Stage 3: Preparing for Success

After salvaging wisdom from your past and trading stale routines for fresh air, it’s time to set the stage for the victories marching your way.  Think of this phase as stretching before tip‑off—your muscles may remember the moves, but your mind runs the play.

Below are the exact snippets I scribbled on locker‑room whiteboards, hotel napkins, and phone lock screens while gearing up for the biggest auditions of my life—from pro tryouts to marriage vows.  Treat them like gym posters: pin up the ones that speak loudest and glance at them each morning until the words move off the wall and into your walk.

 

Fuel

Fueling your body for a workout is just as important as fueling your car for a road trip. The right fuel must be used to make your body run at its best. Your body needs three fuel sources to be at its best.

The first source is physical fuel, which is food and water. In the fitness world, this also can be extended to vitamins and supplements that give you the benefits of food.

The second source of fuel is mental fuel. Reading books and learning new skills is the primary source of mental fuel.

The last and most important source is spiritual fuel. This fuel comes from emotions that affect your drive to be faster, stronger, and wiser. This fuel is your motivation sector.

Negative emotions are more common in training your mind, body, and spirit because they hold more power. These emotions derive from anger, anxiety, depression, and sorrow. These emotions are common in everyday life due to the overwhelming amount of stress caused by the world. Consider these emotions a high dose of caffeine.

As bad as these emotions are, they can cause you to push yourself to another level in the gym and in life. The great thing about this fuel is that it burns fast. This fuel is the equivalent of nitrous oxide to a sports car; you will be able to perform at a crazy rate for a short time and eventually burn out.

 Using this fuel is great for short bouts of progress, such as cramming for a test, maxing out a heavyweight in the gym, or overcoming a loss affecting your day-to-day life.

When negative fuel is used correctly, it will release the positive fuel needed to be better than your best. Let’s use the example of breaking up with your significant other. Take that heartache and apply that emotional energy to a power workout. After that workout, you will feel so much stronger that you will forget your ex and potentially attract a new mate. You now have access to a positive emotion called confidence. This positive emotion will lead you back to the gym to burn the rest of that negative fuel to get that positive, confident fuel pumping again. Pretty soon, the negative fuel is all gone, and you’re left with a faster, stronger, and now wiser body, plus a lifetime supply of positive fuel or confidence.

The result of burning negative fuel to access the positive fuel will spill into your life. Imagine your body is a car with two gas tanks filled with dirty water and premium, engine-cleansing gasoline. Both tanks run into the other, and the only way you can access the second tank filled with good gas is to burn all of the dirty water in the first tank. That is precisely how negative fuel runs out in your life.

Regarding physical fuel such as food. It would help if you absorbed the fat and carbohydrates so that your body has the energy to process the vitamins. With mental fuel, you must read a book multiple times to absorb its contents, and in the process of learning its contents, you must take stringent cognitive tests to prove you have retained the knowledge of the subject.

You must go through heartache and be patient that joy is on the other side of sorrow with spiritual fuel.

Once you have learned how to utilize your fuel sources, you can face any challenge because you have the fuel to do it.

Next time you think about quitting on life.

Remember, you are just burning fuel; once the negative fuel is gone, the positive fuel will carry you through to the finish line.

 

Training to use your fuel:

I wrote this note at a point in my life when I realized that I needed to move toward my goals. To make these moves, I had to have suitable fuel sources. I had to figure out my fuel sources and break them down into areas where I could apply them more efficiently to my life. The concept of fuel drives anything you set your mind to do. In this note, I spoke about emotions as fuel to motivate a successful fitness journey, but these fuel sources can be used at your job, school, or even in your marriage.

Blueprint break: Write down three fuel sources that you use in your life.

At this point in my life, my girlfriend (now wife) had moved to California to live with me. I was engaged and had to be my family's breadwinner. My wife was still working on transitioning to her career as a college professor, so handling the bulk of the finances was my obligation. I was a small business owner, and now I had to make my fitness business grow more prominent than it was—this time, not just for me but for my family.

I had a new fuel source, and its name was responsibility, but before I could access it, I had to let the fuel of doubt burn out my life. I doubted myself as a trainer because I no longer had the safety net of a company behind me. I doubted myself as a man because I was financially unequipped to provide for my wife. These doubts were fuel sources that burned for a while in my life.

Answer these questions: Based on the three fuel sources you wrote down.

Which fuel source do you utilize the most in your life?

Which fuel source comes second?

Which fuel source is used the least?

 

Overcoming Pain

Pain is nothing but an extreme state of mental discomfort. This means you and I can overcome pain.

Overcome the pain of fatigue so that you may stay strong through any circumstance.

Overcome the pain of defeat so that you can ensure that you will never have to experience it.

Overcome the pain of doubt, and never let it enter your mind.

Overcome the pain of fear so that you can accept any challenge that life throws at you with confidence.

 

Training to Overcome Pain

This note serves as a powerful reminder that no obstacle is too great to overcome. Pain is never limited to the physical realm; it can also be deeply mental and spiritual. As we navigate our daily lives, we encounter various forms of pain, whether it stems from the stress of a demanding job, the frustration of unmet goals, or the lingering effects of a sports injury.

The way we confront and manage this pain plays a crucial role in determining whether we overcome it or succumb to its weight. Consider the example of working a job that fails to bring any sense of fulfillment. The pain begins with the mental struggle of forcing yourself out of bed at 7 a.m., knowing that the day ahead will be a grind. You dress, endure over an hour of soul-draining traffic, and arrive at a job that starts at 9 a.m. and drags on until 6 p.m. You barely have time for a 30-minute lunch, often resorting to convenient but unhealthy food options. To make matters worse, you’re surrounded by coworkers you tolerate just to get through the day and a boss who wields their authority as a means of asserting dominance rather than fostering a supportive environment.

This unrelenting routine gradually chips away at your mental and spiritual well-being. Over time, the accumulated stress and dissatisfaction can spiral into depression. Once depression takes hold, its grip isn’t just emotional—it manifests physically.

You may feel constantly fatigued, experience aches and pains, or struggle to find the energy to accomplish even the simplest tasks. 

In this cycle, pain—initially mental and spiritual—can transform into a physical burden, reinforcing the idea that all forms of pain are interconnected. Breaking free from this cycle requires acknowledgment, action, and resilience.

Answer this question: What is the primary pain source in your life?

Overcoming pain can sometimes be as straightforward as making a bold decision—quitting a job that drains you or transitioning into a position that aligns with your passion and goals. I faced such a dilemma when I found myself dissatisfied with my role as a front desk worker. This position, often akin to a door greeter in the fitness industry, came with its own set of challenges and frustrations that left me feeling unfulfilled and stuck.

But the pain I had to confront wasn’t just emotional or mental—it was physical as well. Like many, I faced the reality of injury. My physical setback came in the form of a dislocated knee, a painful experience that became a turning point in my life. That pain pushed me to take my first step into personal training, earning my certification and setting the foundation for what would become a rewarding career.

The hardest aspect of physical pain, however, is not just enduring it but learning to move past it. When I was rehabbing my knee, I had to overcome the memory of the pain mentally. I had to convince myself to step back onto the basketball court with the same confidence and vigor as if the injury had never happened. That mental hurdle was as challenging as the physical recovery.

Ultimately, we all have the power to overcome pain—but it begins with recognition. You can’t treat a disease you don’t realize exists; similarly, you can’t confront and conquer pain you haven’t acknowledged. Identifying the source of your pain is the first step toward rising above it.

Identify your pain, then overcome it.

Answer this question: How will you overcome the pain in your life?

 

Learning to Fly

You crawl before you walk, you walk before you run, you run before you jump, you jump before you fly.

In life, we start our paths crawling. We crawl because we have no purpose. Once we learn the purpose of our lives, that’s when we begin to walk.

When we start walking, we learn that we need to walk in a specific direction. Once we understand what direction to walk in, we run.

We run because we have caught a glimpse of the light at the end of our path, so we run towards it.

As we run towards this light, obstacles are thrown in our way to prevent us from reaching that light. To reach the light, we learn how to jump.

We jump over every obstacle thrown in our way. Some obstacles may require us to jump higher than others, but we can still leap over them.

As we leap over these obstacles, we will see the path from beginning to end, but we still haven’t reached the light ahead.

Do not be discouraged; run to the end of the path and take that leap of faith; that’s when we will learn to fly.

 

Flight Training:

Sometimes, we must fly to new heights in our lives. This note was written while creating my own business, getting married, and learning to be a man. I was running a semi-successful personal training business then, and I had grown from 4 clients to 15 in three months. I had successfully graduated from crawling to walking.

In late 2012, the gym I was working out of closed. I no longer had a space to train my clients, and now my income source was threatened. I ground through the year and still moved my new fiancé to California. 2013 was a “struggle year, " meaning I struggled in nearly every aspect of my life.  My fiancé and I were planning a wedding, and my dream was not enough to pay for it. I had gone from crawling to walking, and now I had to learn to run.

We had one car, and I had clients in four cities with daily schedules ranging from 5 am to 7 pm. I worked part-time at Target (a retail store) to fill some financial gaps, and my fiancé worked overtime (12 hours a day) to ensure we had a roof over our heads.

This phase was my running phase in life. I had to keep moving. I was tired and stressed, but I was also experienced. This experience allowed me to walk back into my old fitness center and regain my job as a personal trainer, except this time, I was getting paid more money than I made last time ($5 an hour more, to be exact, roughly

$12,000 more a year.) I had to put my business on hold for a while, but the time away made me wiser. I acquired five more fitness certifications (one personal training and four group exercise specialty certifications).

A new opportunity arose for me to take my training skills to a new level: through group exercise. I now had to learn to be a group exercise instructor or the “rock stars” of the gym.

In my home life, my fiancé and I had generated enough income to fully pay for our wedding. This period of my life was my time to jump. I was learning to fly. I taught boot camps, cycling, and group boxing. I ended up landing a 15-class schedule and was solidifying myself as one of the best group exercise instructors in the company.

Answer this question: What event in your life forced you to have to learn to fly?

 

Final Thoughts

To be successful, you must be prepared for success.

That means you must find your fuel source to overcome growing pains to learn to fly.

Blueprint break: Create a declaration for preparing for success.