Mitchell Hooper has built a career that extends far beyond lifting impossibly heavy weights.
The two-time World’s Strongest Man has also become a successful businessman, author and content creator, balancing elite competition with family life and multiple business ventures. But despite everything he has achieved before turning 30, Hooper insists his success hasn’t come from talent alone.
Instead, he believes a handful of mindset shifts have been responsible for transforming his career—and he thinks almost anyone can apply them.
Speaking in a recent YouTube video, Hooper broke down the five principles that have helped him become one of the most successful athletes in strength sports while building a life outside of competition.
Reflecting on where he now finds himself, Hooper admitted his current position is something he never imagined reaching so early in life.
“At 30 years old, I’ve been lucky enough to win World’s Strongest Man twice, win eight other World Strongman competitions, run a whole bunch of businesses, have some be successful, some not so much, live in three different countries, have houses in two of them, and be in a spot that if I didn’t work another day in my life, we’d be okay,” he said.
“It’s well further than I ever thought I would be at this age.”
Hooper was quick to point out that he isn’t claiming to have everything figured out.
“I’m not perfect. Goes without saying,” he said. “The mindset that I’ve had to get so far ahead in certain areas have pulled me back in others.”
His first lesson was surprisingly simple: stop chasing perfection.
According to Hooper, many people waste valuable time trying to optimise every detail when consistency and practicality deliver almost identical results.
Using his own nutrition as an example, the Canadian explained that despite eating around 7,000 calories and up to 350 grams of protein each day, he no longer spends hours preparing elaborate meals.
Instead, he opts for a quick breakfast consisting of milk, whey isolate, toast, peanut butter and honey.
“Practicality over perfection is a major mindset that you need to have if you want to accomplish a lot,” he said. “You will inherently always stop yourself from moving forward if you try to do things perfectly.”
He added: “Perfection is kind of useless. You’re going to get maybe 1%, but it’s going to take away a lot more from you than the 1% that you might gain if you do things perfect.”
“You just try a lot of things, find out what works for you, and you just go. You put your foot on the gas and go,” he said.
The second principle centred around structure.
Hooper revealed that every weekday is carefully organised into time blocks covering content creation, training, sponsorship commitments, business projects and personal responsibilities.
However, he believes many people make the mistake of scheduling every minute of every day.
“When you know what to expect, your ability to do things is fantastic,” he said.
“The one thing that most people get wrong with structure is they structure every minute of every day. So you actually have no ability to take advantage of anything new, any new opportunity.”
He also deliberately protects time outside normal working hours.
“Nothing goes on the calendar before 9:00AM or after 5:00PM without extraordinary circumstances,” he said.
The most controversial section of the video came when Hooper argued that certain narcissistic traits can actually be beneficial.
He was careful to distinguish between unhealthy narcissism and using self-belief as a productive tool.
“If you have a sense of narcissism, not about where you are right now, but what you can become, that is incredibly useful,” he said.
Looking back to his first World’s Strongest Man appearance in 2022, Hooper recalled refusing to be intimidated despite competing alongside some of the biggest names in the sport.
“I just thought, ‘I think I’m going to win,'” he said. “It’s not disrespectful to say, ‘I think I am very good at this thing.'”
“But it’s this eternal feeling of whatever room you’re in, you belong.”
Hooper believes that confidence should come from believing in future potential rather than present achievements.
“I’ve met billionaires, celebrities, artists, musicians, whoever. And the one thing I always come away with is these people are not that different from me,” he said.
“I think if I apply myself to anything and I put in the principles to be successful, which is generally moving forward every day, I think I can get anywhere in time.”
He also believes people should feel entitled to achieving more from life—not because of who they currently are, but because everyone deserves the opportunity to fulfil their potential.
“The sense of entitlement about what you deserve from your life is incredibly useful,” he said.
He explained that too many people become comfortable simply making ends meet instead of aiming significantly higher.
“If you feel like your current situation is struggling to pay the bills or struggling with your enjoyment in day-to-day life, that’s not something that you have to have for any period of time that you don’t choose to have it,” he said.
One of the biggest decisions Hooper has made recently was relocating his family to Las Vegas.
To explain that leap, he referenced a principle he attributes to billionaire Jeff Bezos.
“If there’s ever a two-way decision, you make that decision,” he said. “So if you start a new training programme, you start a new job, a new business, a new place you want to live, a new relationship, whatever, all of those are decisions where if it doesn’t work out, you just go back to the same thing you were doing before.”
He believes many life-changing opportunities are reversible, making the risk far smaller than people imagine.
Another major takeaway centred around identity.
Rather than relying on motivation or even discipline, Hooper argues people should simply become the type of person who naturally performs the behaviours they want.
“No human being is disciplined all the time,” he said.
“The only thing that I’ve found creates a true, consistent, sustainable habit is they actually never get to the point where they’re into a negotiation with themselves.”
Instead, he focuses on becoming the person capable of achieving his goals.
“People like me behave like this and people like me do these things,” he said. “I’m at the gym today. Do I really want to be doing this? I don’t really know. I don’t really care. It’s just something that I do.”
He continued: “People like the World’s Strongest Man don’t miss a workout. They don’t miss reps. They don’t miss warm-ups because if you choose not to behave like that person, someone else is going to choose to behave like that person.”
Towards the end of the video, Hooper argued that complacency is one of the biggest obstacles stopping people from improving.
“I think most people are just complacent,” he said.
He suggested too many people focus on making small improvements instead of asking much bigger questions about what they truly want from life.
“I think most people, if they’re making $25 an hour, their head is at, ‘How can I make $27 an hour?’, not, ‘How could I go from making $50,000 a year to $200,000 a year?'” he said.
For Hooper, success is less about status and more about taking pride in whatever role you currently have.
Recalling a positive experience with a Starbucks employee, he explained that greatness doesn’t always require running the company.
“You don’t need to want to run Starbucks. He’s going to be able to go home at the end of the work day and say, ‘I did what I needed to do to feel good about the customers I was serving,'” he said.
As the video drew to a close, Hooper returned to the message that has underpinned his career from the beginning.
He believes progress starts with believing you are capable of far more than your current circumstances suggest—but only if that belief is backed up with action.
“You have to believe that there’s more out there for you than just what the people around you have been able to do, what your family’s been able to do, what the people in your job, with your background, with your degree have been able to do,” he said.
“It’s amazing how quickly things can change, but they have to change through action.”
“And that’s where manifestation is a lie, because that’s just putting it out into the ether. If you put it into your routines, you can absolutely make progress quickly.”
Featured image credit: Mitchell Hooper / YouTube
