The Agony of Defeat and The Sweet Taste of Victory

June 28, 2010 landland Leave a comment

This year so far has been one of those crazy transitional ones for me. Its probably the most uncomfortable and challenging time I’ve been through, but also the most rewarding. Everything I have been doing or trying is not second nature to me. Its been fail after fail. I got demoted at work. It seems any time I try to do the right thing I get burned. I had to do some serious soul searching and make some tough decisions and sacrifices. I eventually came up with three rules for myself during this transitional period. 1) Workout six days a week. 2) Hangout with friends and family whenever possible. 3) Work until my eyeballs bleed. This was not easy. It made me very aggressive with my time. I was working 100+ hour weeks. Night after night I sat in front of my computer until my eyes were fuzzy. I balanced that out with hanging out with my best friends and seeing family members I haven’t really seen in years. Sacrifices were made. I stopped reading. I didn’t get to do a lot of the things I really wanted to do like outdoor bouldering, bjj and playing the harmonica. I stopped meditating and yoga and writing. My diet suffered. I mean *really* suffered. Aunts and uncles were looking to feed me their favourite dishes every day. Eating became a thing to do with friends for no other reason except because we needed something to do while hanging out (just like the good ol days!). My performance and reputation at work took a hit as I waited to be called out by somebody. Nobody did. I made myself insignificant as I pumped the brakes and refocused my energy. But I had to do it for myself and for that I have absolutely zero regrets. I had no guidance from anybody except my favourite bloggers: Tim Ferriss, Ramit Sethi, Leo Babauta, Derek Sivers, Chris Guillebeau, and Seth Godin who would seem to come out with some sort of motivational post any time I would question myself and what I was doing. It was like they knew how I was feeling and how to correct it at exactly the right time. If you were to ask me if I were to do it again any differently I would say absolutely, I would have done this sooner.

“Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

I started freelancing and discovered that I could do this full time. I made some really good connections and learned some cool new skills. I also discovered the world of online marketing. It annoys me how terrible I am at it. Imagine trying to learn every sport all at once, and that’s how I feel about this. It is like an entirely new world I discovered, kind of like the time I found out that people go on the internet to learn pickup but way, way cooler and way more annoying. But I’m building my muscles and paying my dues, this much I know. I’m putting myself in some serious debt. Aside from time, money is another thing I’ve been aggressive in. But I feel ok doing it because I am not spending on fancy watches and nice shoes but rather paying for useful software, paying for memberships and subscriptions and educational courses, investing aggressively, all things that have potential to bring back a positive ROI (and some have already).

School starts in September and I can honestly say I am not looking forward to it. I am not convinced that the material you learn and the people you meet are worth the $75k bill that it requires. Take that same $75k, apply it to the school of hard knocks over the same 2 year period, and the education and connections you make are likely way more valuable. I’ve been to a few school events already and I know good friends who have completed or are completing the program at top tier schools. Highly motivated, highly intelligent, successful people. Lots still can’t find jobs. Others question why they did it in the first place. The rest don’t seem to really care beyond the superficial surface relationships. This keeps me awake at night. But I could be wrong, and there’s only one way to find out, so we shall see.

I’m very thankful for the people I’ve met and the friendships I’ve forged at my previous employer. Some, like my manager, were highly influential in my growth and development over the years and this I will never forget or be able to repay. But its time to move on. I feel this should have happened sooner and it felt like it just kept dragging on but its over now and it feels nice not having any responsibility outside of myself. I am really glad I don’t have a minivan and a mortgage. I am really happy I don’t have any mouths to feed, because if I did I would be terrible at it. That lifestyle honestly feels like it is a lifetime away at the rate I am going. Slow and steady wins the race, at least that’s what I keep telling myself. I have too much I need to see, experience, feel before I’m ready for that. If I had all the money in the world, all the women I could handle and I could be anywhere in the world and be doing anything I want, where would I be and what would I be doing? I’d be in Iceland, with all of my possessions strapped to my back, looking for adventure and hanging out with friends. If not there then Japan, or Brazil, or Egypt. Seeking solitude in India or building a school in Laos. I’m still not there but this is never far from my thoughts. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. I start today. And I brought my appetite.

I’ll be updating at http://landland.posterous.com for any quicky pics and notes that I can throw up for the next little while on my adventure.

Health and Fitness

Rev Abs Review

June 7, 2010 landland 4 Comments

I finished Rev Abs yesterday a day late. Plagued by injuries, over committed on obligations, and a change of scenery made this one a very tough one to complete, but I did it and I am happy. I haven’t done the final fit test yet but I am expecting the results to be less than stellar. I’ll probably do it tonight.

Rev Abs is a very cool program. Its designed to strengthen your core using cool Capoeira moves and other fun exercises, some involving dumbbells. In traditional Beachbody fashion, you don’t really need a lot of equipment aside from aforementioned dumbbells. Brett Hoebel is the guy in charge of this one, and he’s a likeable and funny dude who can get you moving and grooving.

Rev Abs is a 90 day program, with two phases, each 45 days long. Phase 1 is designed to give you the strength and endurance needed to do Phase 2. I did notice Phase 2 to be slightly more intense. I wouldn’t say this is an extremely difficult program. In fact, if you were to ask me which program to do to get in shape I would say start with Rev Abs. That isn’t to say its a walk in the park, you still have to bring it and you will definitely sweat and feel it.

There are 3 rounds to every workout with the last round called the Spice Round. Its the most challenging of the rounds and its designed that way so that you push past your comfort zones. I like this a lot. He talks about paying your dues and this is something that resonates with me quite a bit. Nothing of value comes without paying your dues.

Brett makes you do a lot of silly things like say the Rev Anthem to test your heart rate and a bunch of other stuff. I would highly suggest you participate in it, because it makes the program a lot more fun. This was a very fun program.

And now for the bad news. If you fail to follow a good nutrition program like I did, you will not get the results you want. I’ve been involved in a little experiment in which I basically eat how I ate in high school. Buffets, massive family dinners, beer, ice cream, you name it. This has added belly fat to my stomach despite my best efforts with the Rev Abs program.

This is a lifestyle choice people. You can run and lift and play sports all you want, but if you aren’t eating properly and you aren’t resting properly you just won’t see the results. Somehow, after over a year of six workouts+ a week, I’m a bit of an authority on these home workouts. I get all of the same questions over and over again..should I do [x], do I need [x], can I see [x]… All I can say is JUST DO IT. I see people flop at it all the time. They don’t see immediate results and then they quit. On the flip side, people who completed the programs look and feel much better than they did before. I did P90X without actually seeing hardly any results, but I felt stronger. That was convincing enough for me to continue. Over a year later, my only regret is I didn’t start sooner. I have been asked when I will stop, and the answer is rather simple. Never.

Rev Abs is a great program. If you follow it, push yourself hard and eat right and get your rest, you will see results. Simple as that. Take out even one part of that formula and the magic disappears. Get your copy of Rev Abs here.

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If you liked this review, you may also like my P90X2, Rip:60, P90X+, Insanity, GSP Rushfit, or RMAX BER reviews

Lifestyle

Making Things Intolerably Inconvenient

April 27, 2010 landland Leave a comment

Humans are lazy creatures by nature. Its just the way it is. Laziness isn’t a bad thing, in fact I think it has many benefits including getting adequate rest, keeping things as simple as possible, doing only what’s important, etc. If we can just accept the fact that we are lazy by nature we can use it to our advantage. One of the ideas I’ve been playing around with lately is the idea of intolerable inconvenience. The basic premise is you make something so utterly inconvenient for you that your laziness kicks in and you decide not to do that something. This works great for getting rid of bad habits, saving money, sticking to a good eating lifestyle, and so on.

I first noticed this myself one fine morning when I realized I didn’t have any food in the kitchen but was starving. I was going to drive over to Tim Horton’s for a breakfast sandwich and coffee (bad habit) but realized I didn’t have a car for the day. “Oh, how inconvenient” I thought to myself. So what did I do? Nothing. I decided to fast that day instead (good habit). When I noticed that I did a good habit instead of a bad habit because I was too lazy to walk to the Tim Horton’s, I thought “hmmmm, what else can I make really inconvenient for myself to force good habits?”. Some of the stuff I came up with was removing a lot of bookmarks to time wasting websites so that if I wanted to go to them I would have to type them in manually. Too lazy, screw it. Another is hiding the remote control for the TV so that I don’t watch it. Get rid of the junk food in your house or put it in the attic or something. Lock your credit cards in a safe. You can get pretty creative with this if you use your imagination. Cell phone bill too high? Give the phone to your neighbour. Need to study more and play games less? Hide the power cord to your Wii.

Note that the opposite also works. Make good habits super convenient for you. Have a giant glass of water beside your bed so that when you wake up in the morning you can chug it down and hydrate right away. Put the vitamins and supplements you take right beside the glass of water. Put your keys in the same spot everyday so you’ll never lose them. Leave your lunch at the front door so you never forget it (or set a daily reminder that goes off before you head out the door reminding you to grab it from the fridge). The list goes on. Make the good stuff easy to do and the bad stuff really inconvenient. I like it, nice and simple and effective.

Mindset, Stories

Learning is a Lifelong Journey

April 19, 2010 landland 3 Comments

What do you do for the weekend in April when the weather forecast expects below freezing temperatures, rain, snow, and a lot of wind while also being sick and having a busted knee? Well if your me, you take a weekend summer survival course!! That’s what I did this past weekend, and it was awesome. The conditions were perfect; The weather was miserable, I hurt my knee from hiking the bruce trail the day before (actually re-irritated my LCL and IT band after a drunken night of St. Patty day shenanigans), didn’t have proper clothing/gear, and I was still sick after nearly two weeks. It would have been easy to feel miserable about having crappy weather, freezing your ass off and whining about walking on muddy hills with a busted (very painful) knee after dropping about four hundred bucks for the course plus gear. Rather, it was exciting for me. It made the experience of being in a survival situation much more authentic. In other words, how you think matters. You know, that story about two prisoners looking out their cell window and one sees the bars while the other sees the sky.

I learned so much this weekend. Did some survival fishing and got pretty good at it, actually caught something for once as well. Made some cool traps, practiced some more fire making techniques, refreshed my memory on some first aid and shelter making. It was great. Its funny, the older I get I’m constantly reminded about how little I know. I really feel like a kid just trying to soak everything in. Learning and skill acquisition are so important to me. One of my instructors for the weekend spent a year out in the bush by himself (his only visitor being Les Stroud aka Survivorman) and when people ask him why he did it he didn’t really have an answer. He basically said it was a calling that he felt on the inside and it isn’t the first time I’ve heard that from people who have done extraordinary things. I feel the same way about skill acquisition and learning. I don’t know why I do it, I just like to do it.

I re-designed the blog website last week. I tried to make it as ridiculous looking as possible and think I succeeded. It was a fun learning experience and I’m glad I did it (there’s still bugs in the system, let me know if you find any. free hug!). I don’t know why I did it, I just felt like doing it. I also paid to be a part of Scott H Young’s “Learning On Steroids” program which involves rapid and accelerated learning techniques as well as Ramit Sethi‘s “Earn 1k” program. Scott’s program is a monthly subscription and Ramit’s was a one time deal with an option for ongoing support (which I chose not to pursue at this time). It was funny, I emailed Ramit and pretty much told him I have little money with a condo and big fat tuition bill on the way, no time, and soon to be no job and explained my situation to him. He basically wrote me back and said man up or go home. I literally laughed out the coffee through my nose because I knew that was what he was going to say and because I would have said the same thing to someone who emailed me that. Then I busted out my credit card. Sneaky, persuasive bastard.

The journey into awesomehood is never easy but always rewarding. It’s about focusing on your strengths and improving upon your weaknesses. It’s about taking what’s useful and discarding the rest. It’s about ignoring everybody and everything, sometimes including common sense and conventional wisdom. Standing at the edge is better than standing in the middle. You get a better view.

Mindset

You Don’t Need More Tips

April 3, 2010 landland Leave a comment

Self help is starting to make me vomit. I went in DEEP into the self help industry for about 5 years. Like I’m talking crazy stuff like chakra cleansing, transcendence of ego, emotional freedom tapping and so forth. Really hippy yoga shizz. To an extent, I’m still into it and probably always will be because I believe in carving out my best self. I get what I need about a subject at the time I need it and move on. I had a guy email me the other day asking me to submit my blog into his self help blog directory. Ignored. I’m no self help guru, and I don’t claim to be. What I write isn’t self help. Its atypical. I challenge conventional wisdom and common sense. I take action and make mistakes. Its my journey into awesomehood, and if you get something out of it then even better.

The thing with self help is, people write these lists, 10 things you need to do to be happy, 14 things to help you stop stressing, 45 ways to save a kitten, and they are all USELESS. These people aren’t any better off than you are. I bet I could get under their skin if I really wanted to 😉 The reason that I am so against reading these tips is it is an excuse for inaction. Some people call it paralysis by analysis, I call it the one more thing syndrome. One more book to read then I will be ready. One more purchase then I will be complete. One more piece of equipment then I can start. One more piece of advice so I’m prepared. All cleverly masked excuses. I would prefer something called next syndrome. What’s the next challenge, what’s the next obstacle to overcome, what’s the next mistake I’m going to learn from? There’s just no way in hell you need 45 ways to stay positive, firstly because you aren’t going to remember them all, and secondly because it doesn’t matter. You need one and only one. You aren’t going to read a 5000 word blog post by Steve Pavlina about the “Law of Attraction” and then become complete. Instead of reading that, go out and do something that will actually get you results. There is NO fundamental difference between reading a blog post about “Moving past fear based emotions” and watching a youtube video of a guy farting in terms of actually defeating your fear of something. Want to beat your fear? Then do the thing that terrifies you.

You need ONE tip to relieve stress. Breathe. Want another one? Ok fine, but last one. Stop doing that thing that stresses you. DONE. Moving on. You need ONE tip to get in shape. Eat less. One more? Fine. Exercise. That’s it, not hard at all. The best technique, the most efficient method, the smartest tool, you’ll find out eventually through trial and error and immersion into the subject once you start doing it, not usually before. Too much advice is bad, too many choices is very bad. Simplify, reduce, limit your choices, ignore everybody. Nike had it right with their “Just Do It” slogan. Really, just shut up and do it.

Mindset

Respect Awesomeness, Not Your Elders

March 25, 2010 landland 1 Comment

Tell me something. Why should you respect someone because they are old? That’s silly. Age doesn’t equate to wisdom. Age doesn’t equate to intelligence. Age doesn’t equate to ANYTHING. It is simply a count, a number, not worthy of any type of respect. I respect people who are respectful. I respect intelligence. I don’t care how much money you make. I don’t care if your dad is a professor in sociology. I don’t care if you’re upper management. And I certainly don’t give a rats behind because you are old. Have a cookie.

The most actualized person I’ve ever met was a 21 year old pickup artist from Australia named Alex back when I was 25. I’ve also learned from a homeless cancer survivor who runs marathons named Gwen. Lawyers, single parents, club promoters, directors and musicians, the list goes on. Respect. I learn more from watching children play or animals be animals than most old people. 22 year old UFC fighter Jon “Bones” Jones said something amazing after his fight with Brandon Vera the other day along the lines of “The biggest waste in life is human potential, and I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen to me.” which is absolute GOLD. GOLD. Why would you listen to a guy with a nick name “Bones”? Uh, maybe because its good wisdom.

And yet, people listen to scam artists like Dr. Phil because he’s a doctor. This guy has books out about weight loss. And he’s fat! Give me a BREAK. Respect is rarely given equally, although it probably should be. Instead, you hear conventional wisdom from mostly old people telling you to respect old people simply because they are old. And yet old timers, some of the most rigid, stuck in their ways, bitter, most prejudice people on the planet want respect without actually earning it. I heard Al Gore give a climate change talk in Toronto last winter about some of the political problems of moving things forward, and he basically said the biggest problem was old people. He said that the young people were game, it is their future at stake afterall, who were ready for change but the old people make it difficult to push things forward. Jokingly, he said if we wait long enough the old people will all be gone and the young guns will be in charge, but by that time it will be too late.

How many times have your parents or grandparents given you some of the worst advice imaginable? In my own life, I’ve lost count to be honest. They spent their whole lives working their tails off trying to provide and protect that they don’t actually let us figure things out for ourselves. To do it smarter, faster, more efficient. How about politicians? ALL OLD. Where is the respect for young people and their ideas? Present a new solution, and there is resistance. We all see this consistently with older people and much less so with the younger crowd. Respect your elders? Nah, respect awesomeness (person, place, or thing).

Health and Fitness

RMAX Bodyweight Exercise Revolution Review

March 13, 2010 landland 2 Comments

My fitness journey started in May of 2009. As I progressed and got stronger, more athletic, faster, and all of the other benefits that exercise provide, I noticed my biggest gains came from the same or similar exercises over and over again. Most of them required no equipment and no weights. A lot of them involved bodyweight, and so being the research heavy nerd that I am I wanted to find out some effective exercises that involved strictly bodyweight movement. RMAX Bodyweight Exercise Revolution is one such program, and it is a very impressive program indeed. This is my review.

Bodyweight exercises brings about functional strength, this is why I avoid the gym. I dont need the gym, its costly, out of the way, can get crowded, filled with people who dont know what they are doing, and often smell funny. Bodyweight exercises on the other hand are free, can be done anywhere, anytime, and bring about real strength, endurance, and athleticism. Bas Rutten said it best when he said, ” You can bench press 500 pounds, congratulations!! I can kick your ass.”. Real, functional strength involves incredible feats with the body. Olympic gymnasts, break dancers, Capoeira, thats real strength and these athletes all do bodyweight exercises. Guys in the gym focus on isolating the muscles, and that is flash over function. If that is your thing then bodyweight exercises arent for you, and RMAX Bodyweight Exercise Revolution (BER) certainly isnt for you.

Theres a certain beauty about this program that I can’t really put into words. It isnt hard per se in the traditional sense when you think about working out where you are sweating bullets and maxing out reps to exhaustion, but it is challenging in its own right and more effective at improving body control. The program consists of an ebook that explains the method with lots of detail and pictures showing the specific techniques, as well as videos that show proper form and movement. To summarize, basically its a 28 day program consisting of four days done 7 times (4×7) based off of the Fibonacci sequence geared towards specific goals such as fat loss, strength, general athleticism and so on. Confusing? You bet. It kind of is at first but you’ll get the hang of it quickly.

All you really need to know is its four days in a row (no intensity, low intensity, medium intensity, and high intensity) done seven times for a total of 28 days, and depending on your goals such as fat loss or strength gain those exercises during those 28 days are different. Got it? Good. The ebook manual lays out clearly what needs to be done for each day showing proper technique while emphasizing being mindful of exertion, technique, and discomfort. Should you decide to actually read the ebook instead of diving right into the regimen, you will notice a very well thought out and intelligent philosophy of training that I haven’t seen much in other programs.

But does it work? In a sense, yes, but only if you follow the program carefully. My only real gripe with the program is the initial learning curve and complexity of the regimens. It was quite an eye opening and humbling experience for me on what’s possible with bodyweight and I look forward to exploring that path further. I do plan on using Bodyweight Exercise Revolution further in this exploration.