Professor Elam

You have probably screwed up many times when pursuing an important goal. Am I right?

First of all, the biggest reason people fail is that they aren’t keeping their program in front of them and checking their goals off every day. So, if you haven’t been keeping track, start NOW. I always had my program written on the wall in the gym, and I knew I did it every day when I marked it off.

Second of all, even if you’re writing it all down, you are going to fail. It isn’t easy to build a routine from scratch. You’re retraining your brain after who knows how long.

But here’s what gets lost in the mistakes, distractions, and failures. 

These screw-ups are part of the process, which means thinking they are not actually screw-ups can change your perception and lead to more success.

Here’s what else I want you to know: Failure is not fatal. It can’t kill your progress unless you let it. I know some of you go nuts and get frustrated, and you might even say, “Well, I said I would exercise every day, and I missed day 10 like a real forehead, so now, what’s the point?”

The point is that you’re the type of person who faces failure and adversity, gets up, and keeps moving forward. Our first goal with the New Year challenge was to teach you to build a routine because routines are the key to success. Our goal is to teach you how to get going again when you fail. We want you to choose progress, not perfection. Because none of us are perfect.

It’s ok to spend a little bit of time reflecting on why you failed. But I don’t want you to dwell on it. Here’s a quick story about one of my failures that led to quite a few tears before I got back in gear and kept moving.

It was 1968. I had just won my second Mr. Universe contest in London. England was the place I got started. A telegram came from Joe Weider, the godfather of bodybuilding, to invite me to his Mr. Universe show in Miami (there were two different federations with the same title; it was all confusing). This was the moment I had been waiting for. My ticket to America was in my hand. I was 21 years old, and all the people who told me I’d never make it to America were about to be proven wrong.

I didn’t even go back to Germany where I lived in the spare room of the gym where I worked in Munich, to pick up my things. I just got on a plane to America with my gym bag. I was about to take America and its bodybuilders by storm, and Joe Weider would want me to settle down in California to be the frontman of bodybuilding.

That’s not what happened.

Frank Zane beat me. I was shocked, I was depressed, and I was all alone. I had just left everyone I knew and everything I had in Europe for this. All of the thoughts you can imagine went through my head. 

First, the denial: how did that little guy beat me? 

Then, the mental beating and the worst-case scenarios: I’m a loser, why did I ever think this was a good idea? Weider won’t want to work with a loser. I’m going to end up back in Austria yodeling by next week.

I cried all night. And in the morning, I woke up a little more clear-headed. Now, instead of denial and worst-case scenarios, I saw that Frank won because he was more cut than me and he had better definition. That meant I needed to work on my definition.

And just like that, I went from misery to a mission. Joe Weider still wanted me to stay in America, proving those worst-case stories we tell ourselves are almost always wrong. I moved to Venice near Gold’s Gym, and one of the first things I did was invite Frank Zane to stay and train with me. I wanted to learn from the person who beat me, and Frank was a great guy.

I went on to win 10 more world championships. Frank and I became friends, and Joe Weider became a mentor and father figure. None of that would have happened if I had gone along with the horror stories my brain was telling me and given up and gone home.

Your brain will always tell you why you should give up or that you screwed up. But you haven’t. If you believe you can’t screw up, you will succeed. (Adam teaches you how to create this mindset in his book.)

Your job is to take a step back, see where you can do better, and keep moving forward. So, if you have failed one of your goals we set at the beginning, stop beating yourself up, and turn that misery into a mission today.