It links to a nytimes article talking about the secret ingredient to success: self-awareness. It is one of those “well duh” ideas that doesn’t get enough attention and is often overlooked in favour of life hacks, short cuts, and sound bytes. But self-awareness is HUGE, and it is one of those things that can instantly give you superpowers if you have it fine tuned. When something happens to you in your life, whether it be randomly on the street, online on a social network, at your job, in a relationship, do you notice what your first reaction usually is? Mine depends (and I bet I’m not alone on this). I’ll either attribute it to good/bad luck depending on the outcome, or if it’s something I had to take a direct action on and it turned out well I’ll most likely attribute it to my skill, and if it turned out poorly I’ll blame the circumstance or the person. If I am blaming the person, I’ll usually attribute the fault to their personality rather than the situation, but if for any reason it happens to be my fault, I usually blame the circumstance. Sound familiar? I know, right? I’m a total mind reader. No, just kidding (or am I???). Social Psychology has a bunch of terms for what I just described. You can go look up Fundamental Attribution Error, Self-Serving bias or Actor-Observer bias. It just so happens to be a bunch of attribution biases and heuristics we’ve been blessed to have.
Awesome…not. But that’s the initial reaction, what happens next? For a lot of people, it ends there. That was that, there’s the story you just told yourself. But for others, those who have good self-awareness, that’s just scratching the surface. Those who have the capacity for introspection tend to take it way further and question, analyze, and challenge their deeply set held beliefs, biases, and assumptions. It’s not fun. It ain’t pretty. It’s quite hard. And that’s exactly why many people don’t do it. Here’s a quote that I think applies here, from superstar bodybuilder Ronnie Coleman:
Ronnie Coleman 8 x Mr Olympia 2009 Melbourne, VIC, Australia Category:Ronnie Coleman (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but ain’t nobody want to lift this heavy ass weight!”
If you think that quote is about bodybuilding, think again. The hardest stuff worth doing almost always has some awesome payoffs. Introspection. Do it.
Caution: self-criticism is not the same as self-awareness. You can go overboard on the former, but almost never on the latter.
A few years ago, I tried my hand at affiliate marketing. I sucked at it and I hated it and I wasted a lot of time and money trying to figure it out. I read a lot of stuff about how to do it properly to make huge sums of money. For a while, I thought that this is what I wanted, large sums of money. But something about the whole thing seemed sketchy to me. I didn’t like the idea of persuading people to buy stuff that I never tried, yet implicitly endorsed. Some of the tactics used were also very shady to me, and so I quit. I learned a ton, though, so in the end I am still glad I tried it.
Still, I couldn’t figure out what bothered me about the whole thing. There are plenty of affiliate marketers doing it with integrity and making buttloads of money, so it couldn’t be an integrity thing. Just keep it clean. So what then? It turns out, the reason it bothered me was that I wasn’t really speaking my truth. I wasn’t really bringing any value to the table, which turns out is pretty important to me. Sure, someone filled out a survey and I got paid $1.25 for my efforts to bring the user to do so. So what? Did the world become a better place? Was the user better off for filling out the survey? Maybe, possibly, but probably minimally.
I think this is probably what bothered me with my earlier jobs. I was helping people solve problems, sure, but did I make the world a little bit better? Not really. I helped companies become incrementally more efficient, thus lining their pockets ever so slightly more, and I’m not even sure I did that to be honest.
This is very obviously the altruistic side of me coming out, but that’s not the entire truth either. I still like making money. I still like eating deliciously unhealthy food and splurging on ridiculousness and partying with beautiful women (in my dreams, ok!). That’s a simple truth. Another truth, though, a more important one is this: before my time is up, I need to know that what I’ve done on this planet contributed, in some small way, to making this world a better place. I need it. Sometimes it’s hard to digest the signal from the noise, and sometimes finding your truth is hard to do. But sometimes it’s staring you right in the face.
Starting Strength is a beginner barbell training program from a dude named Mark Ripptoe. It is one of the more popular beginner barbell programs and for good reason: it works! Mr. Ripptoe definitely knows his stuff and has written an excellent book in Starting Strength, now in it’s 3rd edition. It is highly recommended reading as it discusses the benefits of strength, why barbells are the most effective tool to gain strength, and the important lifts that will make any human, even puny ones like myself, strong like ox. That’s just the tip of the iceberg though, as this book comes in at over a whopping 300 pages. The attention to detail regarding the physics, mechanics, and technique is really impressive and you can definitely tell Ripptoe knows his stuff. Do you need to read the book to start the Starting Strength program? Nope, but it is a good idea to read it anyway. If reading isn’t your cup of tea, at the very least watch Ripptoe teach proper form on the lifts on youtube because doing the lifts incorrectly is not only dangerous, but it slows down your gains. If you are worried about form in any way, hire a personal trainer. If you can’t afford one, ask a friend who knows what he’s doing. If you don’t have one of those, video tape yourself and post it on Ripptoe’s forum so that he can critique you. If you don’t have a camera, ask on the forums and practice using light weights. If you can’t do any of that then get the hell out of here because this post isn’t for you.
The program itself is really simple. There are different versions of Starting Strength, and I did the one called “The Wichita Falls Novice Program”. In nice bullet point form, what you need to know:
– Lift 3x/week
– Squat every workout. Squats are boss. Ripptoe suggests the lowbar squat (that just means lower on the upper back, as opposed to high bar squat)
– Alternate bench press with overhead press. These are your pushing movements. So Monday bench, Friday overhead press, repeat
– Alternate deadlift with power cleans. These are your pulling movements. I did deadlift with overhead press.
– Alternate chinups with pullups. Alternate them with the deadlift/power cleans. Huh?? Keep reading.
– every exercise you do 3 sets of 5. That means you do the exercise 5 times, take a break, then do it again 2 more times. That’s 3×5. The exceptions to this are the deadlift (do it 1×5), and the power clean (do it 5×3). Why? Once you start lifting the deadlift you’ll know why. It’s draining as hell. If you can do it 3×5 you have wolverine like abilities. Good shit. As for the power clean, because it’s a movement where form is uber important, you get more breaks and get to lift it less reps.
– Ripptoe also suggests to pack on muscle (and tons of fat) to drink a gallon of milk a day (gomad). That’s crazy town, and I ignored this bit. Die hards will say that I didn’t follow the program. Cool, I’m fine with that. Onwards!
Progressive overload is your friend. That’s how you get strong. This means that if you hit your numbers for the day, you add more weight on the next workout for that exercise. For example, if you do 3×5 bench press at 100 lbs on Monday, then on Friday you’ll try 110 lbs 3×5 bench press. How long does this go on? Forever, if you can handle it (don’t worry, you can’t). How much weight should you be adding for the next workout? When you are just starting out, you should see some big jumps. So go up 10-15lbs at a time for some of the more full body lifts like squat and deadlift, and 5-10lbs for the other ones. Scale back once you start failing on some lifts, and only go up 10lb or 5lb increments. In other words, do what you can handle, not more, not less.
Some tips and tricks to help you along the way. Use the bare minimum amount of gear possible. For newbies who have absolutely no idea what they are doing and who don’t have experienced trainers watching them, at least get a belt. That’s what I did. You know why? Because when I didn’t have a belt on I threw out my back. Yeah, that set me back a month and it hurt to sit, shit, sleep, walk, move, and breathe. In other words, it sucked. So don’t be stupid like me, HOWEVER using a belt, chalk, powerlifting gear, straps on the deadlift, etc. is slowing down your progress. Leave all of that stuff to the pros or until you can’t help yourself any longer. At least try to get a base level of strength. For a 200 lb male, aim for a 1xbodyweight bench press, a 1.75xbodyweight squat, and a 2xdeadlift. Some of your lifts will move faster than others, for me the deadlift and the squat kept on going but the bench and overhead press kept stalling out. So when are you done? Ideally, when your squat stalls after 2 resets and your deadlift stalls after 1 reset. What’s a reset? Well, when you get stuck and can’t move the weight any higher, drop 10% of the weight and try again on the next workout, hopefully working your way past where you stalled. Hopefully that takes you a long time and you become much stronger in the process. One final tip: check your ego at the door. If you’ve never lifted before, you’re most likely weak. Get over it. The barbell doesn’t lie. You can lift it or you can’t. There’s no room for gigantic egos on this program, unless of course you love getting injured. And yes, nagging soreness and injuries will pop up here and there. That’s just the nature of the game. If you can lift, then lift. If you can’t, then lighten the load, do more reps, or take a day off. You’ll start to get an intuitive sense of your own body, so listen to it, not your ego. I messed up my wrists on the very first day of doing power cleans and 5 months later I’m still messed up and was never able to do power cleans. I did deadlift on those days instead. So every other week I did deadlift twice/week, which was tiring as hell, but thems the breaks. For recovery, don’t forget to foam roll. I also like to take hot/cold showers, drown myself in epsom salts on occasion, and perhaps some supplements like fish oil, etc. Speaking of supplements, check out my homey’s kickass site, Examine.com . It is hands down the most definitive source on supplementation on the internets. So kudos to the examine team for cutting through the bullshit and getting down to business.
For me, I’m hooked on barbell training. Thanks Starting Strength for the good times. I’ve now moved on to a reverse pyramid training set up, as my lifts all stalled out on SS, and I’m looking to continue on my strength journey. I ended up with decent numbers that I’m happy with at just under 6 months of training with SS. At last measure, I weighed in at 135 lbs and ended with a 150lb bench, 107.5lb overhead press, a 255lb squat, a 315lbs deadlift, and weighted chins at 42.5lbs and weighted pullups at 37.5lbs. I’d love to get my bench to 200lbs, squat to 300lbs, and deadlift to 400lbs by the end of the year, but I know I have my work cut out for me. It’s alright though, I love the challenge.
Starting Strength is an awesome program and highly recommended for anybody looking to gain strength and muscle. I recommend Ripptoe’s superbly awesome book as well. For additional resources, check out the Starting Strength wiki at http://startingstrength.wikia.com/wiki/Starting_Strength_Wiki, which I referred to often. New year, new beginnings. Now’s as good a time as any to get stronger.
Another year has flown on by, and what a juggernaut of a year it was. With the end of the year comes my traditional end of year review, of course! So here we go. For me, there was nothing sexy about this year. It was gritty, it was ugly, and it needed to be done. I grinded and hustled for most of the year and I don’t really see that changing in 2013. The year itself proved to be huge. There were three really big events that happened to me. They were, in roughly chronological order: 1) I finished my MBA, 2) I turned 30, and 3) I moved home.
1. Finishing my MBA was a relief. I learned a lot during my two years back at school, and almost none of it had anything to do with the classroom. I did manage to pick up a few things here and there while actually doing “school” (at the very least, I can say for certain I know of a lot more of the things I don’t know and am ignorant of), but the real learning came in my hours outside of school. I began to learn certain things about myself, such as what kind of work related activities I enjoy and which I don’t. I learned that no matter how hard I try, there are certain people I just have a hard time clicking with and that I’m not everybody’s cup of tea, either. I figured out the things that are important to me, such as freedom and health over wealth and riches, and prioritized myself accordingly. This year especially, in my last semester at school, I started to really feel that the pieces were coming together and that the earlier 1.5 years had prepared me for the journey I find myself on now. I feel there is so much more to write about this two-year time period that a single year-end review post wouldn’t do it justice, so I do plan on reflecting on this time in more detail later down the line.
2. I turned 30. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is nothing inherently special about the number itself, but something clicked at around the same time that my birthday rolled around. I started to take my crazy ideas very seriously. My entire life I’ve been plagued with self-doubt. I let that voice in my head scream loudly while ignoring the beat of my heart. I let well-meaning parents, relatives, friends, and guidance counsellors dictate and control my destiny. In my twenties I spent a lot of time trying to figure out who I was and experimented with all sorts of things, and now that I had the good fortune to play and discover, it’s time I got real. If there was a word for it, I guess it would be wisdom. But I am not that arrogant to think I am wise. I’m taking Steve Jobs’ advice and staying foolish. They say 30 is the new 20, but I hope not. I’d rather 30 be the same 30. It’s time I put on my big kid pants.
3. I moved home. I haven’t moved home in 10 years, and a lot has changed. Not my friends though, they are still the same dudes I remember in high school. All of them got fatter, some of them got bald and married, and a few even made some kids, which terrifies me to be honest. Regardless, I consider many of them as good friends, and a handful of them as my brothers. We’ve drifted far apart in terms of our ideals, morals, priorities, goals, and many other things over the 10 year span, but there is no denying my love for them. Just like family that drives you mad on a family vacation, that’s how I feel when I’m around these guys. But they are my family, and I love them regardless. Surprisingly, being so close to my real family has been awesome. For a person that loves his quiet time and space and solitude, it is nice seeing my parents on the regular. And they aren’t driving me mad. Heaven forbid, I actually enjoy their company!! I have great family and friends and I never wish to take that for granted. They play a huge role in my sanity and a lot of my drive and motivation comes from them.
There were other big milestones this year that I’d like to briefly write about. If you’ve made it this far, congratulations. Jump up and down in the air like you just don’t care. You also receive a free eHug from me. You are either really bored or genuinely care about me, so thanks either way.
I put on 10 lbs of mostly muscle doing barbell training (review of Starting Strength coming soon!). I love strength training and for as long as I am healthy will continue to train it in some form or other. After just under 6 months of training, I’ve gained a non pathetic amount of strength and that makes me happy.
I read a lot of books this year. According to Shelfari, my book count for the year was 142. See my shelf, here. That is more than 2.5 books a week. And that is an under representation as I read many ebooks that are not indexed in Shelfari. Again, reading is one of those loves of mine that just won’t quit. I have an insatiable thirst for knowledge and books are just a perfect medium to feed my addiction. Although Wikipedia, Ted, and Quora are pretty awesome, too. Quora, especially, is like a new kind of crack to me.
I’ve practiced Spanish on a daily basis. I’ve gone at it for 6 months consistently now and am finally starting to not feel like a total dumbass. The sites I’ve used are phenomenal. The first is Duolingo, which helps translate the web and was invented by the same guy who invented captcha, and the other is Memrise, which was started by a memory champion and a neuroscientist. Both are super badass and complement each other very well. Not only do you learn, but it is also quite fun! Me gusta! My profiles are at here and here.
And lastly, although I am not ready to talk about it just yet, I have been extremely busy building a new web app, so I guess that makes me a founder. I wanted to get it out of the door by the end of the year, but there are just a few minor things here and there that I’m not quite happy with before I put it out there to solicit feedback from a select group of trusted individuals. As soon as I get those out of the way and get the feedback, I’ll be sure to announce it here once I release it to the general public. It’s my small contribution to the interwebz and to society, and in Seth Godin lingo, I’ll be shipping my art.
I’m not done. I’m just getting started. Doors have closed, and doors have opened. I’ve played and had my fun, and now it’s time I… still play and have fun 😉 But now I know what I like to play and what I find fun. I’m nervous, I’m excited, I’m anxious yet calm. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I am excited to get up in the morning and ready to give the day hell. I love what I’m doing so I’m going to keep doing it. If 2013 is anything like 2012, it’s going to be exhausting, both emotionally and physically. It’s going to be a ton of work, it’s going to be ugly, and it’s going to be very hard. I say bring it, because that’s when I’m in my element. Let’s roll! Happy 2013!!
“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” – Winston Churchill
Helping my parents move has been a pain in the backside. They don’t like getting rid of things. Instead, they like to hoard and hoard and hoard. Once they buy something, they have to keep it forever. They have two VCRs that they aren’t willing to part with. Those things with the tapes. Yeah, I know right? It’s all fun and games until someone throws their back out from lifting heavy junk.
The thing is, I know where they are coming from. I mean, I can’t really hate. I was like that myself for many years. I probably picked that up from my parents. I’ve learned a lot from them, as most kids do. Some good, others, such as hoarding everything you can get your grubby hands on, not so much. It might also be an evolutionary reason why we as humans like to collect stuff. From a survival stand point, it made sense to collect food stores while the season and weather permitted. The ones who didn’t probably died a hungry, miserable death. Ah, but how times have changed. Nowadays, the consumption and collection of stuff is so out of whack. We don’t need to hoard to survive, but our programming tells us to.
Things are moving at unprecedented speeds. This is some kind of golden age of freakishly awesome innovation in just about every discipline of science and technology. However, our biological programming still does things the old ways and just can’t keep up. Going against some of that irrational programming is a very difficult thing to do, but I’m going to let you in on a little secret; The ability to reason and change ourselves is our greatest asset as a species. On the same thought, overcoming the urge to consume and collect has been one of the most rewarding and joyous things I’ve ever done. The idea of living simply and not getting attached to things like VCRs and smart phones is akin to removing a gigantic weight off of one’s shoulders. The psychological freedom is something everyone should experience. It’s just stuff, after all. The battle takes effort, but the rewards are plentiful. Don’t get me wrong, stuff is awesome. You need stuff to do stuff, but the burden comes when getting rid of that stuff is as painful as a dentist yanking out your teeth. We all want MORE, this is the reality, and I’m suggesting that sometimes what we want isn’t always what is best for us.
Last night, I hung out with a former classmate who is moving to Seattle. The week before, I saw him at another goodbye party for another friend who is also leaving. It was the 5th or 6th goodbye this month. The past two years have been amazing. I’ve met some incredible people, and many are scattering all over the globe. Some are as far as places like Brazil, Japan, India, Singapore, and China. For many, I’ll probably never see them again in my life. For the rest, it would be an absolute pleasure to run into them 1 or 2 more times in my lifetime, if I’m lucky. Regardless, some of them I’ll never forget.
In the ongoing story that is being written called life, you’re going to run into people who will have a profound impact on yours, and you on theirs. Even if its just a flash, don’t forget them, because just like that they’ll be gone. I’ll never forget my best childhood friend. In that moment, he was my bestest bud. We ended on bad terms in his eyes, but I’ll never forget him for what he meant to me growing up. I’ll never forget my first kiss, or the first time I got beat up, but I’ve long since forgotten my fourth kiss and the 26th time I got beat up. The people of impact are usually around in times when you were experiencing something for the first time, hence why you’ll probably have such fond memories of people you’ll encounter while travelling.
I’ll never forget the first time I was ready to call it quits in school because I felt I didn’t have the ability to continue, and my college buddy made me stay. We’ve lost touch, and I’ve never told him that he positively changed the direction of my life for good. I’ll never forget my first love for believing in me when nobody else did. Nobody, including myself. We didn’t work out, but what I learned from her has had profound impacts on who I am, where I am going, and a belief that maybe, just maybe, I can reach my true potential. That type of impact can never be repaid.
I was at a good friend’s wedding earlier this month. He surprised me when during his speech he mentioned that there was one person in particular he would like to thank above everybody else because if it wasn’t for him, he wouldn’t have met his wife. Then he said my name. It was very touching. It touches me still. I don’t think I’ve ever been publicly thanked by anybody before. Earlier this week, I got a text message at 2:30 am from another good friend telling me that he just proposed to his girlfriend and she said yes. They both credit me for introducing them. For me, it was a simple introduction. But for them, it was life changing. Touching. And I’ll never forget it. For those that aren’t in your life any more, consider yourself lucky if you were able to show your appreciation. For those that are around still, it’s never too late.
Summer is here, with record setting temperatures this past week. Hot! The Miami Heat were also red hot this past week, scorching a very game OKC Thunder on Miami’s way to their second ever franchise NBA championship and the first one ever for superstar Lebron James. I love sports, and although I’m not as diehard a NBA fan as I used to be, I do still like watching games and following the finals. One thing for certain is that people either LOVE Lebron James or they HATE HATE HATE him. I haven’t seen a basketball player polarize the fan base so dramatically in a long time. A lot of it had to do with the way he handled his departure from Cleveland to join the Heat. Despite taking a pay cut to get to Miami, many thought he was arrogant in the way he handled himself. When the Heat made it to the finals last year and lost, tons of fans were very happy. Most rooted for the Mavs just because they wanted Lebron to lose, and when they finally did all fingers pointed at Lebron. He took so much criticism on just about anything you could think about criticizing. This year, many wanted the outcome to be the same. I think some people would have enjoyed watching the Heat make it to the finals every year and lose every year until Lebron retired. But it didn’t happen. Lebron not only elevated his game to help his team win the championship, he shut up an ARMY of haters. Well, at least some of them. And at least for a little while.
Valuable life lessons can be taken from sports all of the time. You win some, you lose some. There will always be critics, naysayers, trolls and haters if you are doing anything of value and anything worth doing. Always. Bet on it. They’ll be there laughing at you when you stumble or fall, only to quietly slink away waiting until you fall again. No critic was ever idolized. No statues were ever built for them.
Get up, stand up, persist, and do what you were put on this planet to do. You aren’t going to always win. Hell, if you’re like me, you are probably going to lose a lot more times than you win. That doesn’t necessarily make you a loser, but it does make you more resilient. And hopefully a little bit better.
