Shawn Phillips | Start Strong Monday

The economy sucks!

You can put a positive spin on it but that’s the plain and simple truth.

Obesity sucks! Healthcare sucks. Fast-food sucks. Cancer triple-quadruple x1000 sucks. Divorce sucks. Hurting children sucks!

I’m sure you can agree that there’s entirely too much sucking in this world.

Well, on that note… I say it’s time to stop the sucking!

Yes, You Too Can Stop Sucking

No, I don’t mean to suggest that YOU SUCK. No, that’s not it at all. Of course, maybe you do—lord knows I’ve got more than a couple places that “suck” might be a good spin on my abilities—but that is not at all my intent here.

I believe there’s a virus in our culture, a hidden agreement we’ve made with the world around us to turn a blind eye to things, places, business, products that suck. And that many of us have come to accept this suck as a given, a fact of the evolving world.

Service Sucks

For one example of sucking, we took the kids to JumpStreet this past Sunday. And as I try to forget each time, we were greeted by the giant sucking sound of the “good enough” service. The service and entry experience is text book “suck.” The place is simply broken.

But it’s fun for the kids. So we go, I complain a little about it and then we move on. Granted, it certainly limits the times we go. I’m completely over ever having a b-day party there. But what else can we do?

You see, as long as you, I or we are tolerant of suck, for as long as we turn our thinking, discerning mind off (or on low), we are keeping “suck” alive. We’ve essentially kept a co-dependent relationship with it.

So, in the case of JumpStreet, I’m clear that I am not in a position nor would I be able to inspire better service from the bottom on, from the staff. So, it’s about not going, making the drive to places like Xtreme Challenge Arena , where real people own it, care and manage it. Where they care about your experience. A place where you feel good about sharing your money.

There’s also places you can share reviews, be social about the negative experience. That helps these days, I think.

Why Sucking is Personal to Me

As I mentioned, my inspiration for this call to “Stop Sucking” comes from an excerpt of Seth Godin’s book, Free Prize Inside, and a passage about Panera Bread (below).

But first the point of this part of the book is that, The problem lays with…

[This is from Seth's book, but written by a food critique writer]

“Panera’s products are remarkable, though, in that they’re developed an entirely new style of sucking. Their products don’t suck in any usual ways; they’re a fresh take on suckiness built from scratch. Since nothing sucks familiarly, Panera’s stuff can fool you at first if you don’t play close attention.”

“Marketers who don’t bother to make truly great stuff at the same time that they build the facade that makes people expect great stuff. The incremental cost of making a truly great pineapple upside-down cake (like the incremental cost of Starbucks making truly great coffee) is tiny.

What separates a product that grows the the ages from one that just grows and crashes is the ability to appeal to both worlds–the folks that want the fortune and the ones who want the cookie.”

Now, that is well said. It’s not enough, truly, to make the story that you make a premium beer–you must actually make the great product. And yet, so few get that. For there are still a large enough majority who don’t attend to the experience. They assume the story and let the product fill their expectation regardless of the actual experience.

And this my friends is how sucking survives,, and even thrives, like “The Thing” creating a life and energy of its own.

How I Put a Stop to the Sucking

I recall how this passage inspired me years ago when I started this crazy idea that became the Full Strength nutrition shake. How I set out not to just make “another” product, another protein shake, but to make a difference. To make a total nutrition integrated “nutritious & fast food” that would simplify and amplify my life and the lives of all those who would take the step up.

Step-up to incremental cost, as mentioned in Seth’s book. For Full Strength the true premium nutrition shake, that step-up is functionally a leap–for it’s created with more intention and intelligence than any protein shake or MRP’s. It’s a different sort of animal, in a entirely different zip code of quality. We improve on every small, hand-created batch produced fresh every three months. And for all that, the incremental “step-up” is about a dollar per meal.

When you’ve been trained to believe that the only difference between Met-Rx and Myoplex is packaging and price, it’s price that you learn to buy on. The thought of experience, of feeling a difference from the inside out, seems like fiction. So, price becomes the grade. And so goes the agreement with sucking.

You forget to expect more, you don’t know you can have more, so you unknowingly settle for crap that sucks. And so the suck goes on.

The Choice to Go Suck-Free

Your choice is simple, accept the mediocrity and continue to tolerate the suck or invest in the incremental cost of great, of Full Strength. Maybe you’re not discerning enough…Yet. Maybe you don’t yet know what great nutrition really feels like. But maybe you do. But you can’t find out what swimming in the ocean is like by standing on the beach.

That’s why I start every one of the faithful Full Strength Inner Circle members with the 14-Day Challenge. It’s as simple as it gets. One great Full Strength a day for 14 Days… and you open you mind and tune in and feel the difference. The difference in energy, in attention, in quality of life. The way you eat all day long, the way you sleep. Even the way you attend to the people around you.

If it sounds like I’m challenging you, you’re right. I am.

Because I believe that the SUCK has to STOP somewhere. And when you’re making the conscious choice to step it up, from the inside out, when you’re elevating your energy and awareness, awakening your mind and Strength, you’ve resourced what you need to begin making the choice elsewhere in your life.

I believe you’ve got the desire to be better, stronger and more empowered. No matter how absolutely great you are now, we all have that drive. And I know that the better, stronger and more awake you are the faster we will rise up to conquer SUCKING, and the sooner we and our children will live in a world free from the suckiness that pervades our world today.

Here’s to the End of Sucking one Great Shake at a Time.

Those Guns Belong to a QB?

My Denver Bronco’s are bore-ing!

Yep, Boring with a capital-B, thanks to one of the NFL’s most high-energy athletes, Tim Tebow.

Since inserting Tebow as the starting QB the Broncos have gone from one of the leagues leading passing teams to a throw-back style—ground and pound—running team. They won yesterday completing only two passes. A feat not accomplished since the early 1970’s of the NFL.

Experts can, do and will argue that the Broncos can’t continue to win like this and most certainly can’t win a championship.

The experts may be right. But then again, they may not be. Only time will tell on this one.

What I can tell you is that I see some simple profound wisdom in what Tebow and the Broncos are doing. The sort of “meat and potato” basics that we all assume we know, that we’re so beyond that we ignore them.

Why? Because they are bore-ing. I mean who wants to hear about the addition and subtraction of getting fit, losing weight, adding muscle when we can be wonderfully entertained by Kozo the Fat-Loss Clown and his Magical Mystery Fat-Loss Show.

Well, as the wholesome boy wonder is reminding us, all the glitters is not gold. Do the right thing, often enough with all your heart and there’s a brighter light from deep within each of us that sparkles through the darkest of times and the thickest layers of dirt and mud.

Maybe they can’t win the Superbowl running nearly every snap. That remains to be seen. But then the NFL is elite of the elite—the 1% of sports. And the fact is vast majority of football is the other 99% —the basics practiced ad naseam, over and over the first day you take the field.

And if you’re willing to do these same things, the basics over and over with passion, purpose and precision for years, only then will you even have a chance to compete at the 1% level.

Simply stated, in football, like fitness and life; the success and satisfaction is earned ground up, through hard work and basics. It’s the “meat-and-potato”, simple things repeated daily, with purpose and passion, that make all the difference.

We do truly want to believe otherwise because our minds like to trick us. We overlook the things we know, the parts we’ve become accustomed to seeing, and choose only the objects that glitter and glow.

That’s part of being human. It’s a trait that’s helped us survive for millions of years and now keeps many of us trapped and struggling. Here are four ways to break free from the trap.

4 Rules for Success in Football and Fitness

1. Get Back to the Basics Often

In your fitness and your life, as in football, as much as we love to admire the extraordinary, star athletes and Sportcenter highlight plays, 80% of the game is won or lost in the blocking and tackling. Same is true for you. In your career, your fitness even your relationship. It’s the seemingly little things that get you in the game or leave you on riding the pine.

2. Execute with Enthusiasm

Our rational minds make us want to believe that life is a game of X’s and O’s… it’s a formula. But over and over again we witness that there’s some else, something we can’t measure or map—and that drives us crazy—that matters. Call it the intangibles—enthusiasm, passion, purpose.

Tebow has it and it infects the team like Elway did in years past. Do you have it in your training, your diet, your life? Or is your fitness a chore, your diet a drain and your life a dull march to the end?

Get excited again and find the spark. It’s not out there, as much as you may want to believe it but it’s in you, waiting for you to confront your fears or resistance that block it. Look in for the passion, not out.

3. Know your Strengths

One thing the Broncos have found in the short Tebow era is something they’ve been missing for a long time—an identity. They may not be pretty, they may not even be exciting to watch. But for the first time in a long time they know who the hell they are. They have an identity—a Strength.

You have it. I have it. We all have strengths—those things, talents, abilities, some seeming flaws or imperfections that make us who we are. Stop pretending you’re not who you are and embrace your strength. Nothing worse than being a really amazing hippo who wishes he were a cheetah.

Embrace your stripes, spots or spout with pride.

4. Passion Beats Perfection Every Time

Notice that games of “world domination” are most often played by people who can’t manage the basics of day to day life. Rather than looking for a tricky plan or more cunning strategy for success, try getting more excited about results in your life than the process.

When you passionately perform the basics, like running the ball for 5 yards a carry, you quickly get damned excited about the results. As you likely heard me say, because I say it all the time, “the worst fitness plan executed with passion will out perform the best plan done halfheartedly every day.”

Don’t’ worry so much about getting it right, just get it done. Do it today, tomorrow, and the next day. Losing fat, gaining muscle, getting fit is not an event, it’s a lifestyle. And when you do it this way, it’ll quickly become not something you do but who you are.

The Basics To Get Back To

Tomorrow, I’ll share with you the short list of fitness fundamentals for a fabulously fit holiday season. And, yes, as you assumed your best basic #1 will be to get your eating sound and strong. And in my book there is no more sound, tried, tested and proven way to get your nutrition right than with a daily nutrition shake. And there is no second best nutrition shake to the world’s only true premium nutrition shake, Full Strength.

Now is the perfect time to experience the unfair competitive advantage of Full Strength. .

You may feel a little guilty watching others are struggle through the holiday eating binges but I’ll take that over the guilt of adding 10 pounds in the next six weeks! Yeah, any day.

Take the 14-Day Full Strength Challenge and find out what our members already know.

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.

The brain doctor, Dr. Amen talks about it. Wayne Dyer believes it’s essential to well-being. My brother, Bill, has an entire chapter in Transformation on it.

I manage to integrate it into the Strength for LIFE daily rituals; first thing each morning. What is it?

Gratitude!

What follows is an excerpt from a TED talk by Martin Seligman PhD, the “father of positive psychology.” Seligman pioneered the move from psychology as a way to reduce “pain” to a focus on increasing happiness. Here’s he shares a powerful practice for enhancing your positive emotions and happiness. It’s called the Gratitude Visit. Watch it and then… what you say? Ready?

A Dime for Your Experience!

What’d ya think?

Have you ever done anything like that–or that? If so, share your experience please.

If not, what’s ya say we get on with it? Come on… give it a test drive and start sharing.