I’ve been struggling recently.

Specifically, I've been struggling because I'm trying to figure out how to not piss people off with this blog post. At least, not more than necessary.

I'm proposing the idea that people should exercise to look better naked as opposed to exercising for more self-love, body positivity, or any other fluffy reasoning that people use to circle around the obvious truth.

You see, when people think of the word vanity or when they think about someone having an ego, they immediately give it a negative connotation.

What they don’t think of, is how ego, revenge, vanity, and narcissism in the short-term can be something negative. But it can be the spark of something magnificently positive in the long-term.

Vanity can be the gateway drug to something much deeper.

For example, how many of you reading have an older sibling?

Think about a time that they did something incredible and you wanted to do it too because you wanted to be better than them at it. You wanted to prove yourself and so this created a chip on your shoulder.

Maybe you have grown up with this chip on your shoulder, which you eventually find out how to harness and use at your will to really put your head down and work hard for an important goal in your life. It has nothing to do with beating your older sibling now, but it did in the beginning.

I'd argue that in the long-term, that initial ego is what set you up for a net-positive gain.

This is my older bro, Blake. We are many things, but I wouldn't say competitive (against each other) is one of them. ;)

Let's take it a little further.

How many of you reading have ever been told by someone that you couldn’t do something--a new career path, perhaps--and then you decided to do it anyway so you could stick it back in their fucking mouth?

Then, after some time passes and their comment subsides, you realize you genuinely enjoy what you’re doing and you end up evolving a successful career out of it.

Again, I'd say that's a net-positive gain.

Here’s the best:

What about your girlfriend or boyfriend breaking up with you?

Ohhhhhhh, man. Talk about lighting a FIRE under you to get your shit together!

Eating vegetables, going to the gym, flossing your teeth, shaving before you go out, reading more … all in the name of showing them how bad they messed up since they expect you to be upset and get all depressed n' shit. Nope. You’re out here just dominating life and signing autographs. And you continue to do so, even long after you've moved on from your ex.

All thanks to reasons that initially stemmed out of vanity.

The point of all those examples is to show you that a LARGE number of things you do, at first, are not solely because you wanted to do them for “high & mighty” reasons, as you may try to convince yourself.

Just like when your favorite fitness celebrity says they don’t work out to look good … first, is a lie because at least a part of it is for vanity reasons. But second, even if that is true, I can almost guarantee with 100% certainty that they didn’t start going to the gym to have more self-love, or more confidence, or to move better, or be stronger.

It’s because they wanted to look hot.

They wanted people to look at them and admire them.

And I’m here to ask the question:

What is wrong with going to the gym to look better naked?

The usual response is to say that you shouldn’t do that because it’s only short-term motivation and isn’t sustainable or because you’re “doing it for the wrong reasons”.

Sure, I can agree with that to an extent.

But what about when people initially go to the gym to look better naked and then later on, *after they actually do start to look better naked*, they realize other areas of their life are improving too?

What they're doing is building trust in themselves as they align their potential with their actions.

They wanna look hot + them doing something to bring them closer to that goal + actually seeing progress towards that goal = increased confidence and trust in themselves = self-fulfillment.

They begin to admire how that new V-neck sits firmly across their muscular shoulders. And how their arm veins start to pop when it gets hot outside. Or how those jeans start to hug against their prominent glutes THAT THEY WORKED HARD FOR.

And due to their clothes looking better on them, they feel more confident. They decide to roll up on that hot chick or hot dude in the bar and ask to buy them a drink, where a year ago they would’ve just sat in a corner and scrolled through Instagram.

They hit it off and so they decide to go on a date. The date goes well, so they go on 100 more. Then they get engaged. Then they have an amazing wedding and begin their lives together.

All because they decided to go to the gym to look hotter so they could get back at their ex.

That one small spark of revenge morphed into a lifetime of happiness.

Tell me again, what is wrong with lifting for vanity reasons?

To give one last example:

I knew a young guy once who was trying to get bigger for high school football and so he started going to the gym more.

Well … pretended he was going to the gym more because of football, but he actually just wanted bigger arms and traps so he would be admired by his friends and the girls at school.

After a few weeks of lifting, he had an older teammate who lifted at the same gym as him who decided to help the kid out. Took him under his wing and showed him how to truly lift to get big and strong.

The kid noticed how others viewed the bigger guys he lifted with – admirable, respectful, and slightly fearful.

The kid wanted that.

So the kid busted his ass for the next 3 years and gained 30lbs of muscle while getting stronger, smarter, and faster.

His peers treated him differently, his coaches were pumped with his improved performance on the field, and the girls definitely weren’t opposed to his new look.

He fed off of this, but started to realize something interesting.

The new admiration and respect from others began to dissolve away as it started to become more and more common. Something different began to take place of the aforementioned vanity reasons.

He started to realize what his true potential felt like.

If he could put his mind to improving in the gym through hard work, self-discipline, smart planning, and never quitting – what other areas of his life could he apply these attributes to?

If he could go to the gym 3 times a day for weeks on end, why couldn’t he start reading and learning for an hour every night?

If he could eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the school bathroom between classes just to gain weight, why couldn’t he have the same discipline to begin carving out a career path he truly enjoyed doing every day?

If he could diet every single day for 21 weeks in a row and win his natural bodybuilding pro card at the age of 22, why couldn’t he use that same grit and patience to start his own online coaching business, help as many people as possible, and fight through the procrastination to write this damn article you’re currently reading?

Well, here we are, my friend.

I am the kid and I’m telling you that the essence of what you’re reading right now started solely as a reason to get more chicks and have my friends admire me.

All because of one thing: potential disguised as vanity.

Freshman year of high school on the left. Senior year of college (age 22 - 2016) on the right.

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