At Least You Went… Why the hell would I name a blog this? Because it’s true. To a point. We all wake up at one point or another in the morning with the feeling of “fuck my life, go back to sleep”! Then we have a decision to make: be a lazy bastard? (Sorry. I don’t know the lady version of bastard or I would have inserted it here) or get the hell up and get after it? So what do I mean when I say that? I’ll do my best here. I hope. Hmmm, maybe my worst but this feels important so I guess we’ll see.
There was this day roughly nine years ago when I was driving to work and I was absolutely positive that I had a minor heart attack. Probably. It wasn’t as dramatic as what you might see on daytime TV, I actually finished my commute and thankfully arrived safely. My boss at the time (much cooler than my last one) looked at me and said “buddy, you look like shit”. I thanked her for the compliment and then told her what I thought had happened. “Jesus, go see your doctor!” she tells me. Like many jackass guys in their early 30’s I didn’t have one, so I got that sorted out quickly. Turns out when you call a doctor and they say they aren’t taking new patients and then you tell them you think you might’ve just had a heart attack, they’ll squeeze you in that day. Life Hack! To get to the maybe near death punchline, the process took too long so I wasn’t able to get a proper diagnosis by the time I finally made it to the E.R. after the doctor visit. So maybe I had a cardiac event, maybe I didn’t. Regardless, it was scary as hell.
So I had some decisions to make, which is clearly an understatement. I was incredibly depressed at the time. I had recently lost my wife to cancer and made the sensible decision to take comfort in corn dogs, pizza, Camel cigarettes and Miller Lite. All things that would be considered leading factors in your trusty heart just saying: “I’ve had enough of this shit”. When you’re really depressed you can actually come to the realization that you’re not actually suicidally depressed by having a (real or incredibly vividly imagined) near death experience. Anyway, I like to think I made the correct subsequent decision and joined a gym down the street from me.
This is not a gym-motivational piece.
OK, maybe it is just a little. However there’s a larger concept that I hope to make some sensible points of, friends. I’m not going to go all over-jacked and tan personal trainer yelling “PUSH IT!” in your face. Mostly because this is a written medium making it literally impossible to do so but even more mostly (?) because I’m not much of a yeller.
What I had decided, ultimately, was to start taking better care of myself. The gym was a somewhat familiar ground in which to start, as when I was 19 plus/minus a year I was a total gym rat. Then college happened and next thing I knew I had taken a 15 year break. Lot’s of 12 ounce curls but that was about the extent of it. However it was a starting block in the Don’t Accidentally Kill Yourself on Purpose wall that I was now determined to build. (Side note: DAKYoP would have been an even worse name for this blog but I digress)
So I went, and full disclosure: probably 10 of the first 13 times I went (including the first 5) I got to the parking lot, got self conscious, chickened out and went home. At the time this made none of the sense at all but in retrospect it makes perfect sense because motivation tends to be bullshit. See? Not a gym-motivational piece.
Motivation is shit.
When many people think about what motivates us, it is usually not with a modest result in mind. No, I’m not talking about getting delicious take-out or making sure you don’t miss happy hour. I mean doing things that can actually impact our lives, health and prosperity. Now before you call me a total loser, yes, lofty goals can be good, great and grand. You should want to achieve something that is great. Holy Balls, I would say that having over a million readers a month would be an amazing and lofty motivational goal for me. At the time of writing this however the number is substantially closer to zero. I’ve been working on this for over three months and I’ve barely got a semi-functional website at the moment to share it on. And there it is: if I expected to hit this goal easily and right out of the gate: I would’ve quit already. If the only thing you focus on is the ultimate motivation then it’s likely not to work.
Back to the gym for a quick analogy: I’ve been a regular for about 8 years or so and right about now it’s the annoying New Year’s Resolution People time. Look, I can definitely appreciate that they want to better themselves (before anyone overreacts and starts “@-ing” me please read all the previous lines in this article) but by Valentines Day 90% of them are gone. Why? Because shockingly, after 6 weeks they don’t look like the cover model on Men’s Health (or Women’s Health!). It’s the same deal as the people who quit a new job after 6 months because they’re not the fucking CEO already. The only thing that happens overnight is generally a good nights sleep. And hopefully good sex. And ideally both, but let’s not meander too far off topic. Though it would be a good night… OK. I’m done.
Trust the Process.
So here’s the deal: dream big, shoot for the stars and have more ambition than Ghengis Khan (though from a macro level he WAS kind of a dickbag but you get what I mean you conquering son of a gun. Yes, OK or you daughter of a gun. Maybe we just made that a thing. Like “Fetch” never was). The bigger point that I’m ambling towards here is that we have to figure out how to get there and then take steps, regardless of how incremental, to do so. Sounds sensible enough but much like I talked about how we can gaslight ourselves in a previous post, it’s easy to talk ourselves out of a goal when it takes longer than expected or presents difficulties that we did not anticipate. I almost did it to myself shortly after starting this project. I was paralyzed by “uh… well now what the fuck do I do”? Well thank you for asking, I will tell you.
I’ve been watching these motivational videos in the morning on Youtube for years that are basically mashups of people doing what I said I wouldn’t do to you, loyal reader, which is essentially yell “ GET AFTER IT!” while a montage of videos of super fit people working out and playing sports is on the screen. Hey, at 4 a.m. sometimes you need a little more than a coffee to get going.
Anyhow, after a hundred or so views of a couple of my go to videos I listened to some of the actual words coming out of peoples mouths and got a few points that apply to life outside of just getting swole at the gym. I’ll paraphrase the first one that came from Jocko Willink, former Navy Seal Commander and best selling author. It’s along the lines that people like to say that “things aren’t going my way right now” and that we wait for the perfect time, for the stars to align and everything be just right before we do something. Well guess what? Things aren’t going to “just go your way”, you have to make them go your way. We do that by simply starting to do what we want to achieve, even if we aren’t sure how to start The perfect time to start? It’s right now. If you’ve been reading, well then you know things haven’t exactly been going my way for quite some time now and like I just said: “well now what the fuck do I do?”. Well, I do “IT” now. I just sat down and forced myself to start somewhere. See if I can still write anything interesting. Google how to start a blog. Watch hours of tutorials on how to make a basic functioning website. I’m still working on it but hey, I’m still working towards something. The second one comes from Eric Thomas and basically sums up the last few lines: “It’s the process that makes you sweet”. I absolutely love that. It basically means crush the things that you have control over. Get up early, bring your best self to work, study and learn on your own time, sacrifice bullshit when you need to and be willing to put in the effort.
So Yeah, At Least You Went.
So yes, and I apologize, I’m going to wrap this up with another gym thing. I think ALYW has other meanings but I really don’t give a fuck because I coined it for myself a few years ago. I realized after a few months that starting my day with some exercise made me feel substantially better for the rest of the day. I had routines and plans and all that stuff but just like anyone else, there were days I woke up and just did not feel at all like doing a damn thing. So there were mornings that I would drag myself there, do 50-75% of my normal routine and that was it. I have a calendar that I keep track of my workouts on and one day I just wrote on it: “ALYW”. At Least You Went. I put in work towards the process of not Accidentally Killing Myself on Purpose. I apply it to other aspects of life: work, relationships, learning. But don’t ever, never ever my friends, use it as an excuse to half ass your way through shit. Instead: when you have those days that you wake up exhausted, are anxiety ridden about trying something new or just feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to start? Do something, anything, that moves you forward. When you are finished with that something then THAT will provide actual motivation to keep working because you will feel better that you didn’t just give up, that you ARE working toward that goal. You just had a victory. Winning feels good, right? Build on that and take those victories as steps toward the ultimate goal.
I am by no means a superhero or elite athlete or certified genius but I persist. Nope, I am not perfect in doing so at all but At Least I Went. If I went, then I know that you can too.