15 May Part 2: How Richard Branson Started Over 400 Companies: The most powerful productivity (& confidence) hack of all time.
“The more you do, the more you’ll do.”
– Anonymous
Because Live Your Legend has been growing like wild-fire, many in the community haven’t yet seen all of the amazing and timeless work our founder Scott Dinsmore created. Today, we showcase Part 2 of one of Scott’s classic posts as we roll out this new series. These will be Scott’s original words, unfiltered, to help you understand what made Scott so remarkable.
Last week we asked for your input and you (over-)delivered!
You left dozens of useful comments about what we should name our new series. Some of the favorites already are Classic Scott Dinsmore, Luckey’s Lasting Impression, Scott Unfiltered, In Scott’s Words, Scott’s Thoughts, Legendary Beginnings, LYL Legacy, Musings From a Legend, etc. There are so many good ones! It’ll be a struggle to pick just one. Big thanks to everyone who submitted ideas; we knew you’d come up with something better than we could. 🙂
Enjoy Part 2 of 2 of this first installment of the new series. (See part 1 of 2 here) Take it away, Scott…
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How Richard Branson Started Over 400 Companies: The most powerful productivity (& confidence) hack of all time!
The Magical 30-Day Challenge
By far my favorite way to tackle fitness is through 30 and 60-day challenges.
Given our craving for variety and how quickly we get bored with the norm, especially with working out, I decided to break my activity into 30-day bursts. This allows me to try all kinds of adventures and to seriously go after the activity at hand without getting burned out. Plain and simple, it makes fitness fun.
I encourage you to use the above steps and apply them to a different 30-day challenge every month or two.
You can do anything for 30 days, right?
Some of my recent challenges include:
- 31 days of Bikram Hot Yoga in a month (this was last month’s January challenge). I also juiced veggies for breakfast and ate mostly plants the rest of the day to do a little New Year’s cleanse – Chelsea, my wife, is an insanely talented cook – check out her mostly plants veggie cooking blog Food-Life Balance. (Side note: I was in a body fat loss competition with my buddy – not because I felt I needed to necessarily lose weight, but just for the fun challenge).
- See how much muscle I can gain in 2 months – that’s my Feb and March challenge, which involves a combo of Crossfit and Leo Costa’s Titan Training System (btw, the quality of the instruction at Kelly Starett’s San Francisco Crossfit gym is bar none. Also has a great view of the Golden Gate…).
- Complete the Goruck Challenge with 8 friends this June.
- Run a self-guided ‘Accidental Marathon’ with four friends.
- Rock climbing (gym or outdoors) – pick a face the first day you hope to conquer by month’s end.
- TRX Suspension training- whoever can get the most days in wins.
- Swim Fast Escape from Alcatraz and across the Golden Gate swims – with a group of 12-year-olds.
- Tahoe Rim Trail Ultra Marathon barefoot run- long runs and learning Chi Running as prep.
- Pick a different staircase to run each day in San Francisco- we found a great guide book for this. Every city has countless stairs.
- Summit Mt. Shasta or climb any mountain for that matter – this was actually what I did for my bachelor party…
- Cross-country Crossfit (high intensity 10-20 minute workouts) – I did this challenge last year remotely with my buddy in the Navy in Maryland using his Crossfit website. Free workouts posted daily. What a fun way to keep up from afar. We compared times each morning.
- P90X Extreme Home Fitness. The 13-week program is one of the best I’ve experienced for full body muscle, cardio and flexibility. Doing a month of it is a great start. I did the full 13-weeks and even gained just under 10lbs.
They do it for themselves…
I’m not the strongest guy at my gym.
I’m not the fastest guy in my running group.
I don’t win the races I enter.
I don’t do the things I do for some external trophy.
I do them because when I lift a little more weight, run a little farther, swim a little longer or eat a little healthier, I become a different person.
When I’m fit, I treat people better, I help people more and I’m capable of putting a bigger dent in the world.
I find new levels of confidence. I experience new heights of ambition.
I become powerful on an altogether different level.
And I absolutely love it.
The fit people don’t do what they do for those around them. They do it for themselves.
They do it for the person it makes them and for the way they’ll be able to impact the world as a result.
There is no health benefit to being bigger, faster or stronger than the person checking himself out in the mirror next to you.
The power comes in knowing that you can control the things you can control.
That you have the discipline to move mountains.
Get in control of that, and you’ll start to surprise yourself.
-Scott
P.S. What benefits have you gained from regular fitness? Motivate us by sharing a sentence in the comments below. Thanks!
Note: Tim Ferriss‘ book The 4-Hour Body helped me add clarity to some of the above ideas. Thanks Tim!
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In the comments below, let us know which 30 day fitness challenge is the most inspiring or interesting to you. We’d love to see you commit to trying it out! It can be such a confidence booster; don’t be surprised if it starts showing up in other areas of your life. 🙂
jyoti Gupta
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Corwinkb
Posted at 02:00h, 16 JulyScott,
Loved the article. I was diagnosed with Polycystic Kidney Disease shortly after playing softball with my church team one day about a year ago. I slid into the other team’s third baseman and ruptured many cysts causing a very painful infection.
My mantra became if I don’t aggressively go at it (whatever it may be) I won’t kill myself from the disease nor will the pain slow me down. But it did…
I got soft, lost control of my blood pressure and was told if I don’t figure this out I’d be on dialysis sooner than later.
So I promised myself I’d experiment and after a few weeks of pain and frustration I decided on the activity that all children learn early..running!
Nearly 7 weeks ago I started couch to 10k (c210k) by Zenlabs and fell in love… And you’re right, working out is key to success, confidence, health, happiness and so much more. ironically enough the only time I don’t have time to run is when I’m sleeping, s********, or at work. I run at night, in the morning, in the rain, in the sticky humidity and heat or the icy cold.
I’ve never felt better, I’m losing weight, my blood pressure is normalizing, I have more energy after work everyday and every run I don’t stop until I’ve smashed an old record even if my feet are dragging and the only thing keeping me moving is my flailing arms.
Laura
Posted at 09:01h, 21 AugustHi. I do wonder, however, whether the fact that we gain confidence by losing weight has something to do with the hugely disproportionate value our society puts on external appearance, and in particular (especially for women) on being slim. I lost a load of weight (healthily) before my wedding 2 years ago, and of course I felt better. But I went through a really hard time afterwards due to difficult life circumstances, lost any patterns I’d got into (heck, they were lost already by the time we hit the luxurious honeymoon buffets), and put it all back on. On the one hand I am inspired by this article – I know I would feel better and you’re right, if the likes of Richard Branson can have time and say it makes them more productive, then it must be able to help me too! BUT, on the other hand, (a) I think you’re right that feeling like you ‘should’ or are ‘not good enough’ unless you DO work out is a sure way to end up NOT working out – this is hard when there are so many messages for women telling them they are already not good enough if they’re even a regular healthy weight, let alone fat… and (b) genuinely when you say the activity you choose has to be easy to do daily, a challenge, and FUN, I wonder what on earth that could look like for me… I really just don’t enjoy running, I find weights etc. boring… in fact I find any gym-type activity boring if I do it ALONE, and whilst group classes are better there are (honestly – i’m developing a new career and am broke!) no affordable gyms in easy access to where I live and work. I love to swim and as I got to the end of your article I realised, – yes, doing excercise with others and a sense of competition is SO much more fun and motivating, but who would I race with as a swimmer when I’m not really that fast, and still have a chance of ever winning? I realised that although you’re meant to enjoy just competing with your own records, there’s something that makes you, as a kid, want to run and swim in races and manage to be the person who’s just fast enough to beat someone else in that race. I wonder if as someone who’s not a natural athlete, I got a bit left behind on the sports front by losing the ability to feel I could win that race and therefore gave up? Just my random musings, but i’d be interested in your advice to someone who’s distinctly un-sporty (at least, at the moment) but who probably has a more competitive nature than I usually let myself realise… Just “lose weight = look slimmer = become more confident” (whilst sadly probably true in our culture) just feels so unsatisfactory as an agenda to live my life on. But psyching myself into enjoying solitary running and weights is definitely not going to cut it (I have tried and give up after about 10 minutes) Any thoughts??
Lancer_Zero
Posted at 05:30h, 29 April“The fit people don’t do what they do for those around them. They do it for themselves. “.
I would recommend that you start recording your own lap time in the swimming pool and try to better it every week , even if it is by a second. Slowly, improve your techniques and stamina and slowly you will become better. Also, you can try Zumba or aerobics or dance classes all those things are fun and people are ready to compete. There are always affordable options available, you need to look harder.
Elizabeth
Posted at 10:31h, 07 SeptemberI lost 80lbs in a year and have dropped from a size 16 to a size 12 in the last six months. In fact, I almost fit into a size 10. It stills boggles my mind to think that 2 years ago I weighed over 260lbs and wore a size 22.
Ronniee Wang
Posted at 08:48h, 28 AprilThe experience was so amazing! Before that, I was hardly to get up before 9, now I could get up at 5 am every morning!