Startup Skills I Learned From my Fitness Journey

As a failed startup founder from the past who now got successful in fitness, here are some of the skills and insights that I learned during the process-

The Americal Phycological Association defines the term resilience as, “Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.”

Eating less calories than what your body needs to carry out your usual daily activities and doing a ton of physical exercise on top of that puts enormous stress on your body. Both physically and mentally. Your system is fighting against you, demanding you to quiet, every second. The feeling is the same when you are trying to build a business with no customers, have limited resources, and you haven’t figured out the product market fit yet. Your consciousness is asking you to pick a more certain carrier path.

The only way to conquer this is by embracing the pain instead of fighting against it. You must internalize the idea that all good things in life are hard to get and if you are feeling uncomfortable, it’s an indication that you are heading in the right direction.

When I started my weight loss plan, all I wanted to do was lose about 5 pounds. In fact, I didn’t even know I was overweight. I simply wanted to get rid of some of that beer gut. After I hit that goal, I didn’t really see much difference. As I gained more knowledge about muscle mass, body fat, and all those fitness jargon, I came to know that what I had achieved was just a lemon. There was real gold further down the line that I didn’t know existed.

Entrepreneurs often set goals that are way too high or way too low. You can’t set your goal correctly when you are not even in business yet. Chasing an unrealistic goal only leads to failure.

What you really need is a purpose. Your business should be purpose driven and it should be steered by continuously measuring progress.

Good things are hard to get but guess what else they come with, they also take a long time. That’s why it’s easy to fall into the trap of “get rich quick” or “lose weight quick” scams. Success is a system that is designed by its nature to reward hard-working individuals with great patience. The earlier you can accept this fact the better. When I started my fitness journey, I expected it to take about two weeks, but it took a month and then a year and I’m still practicing it every day.

Fitness and business are journeys that have no end.

Just by “trying to lose weight” either doesn’t give you any result or you will get a result that will be short lived. If you want it to be permanent, you need to change yourself. What counts is that moment when you say, “enough is enough, I can’t be like this no more”. I was never fond of going out. I always liked staying home, watching TV or working on my computer but after losing weight, I made hiking my favorite thing to do. This is what’s keeping me fit now.

Similarly, if you want to build a business, you must take over your imposter syndrome, be a businessperson and work on it like there’s no turning back.

Both in fitness and in business, one idea can’t keep working forever. One diet plan may work for a while and then it stops as your body adapts this environment. A certain marketing strategy may bring in customers but eventually it also stops. You should observe the changes in your surroundings, keep track of your progress and shake things up when needed.

Here’s what my one year of transformation looked like-

PS. This is my very first Medium post. Leave few words if you liked the story. Thank you for reading.

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