The idea for this blog came about last weekend when I was doing some cleaning around the house and ended up finding one of those body tape measures that you use to wrap around different body parts to see if they are growing or shrinking.
Just for fun I decided I was going to see how much my arms and legs have grown since the last time I measured them (I believe 6 months - 1 year ago). To my surprise I have put on a whole inch of muscle to my arms, growing from 11 inches to now 12 inches, and I believe about 2 inches of muscle on my legs. Although I still have a long way to go to get where I want to be in terms of muscle mass I am very happy to see progress in my muscle growth.
What does this mean for you?
When you start out on your journey, most likely the only way for you is to go up. Maybe right now, with whatever path you are on, you are looking up to being as good as the influencers in your area or you may even want to go beyond them! But sometimes starting can be very scary and hard because you are so far from where you want to be.
But when you start to move towards where you want to be and reward yourself for every little success you have, you will be able to embrace your journey and have fun in the process of getting to where you want to be.
I love the analogy of the baby learning to walk. When you were a baby learning how to walk, you fell down a countless number of times. But you and your family never got mad when you fell. Instead everyone was happy when you could get one step before falling, then 2 and 3 and so on!
If you treat yourself making progress toward your goal in this same way, you will notice how much easier it is to keep going and striving for success.
Closing thoughts.
What is it that you really want to do in life, but feel like you can't do because you aren't "good enough"? The first step is to start, then over time you start to become alright at your skill, then good, then great, then hopefully you even become one of the best if not the best in your area. But it all starts with making progress each day and rewarding yourself for your progress and achievements!
I wanted to make today's post for those of you that are looking into laptops that would be an ideal fit for work, travel, video editing etc. The computer we will be talking about to is the Microsoft Surface laptop. I share what I like about the computer and what I don't. I don't want to just name off some pro's and con's but instead, I would like to give you a more personal honest review on the Microsoft Surface.
I have been using the computer for about 5 months now and thought it would be a great time to make a review about it.
Also not being the biggest computer geek, I will be making this review as simple as possible. Because you are also probably only reading this to decide whether or not this computer is for you and you don't care about every little spec of the computer. What I like about the Surface Laptop.
The design / quality: The Surface Laptop has one of the best designs out there in my opinion. I have the cobalt blue laptop, which gives the computer a sleek, modern look/feel. It is also very portable and lightweight. When comparing it to my MacBook Pro (I have the 2015 MacBook) for the most part it feels like a more luxurious computer, and that is because of the alcantara keyboard. Being a guy that loves luxury and exotic cars, it is very important that the products I invest in use high quality materials. Microsoft could've saved some money by just using a full metal casing for the whole laptop but instead they knew that using a high quality material would make their customers feel just that much more comfortable while typing which I think is a great touch to a laptop (plus the alcantara just feels extremely nice to touch!) The battery life: I notice that the battery life on this laptop is insane, I can charge the computer about once a week or even every 2 weeks (depending on how much I use it and what I use it for) And even in its highest performance mode with the brightness all the way up I don't even have to worry about the computer dying on me.
I usually only use the Surface for editing thumbnails, writing blogs, and watching YouTube, and every once and a while for video editing (which we'll talk on later). Although editing video did drain battery faster than anything else it wasn't too dramatic on battery life.
Overall for what I use the Surface for battery life is great, and I am very happy with it!
Thetouchscreen: This is one thing that really surprised me when I started using the computer. I never thought I would be including this in the blog, but for some reason or another I am really starting to love the touch screen. Although it isn't my "go to" for most tasks, it is very useful for getting around the computer fast or scrolling through something I am reading. It also seems to stay pretty clean even when I am using it a lot.
Currently I don't have the pen that Microsoft sells for its touch screen devices, although I think it would be a great investment for those of you that are photo editors, or work on art on your computer. For now using my fingers with the touch screen works perfectly fine. And although this isn't my favorite point about the computer, I am surprised at how much I actually use, and like this feature!
What I don't like about the Surface Laptop.
Video editing: Although I am not the greatest video editor, I have had a few years of experience with using iMovie (the free video editing software on the MacBook Pro). It is by no means the best video editing software out there but I find that it is very easy to use.
Now on the Surface, I have tried using Adobe Premier, and the free version Davinci Resolve, and for one reason or another they just didn't make sense to me. Even the stock video editor on Windows isn't the best for editing video IMO.
This is the biggest complaint I have about the computer. Obviously it is just personal preference, and you may enjoy editing videos on the Surface (especially if you are a professional video editor).
The screen: Although the screen isn't terrible by any means, and compared to most computers it is phenomenal, I noticed that when I would edit 4k video, it always looked sharper on my MacBook Pro. I know this isn't the biggest thing in the world to complain about, but I wanted to add this in the review to be honest about what I think of the screen and the computer as a whole.
Closing thoughts.
All around the Surface Laptop is a great computer. I actually had a hard time coming up with the things I don't like about it.
For the money, you do get more bang for your buck than its main competitor (the MacBook Pro) but if you are going to start editing video, it may not be the best computer for you.
However if you want a great all around computer for everyday work and tasks, it would be the better choice IMO.
If this review was informative to you, and the Microsoft Surface Laptop sounds like a fit for you click the link below to go check the Surface out for yourself!
I want to start off this blog by stating that I am only going to do this challenge as a sort of experiment. This is not really my normal challenge to try, but I thought it would be a fun experiment to see if I am able to gain muscle on about $10 per day.
Hopefully this will even act as motivation for you to start bodybuilding / bulking with whatever budget you currently have!
In this blog I also wanted to share with you a few different tips on making this $10 per day challenge easier for you each and every day.
This isn't a blog on living poor, or having a poor mindset. I am doing this challenge to save money, but also as a way to discover more healthy, tasty, cheap foods / meals.
A little backstory. This is something I don't talk about that much, but I love amazing foods. This is great for making meals and eating well, but it can be quite pricey. In fact I was spending a good chunk of my paycheck on food. Which is good and bad, its good in the sense that I am able to invest in my body with some of the best food, its bad becase I was shelling out probably around $500+ per month alone of food.
Intermittent fasting.
The first tip that will help you the most is to start intermittent fasting. If you have been following my blog or YouTube channel for a while, you know that I do intermittent fasting nearly everyday. I usually am not that hungry until later in the day, so it works out perfect if you are someone who isn't hungry early in the morning like myself.
However if you want to start intermittent fasting, then it will take a couple weeks to get used to if you have never done it before. But if your goal is to eat cheaper on a daily basis and save money on food, then it will be well worth the effort.
Start to cook for yourself.
This is probably one of the hardest parts of eating cheap, but IMO it is the second most important. Think about it, if you always eat out how much more money do you end up spending? Most likely this number is going to be too much to count.
If your really want to eat cheap, eating out will not be worth it. It may be convenient, but you also don't know every ingredient that they put in the food. The great thing about cooking for yourself is that you can control what goes in your food.
But if you are like me, you love eating at Chipotle. I admit Chipotle is one of my favorite places to eat, but I could easily spend between $9 and $12 on a bowl alone there. Although Chipotle or other restaurants may be filling the money it costs isn't worth it if you are trying to eat on a budget.
Using brown rice and an affordable source of protein. Staying around $10 per day can be very hard to do for anyone. We can get around this by eating healthy and cheap foods such as, chicken, beans, brown rice or white rice, cod, or pork. By making a meal with a good source of protein along with brown rice, it will be easy to stay around that $2-3 mark per meal!
As I am writing this section I also remembered one food that is a very high source of protein and cheap. Lentils, are a great way to eat healthy on a budget and are very filling.
makes you resourceful.
This challenge will also help you think outside the box. I have been eating on $10 per day for a little over a week now, and I have noticed that I am not as much in a routine of eating all the same foods for every meal. Although there is still some of the same things I eat, there are many new cheaper foods I am trying that are healthy. Create a safety net.
One of my biggest reason I am doing this challenge is because I was spending a ridiculous amount of my money on food. Although I could still save some money, I noticed this to be a bad habit of mine. I would literally buy great tasting health food just because I had the money to do it. Although health is very important, I don't believe you should spend all your money on food.
I have been building a safety net over the last few months, but I know I can create this safety net much faster if I am able to stop spending so much money on food. If you are spending most of your money on food, start to look at what foods you are eating on a daily basis that you could switch out for something cheaper. As an example, for me it was chipotle, which I could just switch out with some brown rice and some kind of protein. What is it for you? What can you switch out and replace?
Closing thoughts.
I hope this has been a huge help to you, if you are having trouble saving money on food. It is very hard for many people to not spend lots of money on food, and by making this choice to do this challenge you are breaking yourself out of the excessive spending habit!
Something that I have come across lately was how I was using my language to either uplift or degrade myself and others.
I realized that if I was truly going to start to grow and take massive action to get to where I want to be in my life I would have to change the way I talk.
I first started noticing myself using language such as "I can't" while working out when I was starting to get to a rep or weight that was "too hard" to lift. This in turn became true, by saying I can't do one more rep, I wasn't able to.
Rather, if I switched to saying to myself "I can" or "give it your best shot" I could usually lift the weight one time if not more, and worse case I would give it my best and end up doing a half rep. Either way, I pushed and gave it that little extra effort which in turn made me feel better.
Another big game changer for me was in the book Rich Dad Poor Dad, where the author says "Instead of saying to yourself 'I can't afford something', ask yourself 'how can I afford this?'"
So what does this mean for you? I want you to start to notice where you are using language that isn't helping you become your best version. Start to really dive deep into how it makes you feel on a daily basis, and how using this language is holding you back instead of helping you move forward?
Once we get used to using language against ourselves or others, it usually turns into a downward spiral from there. We start to become attracted more and more to using this type of language.
But the oppposite is also true, if we use language that is empowering to ourselves and others we will start to notice an upward spiral. Sure part of this is positive thinking, but 99% of this is because you are seeing yourself and others in a positive light. By using positive language you will start to shift your brain to see all the ways that you can do great for yourself and others everyday.
You will no longer have to live life in a state of negativity. Although the language you use won't get rid of all of your problems, it will help you get rid of some of your problems.
Before I end this I wanted to give you an exercise to try that will help you shift your language from negitive to positive first thing in the day.
Tomorrow when you wake up (if you are reading this when I publish this blog) it will be Monday morning. I know, the day everyone dreads with a burning passion.
I know that most likely every Monday you wake up, you probably say to yourself "oh great another Monday and week to get through. Now what I you changed tou view and language on Monday just a little bit? I'm not even saying you have to love Mondays, but what if there was something simple that could help you feel a little better about them? Would you give it a try and see if it made not just your Monday, but week as well a little bit better? You bet you would!
So here it is, (as a disclaimer this is something I have heard others say that are living great lives and something that really stuck with me since I heard it) what if tommorow when you wake up you say to yourself how greatful you are to be alive another day, not just that but another week!
If you wake up in a state of gratitude tomorrow morning and every other Monday for that matter, how much better are your weeks going to be? By changing your language early in the morning it will help set the course for the rest of the day and week!
Closing thoughts.
I hope that this read has been extremely helpful for you in changing the way you speak in your daily life. I know first hand that we can either speak in a empowering or disempowering way, and the language that you use will make a dramatic difference in how you live your life. Whether it be for you achieving goals, or influencing others, the words you use on daily basis are one of the most important things that will help you become the person that you want to be in life!
If you have been following me over the past couple months you know that I have been working on bulking to gain as much muscle as I possibly can by the end of this year. So far I am making pretty good progress on my muscle gains, but I have also been gaining some fat in my belly area. Although I probably only gained a couple pounds of fat, I have kind of been feeling bad and discouraged because of it. My goal is to be 135 pounds and lean (8-12% bodyfat) by December, so by gaining fat, I feel as if I will gain the muscle I want, but will have trouble dropping the fat that I need to drop.
Maybe you are experiencing a similar problem with your bulk. I really wanted to make this blog to help and guide you if you are in the same boat. So here are a couple tips that will help you along the way of your bulk!
Keep your focus on the end goal.
The first step in helping you is to focus on where you want to be instead of focusing on where you are right now. If you want to be a certain weight, focus on that rather than focusing on where you are. By focusing on where you want to be you will train your mind to visualize it and work on making it a reality.
This mindset will also help you not beat yourself up for where you are. This is actually the biggest reason I am writing this blog right now. For a couple weeks I was focusing on the fat I gained (although not much) and how it bugged me to be gaining fat while bulking.
As of last week I have shifted my mindset to focusing on my end goal, which is weighting 135 pounds and having8-12% bodyfat, rather than looking at the little bit of fat I did gain so far on my bulk. And the weirdest thing happened since last week, I started to notice more muscle growth.
I know that may sound weird, but I know that by focusing on my end goal, I started to see myself getting stronger and my muscles growing faster. I know the same will happen for you when you keep your eyes on your end goal!
Trust the process.
When bulking you will pretty much be guaranteed to gain fat. The reason being, is that you are eating a surplus of calories, some calories going to muscle gain and others storing as bodyfat. So the first tip is to not get so caught up in gaining a little bit of fat, as it is part of the process. But also don't go overboard and eat so much food that you are only gaining fat.
By eating whatever is the right amount for you, realize that it is normal to gain muscle as well as a little bit of fat. But you always have the ability to eat more or less depending on how much you are currently eating.
Once you get into a good flow of how much to eat on a daily basis, you can start to trust the process more. By trusting in the process you will be able to be content with where you are and have a clear focus on where you are going!
Closing thoughts.
I hope that if you have been feeling discouraged or bad about gaining fat on a bulk, that reading this blog has gave you some useful advice. These tips are really what have helped me and I know that as long as you apply these tips to your mindset that they will help you as well!
Over the past couple weeks I have been lacking motivation like crazy. I've even been unmotivated to go to the gym and workout the past couple weeks. Usually I love working out but its just been feeling like more of a struggle than fun for me at times.
This being said I am still working out and pushing through this feeling of being unmotivated. Deep down I think this lack of motivation is linked to things that I want to happen, not happening fast enough.
Today I wanted to share with you how I am learning to get myself motivated in hopes that it will help you be able to motivate yourself when you need motivation.
We all lack motivation.
No one is born motivated to do anything. Chances are as a child you weren't motivated to try and walk. Although you probably don't remember this, you most likely wanted to keep crawling around and doing what was familiar and easy for you.
Lack of motivation (IMO) stems from resisting something that you want to do that is a challenge for you. For example you may want to start reading books, but haven't been much of a reader in the past, you buy a book for yourself but are still feeling unmotivated. You may want to start reading and create a new habit, but you feel stuck as lack of motivation stops you from achieving your goal.
Its completely fine to lack motivation. But how are you going to respond to this lack of motivation? Are you going to let it stop you or fuel you?
What I have noticed is that even if you lack motivation, you still have the choice to push yourself, and reclaim
that motivation! By doing this you will build momentum, as well as start to feel more inspired and motivated for the things that really matter for you.
Shift your mindset.
In my case I was thinking of working out only to gain muscle. Which isn't bad, but I also wasn't as motivated lately just thinking that way. I ended up starting to remember the reason behind why I am working out, and this was because (yes I do want to build muscle) I want to build muscle to help other hard gainers / skinny fat males do the same in the most effective way possible!
By thinking of how your goals will have value not only to you but also the world, you will be able to have more motivation for achieving the goals you have set for yourself. There will be a bigger purpose behind each goal you set for yourself.
For an example if you want to start reading books just so you can learn more, it might fuel you for a while, but eventually you will need a bigger goal to start reading books. Maybe you start to read books so you can someday know how to write an amazing book of your own to share with the world.
Closing thoughts.
I hope these tips helped you gain some motivation to achieve the goals you have for yourself, as well as helped you create a bigger purpose for your goals!
Today I wanted to make a short blog on a video I made last week. I am writing this so that you can have a quick read on something that will tremendously improve your life!
A few weeks ago I was reading Awaken The Giant Within by Tony Robbins and came across a paragraph or 2 that really struck me. In short Tony was talking about how people flew in to Hawaii and got super excited to see the solar eclipse (which he described as a 4 minute shadow).
He asked the question, "If people got this excited to see the eclipse, why aren't people excited and happy to see the sun rise every morning?"
This is what really made this idea stand out to me. Sure we may have bad days, but what if upon waking up, we realize how great of a day it already is. What if the second you get out of bed you think of how grateful you are to be alive another day, rather than focusing on how you will get through "another day"?
A huge part about this is seeing more good than bad during the day. Training you mind to focus on good rather than bad. Which believe me is very challenging!
I like to become conscious of when I am thinking thoughts that aren't uplifting to my energy and the second I notice I change those thoughts of negativity to thoughts of gratitude or positivity.
By having gratitude for another day yourself, you will be able to wake up in at least a little bit better mood, which will help you focus on more good throughout the day!
Also aa a side note, if you have a day that you perceive as bad, start to shift your focus on "how can this circumstance help me?" rather than focusing on how the circumstance is bad.
Closing thoughts.
I hope that his quick read helped you have more excitement in your day, and gave you some insight on gratitude / making each day a little bit better!
