Get Out of Your Own Way

I am a fairly young fellow.  I am still hanging onto the decade of the thirties.  Each decade that comes along, I think, “you know what, twenty isn’t that old”, “thirty isn’t that old”, “forty isn’t that old”.  Back to the topic at hand.  I want to talk briefly about the wisdom of teenagers.  They are stupid.  I know, I was the club leader of stupid teens.  As with any teenager, along with being stupid, I was constantly defeated and victimized by the world.  It was amazing, as a teenager, I was the smartest thing on two legs, yet I was too incompetent to accomplish anything of any merit because the world was keeping me down.  I knew that if the world  would ever just let me have a chance, I would do great things.  This way of thinking from a teen is dangerous, but to be expected.  More troubling is that actual adults have this misguided approach to life.  While there are those tragic events that the outside world throws at you, they usually pale in comparison to what is really going on between your ears.  While we are all victims at some time or another, the danger is living like a perpetual victim.  You know the type:

1. “All of the traffic lights are red when I am late for work.”

2. “Rich people are lucky”

3. “There aren’t any jobs out there”

4. “Obama/Bush ruined the economy”

5. “I would have been promoted, but the other guy is connected”

This is loser, victim, life-happens-to-me, wimp talk.  No one wants to hear how bad you have it.  Welcome to the real world, where winning requires work.  Your beef is not with the world, it is with YOU!  You are the problem, not the outside world.  Once you decide that getting out of your own way is your first step to success, things will start to move in a positive direction.  If you are wearing a permanent victim hat, then shift your focus.  Forget about fighting the world, fight yourself.  This is where the real battle lies.  Once you conquer yourself, the world is easy.  

Everything in Moderation?

I have heard the cliché “everything in moderation” for decades now.  I have heard it applied to a bunch of different things.  I will fully admit, that approaching things moderately in life, for me, has always been difficult. I, at one time, was the low/no-fat guy.  Trim the fat from the chicken breast, nothing fried, drain the fat from the ground beef, etc.  I have been the low carb guy also.  I have been the CrossFit guy, the “bodybuilding guy”, the bodyweight guy, and now the last few years, the weightlifting guy.  Each time I am given the whole moderation line.  Maybe they were right, maybe not. I have some issues with this idea of the moderate approach.  It may be OK, if the goal is mediocrity.  It seems to me that moderation and greatness, however, are not exactly two peas in a pod.  One cannot lead to the other.  But then on the other hand, few people (if any) cannot sustain a constant hard charging pace indefinately.  It would be difficult to keep a completely “clean” diet for years.  It would be very difficult to keep the same mundane, heavy squatting routine week after week, year after year.  These approaches usually start off very intensely and flame out and ultimately sink the participant.  However, I am not sure that multibillionaire Bill Gates approached business with the mindset of moderation.  The same goes for Steve Jobs, Donald Trump, Peyton Manning, or any other extremely successful person.  After some deliberation, I have decided that moderation alone won’t make greatness, but neither will all - out effort in perpetuity.  I believe that in order to remain on track AND pursue greatness, the ideal is to approach your given task “in moderation” with bouts of “excess”.  From a nutritional approach, eat “cleanish” for 3 months and eat super clean for 1 month.  Train moderately for 6 months and train like an animal for 3 months.  Work your 40 hours for a month, then try to kill it for a couple of weeks.  Good luck!