Grant's Weekly Word

I must be a really annoying dad. My teenage son in particular cops for my long winded lectures nearly every day. Much huffing and eye rolling is involved on his part but I persevere, it's all part of my plan.

I've always taken being a dad very seriously and was amazed when 15 years ago when I had my 1st child that he didn't come with an instruction manual! This is madness I thought, surely there must be some common, universal strategies that are provided by the midwife, doctors etc, it's seems like quite an important thing! Up until the birth there had been loads of advice, after that, you're on your own.

Baffled by this, my wife and I set to reading every book we could to ensure we were doing our best (I can highly recommend, The Baby Whisperer, Tracy Hogg and Raising Boys/Raising Girls by Steve Biddulph) and so our education began and we found the strategies that seemed to fit with our values and ideas.

Moving on 15 years, my eldest is now receiving the full dad treatment from me and I try my best to educate him about life in the hope he can make mistakes quickly and learn from them each time. Hence the lectures, mostly along the lines of "So what did you learn from that experience and how will you change it next time?"

Which brings me on to my main point - REPS. In the immortal words of Arnold Schwarzenegger "it's all about the reps".

My son and I are listening to the audio book "Total Recall" (following in from the hugely inspiring Bear Grylls autobiography, Mud, Sweat and Tears), Arnie's autobiography as it is full of brilliant lessons in life. He learnt very early on that if you want to grow big muscles you have to repeat the exercises over and over again to slowly build them up. He took this philosophy and applied it to many other parts of his life and has achieved incredible things as s result. Here's a few:
• The greatest body builder ever, winning Mr Olympia 7 times, responsible for taking the underground obscure cult and turning into an internationally recognised sport.
• Before he ever became a film star he built up a multimillion dollar portfolio of property, whilst competing as Mr Universe and running a mail order publishing company.
• Despite not speaking very good English he became the one of the highest paid Hollywood actors of his time and now has a net worth of over $300 million dollars.
• He became the Governor of California (if it was a country it would be the 4th wealthiest in the world) in 2003 serving until 2011 making huge progress with climate change and physical fitness legislation.

This impressive list (very brief, he's achieved so much more) has been achieved by implementing the philosophy of repetition. Each time the reps have been completed the next time you have to complete them a little bit better, always growing always improving. I love this idea as I can see it work in so many instances in life, especially in business.

When in the gym exercising with weights, doing the reps actually breaks down your muscles. If you push your muscles past their comfort zone into the part when they're struggling, when they rebuild, they will build a little bit bigger each time. If however, you don't push past the pain barrier, they won't grow bigger, they'll stay the same.

It's only when we push ourselves past the point we thought we couldn't reach, that we achieve greatness, and the "reps" are the route to getting us there.

When applied to all aspects of life, this idea can't help but deliver results. Constant repetition, each time tweaking to get better, at the activities that we need to improve and excel in equals success.

My favourite example of this is the time Arnold delivered his most important speech on climate change to the United Nations. It was a 40 minute speech that he had to write and he practiced it 50 times - 50 times! When he went on stage, he didn't need any notes, the reps had embedded the entire speech into his head, he new it off by heart, awesome!

So I would ask you to consider what it is that you need to apply the "reps" to. Your sales pitch, your cold calling, your cook book or like me, is it lecturing your kids over and over knowing eventually it should stick?