I don’t pay much attention to news media about current events so as to save my own sanity. Much of the news is emotional manipulation designed to covertly influence mass opinion. You can drive yourself insane — and I do not use that word lightly — by trying to “stay informed” with the never-ending barrage of breaking news constantly demanding your precious attention.
I’ve discovered over the years that simply ignoring what everyone says you Must Do is a great way to improve your life.
You never realize how much of the reality that supposedly exists around you is fabricated out of mental images and idle talk, repeated like parrots, that nobody ever thinks to test or question.
I fell into one of these glitches in the Matrix around 2009-2010 when playing with what became the Squat Every Day method.
There are many other soft spots, where the hard reality you believe in collapses into a Potemkin village suspended in mid-air by nothing more than the fact that the masses think it real.
Once upon a time I thought that education was our problem and our goal. If only people knew the right answers, getting rid of myths and superstitions, they could get out of their own way and succeed.
Understand that I am speaking of health and fitness, but not only of health and fitness. The pattern I’m describing plays out across every part of our human lives.
Up here in the current year, education, or access to information, is no longer the bottleneck.
It’s no longer possible to believe with a straight face that people just need to know more facts in order to act right.
And it’s worse yet.
Truth is truth, but what any individual takes to be true is a different question.
Everybody has a history. You were born somewhere, grew up with people, learned language from them and habits of living. Your beliefs and desires are conditional on your past situation.
Realize this and you see that arguing with people over what they believe is a losing battle. Arguing even with Facts and Logic™ on your side may as well be holding a gun to the head of the other person’s ego identity. Communication is 99% non-rational, working through parts of the mind and self that have nothing to do with conscious experience or rational thought.
Facts are facts, but a person’s identity story is sacred.
How in the heck are you supposed to talk about health, exercise, nutrition, and so forth, when you can’t even get people to show up in the same universe to have the conversation?
It’s a real quagmire out here. Which is the main reason I threw in the towel on talking about sets and reps and volume and rest intervals and macro-nutrients and all that jazz.
It’s all noise. The only people that remotely care are other personal trainers and coaches.
What’s far more interesting is behavior and its sources.
Why don’t people do what they say they want?
The irony here is that having access to too much information is one of the major reasons people don’t move, focus, and get results.
Confusion and distraction are no friends to intentional activity aimed at a goal.
Less is better in the realm of information.
A simple daily routine, executed with robot-like consistency, will beat a complex 55-point plan for “bio-hacking” every time.
I want people moving.
Move, and then direct the momentum where you want it to go.
It’s normal to have questions and wonder if you’re doing things effectively.
But that’s got to happen while you’re out at sea on the boat. If you stay on land reading, and changing your mind about your workout and diet and your goals every 36 hours, that ship ain’t gonna sail.
Stop thinking.
Stop reading and learning and collecting facts.
Go forth and act.
That’s the only way forward in this putrid information ecosystem of ours.
Easier said than done, to be sure. The guidance of an experienced hand — not only in the gym but navigating this BS hyper-reality — can mean the difference between getting the body you want and spinning your wheels for another decade while growing fatter, older, and racking up more aches and pains.
I offer my services to the over-40s who need and want that kind of mentorship. If that’s of interest to you, send me a message and let’s see what we can do.
Matt Perryman