I’ve talked about this in my old Left of the Dial blog a couple of times and I’ll reprise it here now.

I’m going to detail a little-used secret technique for succeeding in life. It’s not a pill you swallow or an easy, breezy walk in the park. Yet if you commit to this technique for the long-term you will succeed beyond your wildest expectations.

You can make this change at any point in your recovery or your life. It’s better later than not ever to create this change. I’ve talked about it before: strength training.

Taking action cures fear and instills confidence in a person. “Lifting” as it’s commonly called is the magic motivator for creating other positive changes. The more you do it, the easier it will get. And the longer you lift, more benefits accrue like greater confidence and ahem-a better sex life.

Training 3x/week for 4 weeks is the goal. Training 2x/week on the days you can’t train 3x is acceptable. The goal is to train consistently to see progress over the long-term. A slip-up, a failure, days when you fall down here and there don’t matter as long as you’re resilient, pick yourself up and right yourself to re-commit.

Setbacks of any kind are often only temporary and this goes for doing lifting routines. A quote on the whiteboard at the gym was from Robin Williams a couple of weeks ago. It talked about finding that spark of madness and using it while you have it. Though it could seem in poor taste that the management chose that quote Robin’s words do hint at what it takes to persist in achieving goals.

I’m okay calling this spark madness because it appears not everyone has it not even people diagnosed with mental illnesses. My words for this are drive, determination. It’s when you decide to commit to a goal, take steps to make it happen, and use the achievement of the goal as a springboard to do other things.

It helps to make it as convenient as possible to do what you have to do to succeed.

I will sign off now and on Thursday talk about my own experiences with lifting.