off topic: fight club
Here's my mildly cryptic proposition for a Fight Club... You have to accept that the "normal" way of life (the status quo) is never going to allow you to become the best version of yourself. That the only way forward is to passionately focus on completing the work necessary to illuminate, correct, and construct a new narrative that directs you towards the life you want. Whatever it is, you'll need to remove the blinders sold by reductionistic thinking and open yourself up to the multitude of inputs that allow for a compound effect (1+1+1>3). The mind, the body, and the spirit, singularly mean nothing, but when strengthened simultaneously create more than the sum of their parts. Fight Club seeks to build an undefeatable belief in the self, drawn from the ability to learn from the struggles (physical, mental, & emotional) life bestows upon you, and intentionally take action in accordance with the sovereign individual you wish to be.
Accountability is a pledge to your future self.
Respect is never forgetting the fundamentals.
Education never stops and is always moving.
Health is a vehicle for all performance.
Virtue is only recognized by the strength of ability.
Fear is a bastion for conformity.
Rules:
1. Start where you are.
2. Take action (fight, read, lift, nourish, create, recover).
3. Be better than yesterday.
Fight against mediocrity to live your best life.
326. new ideas
There are people who will never change their minds, not even when presented with new information. It’s okay to have a belief system because that’s how we make sense of the world, but there is a difference between being cautious about new ideas and being calcified.
Some people enjoy having discussions about what they believe in, welcoming new information as a means of progressively challenging who they were, in an attempt to consistently build and improve upon who they are. While others are closed off from any discussion to the point that they defend their belief system against any and all opposing thoughts, no matter how rational the argument. If at one point you both shared similar opinions, yet you decided to be open to new ideas and have since made changes to long held beliefs; you’ll likely be admonished for your transgressions with the person saying, “You’ve changed.” But isn’t that the point? You’re supposed to be open. To learn. To change. To grow.
What in nature stays the same its entire lifecycle? Nothing that I know of. Stagnation in an ever changing process is akin to death. Old habits — or in this case, belief systems — “die hard,” as they say.
I think it’s important that we maintain a sense of childhood wonderment as we progress through life. It’s very hard to have all the answers, and we should avoid those that do at all costs. We have to maintain a sense of openness about what we believe in. It’s okay to maintain rigidity in the process of developing a belief system, as long as we remain flexible in how it works itself out. If we are too tied to our ideas, then we run the risk of it eventually transforming into an identity that may not serve us in the long run.
Despite anyone’s beliefs, the one thing we can all agree on is that we all want to live a freer, healthier, more prosperous life, filled with love and adventure. But this can be very hard to find if you are so locked into an opinion that you completely shut off anything that could improve upon your current situation. It’s okay to have a belief system, but be able to differentiate between what is defining you versus what may be holding you back.
266. realizing a past trauma
When I was young, my mother would always ask me things like, “Why can’t you be this way?” or “Why can’t you be more like that person?” This led me to believe there was something inherently wrong with me. I was never good enough. I think that belief has followed me throughout my life, and became one of the reasons why I got into personal training / health coaching. I wanted so badly for someone to say, “Thank you. You are so great. You’ve helped me. And I appreciate who you are.”
It’s interesting to reflect on the paths we take. To really sit and wonder why. For myself, I try so hard to be good at what I do, that I’m often questioned, why I try so hard or what’s the purpose of continuously taking more classes? It’s very frustrating for me to hear these things. I have always justified them as a need to learn more so that I can be better at helping people, but I think a better reason is that I am just looking to be seen for what I can do and loved for what I am good at. With each new bit of information or protocol I learn, I am able to stand out in the eyes of the people that I help.
I think past traumas play a part in dictating all of our lives. The unfortunate part is that most of us will never take the time to develop the awareness that is needed to heal them. So we hold onto them thinking that the trauma is just who we are, when in reality it is just keeping us from all that we could be.
258. hard experiences
Translate your hard experiences into a mission.
We wonder what we’re supposed to do with this life. Often comparing ourselves to those who seem to have it all figured out. However, it isn’t so much that those people have it figured out as they have used their past struggles, hardships, and experiences as a catalyst to create something meaningful.
The tough times any of us are able to make it through offer a unique insight about how to overcome negative experiences, or better yet, avoid them all together. For example, some of the best doctors battled and overcame specific illnesses, only to become the leading practitioners in their field. They were able to translate their difficult experience into a mission.
Any of us can do the same. And it doesn’t have to be as grand of a gesture as saving a life. It can be anything we’ve struggled with, learned from and overcame such as a weight loss journey or overcoming depression. Our tough times are growth experiences that put us in a position to help those that face the same challenges we made it through. So if we are struggling to find a purpose, use what you’ve been through to make a difference.
244. broaden your horizons
We tend to lose our imagination as we get older. Or maybe we trade it in for our increasing level of priorities or our increasingly limited bandwidth. Either way, it gets continuously harder to imagine a future we want than to remember a past we’ve lived through. So that past becomes a guide for our decisions, instead of the opposite. Making it through the day becomes the goal, rather than envisioning new horizons. This serves us to the point that it allows us to “fly” on autopilot through our day — and if we aren’t careful, even our life — by completing tasks and getting things done, but ultimately falls short on improving that life.
We’ve become less creative and imaginative as we age, and consequently more fixed and dogmatic in the narrative we allow ourselves to live by. And while this can be a way of life, it is certainly not a way to live.
223. memories of yesterday
For our life to progress, it’s necessary to abandon things we’ve become to create space for a better version of what will be. With that loss, we see old opinions, strategies, and relationships wither. Just as likely as those memories fade, so too, does the identity of who we used to be. It’s transformation. With each passing day, a part of us is gone. Left in the memory of yesterday. While the rest, and hopefully the best parts of us, move on with the freedom to create a better tomorrow.
Don’t be afraid to let go, but understand that nothing on our path toward progress is absolute. Pay attention to the memories of yesterday. Walk confidently away from the memories that fade, as the events they’re linked to have served their purpose in progressing our story. And for the ones that continue to reverberate, be aware that they may actually be a necessary part of building our better tomorrow.
189. purpose
Wake up everyday with a purpose.
How do you know if you have purpose?
If you don’t feel like getting out of bed in the morning, then you haven’t found it. If your days are wasted on activities that fill your time, instead of create meaning, then you haven’t found it.
If you haven’t found it yet, that’s okay, but be aware that you’re wasting your fucking time on things that do not matter, and at the same time will keep you as a lesser version of who you can be.
How do I find purpose?
It starts with awareness. Who you are today, and what you consistently do is either keeping you within the bounds you’ve created for yourself, or seeks to continually extend the limits of where you feel comfortable.
Everything of beauty and awe in this life is predicated on growth, this includes you. The purpose of the flower is to bloom, just as the purpose of the caterpillar, much like your’s is to transform into something new. That newness and beauty comes from the metamorphosis, the change, the ability to redefine ourselves, and continually draw lines in the sand further and further away from our starting point, so that one day, when we look back we can’t recognize who we used to be because we are so enamored with who we’ve become.
Purpose comes with whatever makes you a better version of yourself. It’s the reason to get out of bed in the morning, its the reason not to waste time on things that don’t matter. It’s what people of lesser ambition, and who are scared to answer the call, think of as “work” when in reality, it’s just ceasing on every small opportunity to recreate our identity. Eventually, the those incremental changes become part of our purpose, creating a life built on momentum that we never want to stop.
That’s purpose.
145. searching
We’re all searching for something. Money. Status. Higher power. Significant others. It all come down to one thing. It’s mostly to fill a void of some past trauma that we have experienced, whether we are conscious to it or not. Or, perhaps there’s an instinctive drive inside that pushes us in a particular direction in an effort to fulfill some aspect of ourself we do not yet understand. Some of us are searching for the love we never had, in an effort to feel whole for the first time. Others are searching for the secrets of the universe because there is a piece of themselves they haven’t been able to define no matter how deep they go.
We’re trying to put the pieces back together, thinking we’re broken, without realizing that it’s the very awareness of the flaws that provide us the ability to improve. It’s the scars that give you a reason to reflect, just as the missteps give you a reason to redirect. There are people that drift along not understanding the reasons behind their choices, or why thins happen to them, and then there are those that become mindful of the journey and understand that things happen for them.
When we search externally for anything, we need to recognize that we are simply trying to fulfill some part of us. What we are looking for can give us clues about what we need to confront within ourselves, so that we no longer need the external validation. And once we have that, we can truly find fulfillment.