Category: Doing Something New

This category covers things that relate to trying something different. It is a sort of catch-all category that contains things are more verb-like than noun-like. These things like be new movements, new ways to think, or a specific suggestion that you try something that you may never have tried before. It’s a big category because humans are action oriented beings that are kinesthetic learner who benefit the most from interacting with their immediate environment.

How I Changed My Life – Part One

One of my clients asked me how I changed. Slightly puzzled I asked her exactly what she meant. Turns out she was referring to the transformation after my father died when I made the decision to stop engaging in the escapist compulsive behavior and start living a more purposeful life. My answer was a little scattered because there were many reason why I changed but below is a list of the things that lined-up for me in order to begin living a life that I was a cause for:

Making the decision to do new things – regardless of what they were or what I thought about them (how scary they may be) I knew that I needed to do different things to have a different life. But knowing wasn’t enough, I needed to actually do them. I made a decision one moment and that was when things began to change.

Noticing that I have everything in my life that I believe I need to have and realizing that if I started to believe that I needed other things, I would do whatever I needed to do to get them.

Seeing my life as being a part of something bigger that involved other people. Some would call this spirituality or a sense of community or interconnectedness, but by realizing that everyone is part of the same thing, my role changed immediately. Instead of being a floater, wandering the earth, I was able to see the impact that I had on other people and the impact that they could have on me.

Realizing that there was more to the experience of life than what I had been getting. The compulsive behaviors created a predictable state change and I liked the certainty of that. But it was boring because I was doing the same things over and over again. After almost 20 years I was getting tired of it and I was becoming increasingly aware that other people were doing some pretty cool things.

Honoring my dad’s final requests of me. When I asked my dad if there was anything he wanted me to do with my life he said “look after your mother” and “figure-out what I love doing and make a life out of those things.” Looking after my mom was a no brainer, she has always been amazing so I was going to do this anyway, but the other part of it took sometime to process. The truth was that I wasn’t sure exactly what I loved doing because I spend a lot of my time out of my head. But behind all the fog and compulsions were a few things that I did often in a natural state. Those were the things that I spent more time of as a result of his recommendation and they have proven to bring me a lot of joy and gratification.

Examine my thoughts and internal dialogue to uncover generalizations, errors and negative patterns. Thoughts impact feelings that shape behaviors. These unworkable thoughts lead to behaviors that make them real. When I made a list of these things and a list of the possible outcomes of what would happen if I was to stop them, the loop was complete. My behavior was obvious and what I needed to do to get different results was equally clear.

Take a disassociated inventory of my life, my behaviors and my beliefs to bring to light any incongruities between my internal understanding of who and what I am and an external view of what I am. People said things to me that didn’t connect with how I viewed myself. I asked the question “what if they are correct and I am not correct?” and then tired-on how life could be if I decided to let them be right and just let go of what I believed. It became funny after a few minutes because I realized that both sides were right and that it didn’t matter anyway. I was telling myself a story, a rather elaborate and convincing one and at any moment, I was free to tell myself a different story. The reality is that human beings are animals that possess a keen ability to interact with their environment and make predictions about that environment based on past experiences. The other stuff I had been telling myself about it was unnecessary and was only serving an antiquated identity.

Sunk Cost – Another Way The Past Influences Your Future

Sunk cost is regarded as the amount of money / resources that have already been spend / invested into something that cannot be recouped. These costs have already been incurred regardless of the outcome.

For example, spending $5000 digging a hole in the back yard for a swimming pool. Regardless of how you proceed after the hole has been dug, you cannot get the $5000 back; filling in the hole will not return the money. Another example is working on a relationship – you can spend 6 months going to therapy in an effort to mend things with no guarantee that you’ll both grow old together.

The issue with sunk costs is that they can bias perspective and effect decision making because we can tend to place a higher value on past actions vs. future actions. A number of studies have shown that people become more certain about their decisions after they make them – those who bet on a sporting event will immediately become more confident that their desired outcome will be the eventual outcome once they place their wager.

The reality is very different. While the betting odds can change as a result of more people betting on an outcome, and while those people will become more certain about the outcome, NOTHING about the outcome has changed. The team that was going to win is still going to win. The actions of those outside of the system will have no impact on the actions inside the system.

To put is another way, what is the eventual outcome is going to be the outcome regardless of any sunk cost. Sinking cost into a bad decision will not make it a good decision REGARDLESS of any perceptual tendency to think that it does.

Given the human tendency to further invest in poor choice because of sunk cost, it’s easy to see how this can have a detrimental impact on ones life. Alternative options will not be considered or will be viewed less favorably and resources will continue to be invested into a poor decision. What is viewed as unworkable from an external and objective point of view can be viewed as worthy of continued effort by those who are involved and subjectively engaged in the process.

How do you know when you are being impacted by sunk costs?

  • You’ll hear yourself saying or thinking “well, I’ve put this much into it already” while you have a feeling that walking away will be a waste of that effort. In this instance, you have already realized the eventual outcome but rationalizing a delay by looking at the sunk cost. Immediate action is both appropriate and needed here.
  • You have a tendency to view things in terms of win:lose and not from a perspective of what was the lesson from an experience. You don’t want to lose so you continue in a failing attempt to win. In reality both are abstract and meaningless distinctions. If you choose personal growth from an experience you will be able to move forward very quickly because you’ll view the sunk cost as the price for a powerful lesson.
  • You are fearful to consider different alternatives because of a sense of wasted time / money / resources. This is an indication that you are not being objective and open minded, a clear indication that something illogical is at play.
  • You have a scarcity view of the world and believe that you may not ever have the sunk resources again. Being loss avoidant isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but when you hold a view that what has been spend cannot ever be regained, you are not looking at the future accurately. The consequence is that you end-up pouring MORE resources into something that is a lost cause; this will increase the scarcity of resources making real the very thing you are trying to avoid.

There are times to stay and persevere and there are times to learn a lesson and change your course. The right thing to do is the thing that is objectively and statistically the most probable way to achieve your goal. The wrong thing to do is to avoid unpacking your reasons for staying because you believe everything would be a waste if you were to stop.

Sunk costs impair rational thinking so if you are in a situation and have spend a lot of resources on it, be mindful that your natural tendency will be to view continuing as the best course of action. It may be, but take the time to see the potential costs of continuing and to evaluate the situation for what it actually is right now vs. what it was when you made the decision to invest in it.

Fitness Assessments At Gyms – They’ll Find Faults

When someone approaches me inquiring about training, I skip the whole fitness assessment and will instead focus on their goals, their behaviors, their thoughts and their definitions of success, failure, and health. I do this because fitness assessments, as performed outside of a medical setting, are pointless, useless and geared towards selling what the trainer has to sell. EVERYONE can fail some aspect of a fitness assessment therefore everyone needs to buy training.

Bull crap!

Most people do NOT need training. While almost everyone will benefit from working with a personal trainer, people can and have been creating amazing results while training on their own for as long as people have been training. If you workout in an intense and pain-free way 4 times a week and eat sensible amounts of good quality food you’ll become fit and any imbalances that you have will correct themselves. Evolution ensures this.

Working with clients is about helping them achieve what THEY want regardless of what I think. Just because a girl is an amazing squatter, can move extremely quickly and would be an outstanding Olympic lifter doesn’t mean that her goal of having a flat stomach and becoming a better road cyclist gets ignored. The opposite is almost true – whatever potential she has in an undesired goal will only be leveraged to help her achieve her stated goal. The world is full of people who do amazing things in areas where they have no particular innate talent.

Very often a fitness assessment will be set-up to measure athletic indicators that are then used as reasons to justify huge training investments. Failing a Klatt test is meaningless if your goal is to look good naked because your glutes, VMO and adductor muscles will be trained during the course of your body composition training. The fact is, most people will never need to perform at the highest physical level and will enjoy an amazing life simply by moving more. It won’t matter that they are quad dominant, slightly internally rotated, or whatever the test reveals.

There is another reason why fitness test performed by fitness professionals are not appropriate and that is because they are used to make a diagnosis; which most fitness professionals are NOT qualified to do. It sure does feel great to have someone look at you and say “wow, you know what’s going on with my body just by looking at the way I move” but that’s ego stroking or salesmanship. The trainer may be correct but they are not in a position to say what is going on. They are in a position only to create and administer programs. When they make a diagnosis and set out to fix it they are failing their clients in a very fundamental, and arguably, an unethical way.

That is why, if someone is going to work with me, we’ll just train the entire body including all of the smaller muscles. The methods and principles that are used will depend upon their goals, but that is it. The client isn’t broken so we don’t need to fix anything, they just need to consistently move their bodies more and reap the benefits associated with improving their health.

6 Ways To Boost Your Personal Power

People who want to create an amazing life realize that they have control over their personal power and they understand how to boost it whenever they need to. Below is a list of 6 things you can do to boost your power:

  1. Let go of your past by forgiving yourself. Sane people can only act in a way that serves their interests so no matter what your interests are now, your previous actions served the interests you had at that time. Factor in the fact that you cannot do anything about the past, you need to just let go of anything that you are holding on to that doesn’t make you feel strong. It may take some practice, but when useless thoughts are gone from your mind you will become powerful and move closer to achieving your potential.
  2. Accept that your thoughts and feelings create your present experience of life so adjust them as needed to create the internal environment that creates your more powerful actions. Just as holding onto your past will weaken your spirit and sap your strength, grabbing onto positive thoughts and maintaining a clear picture of what you want to become will boost your happiness and productivity. In fact, by holding onto the thoughts of what you want to make of your life you will increase the amount of mental processing that is directed towards making these thoughts a reality.
  3. See your own actions as the cause of your immediate external environment. Powerful people cause their environment to change, people without power are changed by their environment. When anything happens, good or bad, and as soon as any crisis has passed, make efforts to see your role in it – what did you do that caused the event, what can you learn from it, how can you put these lessons to work in the future. This step is critical in boosting your personal power because you can only have power if you can cause change to your external environment. Without seeing yourself as having some control over the environment, it will only effect you and you will never be the cause of any of the things that happen to you.
  4. Accept that other people have their own set of rules for living life. Recall that no sane person can act in a way that does not serve their interests, just like you. Given this, it doesn’t make much sense to try to hold other people to the rules that you have for created for yourself. In fact, by giving them the autonomy to act as they deem appropriate, any energy that would have been spent on making them wrong is directed towards other, more important, tasks.
  5. Know what you want out of your life. By having clearly defined goals and end points you will know when it’s time to change your course, make new decisions or just keep doing what you are doing. Knowing what you want also closes a lot of open loops that tax mental energy. This liberated energy can then be directed toward the things that need focus and attention. Powerful people know EXACTLY what they are seeking and they know what to put their efforts towards.
  6. Do the things that move you towards the things you want out of life. Action is a big separator between those who are powerful and those who are not powerful. Intense, sustained and focused action will move anyone towards the object of their attention faster than anything else. Powerful people know what they want and they work tirelessly only on the things that will get them closer to the things they want.

Things Trainers Think But Should Probably Say To Their Clients – Part 2

The continuation of Things Trainers Think But Should Probably Say To Their Clients.

“Ever notice how the things you talk about not wanting end up being the things that you get?” The reticular activating system (RAS) is a mental process that directs attention onto the things that are considered important to a person. Our experiences and thoughts serve to populate the RAS with these items. IF someone spends a lot of time thinking about they don’t want to gain body fat, their attention will be directed towards all of the things that will cause them to gain it. As a consequence, they’ll probably over eat and gain body fat simply because they are focusing on NOT getting fat.

“You think eating good quality food and exercising is hard? Try living with diabetes, recovering from a heart attack or a stroke or beating cancer, THOSE things are hard.” People do not identify the consequences of their actions as the initial symptoms of their impending illness, so they just assume everything is fine. But gaining body fat, losing mobility or muscle mass, or becoming lethargic ARE the initial symptoms of disease promoters of disease. It’s irrefutable, people who eat sensible amounts of good quality whole food and exercise moderate amounts are at the lowest risk of death. You have a choice though, do a little hard work now to promote recovery or compress that hard work into a few months in an attempt to survive.

“When you say I’m just a little fat you’re ignoring the fact that you have damaged your ability to process sugar.” Telling yourself that you’re just a little fat is a softer story than the blunt truth – you are wrecking your body because by eating too much sugar you are impairing your bodies ability to handle insulin. This is hurting your body and it will eventually cause disease and an early death.

“Not everyone’s metabolism slows down as they age, it only happens to those who choose to let it happen.” While it is true that a person will burn fewer and fewer calories as they get older, making the decision to use this fact as a justification for gaining weight vs. a reason for engaging in intense physical movement is what makes it true. NOT everyone gains weight as they get older BECAUSE they remain active and move a lot. Hearing someone reference an inevitable metabolic slow down reveals a belief that needs to be addressed and updated.

“Stress isn’t a part of everyone’s work.” Accepting that stress is a necessary part of work is an excuse for accepting this damaging aspect of life and letting it continue to destroy and shorten life. Work can be a challenge, placing unnatural demands on a person, keeping it in perspective will go a long way in helping someone strike a more healthy balance. By assuming that work should be stressful, it give you permission to change priorities and move proper diet, exercise and relaxation down and move work responsibilities up. The negative outcome of reversed priorities is eventual ill-health and disease.

Things Trainers Think But Should Probably Say To Their Clients – Part 1

Over the years I’ve trained 100’s of people. I do everything I can to guide, coach and help them attain their fitness goals. There’s a lot of hard work to do and my job is to get the clients to do it. To this end, I basically stay positive and will say pretty much anything to keep them on track. But I think things during some of the sessions that I don’t ever say to the clients. These things are based on reality and are the result of noticing patterns between different clients and between sessions for the same client.

I haven’t been saying them to the clients because they are unfiltered and a little raw; there may not be any value in saying them during a session because they can alter the client experience, shift their focus and generally land poorly. But if I was to be fearless and completely authentic, you might hear me saying some of the following things to the clients because maybe there would be some value in shining a light on the patterns I notice.

“You have such a passion for being average.” Most people do, and that’s why it is the average. But being average has few remarkable characteristics and other than being the safe option, so there is nothing positive about it. People end-up needing my services because they are being average – making average decisions, doing average things and thinking average thoughts. So when someone doesn’t complete a food journal, stops a set when it feels tough, or calls to cancel a session vs. reschedule it, it’s impossible to NOT see the average nature of these behaviors.

“If you put as much effort into your workouts as you do into your excuses you’d be blazing a much brighter trail.” Having heard so many excuses over the years I have to believe that people spend time trying to come up with them. The first time I hear a new one it may carry a little more weight, if for no other reason than it was creative, but probably not. Successful people do not make excuses, they make the time to do the things they need to do.

“You place a lot of value on that speculation.” If something hasn’t happened or isn’t known it simply doesn’t exist. But that doesn’t stop people from allowing it to impact them. In fact, some potentially powerful people are stopped dead in their tracks because of thoughts about things that do not exist. If something that doesn’t exist doesn’t motivate, drive or inspire you, embrace its non-existence and let it go, completely and forever.

“Funny, you hire an expert then keep paying them money while ignore their advice.” I have a tough time with this because it reveals something very significant about nature of the client that isn’t very helpful or healthy. While it’s pretty dishonest to hire someone with a stated intention only to not honor that intention, it reveals an internal struggle between what they believe they want and what they believe they are worth. It’s pretty unworkable because, if they did know more than their trainer, they wouldn’t be in a position to need a trainer.

“The reason you have to do this today is because you didn’t do it before today.” This is a simple truth, if you NEED to do hard work to achieve something it is because the work has not yet been done. And if you kick this hard work down the road another couple of weeks, months or years, it’ll still be there to do, and there will likely be more of it to do.

Training – Real Emergencies Vs. Fake Emergencies

There are very few accidents in life so there are very few emergencies. What most try to pass-off as an emergency is simply just something that wasn’t planned for, but which should have been predicted had the outcome been more important or had priorities been kept in mind.

Don’t get me wrong, emergencies do exist, and they are usually identified by an instantaneous and complete shifting of priorities. They are very rare and most people will have a couple of actual emergencies in their life time. In the realm of personal training, the cancellation call to the trainer is very low on the list of things to do when a real emergency kicks in. Survival or immediate service to those in need are hallmarks of a real emergency. For this reason, great personal trainers will never bill a client for an emergency because they cannot be avoided.

Some examples of a real emergency would be heart attack or stroke for a parent, injury in a car crash, delay due to actual highway / public transit congestion or closure, gas leak, bomb scare, fuel spill, tornado or other acute extreme weather event.

Some examples of fake emergencies would be children’s school event, sports game, or concert, impending work or school deadline, hot date, spontaneous trip or vacation.

The difference is in ones ability to anticipate the event or the amount of lead time or warning the client had about the event in question as well as the actual need to shift priorities. Work and school deadlines tend to be well communicated and well established ahead of time. The same is true for children’s school, sports and concert events. The date and times of these things are usually announced months ahead of time and are rarely spur of the moment things given the number of people involved with them.

What are we getting at here?

Very simple, our most successful clients have never missed a session due to an emergency. They have had to rescheduled sessions later in the week or do an extra session in the previous weeks, but if their program requires training 4 times per week, they always average 4 training sessions per week.

The most successful clients know their priorities and stick to them no matter what happens. They have the same opportunities to take spontaneous trips, dates and other events but they know exactly why they are training and do not sacrifice their future goals for immediate gratification. They don’t regard things they have a choice to do or not do as emergencies so their priorities cannot shift.

The least successful trainees or those who do not achieve their goals have a different view of emergencies. For those who are less committed to their goals, their future selves or achieving their potential, an opportunity to have fun now supersedes actual hard work and success. Worse than this is the tendency for these people to not know what the next few weeks of their life looks like – they don’t have schedules or day planners outlining the upcoming events like school activities, sports events for children, etc…. These people have little desire to create a new and better future because they just make plans and let life happen each day, labeling things emergencies so they can get out of their training session; effectively losing another day of their life just because they didn’t care enough to not lose it.

I recommend billing people for missed and cancelled sessions because there is no excuse for missing or cancelling a session. It isn’t personal but creating a new life is hard and if someone doesn’t care enough about their future to know what that future looks like – the upcoming events for their weeks – use the loss of money for a missed session as leverage for them to do what is important in the long run vs. doing the thing is fun right now.

Knowing It’s Time To Move Forward

People leave unsatisfying situations. They’ll work hard to stay in situations that they find satisfying and will make a lot of other sacrifices to keep things going. But when they leave, it’s because they have seen that situation for what it is – unfulfilling / unsatisfying – and they realize that there is not enough to be gained, or a lot to be lost, from remaining.

Regardless of the area of life – relationship, job, school, where someone calls home, hobby, etc… – the process is always the same for me.

Mindless enjoyment or contentment fades as the awareness that something is missing or out of place grows. Resentment or contempt arrive bringing along a fantasy of a different existence. Bitterness and hostility will soon appear if things do not change. If the situation remains the same, all of the negative emotions bubble-up suffocating and killing the once mindless bliss of “happy”.

I have become very aware of this process because I have gone through it a lot. I can feel or hear the seeds of resentment percolating in my consciousness very early on and have learned to pay attention to the potential harvest that may come to be. I don’t do anything other than notice the sensations the first few times I become aware of them as I may be having a tough day, be tired, hungry, whatever, just that something is off so what I attribute the negative moment to may have nothing to do with it. But I notice it, check inside, and get back to life with as clear a head as possible.

Most of the stuff never comes up again, lending validity to my notion that an empty belly, lack of sleep, or general BLAH can color the lens of perception. That’s good to know because, well, it’s just good to be reminded that I search for a reason AFTER I feel something and not necessarily the other way round.

But when the stuff does comes-up again and becomes impossible to let go of, I realize that the shift has occurred – like everything that is moving, a small change in the direction of life, when ignored, will deliver a big change in destination over the long run – so I make a dramatic change.

In most cases this means that I get out of the situation – leave a job, relationship, situation – and start something new or put more focus onto the other things I’m involved in. Occasionally I’ll spend some time to unpack my feelings / thoughts in order to track the actual cause of the misalignment. When this approach is successful, it creates a decision point where I can either change the situation or change my expectation of the existing situation.

Personal development grows from learning a new skill to help manage an existing situation, so figuring-out my thoughts / feelings / internal narrative is a critical practice. The key is to learn the new skill and implement it ONLY when it benefits all parties who are involved in the situation. There are times to make things work and there are times to move forward into something else.

Regardless of the outcome, when I start to notice that things are not as they need to be, I know that the process of change has begun and that it may be time to move forward.

8 Things Really Successful People Do

Great article about the habits / realizations successful people by Kevin Daum. Pretty straight forward list which is part of its beauty.

The key thing is to be very clear on what you want to do and not on the outcome your successes. Success is a mental game at first (getting into the right mind set, setting the right goals, creating the right habits), followed by the physical game (persistent hard work).

What I found interesting is the inclusion of being clear on spirituality because, for me, that has been a late player to the field. It boils down to being at one with the universe or God, accepting something bigger than just you and engage the world in a way that pays tribute to that relationship.

  • Make Materialism Irrelevant – be successful to be successful, not because you get to buy expensive things. If it is about buying expensive things, you aren’t seeking success BUT expensive things, go straight to them.
  • Enhance Knowledge – keep learning, from beginning to end. There is no substitute for a brain that is crammed full of wisdom.
  • Manage Relationship Expectations – relationships should be given an appropriate amount of time and finding the balance between the right amount of time and what other people want from you is a necessary endeavor. Creating the boundaries to enforce YOUR expectations is critical.
  • Practice Emotional Self-Awareness – emotions are not thoughts. They are types of information, but they are often not as valuable as logical thoughts. Make sure you know when your emotional system is ramped up and when you are functioning with a purely logically mind.
  • Commit to a Physical Ideal – creating a goal for how you want to look in the future will move your mind forward and give you a purpose to make it happen. Exercise tells your body that actions matter and looking and feeling great tells the world that “I am worth working hard for.”
  • Gain Clarity About Spirituality – understand your relationship with the universe so you can always stay true to it.
  • Adhere to a Code of Ethics – acting effectively can sometimes mean you need to have a list of actions to take for when you don’t feel like acting at all. Not knowing what you stand for will delay or impede action when action is needed most critically. A code of ethics will allow you to advance with consistency and it will free you from thoughts about your past actions because you will know you acted with integrity.
  • Focus on Time Efficiency – time moves on, even if you do nothing with it. Use it wisely and get the most out of every second. You won’t be getting any of the moments back.

Getting The Most Out Of Your Brain

The human brain is a remarkable and powerful thing. Under ideal conditions it is capable of processing billions of pieces of information each second and can synthesize complex solutions / understandings based on years of stored information in moments. It has taken a long time for a computer to come anywhere close to the capacity of the brain and it still isn’t there.

However, unlike an electronic computer, the human brain has a need to survive. To this end, built within it are mechanisms that will protect it; or more accurately, protect the body that holds it. The key mechanism is the ability to alter function, to turn off certain areas of the brain allowing other areas to exert more influence.

Rewind to a time when life was more simple, when our ancestors lived off the land, in caves or primitive huts. This was a time when logical thinking would get you killed given that it is not reactive and takes time. In crisis situations the brain needed to do one of two things, run or fight. A compelling reason is of no assistance when a predator has you in its sights and is bearing down you, you need to physically beat on the creature or you need to run.

Out of this environment springs forth brains that are programmed to suppress logical thought in times of crisis, and let the parts of the brain that promote fight or flight reactions control the show.

Various brain scan technologies reveal that the prefrontal cortex shuts down during highly emotional experiences, taking off-line the capacity for executive functioning – logical thought, the relevance of time, the concept of consequences, etc…. Without a future the individual is completely in the moment and is not capable of the things that they would normally be. In this emotionally charged state you attack to kill or run. Survival is the only outcome and everything becomes about that.

How does this help you get more out of your brain?

Well, the prefrontal cortex is responsible for so much of what makes human being unique and exceptional. Anything that reduces the level of functioning of this part of the brain is detrimental to our being exceptional (with the obvious exception to times when we need to be destructively reactive such that we fight or run).

Here is a list of the things that cause the prefrontal cortex to shut-down:

  • Intense emotional responses. Emotions can serve a survival function so they cannot coexist with logical thought. Reducing stress and anxiety will allow the prefrontal cortex to become more active which will improve the entire thought process.
  • Low blood sugar. The brain uses sugar so if you are hungry or your blood sugar level is low, the prefrontal cortex is the first part of the brain to shut-down. Controlling blood sugar by eating good quality whole foods will keep levels normal and keep brain functioning high.
  • Low amounts of glucose in the prefrontal cortex. Even if your blood sugar level is high, too much thinking will use-up a lot of the glucose that is available in the brain. For this reason, it is best to avoid thinking about things that are heavy or require a lot of logical thought after periods of intense thinking of any nature.
  • Being tired. When we are tired, the prefrontal cortex powers down. It’s best to avoid though thinking at the end of the day when we are burned out and running on empty.