considering that they may need to change their exercise selection, increase their training frequency/intensity, or simply get stronger by upping the damn weights (pet hate of mine: when people come up to me and ask why they haven’t been progressing for a while, I ask them what exercises and how much weight they’re using. Their answer: the same ones for the past 6 months!). This aversion to working on the things needed for long-term prog22

ress is the reasons why many of us feel ‘stuck’ doing the same things week-in week-out and not getting any closer to our goals – to the point where they start to feel unattainable. We’ve been conditioned to hold negative connotations to actions that cause discomfort, while placing too much value and reliance on comfortable activities/conditions; without recognizing that the latter almost never helps you improve while the former is necessary for improvement.

The key then is to find your Groove – the action steps, activities and mind-frame you need to progress to the next level – and combine it with Time under Tension. Only by exposing yourself to a long enough period under pressure and outside your normal level of competence can you develop the mental toughness and determination needed to maintain focus on your goals for the long-term. It’s like going to the gym once or twice a month versus making it part of your regular weekly routine: if you’re there only once in a blue moon then of course your muscles will always feel sore and weak! You haven’t yet given your body the chance to adapt to the challenges of exercise so it will only respond by treating it like a stressor to be avoided. Whereas when you come in several times a week over a period of months you’ll find that although the workouts themselves are still tough, your body and your mind are able to cope better with the physical stress and actually start to respond the way you want it to.

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Once you immerse yourself outside of your safe boundaries and prepare for inevitable setbacks and mistakes, your life will move in the direction of your goals much faster. You’ll find that not only can you adapt to the ebb and flow of the daily Groove, you can even flourish in it! The only time you should be truly uncomfortable is when things get too comfortable – this is a warning sign that you’ve stopped moving forward. And when you stop growing in any area of your life you’re simply maintaining and, eventually, deteriorating; if you aren’t actively taking steps towards your goal it only gets further and further away from you.

So instead of treating uncomfortable/challenging actions as something you rarely do and comfortable/easy activities as your default choice, I want you to reverse that completely and fall back on the comfortable actions only when you absolutely need a break from the Groove. Instead of having a Safe zone and a Fear zone in your head, try to leave both of those limiting mind-frames behind for good and fully commit to living your life in just one Zone: the one that involves uncertainty, discomfort, risk and difficulty but also brings with it self-improvement, progress, opportunities and fulfillment. You cannot have one without the other. Develop the courage to consistently take on more challenges in your life, combine it with the mental toughness built from weathering adversity, and you’ll start experiencing long-term positive changes greater than even you imagined.

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3

MAKE YOUR GOAL MISSION STRATOSPHERIC “There is no passion to be found playing small in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”

- Nelson Mandela -

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ne of the most common roadblocks we’ve all experienced is the fickle nature of Motivation. Many of us have meaningful goals but lack either the motivation

to start pursuing them, or the drive to continue until the goal is achieved. If you feel like this inconsistency is something you seem to chronically suffer from, don’t worry; we’re going to learn how to prepare ourselves for this problem so we can keep pushing forward towards our target even without ideal motivation levels. You see, there are 2 parts to understanding how to master inner motivation to help you reach your goals: the first is to realize that you need Motive to have motivation, and that it’s in your best interests to make this motive as powerful and as closely aligned to your vision and values as possible. The second is to accept the fact that 25

it’s impossible to keep your motivation level consistently high – inevitably we’ll experience drops in energy, effort and self-commitment. However, this shouldn’t stop you from keeping a laser-like focus on your dreams and getting the job done even in the absence of motivation.

That’s what this chapter will teach you: the importance of transforming your dream/goal into a Mission, and then turning that mission from ‘realistic’ to Stratospheric so that instead of relying on motivation to keep you going, you now have a purpose that drives you from within. Once you have inner purpose, your desired outcomes will no longer be held hostage by mood swings and you’ll find it easier to counteract this common mental hurdle. But first, you’ll have to change the way you approach your goals in the first place.

Commit to a Purpose As Agent Smith said in The Matrix, ‘it’s Purpose that drives us.’ Look at any great achievement, whether an individual one like finishing an ultra-marathon or an altruistic one like fighting for equality and human rights, and you will find that the person involved succeeded because their passion for their goal was far beyond what society considers ‘normal’. These people are so firmly committed to their undertaking that for them, seeing their personal mission through to its end is more important than any discomfort, pain and hardship they’d have to endure along the way. This is one of the major factors that often decides whether an individual’s goal will succeed or fail before it’s even begun: how bad do they want it?

How much importance do they really place on its completion? In my experience, people are quick to announce what they want and 26

erful it becomes your personal mission, a mission you’re willing to put everything on the line for to see through to its accomplishment. But Jam, what if I don’t feel that way about any of my goals at the moment? You will, when you take one simple step – make your goal BIGGER. Aim for higher than you think is necessary, to the point that it actually scares you a little bit. Because if you tell yourself you’ll be happy to reach the clouds, you’ll be lucky to get off the ground. But shoot for the stars, extend your reach to the moon, and blast your inner driving force to the stratosphere…and the sky’s your limit!

I can say without a doubt that the times in my life where I experienced the most personal growth was when I was chasing an ambitious, intimidating goal. Travelling solo for 6months in a foreign 28

continent as a teenager, with nothing but a backpack and my wits; moving into a brand-new city pad I could barely afford on my own; turning my back on a promising career based on my university education and choosing to start my own business in an industry with a high turnover and limited long-term prospects. All of these undertakings started off as fanciful ideas, then when I decided I actually wanted to attain them rather than just fantasize about them they became targets. When I began formulating a plan and implementing action steps on a regular basis, the targets became projects; purpose-driven missions I was fully committed to. And after going through more than a few ‘pain periods’ and setbacks, they became achievements.

What success triggers did they all share in common? Looking back on my major accomplishments, they all shared two common factors: a) they were born as dreams that were extraordinary in ambition and desire, and b) they required me to put in extraordinary levels of work, energy and commitment. In other words, the goals were large and challenging enough to inspire me to supercharge my efforts – indeed they wouldn’t have been possible if I hadn’t.

They were projects that not only created a greater sense of urgency but more importantly drove me to always be ‘switched on’: unlike passive desires like owning a luxury car, which you can always switch yourself off from and forget, truly meaningful goals become part of you and stay at the forefront of your mind. They imbue you with an innate sense of purpose and the self-fuelling drive you need to succeed with any endeavor.

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about the author Jam Acero is a Melbourne-based personal trainer and Director of the fitness lifestyle project Athletic Edge. Operating from the core principle that a balanced approach to training and nutrition is the key to a healthy lifestyle, Jam’s mission is to empower people with the knowledge, ability and inner drive to fulfill their ultimate potential. Whether it’s educating crowds at fitness seminars and workshops, motivating people to develop mental toughness at outdoor bootcamps, or working with clients one-onone for maximum results, he is passionate about making a positive impact on your life and inspiring you to bring out your best.