27 lessons from 27 years, Part III (16 - 1)

16 - Promises are meant to be kept. 

       What’s the good of your word if you don’t keep it. This year has been an absolute revelation in terms of my own character flaws. Perhaps the most obvious, but probably the least egregious example has been my tardiness. Danielle pointed out how my constant tardiness reflected my list of priorities whether I consciously acknowledged that list or not -- a painful but necessary lesson. I’ve been trying to work on timeliness but I’m still far from a satisfactory level. Half of life is showing up. If I can’t even get that down, what hope do I have of the other half?

15 - Your ambitions should be ambitious.

        I do an excellent job of hiding thoughts from myself. After I completed my first triathlon I was happy to be sure, but I felt a strange disappointment. That wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I thought I’d be more broken down, more on death’s door. I pushed as hard as I could at the end of the race, once I hit Central Park, but considering how quickly I recovered I kept thinking to myself “I could have made my big push sooner.” This year I did the Half Ironman in Syracuse and I’ve never lived a day with such intense emotions as I did that day. Fear. Despair. Desperation. Hope. Triumph. Elation. Gratitude. I felt them all, I emptied my soul out that day. I’m glad I met a new friend on the run and old friends found me at the finish line. But the last few weeks I’ve been trying to remember how much my body hurt that day. I can’t recall anything of my IT Band pinched between my knees nor vomiting on myself in the swim, or my heart rate flying through the roof prematurely on the bike. I can’t viscerally remember a single one of those facts. Again I feel a dissatisfaction with one of the happiest days in my life. I can do that faster. I can go even further. Ambition. A pastor who has always struck me as flamboyant and full of hot air actually gave me one of my most cherished nuggets of wisdom, a Chinese proverb: your life is a boat rowing upstream. You’re going forward or going back. There’s no staying still. 

14 - Your body remembers joy. Your body doesn’t remember pain.

        Remember that the next time you want to skip a workout and stay in bed.  See previous for details. 

13 - The 80/20 rule. Don’t sweat the small stuff.

        80% of your results come from 20% of your work. Take fitness for example. I’m extremely, extremely confident that you will be fit as you will ever *need* to be for the rigors of this modern world with a balanced diet and 2 half-hour walks every day. That’s ALL. Forget going to the gym for hours and hours lifting weights, running, swimming or sinking loads of dollars into gadgets and programs. Your workouts come for free and you’ll actually save money with your diet once you cut out fast food. You can stay mentally active into old age by doing sudoku’s and crosswords. 

12 - The 80/20 rule. The Devil’s in the details.

        20% of your work produces 80% of your results. But the difference between 80% and 100% is enormous. You can be fit with a good diet and walking but you won’t be able to do a triathlon, climb a mountain, fight a bear or crush an apple in your palm. You can stave off Alzheimer’s and dementia by eating fish, fruits and doing newspaper games. But you probably won’t write a great novel, play or sheet music if that’s all you ever do. Not a problem if those feats are meaningless to you. A big problem if those are your life goals. 

11 - 10% Inspiration. 90% Perspiration.

        As good as your plan is, as passionate as you may claim to be, as supportive as your friends and family may be, no one can do the work that is yours alone to do. You must work for your dreams, your goals. If you do not work, nothing will happen. And you will die never having lived, a stillborn soul. Your life is work. Your work is your life.

10 - Man was made to work.

        Musing upon Genesis, God’s first words to humanity were work orders. Go forth and cultivate the earth. Man was made to work. Humanity, born late on a Friday and the first thing he has to do is to clock in. I think our lives would be much improved if we had that same attitude. 

09 - Your Work might not be your job.

        And your job is not your Work. Every life should have a Magnum Opus, a great work for which they’ve given their whole life. Some have criticized my views and writing as a workaholics manifesto. In some sense, it is. Work is better than indolence. But they misunderstand me. I don’t really care too much about money, prestige, recognition or compensation. Your compensation is joy. That’s better than money. You can’t buy joy. You can buy marshmallows which might make you happy but they’ll rot your teeth and make you fat. And then you’ll be sad again. You may have to get a job, several jobs, in order to fund your Work but you must give your all to your Work. Your Work may be your family, or something that people with small visions and shriveled hearts may demean as a hobby, but you have to give your all for it. Because...

08 - Your Work is your joy.

        Every soul owes it to themselves to question the conventional wisdom that work is a nasty, miserable odious chore that you have to suffer through in order to survive. Question it! Every year I find myself working much more than I have in previous years and every year I find myself having a deeper and deeper gratitude for the life I lead. Not a coincidence at all. 

07 - Your Joy is your destiny.

        Want to know what you’re meant to live for? Your joy. The glory of God is a human being fully alive. Happiness defies reasoning. Axiomatic in nature, how would you argue that happiness is better than sadness? It just is. If you don’t understand the premise, then there’s no argument based on any epistemology that can convince you. Happiness is. Joy is. Every argument that requires the subordination of joy to any other principle or cause immediately comes under suspicion. And rightfully so! Follow your joy. Find your destiny.

06 - Caffeine is a hell of a drug.

        I fought a hard battle with caffeine addiction and depression this year. Just because it’s typically caused by a beverage that most people, even kids, drink on a daily basis, is no reason to discount the potential for wrecking your life.

05 - No improvement without recovery.

        Forsake your sleep, forsake your food and let all your work go to waste. You can train like a demon or like you have a demon but if you don’t allow your body to rest and recover, you’ll hardly see any gains. Your body knows what to do. It’s kept you alive your whole life. It’s on your side. Are you on your body’s side? What’s your relationship to your body? Do you treat it like a jerkass Asian parent, always demanding without listening? If you have, why should you wonder at your own body’s rebellion against your tyranny?

04 - Protein.

        15 grams at a time. A few hours apart. You don’t really need much more than that unless you’re bodybuilding.

03 - Water.

        Drink a lot. Drink often.

02 - Air.

        Breathe deeply. Breathe regularly.

01 - You’re never done.

        Never. 

        

27 lessons from 27 years, Part II (21 - 17)

#21 - Breathing is important.
         Breathing is the most fundamental activity for life. Gaseous exchange. Inhale fresh fuel. Remove waste products. Were I to speak only of the body, this lesson would have profound impact. Consider if you will, the typical member of the American workforce: grossly out of shape, winded after a flight of stairs, unable to run more than a few blocks without panting. What factor tells us whether a person is in shape or out of shape? The breathing. I no longer rely solely on physical appearances, I've had my butt whupped by enough Clydesdales in both runs and triathlons to care about how far a belly protrudes. It's the breathing. A person hunched over gasping for air doesn't possess fitness sufficient for the activity he's doing.             

#20 -  Breathing denotes mastery.      
          Consider how breathing denotes mastery of a subject. When you are in full command of a situation, when you're relaxed, when you can breathe easily, that's when you're in control. Have you ever noticed what your body does during times of stress? Why are your shoulders so high and tight? Why are you holding your breath? Did the room just fill to the ceiling with water? Did you stop breathing well because you thought you would benefit from a lack of oxygen? No, of course not. You stopped breathing because you didn't have enough awareness to continue breathing. You stressed yourself into more stress. Someone with full mastery of their craft doesn't forget to breathe. I had the chance to witness some excellent fighters spar. Even in such a tense situation with high level combatants pummeling each other, they didn't forget to breathe. Just because your boss is yelling at you isn't reason to forget breathing either.

#19 - Breathing causes mastery.
          Consider also how to master a subject, you're going to have to breathe. Athletes say it all the time. Newspapers say this constantly about players like Jeter and Mariano. Heck, they even say this about each other. Players who perform well in the clutch have a preternatural ability to "slow the game down" and "let it come to them." Have you ever noticed that when the great Mariano prepares to throw a pitch he breathes out a short breath? Do you think this is mere coincidence? I didn't pay as much attention until Rif spoke about breathing in the training DVD I watched. I won't go into the details now but I would hazard a guess that breathing well isn't only a sign of mastery in whatever you're doing, but also a likely cause. One of the things that have increased the general quality of my life has been waking up at 5 in the morning to spend half an hour doing breathing exercises.

#18 - Never sacrifice the breath for the form.
         Now actually I learned this the first time I did yoga with Kendra but I hope you've already picked out the theme for these 5 lessons I learned. It might be yoga or it might be kettlebell intervals like I was doing this morning. Or it might be pull-ups, writing, anything. If you're going at a pace where you can't breathe properly, you're going too fast. Now there are definitely times when you want to practice being in a state where it's hard to breathe, maximum power sprints and the like, but this shouldn't by any means be your regular state of existence. If I'm not breathing right, expanding the diaphragm, protecting the spine, during my pull-ups and kettlebell drills, then I'm not getting as much as I can from my efforts. Slow it down. Work on the basics.

#17 - Your basics can never be too good.
          Ilio-tibial band syndrome. Tendonitis of the posterior tibialis. Shoulder soreness. Groin pulls. Hamstring cramps. Calf cramps. Those might be the worst of what I experienced this year and they're all likely due to poor emphasis of the basics. I've run with improper form. I've done workouts with improper form and I'm definitely payed the price for my own negligence. 2011 for me will be a year of getting back to basics, of taking a step back to take a step forward. I think about all the excellent fights that I saw this year. None of the fighters had any fancy maneuvers like jumping punches, spinning kicks or other blockbuster summer movie type moves. Left jab. Right cross. Left hook. Right uppercut. 1. 2. 3. 4. Low kicks. Front kicks. Everything is simple to execute. They've just practiced it tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of times. Each time, these high class fighters weren't seeking to add something to their technique. No, they were looking to remove impurities. That's what the basics are. They should form the very bulk of your training menu because this is what separates the good from the mediocre, the great from the good and the legendary from the merely great.

27 lessons from 27 years, Part I (27-22)

I'll be turning 27 on Saturday. In recognition of that, I'll post up 27 random lessons I learned in my perfect cube years of life.

#27 - Benchmarks.
         Birthdays don't mean much to me. An odd thing to say since I'm writing a week of blog posts in honor of 27 but quite honestly, I don't really like people making a huge fuss over me. Also odd to say since I love the spotlight but the idea of an entire event devoted to me boggles my mind. Why would someone do that? Really, I celebrate life every single day I have it. I'm alive in a world full of opportunity. That's more than enough reason to celebrate.
         Instead of birthdays, I like benchmarks. Benchmarks are awesome. They offer you a way to measure your progress towards your goals. Years go by, the calendar pages roll on and on, but am I any closer to the death I want to die? Have I lived the way I want to live? I love numbers and time because it slaps me back into reality. I look at so many of the people around me. I'm going to be 27 years old and the most beautiful thought in my mind is my own death. If I can have it, I can't wait to be surrounded by fat, crying grandkids whom I love so much, who I'm going to miss lifting in the air, teaching them how to throw a punch, how to take a punch, talk to adults without looking away, ride a bike without being afraid to fall, swim deep waters, climb tall trees, kiss all the pretty girls and throw baseballs through brick walls. My children, biological or otherwise, soberly reflecting on the spiritual inheritance I'll be leaving them. Friends, whom I've known for a good long time, laughing at me because I always said I'd be the last to go, punks all of them. I want more than anything else to die smiling knowing I left nothing behind. I fought the good fight. I ran the race. And I made Death work his damn ass off to catch me.
         Or who knows?  Maybe my reckless driving will get to me and I'll zig when I should have zagged and end up burning to death, shards of glass, beams of steel piercing my vital organs. Who really knows? If I don't get the death I'm asking for, so be it. I don't control that so why worry about that? Death will come when it does. In order to die that death, I'll have to live my life. Live. Life.

#26 - Time is never objective.
         Quantum physics should have taught us this much already. Some of the more scientifically inclined amongst us knows what happens to rays of light as they stray too near the event horizon of a black hole. But what happens when black holes start emerging in our spirits, in our schedules? The prospect, the spectre of the real world haunted me back in college. Why? The people representing the "real world" to me looked so dead and lifeless, fish on a bed of ice at the market, eyes red, glazed over. 5 days a week of doing just enough to get by, going home to watch shows that numb your pain, drinking on the weekends to forget you're alive. 80 years of life? Too long by far. Years become crawling, creeping vermin, each annum indistinguishable from the next.
        But life moves quickly, too quickly for those who love life. Einstein said that placing your hand on a hot stovetop for a moment may seem like an eternity but a night spent with a beautiful woman passes like a phantom. As someone who has met his share of stovetops and beautiful women, this is true. As someone who loves his life, this is true. I'm going to die one day so I have to start saving up now for a big coffin. I have a lot of joy to bring with me. Ain't gonna have much room for any possessions in that box.

#25 - Your life won't wait for you.
         As much as time isn't objective, it will still move no matter what you do. So get your ass in gear! Your future you isn't any more likely to stop procrastinating than your current you. Your future you won't be any better than your current you unless the current you does something. Like every battle that has ever been waged, the key to victory lays in taking the initiative. If you wait for the enemy to dictate the terms of engagement, you lose.
         Life is hard. Life demands that you fight for your joy, that you get up off the couch, off the floor where you've been crying, off the bottom of the well where you've been thrown and fight. Tooth and nail, grit and guts, you must fight. It'll hurt. It'll hurt even more than it's hurting right now. But your other option is a life of slow suffocation as the coils of time tighten around you. Live or have your life taken from you. Choose or have choices made for you.

#24 - Stop fighting the water.
         My swimming took a massive step forward this year. Suddenly, I was slip-streaming through the water where before I felt like I had to plow through with brute force. If you looked at my workout schedule and saw swimming twice a day, five days a week, you might think that I improved because I developed more swimming muscles. Not really. I improved because I finally opened up to the water and surrendered.
         Life requires that you fight. Not everything in life is a fight. Looking forward, I think a great deal of my maturation will come from trying to hold each of these truths in their proper tension. Swimming teaches me to surrender, to stop fighting, to let go and let things be. It would be one thing if the water was merely stronger than you, but not only is the water mightier than you, the more power you bring to bear, the faster you go, the more resistance you'll meet. And this resistance scales geometrically.
         But the water doesn't want you to fight. If you're stuck in an unwinnable fight, you should probably consider whether fighting is what you're supposed to do.

#23 - Trust the water.
          I stopped fighting the water when I began to trust the water. I'm 222 lbs. Densely muscled. Fairly long legs. Poor swimmer design. All the more reason to trust the water. I'm not going to drown. I can lean on the water. The water will support me. The water is here to help me. Believing these atomic facts, truly believing in a way that those who define belief as 'mental assent' will never understand, is the difference between swimming 1.2 miles and clinging onto a kayak and giving up with 90% of the race in front of you, eyes full of tears.
          Consider the wealth within this metaphor. Where are you fighting unnecessarily in your life? What succor and aid are you pushing away, refusing to see? Where can you soften? What can you relax and still maintain this posture? What are you holding on to that you can, you should, you know you should let go of? Let it go. Trust.

#22 - Fun is a sign of trust.
         I have lots of fun goofing off in the pool ever since I began trusting the water. Swimming upside down, backwards, making up ridiculous new strokes, just generally acting like a kid again has been a great joy for me. I went to swim at the pool right when it opened up this morning when suddenly the realization dawned upon me: I didn't come to get a workout in this morning. I came to have fun. Swimming fast and smooth is fun. Swimming for time is fun. Swimming in zig-zags like I was doing an aquatic cone drill is fun. Empty pool all to myself, about the only thing I was missing was wacky Hawaiian shorts and a crackling barbeque on the side.
         For the longest time, the only thing I thought about 10 to 12 times a week was how I could improve my swim time. I ground out every work out trying to fix my form. After the truth of water shone upon me, I felt liberated. The scales from my eyes, the weight from my shoulders, the seconds off the clocks, all these burdens fell and I could be a little kid again.
        I'm a little country boy at heart. Yeah, I read such and such and like this and that, but what really makes me ridiculously happy is summer sunshine, running and chasing things to my content, jumping, swimming, climbing, building, catching, wrestling. Fields of tall grass, forests of high trees, babbling brooks, running rivers, I've never outgrown this part of life and may the very flesh rot off my bones before I ever stop having fun. If something I'm doing is not something I can have fun doing, I'm doing the wrong thing.