Let me ask you a question:
Do you really want to be fit, ripped, healthy, strong, pretty, sechsy, or any of the other goals that people always SAY that they want for their bodies if you ask them?
Don’t bull-sheet me. Be honest.
Do you REALLY want these results?
Because I wonder.
Can you think of a person who said to you “I want to lose X lbs” or “I want to look like so-and-so” but never did anything about it?
I sure can.
That person is not being honest with you.
They aren’t even being honest with themselves.
Unless a person is really driven by some goal, purpose, or mission… and I mean sincerely driven to the point that it consumes them… most of these “want-to” sentences are idle talk.
They’re day-dreams to wish about, not real goals to achieve.
A lot of the idle wish-talk comes down to the game of comparison that humans love to play.
If you get pulled into the melodrama of status, you’re always comparing yourself to other people.
There’s people above you on the ladder and people beneath you. Your objective is to stay above the people below you and climb above those ahead of you.
There’s only one catch. There is ALWAYS somebody ahead… and ALWAYS somebody climbing up from below. It doesn’t matter where you are in the hierarchy. Bill Gates, Elon, and Jeff Bezos are playing this game.
If you follow the herd, your desires aren’t your own desires.
That’s what the existentialist writers called “being inauthentic”. You’re drifting along with the crowd and what the crowd wants, without ever once pausing to ask if it is what YOU want, what YOU care about, what YOU judge worthwhile in your life.
I’ve had some discussions lately that made me stop and wonder for myself. It’s one reason I’ve downsized my body and picked up a few gears getting myself in shape, for the way I WANT to be in shape, not what others expect for me.
It’s why I’m changing the direction of my business from all the “must do” things people say I HAVE TO and MUST and OUGHT TO do and instead building what I want to build.
If you’ve never had a serious discussion with yourself about this… about who you are, what matters most to you, and why… it’s worth getting out a sheet of paper and a pencil and spending an hour getting it on paper.
That goal you’re struggling so hard for might not be what you want.
If it ain’t, why are you spilling tears over it?
Getting to clarity about your true, genuine, sincere, and earnest wants and goals is the first step to getting anything.
I see that now in a way I never did before.
Most people are spinning their wheels with this “fitness” nonsense because they never stopped to ask what really matters to them. They’ve fallen into this bizarro-world sub-culture with its own beliefs and ways of talking and thinking.
There’s a way we do things in “fitness”, and ways we don’t do things.
Sure. If you want to be a robot acting out a script that someone else programmed into you, have at it. When I look at these people, their results, their lives, and the misery and suffering they inflict on themselves… they can have it.
It ain’t for me.
I’ve been talking up this coaching project that I’m unveiling for a January start date. There’s been some interest, enough that I’ll continue on with it.
But, continuing with this riff, there’s some things I’m simply not going to do, and people I will not work with (no matter how much I may like you or feel bad for your situation). It ain’t personal. It’s not you, it’s me.
Anyway, I’m tinkering around with price points and what exactly we’ll be doing. I’ll fill you in more on that after Christmas.
But I know for sure that it’s going to begin with deep work on who and how and what you want to become, before we ever say one thing about lifting a weight or going for a run.
I can guarantee that not only will it be unlike anything else out there in fitness — certainly from anybody who is focused on strength and physique change as I am — but it will be more effective, with less effort and headaches, for those who find that a balls-deep go-hard-or-leave attitude leaves them flat and unsatisfied.
If that’s got your antenna pinging, stay tuned.
Better yet, make sure you’re getting my emails so you’re tapped in to what is happening.
Matt Perryman