4 Mistakes that Smart People Make Success Impossible

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4 Mistakes that Smart People stifles success in life, strength and fat loss.

1. Thinking that …

you know, when you really don’t. I’m 33 and my ego has definitely matured quite a bit.

My journey with the deadlift has been a fun one. Powerlifting is extremely humbling. Guy’s half my size lifting twice as much. .kinda crazy.

It reminds me how big the world really is..

It reminds me how much I don’t know..

It reminds me of what’s possible..

When I say .. “Thinking that you know” what I mean is .. How much do you really know about something. Every subject has deep facets and there are things you’ll never quite understand deeply , but smart people are so quick to form an almost absolute opinion.

2. Not having enough Empathy

What does this mean exactly? the definition is as follows:

“The ability to understand and share the feelings of another.”

The key distinction of Empathy vs sympathy is ‘share the feelings.’

This is not easy to do… Sharing feelings opens you up to pain. Cancer, a drug problem, an injury, being over weight, being bullied, losing a parent or a child

Why is empathy important? Because it helps you be kinder to people and give them a break. More importantly, IT HELPS BECOME KINDER TO YOURSELF

We can really get down on ourselves and when we do this we feel bad. When we feel bad we don’t perform as well towards our goal. Sometimes we quit.

Like missing a lift in training or at a competition – or not getting a promotion or failing a test.

3. One way One result

From time to time a lot of us are like this. We see only one way to accomplish something. We see things being done in a sequence that ‘can only be.’

This mistake keeps many from succeeding.

Too often we confuse the result with the method. A training method or a parenting method .. so many ways to accomplish a happy child, a big deadlift, a lower body fat .. etc.

Opening our perspective allows the problem to bee seen from different angles allowing for a better solution .. .heck.. better yet.. a better working relationship with our peers, training partners and life partners.

4. There is a way to accomplish both

Both what?

A stronger body and a lower body fat.

A happy child and a that does well in school (and video games)

A big deadlift and a big squat

A big bench press without shoulder pain

2 things that seem impossible to combine are possible. It takes creativity, patience and lots of effort.

I always say I could be an amazing chess player or magic player if I had more time than my opponent. And that’s usually the bottleneck .. time. We make choices with time being the limiter.

And that’s okay.. but .

Acknowledging that it is possible gives us the opportunity to accept an outcome that’s too difficult or impossible. We still might not get both, but when we use our maximum creativity to see both happening – it allows us a reality that we thought was impossible.

When you think like this, you’ll be able to see more options to get the most of making progress.