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The first thing you have to do when you set a goal is to determine exactly for whom you're doing it. Everyone needs goals, but we also need motivation to realize those goals. Many times, when the purpose of the goal is undetermined or ambiguous, the goal goes unrealized. Even while it may seem selfish or narcissistic, the best goals realized are those you set for yourself. Success is often measured in terms of accomplishment. But really, the accomplishment is realizing the goal. Success is just, sometimes, a side effect of reaching your goal.  The best advise I ever received to effect an accomplishment is to set your goals high and strive to achieve them. Here's a good example: Between January 1985 and April 1996 I had been on a total of 35 magazine covers. After you've been on several, the novelty wears off and it just becomes part of the deal. By no means did I ever set a goal to be on a magazine cover.  I'd never minimize the tremendous honor it is to be on a cover, but, the reality is, if you're a top pro, you get covers. But, every now and then something really cool happens that puts the whole magazine cover mystique into perspective. At least it did for me. The first cover I did for Ironman magazine was in November,1988—as the hero, Hercules Incarnate. I got another Ironman cover in February of 1991. And, one more, the last Ironman cover of my competitive career, in April of 1992. During my induction into the Bodybuilding Hall of Fame, on Memorial Day, 2011  Ironman publisher, and old friend John Balik, came up to me and asked if I would consider being on the cover of his magazine again.   “I’d love to,” I said, maybe a little too quickly.  “Good,” he said, “we have a tight publication schedule, the photo shoot is on July 15. Can you be ready?” “Heck yeah,” I responded, without thinking it through (that’s how I’ve always been - accept the challenge and figure out how to get it done later). Then I started doing the math. Oh boy.... That would give me 52 days to get in photo shoot shape – that's like two inches away from contest shape! Could I do it? At 48 years of age? Now, I was still in good shape. You have to be if you own a nutritional supplement company. People would tell me I looked good. But, You know, you get brutally honest people that would punctuate that statement with, “not like you used to though, but still pretty good.” “Pretty good?” Oh man.... What did I just get myself into? It was 15 years since I did a cover shoot! (Flex magazine, April 1996). I knew I had serious work to do to be ready. I was currently eating four meals a day - I had to ratchet that up to seven immediately. I was training four days a week - that had to increased to five. I had no room to miss a single training day. The mechanics of what I did were pretty cut and dry. But what drove me? Was it to promote my company? Sure. But we were already growing nicely. Nothing as crazy as what I bit off was necessary! Pride can be a great motivator, But after 35 covers, I had nothing to prove I thought back to the last Rocky movie that came out in 2006, Rocky Balboa. There’s a scene where Rocky is asked why he’s making a comeback and he says, “I still have the fire in my belly. I’m doing it for me.” I liked that. And that was my real reason. I took on this ambitious goal for me. To make a long story short, I put my nose to the grindstone, I put in the work and sacrifice and showed up at the shoot just as I had for any of the other photo shoot I've ever done – ready. But, it didn't hit me until that October 2011 issue of Ironman magazine showed up in my mailbox with me on the cover – 20 years after the last one I did. I was like a kid on Christmas morning. I did it. If I do say so myself, I looked pretty damn good – even for an old man!  There may be a lot of thoughts and motivations swirling around in your head for something you're trying to accomplish. Maybe you're trying to get someone to notice you. Maybe you want to show your significant other or your parents what you can accomplish. I’ve been there too. But let me say to you right now: don't do it for anyone else – do  it for you. For your own personal sense of accomplishment. I’m a people pleaser. You may be too. That’s fine. Nothing wrong with it. But don’t forget the one person you're with 24 hours a day, the one you see in the mirror each morning. And here’s a little secret you probably already know: when you please yourself you're usually more pleasing to those around you. It’s almost impossible to impress yourself and not impress others. If you want to take better care of the important people in your life, start by taking better care of yourself. Hit the gym with a passion today. Don’t do it for anyone else. Do it for you . . . impress yourself!

Hard work is at the core of every single thing that's worthwhile to achieve. Everyone has their unique take on what that is, how to achieve it and their version of hard work. The only viable metric to know if you're advancing or not is competition.  Competition is good. It pushes us to do better than what we think we're capable of doing – because we all want to win. Competition lets us know where we fall short. I won plenty of hardware in my career. But I never captured the greatest prize in bodybuilding – the Mr. Olympia. In that competition I always had a mountain named Lee Haney blocking my path. I didn’t have the genes to produce the freakish width of his clavicles or the naturally narrow waist he had. I knew there was only one way in the world I was going to beat him. I was going to have to outwork him. I learned this lesson early on in my bodybuilding career. By the time I was 14, I was working out like a mad man. When I got to high school I was well on my way to benching 400 and squatting 600 pounds as part of my regular workouts. Even though I was really strong for my age and size, I wasn't ready to compete. Until Paul came along. This kid was a year older than me; he had been in some competitions and brought home some medals. The other kids in the gym looked up to him. He was admired. Me? I was just a gym rat. And, one day in the gym, Paul let me know it. He flat out told me I was nothing compared to him. He had “competed” after all, and brought home hardware. Well, that was a giant mistake. Little did he know he just woke up the dragon slayer. At that moment I not only decided I could beat him, I was committed to beating him. I found out what show Paul would do next and I registered for it too -  Physique ‘79. I trained with everything I had for that show. I was so focussed.  All I could think of was beating Paul and earning the respect of the guys at the gym. Well, show time came around and when the dust settled I had taken sixth place. Not a very auspicious start to my competitive career; it would take me three more years to not only win the youth section of the event, but the overall as well. But, the good news was, sixth place was good enough to beat Paul. I still had a long way to go to become a champion, but, beating Paul gave me the confidence to believe I could achieve what I set out to do.  Even though Lee Haney was indeed the preverbal mountain in my path to winning an Olympia title, I never thought I couldn't beat him. I believed it with every fiber of my being. When I think back on that time even I cringe when I think of some of my workouts. I basically doubled what everyone else was doing and did two sessions a day. Why? Simple - I wanted to beat Lee. I never got him though. I knocked on his door three times, but he never let me in. But, training with him and competing against him pushed me to achieve levels of greatness I would never have approached otherwise.  I’ve told Lee more than once that I thought there was at least one year, maybe two, where I had him beat. He laughs and tells me I might be right, but the Sandow is staying at his house. To become a champion, you have to beat the champion. And, in a subjectively judged competition like bodybuilding, it can’t just be by the narrowest of margins. You have to be the clear winner. You have to knock out the champ. I couldn’t do that, but I still reached new heights by trying with everything I had in me. The lesson I learned was that the greatest competition I could face was not Paul or Lee Haney. It was with myself. Even though I was trying to beat these guys, and many more in between, it was the standard I set for myself that I had to beat. When Usain Bolt runs the 100 m or 200 m and sets a new world record, is he competing against the field or himself? Since no one is within three strides of him, the only way he can get better is to compete against himself.  Did the late Steve Jobs, the legendary CEO of Apple, sit in his office all day worrying about how he could beat Bill Gates? I’m sure the two men felt some personal competition. But, if Steve had spent all his time thinking about Bill, he wouldn’t have had the brain space to think of so many breakthroughs where he bested what he had done before. He competed with himself. So, let me dare you. It’s time for you to get up on that stage- in what-ever venue of your life that you need a challenge. It’s time for you to show how far you’ve come and where you're headed. Here’s who you have to beat—you! You have to beat who you were when you were in the very best shape of your life. You have to beat you from a week ago and a month ago. And to get the trophy, you can’t win by just a little. You have to show up and score a knockout. Are you up for the challenge? There's probably someone like Paul who says you're nothing;  they're going to whoop you. What are you going to do about it?