Are you a HOPE DEALER?

This one's short and sweet with some thoughts on hope.

For a long time I believed that if more people had hope that their lives would be drastically improved.

I'm a big fan of John C Maxwell and his books, and in many of his books he talks about being a HOPE dealer.

And I believed that's all it took was hope.

I thought to myself “if I could show people that there's hope, they’d do what needs to be done”.

I run into so many people that are absolutely HOPELESS that I just feel like if they had a bit of hope, just an ounce, it would change so much.

But I was wrong.

This weekend, I learned something new: Hope is NOT an action plan.

You see, some friends of ours got married out of town, so we arranged sitters for the kids and made our way there. Everything was going along great, until the speeches.

The father of the groom said something that was directly applicable to fitness, in fact it is applicable to anything in life, and I couldn't stop thinking about you.

He said that hope was nice and that it was necessary, but that it was not enough. Hope needs to be backed with hard work, otherwise it's completely useless.

If you're hopeful to get in shape but sit on your couch it's completely useless.

If you hope for your goal to come true yet refuse to lift a finger, nothing’s going to come from that hope, no matter just how much hope you have.

Hope doesn't mean things just fall in your lap, you have to go out and get it.

Hope is NECESSARY, yet NOT ENOUGH.

Hard work, discipline, determination, consistency and courage (etc.) are the backbone of hope, and without these things hope is quite useless.

I thought this was all quite interesting, but what hit me the hardest was what his son (the groom) added.

The groom is a Captain in the Canadian Army, and in his speech he said that in the army they have a saying that says “HOPE IS NOT AN ACTION PLAN”.

They never send a troop out and say “we hope it goes well”, “we hope this works”, or “we hope you make it back”.

In fact, what I found funny about the word hope is when it's used, it almost sounds like there is NO hope. I mean, if someone came to my fitness studio and asked me if my programs work, how good would you feel if I said "I hope so"...

Hope is not an action plan, but man, throw in some hard work using a proven system and instantly you've got results.

If you want success, in ANY area of life, you must have hope, believing it's possible, and PUT IN THE HARD WORK.

I have yet to come across any other method or strategy that works.

Always remember; hope is not an action plan.

Hoping for weight loss is NOT enough, you must back that hope with a relentless pursuit.

Keep at it, keep pressing on, and your goals will surely arrive.

To your success, 

Al