Shawn Phillips | Start Strong Monday

Too old or wise to engage in a Challenge?

These new insights are bound to invigorate, inspire and renew your commitment to you.

Take a baseball and launch it into the air. After the thrill ride lift-off slows visibly before briefly defying gravity, pausing motionless in the air for a moment, before accelerating back down towards the ground.

This baseball’s path is like your life trajectory—you come out of the shoots with tremendous energy, all cylinders firing.

The Rise (and Fall) of Your Health, Vitality, and Energy.

For your first two decades life rises with momentum, like the ball, going up, up, up. Each day a new experience on an exciting journey; growing, learning, expanding and becoming more in every way.

In your 20’s you bounce back quickly from stress, exercise and even injury. Months can pass without training with few ill effects. And diet? Check out my “drive thru diet!”

Things have begun to slow a tad but not such that anyone can notice. You feel indestructible and are confident that you’re “being that ball,” defying gravity only in this case for better than a decade.

The Illusion of Floating
You may be working like a dog on fire, striving for super-human financial success while physically doing “good enough,” surviving.

What the heck? You’ve got stuff to do now, and your body will be there when you’ve made it, right?

The fundamental flaw in this thinking, as I say in Strength for LIFE, is “the absence of illness is not the presence of Strength.” Getting by, defying gravity is the Lochness Monster of Fitness. It’s a fantasy. It doesn’t exist.

The fact is (and this is where I encourage you to pay special attention and take notes) like the very universe we inhabit, in each moment you’re either growing stronger or declining, but never standing still. There is no status quo.

Unfortunately, many people ignore, or even worse yet, do not allow themselves to acknowledge the mounting evidence of a declining trajectory. That is until they’re falling like that baseball back to earth gaining speed by the second.

The pull of gravity is amplified by “bad” habits that developed to manage stress while striving for the brass ring. It’s anything but a healthy lifestyle.

The seasonal diet and/or “event driven” bursts to “get in shape” (the wedding, the reunion, the milestone birthday) may slow the descent, but are really nothing more than veiled attempts to get back to the “status quo,” the fantasy of running in place.

Rise Up to the Challenge
Want to reverse the downward trends, take a run back to the top? It’s in the upward propulsion of your rising years that you’ll find the answers.

It’s intentionally engaging in a phase of “growth” again. Pressing for expansion, once intrinsic to our life—no real plan required—now demands intention and preparation.

This is where The Challenge comes in.

When you accept a Challenge, any challenge, be it a Fitness Transformation, learning a new sport or changing careers, you have accepted an invitation to growth. You’re again on the path that is at once both unsettling and yet so invigorating.

It’s what life really feels like when you’re being fully engaged.

Life is found alive in challenging yourself, pushing beyond what you know you are capable of doing, feeling, thinking, and being. It’s not in resting on past success or decade-old high-points, or becoming an idle spectator—that only causes you to shrink away from life, to get smaller and be less.

Now this doesn’t mean that your life should become non-stop Challenge moving from one quest to another. That’s a recipe for burn-out and a more active way to actually avoid life.

Your life and all those who you inspire, will be well served when you make Challenging yourself—in some new and fresh way—an semi-annual event.

This summer my challenge was the Triple Bypass. It pushed me physically and mentally in dimensions that I’d not known for many years. This challenge elevated the trajectory of my life and I’m better, wiser and more vibrant for it.

What’s your next challenge? What growth is calling you the loudest? Hint: It’s often the one you’re most resistant to embracing.

How will you become anew, again?

Meet The Author, Shawn

Known as "The Fitness Philosopher," for his deep, clear approach to the cutting through the fitness conundrum, Shawn is a 20+ year veteran in the field of Lifestyle Fitness and Peak Performance. Author of several best-selling book, with one of the most photographed physiques in history, Shawn, with his brother, Bill Phillips (Body for LIFE) catapulted EAS sports nutrition into the world leader and Muscle Media magazine and the documentary movie, Body of Work. He created the first computerized training system in PowerBuilding and the popular Variable Split System for Muscle Mass. Now, in his 40's, a husband and father of two young children, Shawn is passionate about helping busy, high-achieving "men in the middle" enjoy vibrant, energized, amazing, Full Strength lives! He has recently created the World’s 1st and only true premium nutrition shake for men, Full Strength — clinically proven to build muscle, burn fat and boost energy. His most recent book, Strength for LIFE is the "how to" guide to a Lifestyle of Fitness Freedom.