Posts Tagged ‘life lessons’

More Literal & Metaphorical #WeightTraining Please

Posted: March 26, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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I love weight training. It is one of three things I recommend to every human being. It is one of the things I love that is actually good for me.

Weight training has positively impacted my life as much or more than any other external concept I’ve encountered while I’ve been alive. I’ve been regularly weight training for two thirds of my life now.

I don’t plan on stopping. All physical exercise is a marathon, not a sprint. Weight training is not something one does for a season, it is something one does for life.

Every year that goes by more and more scientific studies come out showing greater and greater benefits of weight training. Broader benefits and deeper benefits. Physical benefits, mental benefits and social/emotional benefits. Benefits for children and benefits for the elderly. Benefits for living longer and benefits for living a higher quality of life.

There has been and will continue to be resistance to weight training because of it being intertwined with bodybuilding. Male bodybuilders are to weight training as female instagram influencers are to yoga pants. They go hand in hand but only represent the egomaniacal extremes of the user base.

Most people want to exercise and benefit from weight training for practical health benefits. Not because they are seeking external validation from strangers via their smartphone to compensate for an internal lack.

For every fitness influencer covered in athleisure shape ware from head to toe while they photoshop their selfies, there are 10,000 people who would benefit from going to their local gym, a few times per week, to see and feel tangible physical benefits of exercise, surprisingly quickly.

Warm up, lift some weights that challenge their effort and comfort level, do some cardio, stretch, cool down, go home, shower, and eat. Anything beyond that moves into intermediate and beyond which one can find infinite information on in the growing podcast and youtube fitness video sphere.

Weight training helped me in the deepest, darkest times in my life. From depression, to burn out, to grieving the deaths of both of my parents. It helped me to feel good, feel challenged, feel accomplished, feel pride, feel growth. I wish that for every person I meet which is why I recommend it to everyone regardless of demographic or type.

Weight training also makes for great analogies and metaphors. Meditation, another thing I universally recommend, has been called doing bicep curls for the brain. Seeking general challenges and discomfort has been called weight training for life.

More weight training for all and more weight training metaphors please.

Notice how I am yet to bring up aesthetics. Except to poke at the social media narcissists who use perceived visual fitness achievement as a fix for their addiction to attention. Aesthetics is a by product of weight training and exercise in general.

Exercising for aesthetics can be a path the dark side of the fitness world. See fit fluencers and steroid abusers. People who are chemically and surgically enhanced, making a living, by living and lie. Lying to anyone and everyone, including themselves, that their aesthetics can be achieved with discipline, consistency, and whatever products they are selling.

I’ve had multiple IFBB pros tell me when it comes to who is on gear/has had cosmetic surgery vs naturals; muscle mass volume to body fat percentage never lies, ever.

So use common sense, although I’m not so sure how common that is anymore.

But common sense would dictate all humans engage in some form of physical exercise unless they spend their days engaging in physical labor for the job/career.

Use it or lose it. That applies to your body and your mind. Physical and mental ailments and deterioration are often brought about by physical and mental inactivity. The happiest and most spry elderly are the most active. The saddest and slowest youths are the most sedentary. Use it or lost it.

More weight training for all and more weight training metaphors please.

Acceptance & Love of What Happens

Posted: March 26, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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Amor Fati is one of, if not the, most challenging concept I’ve ever learned.

To love what happens, regardless of what happens, is not natural. If we all loved what happened to us, regardless of whether we perceive what happens as positive or negative, we would be living in an unrecognizable world.

I am very grateful to have learned about this concept, through stoicism. Although the term Amor Fati is not of stoic origin. It is a term that comes from Frederich Nietzsche. This is a philosophical concept that is like jelly to the peanut butter of meditation.

Plugging the concept Amor Fati, into the awareness that is cultivated by a habitual meditation practice, has been
well, I’d like to say game changing, but in actuality it has been very challenging to apply and execute.

It is certainly a concept that goes against the grain. Modern culture and mass media certainly don’t put out the vibe of accepting and loving what happens to us. In fact, a solid majority of pop culture in America is about not liking what happens to us.

Amor Fati being the norm would mean the end of gossip, office politics, relationship drama, family feuds, rumors and innuendos. Imagining modern life without any one of those things requires strong, concentrated imagination. To imagine modern life without all of those concepts would be the beginning of a science fiction novel.

So it is natural to struggle with getting a grasp on Amor Fati because it is so unnatural and unnurtured in modern life.

Life doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Life doesn’t occur in a rehab facility. Life can be loud, messy, challenging, harsh, cold, unfair, stressful, and unnerving. We’re all zen until someone cuts us off in traffic or we stain our favorite shirt.

Life is challenging. Life is challenges. That is why I feel like philosophy and meditation go together like peanut butter and jelly. To think about philosophical concepts during meditation sessions has been a genuine help for me, when I’m able to disidentify from my thoughts and emotions.

Meditation can create space for deep thought. Meditation can create focused pondering of; the big things, the scary things, the confusing things, the unnatural things. Amor Fati is all of those things. It is a big, scary, confusing, unnatural concept to love everything that happens to us.

Amor Fati isn’t a philosophical concept that is meant to be all sunshine and rainbows. This isn’t a toxic positivity, self help guru, social media influencer like statement. This isn’t saying turn your frown upside down.

Amor Fati is as challenging as it gets, because we have been conditioned to think, perceive, feel and act in the opposite direction. If I didn’t have a meditation practice to plug Amor Fati into, I would have likely dismissed it instantly, like I imagine a great many people have throughout history since Nietzsche first wrote the words.

It is because Amor Fati is so different, that I believe it’s time has come to be mainstream. We need different in the culture right now. We need different in the zeitgeist right now. Amor Fait is what we need to break up the status quo claptrap that monopolizes the perceptions of the masses.

We need a different paradigm. We need to change our perceptions. Amor Fati is the type of concept that cuts across class, race, gender, and generation to challenge us at our cores equally.

It is a concept that I very much need to apply in my life. More and more as the days go by.

Amor Fati, to me, also sounds like something, that we all, desperately need at this point in history.

#Life Taught Me What Is Real

Posted: March 26, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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It is a sign of privilege to think that everything should go the way we want all the time.

It serves as both a compliment to and a reprimand of our upbringing. Any parent or legal guardian who is worth one’s salt wants their children to have a good life and a better life than they, the parent had, growing up.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

A byproduct of this in America over the past forty years has been helicopter parents, which evolved over the past twenty years into bulldozers parenting.

Life is only easy for the privileged, and that only applies to the external and material aspects of life. I have never met a rich person who didn’t have mental and emotional issues in spades. They were just able to throw money at the problems and use their money to create shields and masks for the public.

There is no escaping the yin yang.

There are ups and then there are downs. We wouldn’t know one without the other. We wouldn’t know sound without silence. We wouldn’t know darkness without light. And vice versa.

Frustrating isn’t nearly a good enough word to describe when a person has a vision for their life, they make the right choices to manifest that vision into reality, and then something(s) happen that interrupt their journey and block their path.

The Obstacle is The Way.

It sucks that we can’t always get what we want. Wouldn’t life be better that way?

It would certainly be easier and less stressful
but better? A life without challenges is
a better life? I don’t know about that one.

I know when I was younger; completely socially conditioned by mass media; completely identified with the thoughts and emotions instilled in me during my formative years by the for profit entertainment industry; that a life of fame, fortune, excitement and pleasure was the only life for me.

Then life happened. Real life. Not high school, homework, and hanging out with friends. Real life. Love, loss, triumph, tragedy, success, and failure
lots of failure.

Real life drove me to meditation, philosophy, drinking, journaling, sleeping in, reading, binge watching, weight training, hallucinogens, yoga, smoking, nature trail hikes
and an old enough age to see how cyclical, repetitive, and unique people and life can be regardless of technological advancement.

It’s all the same, only the names will change.

Real life taught me the interruptions from my childhood dreams weren’t interruptions. Real life taught me that the obstacles on my path weren’t obstacles. Real life taught me that hard times and challenges weren’t unfair or punishments.

Real life taught me those things are real life.

Living for our Present & Future vs Our Past

Posted: March 9, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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Living in the present moment sounds so simple, too simple perhaps. If it was easy for people to be present, rather than identified with their thoughts, emotions, and/or memories, the world we live in would be unrecognizable.

Our past makes us who we are. What led us to this very moment in time? Our past. For better and for worse. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

Our past choices became habits became patterns became the way we lived our lives. Many people live life unaware of this fact and even more are unaware that we can choose.

Meditation has been a life saver for me. Those close to me have heard me say that many times by now. Meditation helped me break the hold of identifying with my thoughts, my emotions, and as Eckhart Tolle says; my life situation.

We are not our thoughts, we are not our emotions, we are not our life situation.

What a wonderful concept. A moment of internal liberation. If only it was a one time, permanent fixing, magic pill, cure all. Meditation is not a magic cure all. Nothing is. The discovery that I am not my thoughts, I am not my emotions, I am not my past trauma was the beginning of awareness.

Awareness is the way out. Becoming aware was the first step, of the first day, of the rest of my life.

Step by step, day by day. One thing at a time. One choice at a time. That is how we live in the present moment. That is how we live for our future self that we would like to become. That is how we separate ourselves from our past, our trauma, our inapplicable teachings, our perceptions that no longer serve us, our old ways of doing things.

It’s just like most things in life; simple NOT easy.

Sure we can try, but what happens if we fail? What happens if we don’t try? What happens if we succeed? What happens if we sabotage ourself? What happens if we give up? We happens if we achieve mastery? What happens if we try, try, try again and nothing external changes?

First, gratitude. Always, gratitude. Gratitude is gravity. Gratitude is glue. Gratitude is what you lay the foundation on top of.

Then


Step by step, day by day. One thing at a time. One choice at a time. We choose, to do what we can, with what we have, to the extent we are capable of doing.

Change is hard, change is slow, change can be painful. If the opposite were true, the world we live in would be unrecognizable.

So we have to forgive ourself. We have to accept ourself. We have to love ourself. We have to support ourself. We have to cheer on ourself. We have to champion ourself. Life can be hard enough. Change is made harder if we are hard on ourself.

Simple NOT easy.

It can seem overwhelming. It can seem insurmountable. It can seem impossible. That’s why we do things of this nature;

Step by step, day by day. One thing at a time. One choice at a time. One breath at a time.We choose, to do what we can, with what we have, to the extent we are capable of doing.

That is how we live in the present moment. That is how we live for our future self that we would like to become. That is how we separate ourselves from our past, our trauma, our inapplicable teachings, our perceptions that no longer serve us, our old ways of doing things.

Simple NOT easy.

Worth a try.

Possible, Probable, Immeasurable, Balance

Posted: March 6, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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Balance

Possible? Yes. Probable? Well


That all depends.

Depends on what?

Well if you live in a capitalist controlled society, how much is money a direct concern for your ability to eat, drink, and be sheltered?

Are you living paycheck to paycheck just to survive? Constantly working to keep your head above water and only living on the survival plain?

If yes, then rest is a luxury. It shouldn’t be. Not this side of the industrial revolution. But it seems as though technological advances are weaponized against the working class in order to force more productivity for less compensation. See A.I doing to the white collar class what machines did to the blue collar class forty years ago.

From a place of stress and survival balance seems like a theory and a fantasy created by those who have never known struggle. But the ancient philosophies and spiritual practices that cultivate and tend to our hearts and souls come from a time when all there was to do was survive, when slavery was standard, and life expectancy was a fraction of what it is today.

Wisdom is wisdom for reason. Concepts, teachings, and ways; stand the test of time for a reason.

“Always do what you are afraid to do.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

When one spends the majority of their waking hours “earning a living”, and just trying to keep a roof over one’s head, as I spent many years doing myself; using limited leisure time for something other and pleasure is scary. That fear is often masked with dismissiveness, sarcasm, excuses, cynicism, and/or denial.

We work hard, we have the right to play hard. When one spends their time in the service of someone else’s dreams of making more, having more, producing more, extracting more
we want to spend our time off the clock doing what we want.

I understand this. I’ve eaten my feelings more times than I could ever attempt to count. I spent countless hours binge watches shows, rewatching movies, and marathoning video games because work sucks, I put in my time on the clock, and after my commute home it was ME time.

“Always do what you are afraid to do.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

But entertainment and escapism only worked so long for me before it all became shallow, then hollow, then empty, then a void, then burnout, then darkness.

We must challenge ourselves to work on ourselves and for ourselves, even when we feel we’re being worked to the bone and driven into the ground. It is hard. It is unknown. It is scary. It is work. It is hard. But it is worth it. Why?

Because we become better versions of ourselves. Individually, not in a cookie cutter way. Emotional regulation is different for everybody. Peace of mind is different for everybody. Overcoming fear is different for everybody. Letting go of the past is different for everybody. Physical fitness is different for every body. Mindfulness is different for everybody. Applied philosophical wisdom is different for everybody.

The principles are the same, the wisdom is the same, the application and results are unique because we are all unique.

I slept poorly for a third of my life. I spent my waking hours in a poor mental emotional state for half of my life. I had to work for a living. But when I stopped dedicating all of my leisure time to escaping and entertaining myself and went to work on myself, for myself
my sleep, my mind, my emotions all slowly and steadily became better.

“Always do what you are afraid to do.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’m still going, still working on it, no magic pill, no cure all, no end point until the end of my life. However, now I move forward with some stillness and balance.

Immeasurable? Yes.

Immeasurably better? Yes, please, thank you.

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