75Hard Days 7 through 13.

Key Takeaways:

1. Beware the routine. Stay sharp, check off your goals.

2. Prepare. One workout that has to be outside, definitely can't be sunny all the time. Plan accordingly.

3. Celebrate the wins when they come. These will probably start spreading out a bit more in frequency. Monotony sets in with any program and with something like this, probably sooner than others. Don't get me wrong, it's still challenging and will get more so the more I get used to it. That's probably when I (and you if you're doing it) will have to be most on guard. While I got all my goals for today, I didn't check them off in the app till way later so yah, might get tricky.

My main thing today that I wanted to pass on is this, don't forget to own your wins as hard as you own your losses. Over the past few days, I've gotta a lot of compliments on my progress. People who haven't seen me for a long time checked out my Power Clean PR video and remarked how good I was looking. Today in the gym, people who I barely talk to ended up remarking "dude, I saw you from across the room the other day, I knew you lost weight. How much so far?"

Listen, dudes get compliments so rarely as it is, we squirrel that shit away for a long , cold winter. I'm still warming myself from a compliment I got @ ShmooCon 2 years ago. However, a lot of us are still mostly shit at accepting compliments when they're given. Call it imposter syndrome or whateverthefuck, lots of us are not good at recognizing our own success.

I did that once before and all it did was get me here, now, talking to you, trying to unfuck that which I properly fucked.

Back in 2013 I did this dance before. I did P90x (twice) and Insanity (twice). Nailed down my diet and ended up shedding about 65lbs. Holy shit right? That takes some doing and is no small amount of weight to dispatch. I remember showing up to a friends house for a BBQ and having people remark on my progress. True, genuine compliments. I also remember not fully embracing them. "Oh they have to say that stuff. They're just being nice."

I think it was my inability to accept that I'd done a great thing and the compliments that came with it which doomed me when I lost my job and shit went downhill. I torpedoed all that work and sacrifice and sunk myself into the bottom of a McDonalds bag every night for 4 months. I won't make that mistake again and I write all of this to help guide you away from that destructive train of thought. It goes nowhere but off the rails.

Own your successes. Celebrate them. Analyze and remember them. Trust me, later, when you're comfortable and shit hits the fan, you're going to need to them. People don't just hand out compliments. If 2020 should have taught us anything it's that people are basically bastards with bastard coated bastard filling. What possible reason would basic strangers have for telling me they see progress in me?

I don't want to do this dance a third time. I think this is my last chance and I won't stop pushing. Neither should you.