Your beliefs are determining your success and failure in every area of your life, you MUST change them! Read on…
How successful can you be as a natural bodybuilder?
A lot more successful than you might think. The limits we humans place on ourselves are enormous, not to mention stupid.
Your beliefs about life will create life in congruence to that belief.
More specifically, your beliefs about anything in life will create along those lines as well.
Think about this:
- The person that believes that they can’t do something, won’t do it.
- The person that believes they are not worthy of a happy relationship will eventually create failed relationships.
- The person that believes that people don’t like them, will experience a world in which people don’t interact with them much
- The guy that believes that girls don’t like him won’t get any attention from them. He won’t approach them, he’s not approach-able, and he will have all the charisma of an out-of-date cabbage.
I look at it this way – all beliefs are self-fulfilling.
There’s a saying that goes,
“Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right” – Henry Ford
I completely agree!
So, what disempowering beliefs might the natural bodybuilder hold?
- You can only add a few pounds of new muscle in a year (yeah right!)
- You can’t just keep progressing every week, can you?
- You can’t get big being natural
- You have to add fat while adding muscle
- You have to lose muscle while losing fat
Ah! It annoys just to hear them!
The subconscious mind is the storehouse of all your beliefs.
Your subconscious listens to EVERY WORD AND THOUGHT YOU THINK. It then accepts your dominant thoughts as programs. These programs run in the background of your life, much the same as several programs are running in the background of your computer’s operating system right now. It’s your habitual thoughts that become your beliefs/programs.
Now, if you accept any of the disempowering beliefs above as true, your results will reflect it. Your subconscious is astonishingly powerful and will do what it has to, to meet the expectations of these programs.
You’ll subconsciously start to sabotage your own success. You may:
- Reach failure too early in a set
- Reach plateaus that you just can’t break
- Unexpectedly get too tired before a workout and decide to skip it
- Drop your guard and allow your diet to falter
All of the above scenarios aren’t nearly as random as you think. You are unwittingly living up OR down to your own subconscious expectations.
Now, what if you believed the following?:
- I will perform better with EVERY SINGLE workout
- I can naturally and easily reach the size and definition I want
- I drop fat rapidly
- I grow bigger every week
- I will grow to the size I want LONG before any supposed ‘Genetic Limit’
- I enjoy and am ENTHUSED by the process of building a magnificent body!
Drop the limits! Drop the excuses! Today!
When a hypnotist speaks directly to someone’s subconscious and tells him he’s a chicken, he becomes a chicken in his experience. He thinks and acts like a chicken, no matter what you tell him, he’s 100% convinced he’s a chicken. You may want to stop using labels like ‘ectomorph’, ‘skinny’, or ‘hard-gainer’ to describe yourself if you don’t wish to remain that way. The more you repeat it, the more you’ll believe it.
Change your beliefs and you will change your life. That goes for ANY area of life!
So next is the process of actually changing your beliefs. One of the best ways is to experience something that shatters your current paradigm. The videos below should help you do that.
Check out Jeff Willet. As far as natural bodybuilders go, this guy is my inspiration. And I can guarantee you something, he didn’t hold the same crippling beliefs of a lot of other natural bodybuilders do.
Here he is working his chest:
Here he is responding to those who don’t believe he is natural:
And here are some shots of Jeff Willet on stage:
Hope that helps you break through some limiting beliefs.
Decide that you’re going to live a LIFE WITHOUT LIMITS! Trust me, it’s much better 😉
Your Buddy,
Mark McManus
Hi Mark ,
this is something which I think will be very beneficial to me once I grasp it and implement in the gym. What is your opinion on Jeff’s training principles of high weights and low reps (strength training). They seem to be the opposite of what you are sharing with us.
thanks.
Mark, I love this stuff! Another awesome post.
I highly recommend people build their mind and spirit at the same time they build their bodies. Our bodies are a physical manifestation of what is happening in our mind and spirit. If you believe it you can achieve it.
The key is having a picture of how you want to look in your minds eye. Even if you have to paste your face on a picture of another person’s body whom you’d like to look like, do it. Get that picture going in your subconcious. I personally look at pictures of Arnold from the early 70’s. I don’t care if he used steroids, that is how I want to look. 🙂
Since I’ve been really working on my mind/spirit as well as my body, my scale weight has gone down 20 lbs while adding muscle at the same time. Burning fat used to be hard for me until I changed my mindset that it was easy for me.
I’ve been reading books like Psychocybernetics by Maxwell Maltz, Born Rich by Bob Proctor, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, Harmonic Wealth by James Ray, Big Heart Big Mind by Genpo Roshi, and Conversations with God by Neil Walsch. All of these books have helped me to develop myself mentally and spiritually into a happier, more successful person. This alone makes any goal 200% more achievable.
hey mark
I have noticed that you use many of the things tha I have read in the law of atraction
Have you read it?
because I have, but I dont know here am i going wrong
I know it works but I dont know how to make it work for me
anyway great stuff
I am starting to do the M.A.N.S. diet
but I would like you to put something like, what do you breakfast what do you eat for lunch and for dinner etc., so I have an idea
Im really exited with this because I have read the testimonials and they say that they started to notice changes in just two weeks!
Another thing is that, is it ok that an 18 years old guy (me) is usin the M.A.N.S. diet?
Thanks for the page!
Alex, I’m not Mark, but the key to changing your life is to start picturing in detail, what you want. Write it down, set goals, see yourself already having what you want. The more detail you have, the better. Don’t worry about how its going to happen, just worry about what you want. You must also act eventually, you need to learn to take advantage of every opportunity that comes your way. When you look back later in life, the things you will regret the most are missed opportunities. You won’t regret the times you tried and failed, I promise you.
Also, it is very important that you learn how to be happy here and now. There are a number of books and audio/video programs that will help. Find some that speak to you, do the exercises every day, read the books, listen to the audio, and watch the video for an hour a day for ninety days and you will be a different man after that ninety days.
As far as the MANS diet, I personally follow a generic Low Carb diet mixed with occasional fasting (I’m in a very strict cutting phase), but I did buy Mark’s ebook, and I highly recommend it. It was worth the price.
@ Andrics. Actually, the 2 workouts are pretty identical apart from rep range. Failure, progression, length of rest between sets, recuperation between body parts, total no. of sets are exactly the same. I’ve covered the rep range in earlier articles.
@ Javacody. I enjoyed reading your comment. We’ve read some of the same books and I use these types of practices in my life daily. Keep learning and growing!
@ Hi Alex C. Yes I’ve heard of the Law of Attraction. I knew of those principles before ‘The Secret’ came out. There are some things I like about it and some things I think are misleading and will lead to poor results. Maybe I’ll do a post about it or I’ll speak about it when my Personal Development book comes out 😉 No problem with an 18 year old on MANS. Go to this thread in the forum for menu ideas
https://www.bodybuildingforum.ie/diet/m-a-n-s-big-low-carb-food-list-t8.html
Thanks for the comments guys,
Mark
Hi Mark,
I would like to congratulate you on this blog. It is absolutely excellent. I love your posts, especially about th burning fat and building muscle at the same time. Please visit my blog at well – (Link in Commenter’s name)
In that second video I thought he looked really small… and then the camera zoomed out and I thought he had a puny head…
In the first picture though he looks amazing…
I don’t see why people have a problem with steroids…
I’m interested in acheiving a good physique without steroids because I’m afraid of health issues steroid use may have…
If I was certain steroids were safe I’d be using them for sure…
Good books I recommend are: The Power Of Now by Eckart Tolle and A New Earth by Eckart Tolle.
Thank you for your blog! Always excited to read your new articles and have been on the M.A.N.S diet for ages…
Is your blog missing it’s footer?
I can take a crack at fixing it for you if you want…
Love
I think whats important to get from JEFF’s routine is his warmup. The MAX OT style. Just by warming up in this fashion i added 10lb to my regular bench press, it is quite significant increase. It goes something like this, 5 warm up sets at these percentages of total weight and rep ranges,
set 1) 50% x 12
set 2) 50% x 10
set 3) 70% x 6
set 4) 90% x 3
set 5) 95% x 1
What is nice about this warmup it doesnt fatique your muscles. So when you go heavy and do your actual set. It feels great and you are very strong. Ill never warm up another way , but MAX OT.
Thanks man, that was useful!!;-) In fact we should fight for drug free sport!!!