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Finding Closure… Strangely

It’s easy to stand here in 2010 and be completely amazed at the world around us.  We are simply awash in a staggering amount of technological progress that takes our big beautiful world and makes it feel incredibly small.  Blogs (like this amazing one that you simply cannot get enough of… right?  RIGHT?!?!?!?), Twitter, Facebook and so on.  When I actually take a moment to stop and think about it, it’s pretty overwhelming in a wonderful sort of way.

But as we move forward and become (allegedly) more sophisticated, we do leave many things behind… and not all of them are bad.  For one, we have really done away with or just completely forgotten many of the rituals or ceremonies that marked important passages in our lives.  I think it’s a wonderful thing that, for example, in Judaism there is the bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah to mark the entrance into an adult life for young people of that faith.  Or perhaps the walkabout that Australian aborigines participate in.  It’s truly a shame there are not more events such as this more universally.

Why have we left such things behind?  Is it a feeling that we are simply too sophisticated for such things that remind us of our more tribal and ancient roots?  Probably.

Ahh, but rejoice my friends!  For despite our desire to leave behind such primitive trappings of a bygone era, there are those out there striving to still provide a means by which to help mark those significant points that we might otherwise let slip by like a thief in the night.  Who, pray tell, who could such a person be?

I present for your consideration… Death Bear.Death Bear

Yeah… you read that right.  Death Bear.

Who… or maybe what… is Death Bear?  Death Bear is a performance artist based in Brooklyn who will come to your home on a strictly volunteer basis to help people move on from a break-up in a relationship.  Cute and cuddly, ain’t he?

I stumbled across this character as part of a piece over at MSNBC and honestly, I had to chuckle when I first saw it.  I mean, seriously… a dude showing up in a 7 foot tall all black bear costume to take away the reminders of love gone sour?  How can that possibly be something helpful for people who are going through some genuine emotional pain in their lives?

Well, apparently it does help.  As Theresa Thai, someone who has used Death Bear before, says in the MSNBC piece, “He was very cordial and kind of somber, actually.  It was almost like sacrificing something to alleviate the feeling of a heavy heart. It’s all symbolic, but it really did help.”

The more I thought about it, the less strange it seemed.  Don’t get me wrong – there’s no way a dude in an all black bear suit going by the name Death Bear is ever going to be quite a normal to encounter as an accountant in a business suit.  However, the notion of someone taking part in a ritualistic way to move beyond heartbreak?  It actually makes a lot of sense and it’s probably not a bad idea for anyone seeking to find better closure.

Plus, who doesn’t like someone in an animal costume showing up at their door?  I tell ya who… people I don’t wanna know.

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Coloring Outside the Lines

Whenever I see a little kid doing some coloring, I always smile when I see what kind of wild creation they come up with in their coloring books.  It’s often a bunch of crazy colors, none of which match and rarely are they able to stay within the lines.  I know it was like this with my nephews when I would see their bursts of Crayola-inspired artistry.crayons_full

But then when they reach a certain age (and I’m not sure exactly what age that is), I  think I fall into the same pattern of behavior as everyone else… admonishing them (gently mind you) that they need to start coloring inside the lines or they need to pick the “right” colors for their drawings.  It’s like my brain just cannot quite process a drawing by (for example) a 9 year old where they just can’t seem to stay neatly within the black-and-white pictures they are given.  I reason, “The pictures would look better and more life-like if they stay in the lines and pick appropriate colors!  I mean, cows aren’t green, for the love of God.”

Well, a friend/colleague/blog reader, Heidi, sent along a quote to me that really struck me about the above kind of thinking I (and lots and lots of other people) get snagged into:

Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.
– Alan Kneightly

Boom.  Headshot.

What a perfect little snapshot on what creativity should mean to each and every one of us.  I’m not going to go off on some rant about nurturing children or proper parenting techniques because (1) I’m not qualified having no kids of my own and (2) that’s just patronizing.  What I do want to say is that for myself, I really need to think a little more about how I view “coloring outside the lines” generally speaking, especially with my nephews.

Pencil mug from Sam In the end, does it really matter if my nephew, Sam, likes drawing all over the place or using the color red for… well… mostly everything (as is demonstrated by this pencil mug he did for me a few Christmases ago)?  Hardly.  I just wonder about the subtle effect of always forcing people into smaller and smaller boxes, hence smaller and smaller ways of thinking about things.  Would Sam be driven down a path of complete anarchy and chaos if he was never “corrected” to use different colors or try to be neat?  I kind of doubt it, but I do think that if he (or any kid) were to be constantly boxed in, they might not quite be to their creative potential as they should.

And I don’t mean anything about all of us needing to be artists and such, but I believe it to be a fact of modern life that creativity tends to be constantly stifled.  It’s like the old line of corporations wanting people to think outside the box, but then always putting them inside physical boxes (cubes) to do their work.  What is gained in neatly partitioned work spaces and potential floor plan efficiency may very well be lost in new ways of thinking.

My own remedy for my own potential stifling attitude (whether for others or myself) is twofold: (1) This blog.  I cannot even begin to say how liberating it is to do this and to write freely about topics of interest to me.  (2) Read The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron.  I’ve had this book come highly recommended as a great read on unlocking your own inner creativity and letting it breath a little more.  I began reading a sample of it on my Kindle (so handy) and please do not be dissuaded by the title – it’s something anyone can find value in, not just artists.

Maybe I will even color my next chart for work outside the lines… if I could just bend that damn PowerPoint to my will…

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Adventures in Self-Discovery: Snowboarding

Today I decided I would walk the walk and not just talk the talk.  You will certainly see me advocating all sorts of good positive change, going for it and such on this very blog.  Part of it is certainly because these are all things I am trying to do for myself.  If I speak of how people should put themselves out there and try some wacky things, it’s because I know I need to do the same.

Well, today was a day for me to do less yapping and a little more doing.  So, I took my jazzy new snowboarding outfit and headed on off to Ski Butternut up in Great Barrington, MA to finally give snowboarding a whirl.  It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for quite a while and did a ton more talking about wanting to go than just getting up off my butt and just going.

I figured taking a vacation day to extend my weekend to 3 days would be just the thing.

I’m not gonna lie to you… when I actually arrived and saw all those people who just effortlessly glided down the mountain on their skis or snowboards, I got pretty nervous.  I’ve been skiing about 5 or 6 times in my life, but it’s probably been at least… ohh… 12 years since I last went?  And snowboarding is really nothing like skiing.

But I pressed on, signed up for a lesson and off I went for my 1 hour lesson.  How did it go?  Well… much of my day looked pretty much like this:

2010-02-08 - Snowboarding

Yup.  On my butt and looking down the bunny hill, wondering how the hell I was actually going to get back on my feet.

So what did I learn on this brisk and sunny New England day?

  1. Don’t take yourself too seriously.  I knew going into all of this that if I was going to get all bent out of shape, it would be a wasted vacation day.  I hate wasting vacation days.
  2. Kids tend to be pretty good at skiing and snowboarding because they are too young to be afraid.  I could hardly count how many kids… and as young as 6 or so… just firing down the slope with complete ease.  It makes me chuckle to think as we age and allegedly get smarter or more “wise”, we also tend to become less playful and much more reserved.  Kids just go for it and worry about the consequences later.  While that approach is not going to be ideal for all circumstances of an adult life, I fully believe we can all benefit from having this more in our lives every day.  Yes, I said every day.
  3. It’s good to stop being “that guy”.  Oh and which guy might that be?  You know the one.  “Dude, I am totally going to go skydiving.  Seriously.  It’s gonna be aaaaawesome.”  Except he has been saying that for 5 years.  When it came to snowboarding, I was totally that guy… and that guy can be so annoying.  It’s fine to want to do something cool or fun or daring, but talking about it any longer than 1 year is just ridiculous.  And yes, I just made up that 1 year mark, but it now feels super-official to me.  I am the rule-maker… FEAR ME.
  4. Snowboarding gear is almost absurdly complicated. I love my snowboarding pants and jacket.  They are 100% powerful sweet, no doubt about it.  But damn, do they have a lot of pockets, zippers, vents, snaps and doo-hickeys.  I must say I do like the pocket with the vent hole so I can safely tuck away my iPod and run the headphones up through my jacket.  I am still convinced I overlooked a few features.  If the jacket had an emergency parachute in the event you fell off a cliff, I would not even be remotely surprised.

So that was my new experience today and it was pretty fun.  A few of the falls were tough and just getting back onto my feet was a challenge, but I kept at it as best I could.  I only decided to call it a day when one of my falls was a little TOO hard and jerked my neck and head pretty hard.  I figured that was my sign to stop.

I’m just happy I got off my butt, tried something new and shed my “that guy” title… at least for snowboarding.  Now if I can only get my running with the bulls in Pamplona plan in motion… and I am not even kidding about that a little bit.

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Got Scars?

Today I was out in the gray chilliness that is Winter in Connecticut and doing some pushes and pulls with my beloved Prowler.  I strained and struggled and fought it with all I could for a shade under 30 minutes before calling it a day.  As I completed the last push of the day, I finished and immediately dropped into a semi-kneeling position, almost like genuflecting.  However, I successfully kept my breakfast down.  But you know what I thought to myself?

“Huh… no puking yet again… maybe I’m not doing this hard enough.”

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the insanity that is my noggin.  Please keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times because I really can’t be held responsible for what may happen otherwise.

Now why on earth would I think that?  Seriously.  First of all, I really hate puking.  I know that is not a penetrating insight on par with the work of Plato or Immanuel Kant, but I mean I really hate it.  Second, how can anyone rationally think that puking could be a sign of anything remotely good or positive?  It’s like those kooky powerlifters who seem to enjoy the fact they get blood shins from doing deadlifts where the bar drags along their legs.  That can’t be sane… can it?

I’ll tell you why I think this… because I often wonder, if you don’t bear scars, have you really tried hard enough?  Or put another way, have you truly found the thing you are just so passionate about that you are willing to run the risk of skinned knees or puking or falling short in the process?  Willing to run the risk of embarrassment over not coming through as a total success because you just love the process so much that winning or losing is a distant second?

I wonder this because I believe (at least in my own personal case) that for things that truly and deeply matter to me, I am willing to risk the scars or the falling short or the skinned knees or possible ridicule of polite society.  I know if my heart was not truly in whatever this “thing” may be, I wouldn’t be willing to run the risk of any of that.  Who wants any of that for something that doesn’t stir up the passion of your soul?  Not this kid right here, I’ll tell you that much.

The physical acts of which I speak and the scars that can accompany them are just one tool or expression of what any person walking this beautiful planet can be passionate about.  As you and I well know, not all scars are physical and those that are not can certainly mark you more deeply than ones etched upon your skin.  But the fact still remains… that for those things we care most about… our families, our faith, our ideals or whatever it may be… we will put ourselves out there and run the risk of the scars.

I’m still working on this all the time… the process to find my true passions for all aspects of my life.  It’s certainly not easy because it’s rare to just wake up one day and think “By Jove!  I’ve got it!” and just know what you were meant to do or who you were meant to be.  So I keep plugging away at those things I know I love and by virtue of the struggle, sweat and scars, I hope to find it.

Even if I may have to get a little sick to do it.

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The Internet is Full of Real People Too

A few days ago I wrote a post called “The Failure Cushion” where I reacted to a piece on MSNBC discussing people who are new to getting in shape.  Now, I’m very much fine with people trying to improve their lives through exercise and healthy choices… and I damn well better be since that’s about 90% of this blog.

There was a quote from that MSNBC piece that I focus on where a woman being interviewed, Taryn Wright, discusses that she feels she should be able to get in shape because “All these muscle heads are doing this high on steroids. I can do this!”  That line really didn’t sit well with me for these reasons I go into in the post.

Well today a funny thing happened… that same Taryn Wright from the MSNBC article found my post and commented on it (you can see her comments on the link I include above to the post).  And you know what?  She was actually very nice about it and mostly agreed with what I had to say.

The reason I mention any of this is pretty simple: that even when you think you are writing about some seemingly far-away person mentioned in an Internet article, they’re a person too with real thoughts, real experiences and real feelings.  I’m not saying I regret what I wrote in my piece – I really don’t and I think I wasn’t some kind of complete jackass about what she said.  I just strongly disagreed with it.

But it was interesting to get the note from Taryn and then to go over to her blog, Inner Fat Girl, to get a sense of what she is all about.  And yup – she’s just a regular person fighting the same fight all of us have to push ourselves in the direction we want our lives to take.  I’m really pleased Taryn took the time to respond to what I wrote because it’s a really important reminder to me that for all of the nonsense that occurs on the Interwebz, there is often a perfectly nice person on the other end.

So that’s something I try to always strive for in my posts: If I wouldn’t say it to someone’s face, I shouldn’t say it on here.  It’s cowardice, plain and simple, to hide behind the “safety” of your computer keyboard while excoriating people from a distance.  Friends, family, colleagues and such read this blog, so it matters to me that it’s well-written and reflective of who I am as a person… and that shouldn’t be too hard to accomplish.

Please do check out Taryn’s blog.  She is a very good writer and pretty damn funny.  Well, maybe not as funny as me, but good Lord, cut her some slack.  No one has my incisive humor… or charm… or tremendous good looks.  Seriously, it makes for a lonely existence, my friends.  You should feel bad for me.

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Toxic People and the Superfund of Life

I’m not sure if it’s El Nino or global warming or the Winter or some mysterious cosmic force only foretold of by Dionne Warwick and the Psychic Friends Hotline, but toxic people have been on my mind.  Some of these have been people I have had the dubious pleasure of interacting with, but more often than not, it’s been friends of mine dealing with this abomination of the human spirit.

In thinking over this phenomenon, I tried to look to the cultural giants in human history for guidance.  There is certainly nothing new about the existence of toxic people – they have certainly existed for probably about as long as human beings have walked the earth… and at least as long as MTV has decided to collect them for the purposes of reality TV.

So I quote the bard:

You’re toxic I’m slipping under
With a taste of a poison paradise
I’m addicted to you
Don’t you know that you’re toxic

Yes Ms. Spears… yes.  I do know this, but it was never going to work out between us in the end.  We come from two different worlds and… umm… wait, where was I again?

Oh yes, toxic people.  I think there are essentially a few different ways to handle this bane of human existence:

  1. Avoid them. Like the plague.  Seriously.  Certain people out there will just suck the life out of you every time you interact with them.  It’s just their nature (or maybe their nurture if they grew up oppressed by a toxic parent).  In the end, they are just not worth the time, aggravation and drama.  And ohhhhh, the drama!  The drama queen/king is really one of the more common forms of toxic people running around.  Sure, there are people out there who look to tear you down with biting comments, but they are more rare than those who seem to have a parade of complete disaster trailing in their wake.  They make me smile and chuckle softly to myself because their dead giveaway to their drama-dom is the line “… and I cannot figure out why all this stuff happens to me!”  If they repeat that a lot… flee.  The reason that all that stuff happens to them is because they subconsciously enjoy the drama (it gives them attention) or they constantly make bad choices that bring it upon them.
    But what if they are your family member or co-worker or boss?
  2. Address the drama: Family members.  This is trickier, obviously.  It can be a little easier with family members because… well… they cannot really fire you from being related to them.  I think in this case you just need to ask more gently when they are in the midst of a drama meltdown “Huh… well, why do you think this is happening to you?”  They may have no idea they are creating their own drama and you need to ease your way into discussing this with them.  If you go this approach and it stays the same or, God forbid, gets worse, then you will probably have to default to tip #1 more often than not.  As harsh as that sounds, think of it this way – if you have brought the issue up with your family member and they continue the behavior and you end up absorbing all the stress, how fair is that really to you?  I know you love them, but a little tough love through the absence of your presence may begin to snap them out of it.
  3. Address the drama: Your boss.  A boss is a harder one because you don’t want to derail/ruin your career or lose your job by ticking off your boss… and if your boss is a toxic person, this is a definite possibility.  I ain’t gonna lie to ya.  The first and clearest option to me is to complete kick ass at your job and be sure you can prove you kick ass at your job.  Why?  Because a toxic boss who likes to pick away at you or create havoc for you will have a difficult time refuting cold hard facts of your complete awesomeness.  Is this easy when you work for a toxic person?  Hell no!  But it’s what you truly need to consider because there are 2 primary benefits of doing this beyond having material to use with your boss if the gauntlet is thrown down: (1) You are making yourself more marketable and prepping your resume for your next step; and (2) Other people in your company/organization/department will begin to notice you are really good which can ease your transition to something new.  You cannot underestimate the power of this second point, especially since other people where you work likely can tell you work with a toxic boss.

As you can see, there are various themes to these tips and avoidance is a piece of it (if possible).  I can see a reaction from people that avoidance is a bad idea because you aren’t really “addressing” the problem.  My response to that?  Umm… yeah, that’s the point.  We are often taught that every problem must be met head on… confronted directly in order to vanquish it like St. George slaying the dragon.  Hogwash.  Why?  2 reason: (1) It’s not your job to fix everyone else in the world, quite frankly.  In addition, toxic people are by their very nature stressful to those around them.  Why seek out stress you really don’t need? My life philosophy these days is to keep things very simple because life adds its own complications just fine without your help. (2) A toxic person has to choose to change.  Yes, your confronting them on it may cause that change, but at some point, it’s like yelling at a wall.  Believe me… I’ve yelled at some walls in my time and they really don’t listen well.  Heck, they may not even listen AT ALL.  Umm… oversharing?

In the end, putting in an effort to handle those people who are toxic is fine… to a point.  After that, let it go and enjoy a life with a slightly smaller slice of happiness.  Believe me, life is much better outside of the Superfund.

LiquidDisposalMaComb-B1_167776_7

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Everyone Else Is Doing It

Ethics.  It’s a word that can certainly grab your attention and one that actually gets bandied about quite a bit in the news the last few years.  Ethics goes to more than just what the law requires (although it certainly encompasses that) and goes to the seemingly nebulous idea of “what is right”.  My full-time “real” job is completely comprised of handling business ethics where I work.  I know, I know… you’re thinking to yourself that it seems impossible that someone with my chiseled features and build is not making a living as an inspiration of nouveau sculptures of Greek gods, but there’s really a lot less of that kind of work than you would think.  Quite a bummer.

I believe very strongly that ethics is not just something that’s “good to do”, but in the business world, it’s also a competitive advantage.  Don’t believe me?  Think of the car mechanic your family swears by because he does great work, doesn’t overcharge and genuinely lets you know when something is wrong with your vehicle.  We will tend to gravitate much more strongly towards those who give us a square deal and we do not feel completely slimy after a business transaction with them.  Plus, a business committed to acting ethically is also going to be a place that is very well-run anyway.

If there is something in the world of ethics (whether business or just personal) that makes my gray matter light up with red flags, it would have to be someone using my all-time favorite justification for unethical conduct.  Yes, that’s right good people… “Everyone else is doing it!” *shudder*  Remember trying that one on your mom?  Remember how that went?  Yeah, me too.

This is why I was so struck by this piece over at Time Out New York from this past Summer.  There is a Broadway revival of The Fantasticks and Ben Brantley from The New York Times went to it and wrote a review.  Generally speaking, he didn’t care for it.  But he did have a little bit of positive reaction to one actor in the piece, Tom Jones:

Unlike much of the rest of this production, he feels like the real thing… [he] gives a perfectly pitched, disarmingly sincere performance that captures why The Fantasticks became the enduring favorite it did.

Mr. Brantley also went on to conclude with an observation of how he thought when he saw the original piece at age 9, he was enchanted.  So on this piece he writes:

And who knows? There may be a few 9-year-olds out there…who will conclude that The Fantasticks is the last word in theatrical sophistication.

Easy enough.  He did not care for the piece, one actor had the feel and spark of the original production and maybe some 9 year olds will think it is a sophisticated piece of theater.

Here’s the problem… the photo below is what was posted outside the theater as a quote from this reviewer:

photo-225x300

Umm… what?  That’s not even in the ZIP code of what the review was and yet, somehow this is what Broadway shows apparently do.  I have seen a bit more of this in terms of selected quotes for movie reviews, but this may be the most blatant example I have seen of cobbling together bits and piece of someone’s words to create a meaning that was simply not present.

To top it off, one of the people responding to this Time Out New York piece in the comments wrote the following:

Mr Brantley’s quote is the reason I bought a ticket to The Fantasticks last week. In a single word The Fantastciks is magical. It is a simple musical, love story, poetically played by a wonderful cast. I have seen The Fantasticks several times, and this production currently playing at The Snapple Theater Center is the best I have seen. But that isn’t why you have attacked this quote and theater is it? I would like you to show me any Broadway, or Off Broadway show that doesn’t pull words from sentences in order to bring in audiences. Why not let the public decide. When I saw the show last week, it was to a sold out house.I don’t care who wrote it, or even didn’t write it. The fact is that it is a true statement. Now really, there must be more news worthy stories out there for you.

Really?  Is there where we have come to?  That if the ends justify the means (i.e. this one woman enjoyed it based on the review so it becomes a “true statement”) so all is right with the world?  Or because other Broadway shows dissect a review done to get enough words in a proper order to create a positive review, we should shrug our shoulders?

Maybe this seems like I am blowing out of proportion something small, but it is something I believe that should matter to each of us as individuals.  Your integrity is yours and yours alone to nurture, protect and develop.  Trust is hard to develop, easy to ruin and then near impossible to build back up depending on the magnitude of the let down.  Just a lesson that if you want to work towards respect (personal or professional), it’s not a sometime thing… it’s an all the time thing.  And the world’s worst attempted shortcut when deciding how to work through a dilemma is what everyone else may be doing.

And before you demand I get off my highest of horses… it’s not about being perfect, but it is about doing your best… and this was not someone’s best or anywhere close to it.  A little effort, people!

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JK Rowling on Failure

kevin 111A fairly old adage says that the two unavoidable things in life are death and taxes.  I actually can think of two other events that fit the parameters of being unavoidable: change and failure.  Quite a list there, eh?  Death, taxes, change and failure.  Possibly four of the greatest fears most people probably have.  I know I have had them at one time or another in my own life – well, maybe not a fear of taxes, but certainly a less-than-rosy view of them.

I’ve also had my own moments of failure, disappointment and heartbreak.  It’s never a good thing to decide as a senior in high school that all you ever want to be is a lawyer… to go to college and spend so much focus on getting into law school… and then working your ass off in law school to get that first shiny job with a big firm… only to realize you despise being a lawyer.  Or to be working at a job and be part of a 1/3 of the company lay-off, move home to live with your parents at age 29 and spend 9 months out of work, all the while doubting whether you can truly make something of yourself.  That’s all happened to me and while a lot of it brought me down to my knees, I also think I learned an enormous amount about life and myself in that time.

JK Rowling spoke 2 years ago at the commencement for Harvard University and touched on what failure (as painful and agonizing as it was), did for her.

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

The point she makes that stuck me most was this:

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure?  Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential.  I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.  Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena where I believed I truly belonged.  I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized and I was still alive and I still had a daughter whom I adored and I had an old typewriter and a big idea.  And so rock-bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

That last line is an incredibly powerful insight and mirrors my own experience.  Granted,  I was not in a place probably as difficult and dark as Ms. Rowling, but I was certainly not at the pinnacle of my powers in any sense.  And it sucked – bad.

But it shows that when difficulties come, they are very rarely terminal.  They will require an ego-check or some pride swallowing, but they are surely not the end of it all.  It’s just a another example of keeping one’s perspective when you face the inevitable difficulties of your life.

So I would love to add a fifth unavoidable to the initial list from this posting, but maybe it’s not an “unavoidable” as much as it is a near certain result when you face some ugly times:

This too shall pass.

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The Failure Cushion

The month of January is the carnival of newbie-dom at gyms and health clubs across this nation of amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesty… you know, above the fruited plain and such?  Anyhoo, while I am fully one to applaud the efforts of anyone looking to get into better health and such, there are clearly some hazards.

MSNBC had an article this week on the variety of injuries incurred by those looking to get back into shape or just into shape for the first time ever.  The article itself was not terribly remarkable to me… until I got to the following passage:

In a fit of New Year’s resolution frenzy, Taryn Wright marched herself to the gym and onto a treadmill on a January afternoon two years ago. “I had never — literally, never — worked out before, ever, in my life,” says Wright, who’s 31 and lives in Chicago. But, she reasoned, “How hard could it be? All these muscle heads are doing this high on steroids. I can do this!”

At first, she walked. Then, spurred on by the imaginary scorn of her surrounding exercisers, she kicked it up a couple notches — and couldn’t keep up. She flew to the end of the treadmill, caught herself at the edge and did a weird little hop back to the front of the machine. “It lifted the end of the treadmill and sent it crashing down to the floor,” says Wright.

It’s not the fact of her tumbling onto the floor that caught me.  Believe me, I have had enough near-disasters in gyms to last me a lifetime.  I’m just thankful I’ve come out fine in all of those cases.

But it’s that one damn line…. “How hard could it be? All these muscle heads are doing this high on steroids. I can do this!”

My problem with this line and this mentality is that if people are out there looking to get in shape and immediately start off assuming that anyone who looks slightly muscular is on steroids… well… then they’re simply working from a place of failure from the get-go.  Too harsh?  Honestly, I’m not so sure.

The problem I see with this mentality (and I have heard it from several different people before) is that it is a case of seeing those who are successful and immediately jumping to they must be cheating or taking shortcuts to get where they are.  It’s the act of tearing down others who are in a place we wish we were in, so instead of using them as an inspiration or a goal or even a point of competition, it’s easier to say, “She must have had work done” or “Pfft.  He’s obviously on steroids.”

Are there people in gyms on steroids?  Sure.  Are there people out there who have had “work” done on themselves?  Of course.  floor-cushion_main

But here is the crux of the matter: if you start in a place that anyone who is leaner  or stronger or has a better build or whatever it may be cut corners to get there, all you are doing is building your cushion for failure… because hey, if you cannot get into the shape they got into, it’s because you have ethics or morals or standards unlike them.  It couldn’t possibly be that you just didn’t want to put in the time or dedication to accomplish those goals.  Oh gosh no!  That requires accountability.

And who has time for accountability anyway?  That takes up too much time from carefully crafting that comfy velvet wrapped failure cushion.  It really does pull a room (or an enormous set of excuses) together exquisitely, don’t you think?

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From Whence Shall Come Our Catalyst?

I’ve mentioned before that a lot of friends, family and co-workers will ask me variations of the question “How can I get into better shape/health?”  It’s pretty much the most popular question I get… you know, besides “Do they sell elite-level handsomeness like yours in a bottle?  Because I would totally buy that.”  The answer to the 2nd question is, sadly no.  This is just how God made me.

Truth be told, the 2nd most popular question I am asked is “How do I get started on getting healthier?”  This is a trickier and much more fundamental question than the first one entirely.  The first question assumes a level of action or momentum whereas the second question is looking for something to begin that momentum.  Essentially, the person asking the question is looking for some kind of catalyst to get things moving.

I found the following definition of a catalyst over at Chemicool:

A substance that speeds up a chemical reaction, but is not consumed by the reaction; hence the catalyst can be recovered unchanged at the end of the reaction it has been used to speed up, or catalyze.

The more detailed discussion on the definition goes on to say that a catalyst acts  to lower the amount of energy required to cause activation in a chemical reaction.

Isn’t that really what someone is asking about when they want to know what it takes to get off the couch and get going with a better lifestyle?  Some way to ease the transition from one state to yet another by lower the barriers and resistance?chemistry

I know it may seem like I am getting off into semantics here, but it’s an important point and why I think the catalyst concept is so important for people who feel like they want to change, but cannot muster up that first push.  The catalyst helps get things going by making the transition from one state to the next easier and it does not get consumed in the process.  After all is said and done, the catalyst remains.

So where does that get us for those looking to make the move?  Here are my tips and thoughts on that.

  1. Get pissed off.  No really.  There is a substantial amount of power to be tapped from a complete sense of being fed up and dissatisfied.  I am not suggesting you turn into a wall-punching lunatic, but to take some time to think about why you are even considering a lifestyle change.  Maybe you were playing with a grandchild and were getting winded easily and had to cut short the fun.  Maybe you are sick of your lower back feeling like it has daggers sticking into it every time you want to go dancing.  Maybe you think wistfully back on the days of being an athlete and wonder why you replaced quick feet for a beer gut.  Or maybe you saw your doctor who shook his head disapprovingly at your stress levels and blood work results.  Give some time to really think about whatever it is that got you thinking about making a change.  Many times, it will make you a little more restless… and that’s good in this case.
  2. Start small.  It’s not necessarily the case that you need to make a full 180 degree change from how your life was before.  That approach does work for some people, but for others it’s just a quick path to hitting huge roadblocks, stalled progress and eventually giving up.  But some action is absolutely better than none and as any high school physics student can tell you, an object in motion tends to stay in motion.  If you are even doing something small, the barriers to moving onto the next step are not going to be nearly as great.
  3. Go after things of interest to you.  I can give someone all the advice in the world about weight training and interval conditioning, but if they simply are disinterested in that, it’s of no use.  I think that points gets lost on some people providing advice – they treat it as an all-or-nothing kind of thing.  I am a strong believer in the power of a proper resistance training program, smart diet and good conditioning to make a big impact not just on your health or bodyfat, but your quality of life.  But I also know it’s not going to interest everyone, so I am not going to force feed anyone my philosophy.  I will try and seek out what is the area that someone may have an interest to seek out.  Again, the catalyst is all about lowering the barriers to make the reaction change occur.  If someone used to be a dancer, they might like to try a dance class.  Then the ball may begin rolling along and they branch out from there, but the key is to seek out that thing of interest first and make the push there.

I only went with 3 tips because what I considered as a 4th option is not really a tip so much as a fact: it’s your own personal decision to take action in the end.  There are a lot of wonderful ways to ease that decision, but it will still be ultimately up to you to make that choice.  The trick is that when you are in a long-term state of inaction, the choice can seem massive and curling up on the couch with some Cheetos to watch Jersey Shore is a whole lot easier if that if what you’ve been doing… and if that is truly what you’ve been doing, God help you.  That show is crap.

So from whence shall come your catalyst?  Look to thine own self.

Now I need to go spend a few minutes thinking why I lapsed into sounding like the King James Version of the Bible.  Hoo boy.