An introduction: Do you even want what you want?
When contemplating what I wanted to write for my first blog for The Mindful Meathead, I had a really wide range of thoughts. Should I just introduce myself and who I am? Should I discuss how under-prioritized sleep and recovery currently are in the fitness industry? Should I just chug three large cups of cold brew and see what happens? While I would be happy to do any of these three things, I thought that, for my first blog, I should focus on the fitness and wellness wants people have. To not be a hypocrite, I should probably set some goals for this individual blog post that I would like the reader to leave with:
1. To briefly introduce the mission of The Mindful Meathead.
2. To tell you a little about myself.
2. To get people to think about the reason they want what they want.
I always love to start with a quote because I have long believed that on the shoulders of giants, we can see farther. There, I even referenced and damn near quoted Bernard of Chartres in my explanation for my love of quotes.
Here is an oldie, but a goodie: "The unexamined life is not worth living." -Plato, quoting Socrates.
In our current distraction-obsessed world it is entirely possible to go days, months, or even years without taking a second to think about what you are doing. There are people who:
1. Wake up and immediately turn on a show, podcast, or music while showering and getting ready.
2. Eat as a force of habit.
3.Commute with some kind of media going into their brain.
4.Work all day with constant distractions, conversing with people in-person or via technology.
5.All the while, filling any downtime voids with social media, internet articles, and memes.
6.Spend their evening in front of multiple screens simultaneously feeding more and more information into their eyes and ears.
7.Toss and turn until exhaustion takes them into a restless slumber so they can wake up do it all again.
This might be hyperbolic, but there are people who live this way or at least live a good portion of their day this way. If you are getting barraged with constant external inputs, it leaves little to no time for internal input. This is an unexamined life, and I try as much as possible to warn people against it.
Before accusing me of being a Luddite, understand that I am not telling you to kill your iPhone or live a solitary existence off the grid like Thoreau. I am advocating taking a bit of time each day to be alone in your thoughts. It doesn't have to be hours on end or even that long, but it is a powerful tool for understanding both yourself and the world around you. Giving yourself time to listen to your own internal inputs can help your memory, stress-level, focus, health, and and happiness.
This is where mindfulness comes in. According to the old Google machine, Mindfulness is defined as "a mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique." I believe everyone could benefit from a little more time in the present moment rather than regretting the past and fearing the future. That is why I created The Mindful Meathead. The mission of The Mindful Meathead is to encourage presence in the mind and the body.
If people can get in touch with their own thoughts and feelings a bit more, I believe people would be more productive, more content, and more positive about their outlook on life. As I have gotten older, I have become increasingly interested in examining my own life to get the most I can out of it. Now a brief history of how I got to this point:
I grew up fat. Not a little chunky or big-boned or overweight, I grew up fat. For the first 17 years of my life, I was the funny fat kid, and that's just kind of the way it was. I did impressions of Chris Farley, I wore Hawaiian shirts to school in February, and I did some pretty gnarly belly flops into any pool that could handle my thunder. While I was aware of my heft, I played sports and was relatively athletic, I was rather popular in a small town, and I had a great childhood and family.
Despite my adorableness at a young age, eventually, my weight started to become an issue both physically and mentally. As I got older, I became more self-conscious, insecure, and worried about what I looked like to other people. Although I wanted to change, I didn't really understand nutrition, training, or how the two were related. I continued to play sports with some success as a role playing starter, utilizing my size and surprising agility in short spurts in lacrosse. I was quite popular and had a pretty lively social calendar. I wasn't exactly knocking it out of the park romantically, but I did okay. To an outsider, I probably looked like I was living my best life, but, when I was alone, I hated what I saw in the mirror. Excluding what I thought about my physical appearance, I was still very happy.
When I got to college, I had ballooned up to almost 290 pounds. That is a horrifying number when you consider I am only five-foot-six. Though I had my concerns about my size I instantly fell in love with DeSales University, made lots of friends through the lacrosse team, and was having a great time. After not starting in fall ball lacrosse, I knew I had to make a change. I said to myself (most likely while wallowing in buffalo chicken fingers and fries) College ball is just too fast for me to be this heavy. My coach was a great man who turned me on to the Atkins diet. I was still able to eat fried foods, more vodka than I could handle, as much bacon as I wanted, and a boatload of cheese. But, under absolutely no circumstance could I eat carbs. Even fruit and most vegetables were off limits too. I lost 25 lbs. rapidly, and for the first time in a really long time, I felt better (not great, but better) about my appearance. Atkins was not terribly healthy but it sparked something in me that made me want to do more on my journey from sickness to wellness to fitness.
Being a voracious reader, I began to pore over everything I could find about how to lose more weight. Two years later I was starting on my lacrosse team, had lost 50 total lbs. and had hit kind of a wall with weight loss. I was getting frustrated and I decided for my junior year of college lacrosse, I wanted to be under 210 lbs. I wasn't sure how I was going to get there, but I wrote down three goals in my journal; 1. Weigh less than 210 lbs. 2. Get a girlfriend 3. Become captain of the lacrosse team.
I worked my butt off. I did absolutely every single thing I could do to obtain these three goals. I didn't focus on school, neglected my family, and avoided some friends all in pursuit of these three objectives. "That's what champions do," I repeated over and over in my head with a singular focus in mind. It took me a couple of years until I had achieved all three of my goals simultaneously. The next picture is when I had completed the three goals and was at absolute peak d-bag:
There was one major problem with the fact that I had done exactly what I had set out to. I was the least happy I had ever been in my entire life. I was around 205 pounds but felt terrible all the time. I had gotten there by using a combination of punishing myself with cardio, taking caffeine and DMAA-laden supplements like Hydroxycut Hardcore and Jack3d, and even occasionally binging and purging when I had felt that I didn't work out hard enough to deserve what I was eating.
I also had a girlfriend... who didn't particularly like me. We went through the motions of boyfriend and girlfriend in public but we were not a good match and she was cold, distant, and often downright mean in private. She did not understand me at all and certainly didn't love me. Finally, from all of the weight loss, caloric restriction, and overtraining, I had zero energy and my lacrosse game suffered for it. I wasn't playing well and it was difficult to lead when I was not at my best as a player.
I got exactly what I wanted, and I was all the worse for it.
This is not uncommon. Many believe that setting a goal and failing at said goal is rough. Let me tell you, setting a goal, achieving it, and then realizing that you didn't want what you thought you did is downright devastating. The mistake that I made was thinking that a goal was the answer to my happiness. Both I and many others have learned that this is not the case. This is not only true with smaller and more personal goals like my own, but also with much loftier objectives.
Professional athletes and Olympians who have achieved their ultimate goal—a gold medal, Super Bowl, etc.—have stated that after victory, what followed was an immense depression. Achieving their goal and enjoying it was short-lived and, during these “post-race blues,” they looked around and had to ask themselves, “well, now what?” Achieving a goal or not achieving a goal should not dictate your happiness.
Tying your happiness to a goal is a fool’s errand. A million different factors that are completely out of your control can stop you from achieving a goal. If you did everything in your power for years and didn't achieve your goal due to a random happenstance or someone just being plain better than you, it should not mean that all of that time was wasted. The power is in loving the process of becoming your best, whatever that may look like.
This is not to say that you should not set goals because nothing matters and everything is out of your control. Goal-setting is incredibly important and I think it should be done in the short, mid, and long-term. But too often people set goals without understanding why they are setting those objectives. You have to ask yourself why you want what you want. You have to live an examined life. If you don't, you could end up leading a life that you didn't want in the first place.
Since my darker days, I have come a long way. I am no longer below 210 lbs. and that's just fine with me. As a CrossFitter with some mild success (I was 2017's 76th fittest teacher in America, weird brag), I need to be a little heavier for performance purposes. I can do gymnastics moves that I never dreamed I would be able to do, I can move heavy weights efficiently, and I've even become pretty good at cardio. I understand nutrition, provide programming and coaching to athletes, meditate daily, and spend as much time helping people as I do on vacation. More importantly than what I can do, I have a loving wife who supports me in what I do, my jobs as a teacher and coach bring me great joy, and I couldn't ask for better friends and family.
This extremely happy moment that I am living in right now is something I am grateful for. The reason that life is as good as it is right now is because I have done a lot of work to get closer to understanding what I want and need. It's a lifelong process that I intend to enjoy every second of.
In my next blog, we will talk about how to set goals that are measurable, realistic, and specific.
