When I first wrote the book, Under The Bar and the sequel, Raising The Bar, the premise behind both of the books were to take the lessons that I learned under the bar in the weight room and explain how I've been able to apply those same lessons in life and business situations. The correlations are very high between the two.
I then moved forward and through some of the posts that you've read here in my blog so far, you'll see I'm doing the same thing again just at different level with more experience under my belt. Seventeen years in business brings a lot of experience, more wisdom and a TON of mistakes, a lot of things that I would've done differently and at the same time... this still correlates back to the thirty years that I spent under the bar. Looking back and seeing those same things also exist, things that I would have done differently and so on.
Environment
The item I wanted to touch on in this piece is environment. Your training environment is critical to the success of how you're going to be as powerlifter or an athlete. This is something that I learned very young, I was put into a good training environment. I would actually go as far as to say it's something that I took for granted because it was such a good conducive training environment as far as reducing limitations, raising expectations, reinforcing technique, creating good patterns, reinforcing the right behavior, correcting the wrong behavior and developing an elite lifter.
Over the years, from that experience as a teenager, the one thing that I learned was to always try to seek out those who were better than I was, better lifters, but also more knowledgeable. That took me through twenty some years of competing at a national and elite level. With each move and each group I trained with the environment changed, sometimes it was a great environment, sometimes it wasn't a good environment. Every time it wasn't a good environment, I always ran into sticking points, I always ran into injuries, I always ran into different things that held me back and didn't help to propel forward.
Environment has to be productive
The environment needs to be productive and something that works for the individual and for the environment itself. It has to work for both parties for it to be successful. In training, many times, you'll see lifters that jump from gym to gym. There's nothing wrong with that because they may not be the right fit for the environment that they are in. It's not working for them or it could not be working for the group of lifters or training partners that they're trying to train with. Some people will take it more serious than others. People have different philosophies on training. There has to be a good fit. It doesn't have to be a perfect fit, but it has to be a fit where compromise can exist.
Anybody who's been a competitive athlete on any team situation or even individual sports which practice in team situations know exactly what I'm talking about. There's energy that can be derived from being in a team environment that can propel somebody to be the best version of themselves or even a better version of themselves. This is no mystery. We all know and understand that.
The hard part for so many is to be able to remove themselves from the environment when they know it's not working or for the environment to remove them when it's not working.
What impact can environment really have?
If you think for a minute about environment and the impact your environment can have on you and your productivity, ask yourself this, who would you be, what would your behaviors be and what would your beliefs be if you were born into a different country? Would you believe the same things you believe now? Would you dress the same way you do now? Would you speak the same way you do now? That's just a small way to tell and see the impact environment can have on the development of a person.
Now that you understand that the environment does impact the growth and development of a person, then you can begin to understand how being around negative people all the time will create a negative attitude within yourself. You begin to understand how being around people who, you know, as Schwarzenegger likes to classify them as, naysayers will hold you back.
One example would be if you live in an apartment right now and you're struggling and you tell somebody who lives in the same situation, that someday you're going to have a two million dollar house. They're going to think you're full of shit and laugh at you. Now, if you say that same thing to somebody who does live in a two million dollar house, they're not going to say you're full of shit. They know it can be done.
Another example I have heard mentioned several times, is if you tell your co-workers that someday you're going to run the company. Most of them are going to be naysayers and they're going to give you shit. They're going to give you a hard time and crack jokes and laugh behind your back. Now, if you say that same thing to the president of the company, he's not going to laugh at you. He may think a lot of different things about what you said, but the one thing he's not going to do is laugh at you or make fun of you about it. I'm not saying that this is something that you should do. What I'm saying is, that there's different perspectives based upon the people and the environment you are associating with.
Is success the goal?
If your goal is to achieve success, however you define success, then you want to put yourself in the environment and around the people who have done what you want to do and have had that success and are not negative people trying to give you all the reasons why it can't be done. Social media is a drain for this. Way too much of a drain.
People spend way too much time reading all the bullshit and ... It's probably not reading the bullshit because social media is nothing more than a modern day tabloid. It's when the posts are being made to the person about the person from other people who would be the naysayers or the people who are trying to give you all the reasons why you can't do what you want to do. That's when it begins to become an issue and when those people should be removed from the picture. They're not doing anything to help propel you forward or to make you better. It's just best to block, un-friend, cancel or whatever it's called now - do away with them. Or actually, better yet, find real people that you can have conversations with and real dialogue with who have been there so you can develop the same habits and the same behaviors that they have. Those are the things that are going to make the difference. Keyboard behaviors are not the same as real word behaviors that lead to execution and completion of projects and work.
How to creating a more productive environment?
First is to understand that the perfect environment doesn't exist. Stop trying to find it. Perfection does not exist. When you're spending all your time trying to find the perfect network, or the perfect environment or the perfect staff or the perfect software or the perfect office, the perfect weight room, the perfect weight room, the perfect anything. It doesn't fucking exist. You want to find what's the most productive for you. You'll know what that is because your work will be better when you are around those people and when you are in that environment. Spend more time in that environment and understand that that environment may change over time.
Years ago I used to be able to get a ton of work done working out of slow restaurants during lunch, coffee shops and all kinds of different places. Now I can't get a damn thing done if I'm in any of those places. My most productive environment and time of day has completely changed. You need to be aware that these things change over time. You need to be scouting for it. As soon as you start seeing that the productivity and the quality of your work is dropping, your stress level is rising, look at your environment. Look there first. The simplest answer could be just a change of that environment. DON'T try to relive the past and thing my best work used to always get done when I did X at X time.
Another aspect of environment is your work space. If you thrive in a trashed, messy workspace, then don't clean it up because you're going to stressed about it and you're not going to be able to get the same quality of work done. At the same time, most people, from my experience, thrive and do better in a clean, organized work environment. It's worth taking the time at the end of the day before you close up shop to organize everything, clean it up, so it's ready for the next day when you start work. This can be anything from icons on your desktop to having four hundred emails in your inbox.
Not everybody is the same. I for one, will not close a day with more than five emails in my inbox. I will have no more than two icons on my desktop. There's folders that you can create on a computer for a reason. At the same time, I know many people that have their entire desktop is full of icons and their email looks like a train wreck. I can't even look at it because it drives me absolutely insane. Everybody is different. The only time it becomes a problem is if the work is not getting done. Then you need to re-access because people and technology change.
Raising your standards is a component of environment.
If your standards are the bare minimum of what's expected, then don't expect a whole hell of lot in return. It's up to you to raise your standards and what you're level of expectations of your own work is. Keep in mind, when it is your own work, if you work for somebody else or if you own the company. It's got your name on it. That's your working reputation. If you're going to sign your name on something then you should make it something you're proud of and something that you can stand back and say, "Yes, I did that." If not then maybe you should think about raising your standards.
There shouldn't be phoning it in work or junk work or work just to get it done. Many years ago I actually had somebody tell me, "I'm only paid X amount of dollars, so I'm only going to do that X quality work." Well how the fuck does that work? If that's the standard that they're going to set for themselves, then that's all they're ever going to be compensated. They'll actually be compensated less over time or they'll be let go because who is to say what they feel their quality produced is really worth. Most of the time it's worthless than they think it is - so under what they are being compensated.
If you're getting paid X amount of dollars and you can do the quality of work and standard of work that produces twenty percent more then why are you not doing so? There is nothing good than comes from knowing you are producing less than your best. Think about it for a minute.
If you always strive to do your best then will your best NOT increase with the more work you do?
By doing less you are essentially telling yourself you want to be worth less and suck more. If you're the owner of the company and think this way, what do you think your worth is going to be to the marketplace or with those you lead?
People need to take pride in what they stamp their own name on. That's a reflection of them. I don't think people take enough time to really think about that.
Tools are a product of your environment.
In the weight room, as powerlifters, we always use and try to find the best tools that are available to us. No, you may not have the IPF approved Powerlifting bar or the Mastodon Squat Bar or even a Texas Squat Bar. You might have a Texas Power Bar. You're going take the time in the gym to find the Texas Power Bar if you're going to squat or bench. You're not just going to grab whatever bar's there. That's not what a powerlifter does. A power-lifter is going to take advantage of the best equipment that's available to them at that time. Many times THEY will buy their own and bring it with them to the gym. In many cases, many lifters at a high level, if they don't have a certain standard or quality of equipment they'll just leave and go to another gym or pack it up for the day because it's not worth the risk to use cheap equipment and get hurt.
In the work place, you need to use the best tools that you have at your disposal to be able to produce the highest quality work. If you don't have the best of the best, utilize what you do have to get the work done. I've seen amazing video work shot through a phone. I've seen amazing photography shot through a telephone. I've also seen armature photographers with ten thousand dollar cameras shoot the shittiest photos you've ever seen. You need to also know how to use the tools that you have to your disposal. I am willing to bet almost everyone reading this has software tools on their computer than they have no idea how to use that would make their life and work much easier. There should NEVER be an excuse that you do not know how to use it. You can better learn any software through an internet search and more than likely on YouTube.
If you had a new piece of equipment that came into the gym, that you thought would be able to drive your squat and your deadlift, you're going to learn every way to use that possible to make sure that you can get the maximum benefit out of that. That's the same thing that has to happen in the workplace if you want to try to propel yourself to your definition of success.
Attitude impacts your environment
Your own attitude is a product of the environment. Yes, other people can influence your attitude. We've already talked about that, getting away from them, spending less time around them, sometimes you can't avoid them entirely so it's just a matter of putting distance between them. At the same time, understand that non of us are perfect. We all bring our own baggage to work. We all bring our own baggage to the projects that we're working on. You need to determine and to find what your threshold is.
When you reach that threshold, you need to take a break. Get up, walk around, start doing something else, answer emails for a little bit. Whatever it is, get away from the project that's pushing you to the threshold. If the overall entire day is pushing you to the threshold, take a break. Go outside, walk around, move, move, move.
Movement it critical.
The more you move the more it's easier to be able to lower that stress and to be able to actually increase your threshold.
The longer you're in business, the longer you work, the longer you're in a profession, you begin to go from having a business to having a career or you go from being an employee to somebody who's building a career. When you get into the phase of actually building a career, your threshold will increase. It will increase over time and experience. The things that are driving you crazy today, they're not even going to be on your radar three, four years from now. That's because your threshold increases. Keep that in mind too, when that threshold hits.
The key thing is, when the threshold does hit, remove and move.
Remove and move.
Understand that, when you are at that level, listen to what you say both to others and yourself (in your own head). This is very hard to do.
Listening to what you say impacts the environment that's around you.
Are you the naysayer?
Are you becoming that negative person to somebody else?
If that's the case, you need to take a step back, reevaluate and get your shit together. That's not going to propel you forward. That's just going to lead to gossip. It's going to lead drama. It's going to lead to all kinds of shit which isn't going to move you in the direction that you're going to define as success.
These are just a few things that will impact your environment to make you more successful both in and out of the gym. The key takeaway is to understand that environment is important. If you think of the two examples that I presented:
What makes a good environment is in the gym and how to take advantage of it, if it's not.
Asking yourself, who would you be and what would your beliefs be if you were born in a different country,
This will solidify the fact in your brain that your environment and the environment that you create - yes, you, can, create, is a big part of determining your success in and out of the gym.