The Motivation Mistake

Motivation is a topic that gets a lot of press. It feels good to start new things, to be inspired to make change, to tackle that next project! It can be really inspiring to get fired up and push after a goal.

But, since you read the title of this post, you can see where this is headed: I'm about to shit on motivation and inspiration a little bit. Hopefully to re-frame the context around our goals and how we go about pursuing them!

I want all of us to have successful, productive journeys, after all!

Being motivated is a great thing, don't get me wrong! It can feel great to wake up one day and say, "Wow, that Henry Cavill looks great as Geralt in the Witcher! I like that show! Maybe I'll start working out and get to be buff, too!"

Whatever the motivating factor behind a sudden lightning strike of inspiration, it really is a surge of energy and we get excited, make plans, and imagine now sweet it will be to achieve our goal. Even how satisfying it'll be to do that workout or apply that process every day!

But then life happens, we find ourselves just surviving. The stream burns up, and suddenly we dread our workout that day. 

Pause here a second, cuz this is important.

You pausing? Ok, good.

This is the point where I think a lot of magic COULD happen.

So the steam burns off and you're not feeling motivated anymore. What now?

Cuz that always happens, right? It's sort of inevitable. Motivation can't last forever! That initial burst of inspiration fizzles out and we are just feeling... Well... Normal again. Ew.

So, what are we left with? 

The first option is to go back to the source that inspired us: watch that video, look at the picture that seemed to inspire that initial excitement! But that has diminishing returns, also. Somehow, it doesn't seem as exciting, or the amount of work it would take to get there really sinks in and send daunting.

Another option is to just "buckle down and pull yourself up by your boot straps". Tough it out. Grit your teeth and push on, cuz the end goal is worth it, right?

But that doesn't feel very good, either! It's demoralizing to wake up and shake yourself off and hit the grind, because part of the excitement of being motivated is feeling like you're on a Grand Quest to Change the World.

So that seems to leave us at an impasse, doesn't it?

When you feel that being inspired and feeling motivated is the key to success, I think you'll always end up here eventually! And that isn't a bad thing.

It's not: I mean it!

Being motivated is a great way to start out. It's great to feel inspired, to have your imagination riled up and think of all the good things you want to do. It's good to jump in with both feet first and want to set the world on fire!

And it's good to buckle down, sometimes. It's good to put your nose to the grindstone and look for the end goal, that shining city on the hill that you endure the Slough of Despond to reach.

But I think that leaves out a lot of stuff.

I think that there are a couple other important stops on the way, a few shades of experience that are worth including to make the journey more than a binary between "needing to feel motivated" and "just pushing through."

Let's cover a few important ones:

1) Notice progress not directly related to your goal.

2) Appreciate the variety in repetition.

3) Learn that disciplined isn't equivalent to punishment.

4) Swap motivational icons.

So, touching on all of these briefly...

Notice progress not directly related to your goal. In any journey, there are a lot of things that come up that don't seem, at first, to be related to your goal. If your goal is to become more organized and you start rearranging your schedule and tidying up the drawers in your house, you might find that actually improves your balance and spacial awareness. It might not SEEM like those things are related, and really, it doesn't even matter if they ARE or WHY it works. But you're working on new things so new things pop up in your life. Notice those things and feel good about them, too! Especially with fitness, this is a good thing to appreciate because visible progress doesn't happen in a set period of time. So appreciate the accessory benefits of whatever process you're working on.

Appreciate the variety in repetition. In any long journey, it seems that you have to repeat the same stuff over and over. And over. And over.

And this is undeniably true!

But each time you approach your practice, it's a new day, and a new you tackling that task. I had this a lot when I was doing Tai Chi as my main focus. It's the same form over and over again. The same moves, day in and day out. But there's an infinite way to approach those moves! Focus on breathing, focus on foot work, focus on precision, on tempo. There's infinite ways to approach familiar tasks!

Plus the light will be different, the temperature, your internal climate.

This can be seen as "being in the moment" or "enjoying the process" but those can sound trite. Just like the Buddhist koan: a candle flame is never the same, nor a point in a flowing stream. It might be similar, but there is always something different there if you'll just take the time to notice.

Learn that discipline isn't equivalent to punishment. I this this step is absolutely VITAL. Sometimes it seems that we need to punish ourselves for not meeting our goals. We can feel like we need discipline because we're bad people, or that fitness and diet are a punishment for the weakness of eating food that we like and enjoying past-times that are rewarding. This is not the case! 

I think this is a huge shift that a lot of people can make.

In school, growing up with parents, having to work... All of these things can feel like necessary evils because of how we were raised (I'm generalizing here.) I know, as a child, I felt like doing the dishes was a punishment for enjoying video games. I had to grudgingly take care of certain things so I could enjoy myself. But sometimes, maintenance and upkeep are a process of that enjoyment! If I enjoy a clean house, part of that is actually cleaning the house. And then cleaning the tools that I use to clean the house. And then cleaning myself after I do the cleaning. Which then dirties the house a little. But that upkeep isn't a punishment! It's the other side of the coin of the thing itself. Once you realize that they're inexorably linked, it can feel better. And reframing it as part of the activity itself can help plan how much of the activity you do or choose to pursue.

Look at it this way: if doing the exercise is the activity you want to do, equal parts of that activity are getting dressed to go to the gym and getting a shower once you get home (and ALSO making sure your life is in order enough to go to the gym). Maybe that means you need a 45 minute workout instead of 90 minutes.

Or maybe working out feels like a punishment, itself!

Learning to re-frame it to being equivalent to sweeping the floor to enjoy a clean house can sometimes help. 

You're not punishing yourself, you're doing chores. You're taking care of things so you can have time to enjoy other things.

Swap motivational icons. And also make YOURSELF a motivational icon. Maybe after working out for 3 weeks trying to look like Henry Cavill, you HATE Henry Cavill and his f*cking abs and jawline. It seems too impossible! He can't be human or natural: it's pointless.

Ok, then pick something that's a more manageable motivation! Maybe it becomes finishing your workout that day, avoiding one trigger, or losing 5 pounds. 

It's great to have an end goal, but we need smaller goals along the way. 

One thing that I'm doing that feels meaningful is taking a progress picture every month. I only do it on the 28th of each month, and make a side by side comparison image.

The first few times I did that, it didn't look very exciting. But now I'm 4 months in and I can't believe what I see!

Measuring progress over time is important. That can give you that little burst of "Hell Yeah!" To get you through the next round.

So motivation is good, but it's not the whole picture. Motivation won't solve your problem, won't carry you to your solution, and is only beneficial for part of the process. Learn to re-frame, appreciate the small things, changes, and wins, and do your upkeep.

I believe in you! Hopefully this can help.

Feel free to reach out to me if I can be of any help to you in your journey!

The 50 Shades of Play

     Play is a really interesting concept! When you look at philosophy, movement theory, music, or almost any field, there is a certain reverence for play. People play a sport, they play music, they play around with new ideas. Play is a cornerstone of the human experience! We play when we are children, and as adults, try to find ways to inject playfulness into our lives. 

But what, really, is play and how do we make it a meaningful component of our experience?

    If we look at human development, play can be seen as exploration. As children, we play by interacting with our environment. We chew on things, we  try to stand up, we feel things. That progresses to running, to expressing our abundant energy. Then, when we are a little bit older, we play pretend. We've heard stories and seen programs that spark our imagination, so we want to try those scenarios out and see how they might come out differently. That can lead to confrontation when our friends don't react the way that we would like them to!

    In school, we get into organized sports. We learn the rules of the sport and the different positions. Then we play games against other teams. We experience winning and losing, we are introduced to discipline and practice, strategy and technique. We might also play music. In that, too, we have to learn scales and chords, we play in recitals to demonstrate what we have learned.

    So let's break this down a little.

    Play, when we are developing, seems to be directionless exploration. We go out and try things, and in the trial and error, we learn to crawl, stand, walk, run, and recover from falling. We build resilience and competence. We're just exploring, and the exploration itself is stimulation for the nervous system and muscles to develop!

    But when we get older, play changes. We need to learn rules and practice specifics to build skill. We need to relate to others and how they perform. Technique and structure lead to further development.

    In the field of human movement, we are faced with the same basic processes. If we don't have a goal, it can be good to play around with new exercises or modalities to see what speaks to our imagination and inspires us to develop in a further direction. It can be good to try Yoga, Tai Chi, Weight Lifting, HIIT, kettlebells, or whatever else you want! Try it out and get that novel experience for your nervous system.

    But taking 5 different classes a week will have limited results. You are exposed to a mix of stimuli without any rhyme or reason. This can be fun, and can have positive impact on your musculoskeletal and nervous system, but it doesn't necessarily train you to perform. And it doesn't train you to play BETTER.

    Play, when we look at the context of sports (our second analogy), is a performance. A performance is an arrangement of themes set to specific restrictions and rules. If we play football, for instance, there are rules for performing in the context of the game. Just going out and running up and down the field without any knowledge of what you're supposed to be doing might be good exercise, but it's not enjoyable or engaging PLAY. For that, we need: discipline, practice of specific techniques, direction, and knowledge of theory.

    So I like to look at Play in this kind of scale:

At one end we have Exploratory Play. In this level, you are having novel experiences that can have beneficial impact, but are exploring in a baseline capacity.

In the middle, we have Disciplined Practice where we have picked a direction and focus on building the individual components of that performance or skill.

And at the end we have High Level Play where we are so competent at techniques and components that we can combine them into novel and spontaneous experiences.

    Like the Zen adage says: "Before Zen, chop wood and carry water. After Zen, chop wood and carry water." This can mean, in this context, that what seems simple and ordinary in the beginning can have unexpected meaning and depth in the end. What can look like simple play can have hours of study, performance, practice, and theory behind it. 

    So get out there and play, but if you have a purpose to it, that play can lead you to mastery and autonomy!

Surviving

 

    On the surface, the IDEA of working out seems really awesome. Lifting heavy weights, feeling your muscles bulge, having your body being a "well-oiled machine." The feeling of exertion, in your head, can sound invigorating and conjures images of the Spartans, Vikings, or Super Heroes like Superman. Or, you know, like whatever feels cool for you. Maybe it's something completely different.

But I still bet that your mental image of fitness and exercise is something that you feel is epic.

And, it sort of should be! It's good to hold yourself to a high standard, to be exacting, and to shoot for greatness.

What oftentimes gets people into trouble is the gap between their idea of what they want and the process of surviving until they get there.

    I forget which author wrote it about which of their characters (and, frankly, it isn't that important) but the idea was this: An Adventure or a Grand Quest, while you are living it, is a series of misfortune, obstacles, hardships, and travail. When Frodo was taking the ring to Mount Doom, he was alternately plagued by hunger and thirst, by self-doubt, by injury, betrayal, and being stuck in places for long, indeterminate periods of time.

When we look at Superheroes, even Superman, they are in constant struggle and on the razor's edge of personal disaster.

But we applaud them for winning (and looking good in spandex!)

I think the trajectory of a fitness journey is the same thing. Not "kind of" the same thing. Literally the same thing. We approach our physical workout in a microcosm of how we approach life in general.

Let's say that we are training for the most common goal imaginable: weight loss. In our head, we have an image of how we want to appear. Maybe that is tanned, with a 6-pack, and a 28 inch waist. We have that Superhero version of ourselves in our head! But when we get on the treadmill, we don't FEEL like a Superhero. Our calf cramps, we get out of breath, we get BORED. 

One of the major issues with starting out with good intentions, with a grand picture in our heads of where we WANT to be, is there is a major gap in the image or "movie" we project in our heads and the slog (the Dirt and Weeds of my previous post) to get there.

So, briefly, let's take a look at this gap. We started out with a mental image of what we would LIKE to be reality. We start the process, and then, as we saw, there is resistance in the physical world. Once we meet that resistance, our mind has a reaction to it. An "OH SHIT" moment, if you will. There is a non-acceptance of the reality of what we are experiencing, and that can be very uncomfortable. Then the mind comes in and tells us "this is not what I wanted!" The Superhero image seems unattainable.

Now, I bet you're expecting me to say that this is where you need to develop a Warrior mentality and look for the end goal or that "nothing tastes as good as thin feels" or something. But it's exactly the opposite: I want you to stay with that feeling. I want you to recognize that things are hard and that the image in your head doesn't match reality, and that you DON'T feel like a Superhero.

Because the point of life, and indeed the point of a fitness journey, is not in attainment, in reaching that mental image! The point is showing up every day and facing what is in front of you, and in being with yourself while you do it. It's finding a functional kind of survival. It's learning the visceral lessons right in front of you; the kind of lessons you learn through struggle.

HOLY COW, that might sound a little bleak, doesn't it? Let's see if we can shift our perspective on that a little, shall we?

Struggle is just another name for creation. If we are making a work of art, a piece of pottery, first we need material. Then we need technique. Then we need the kiln. Then we need refinement. When you first start to make a bowl, you need to know how much clay you need. How do you know? Well, firstly, it is helpful to have someone make a suggestion. But mostly, it's through practice, through trying to make bowls. When you are shaping the bowl, you need to know how to use your hands, how the clay feels in your hands, and how the clay responds. A LOT of those bowls will break! But with each bowl, you better learn how to make a bowl. In the kiln, some pots will shatter (even the ones you thought were really good!), and in the finishing process you'll mess up the paint.

Your fitness journey is the same way. Every day we show up "on the mat" to create something. It might not feel like a set of bench presses is creating anything besides a set of nice pecs. But I'd argue that you're building a lot more!

Let's apply the analogy of pottery to weight training (specifically because weight training doesn't SEEM like a skill, and it SEEMS like it is just about the result). The raw material of weight training is effort and time. Yes, I used "effort and time" as a single unit, that wasn't bad grammar. How much clay goes into making a weight training session? You have to figure out how much. Someone can tell you, but unless you show up day after day and put effort/time into shape, you won't know. Your technique is important, too. Sometimes you do too much and you are sore. Sometimes you come in tired and angry and your session doesn't go very well. Sometimes when you try to do that 300 pound squat, you don't get it. But that's all ok. Every broken pot teaches you something more about pottery. Every "bad" session, stressful session, or even session that you start and then quit, teaches you more about your body and your SOUL. Not about working out, but about how to move through life.

    Yes, here is where I get philosophical. 

Remember, the point of exercise isn't about what you look like, or even about how you feel at the end of the day. Movement is about learning about what it takes to move. Over time you'll lift a lot, and you'll lift a little; you'll be a bodybuilder, and you'll be a yoga guy. You'll go through years where you don't do anything at all: no pottery or exercise! 

But it's all learning, and it's all surviving.

If we can be like the tree at the beginning of the post, like Frodo, or like the made-up potter from my analogy, we are surviving. The tree grows a little every day, faster in the spring and summer, slower in the winter. Sometimes it gets struck by lighting (which CAN'T feel very good). But the tree shows up every day and does it's thing: it grows. Regardless of what happens.

And you might be reading now and say "Justin, you're basically telling me that I don't need to exercise, I can just make pots". Maybe yes. You'll still grow. You'll still be a Superhero. Exercise just has lots of good things to recommend it, and it's the medium that I use.

My goal for this post is to maybe change your perspective on "working out" and on what it means to be a hero.

So go out there and do what you do. Survive. Grow.

Down in the Dirt and the Weeds

Down in the dirt are where seeds grow. In order to cultivate a garden, you must first prepare the soil. In order to build a house, you must first set the foundation.

There's a lot of analogies you could use to say that foundational or fundamental skills are important. But when you're looking at building a new skill, starting a new hobby, or creating a fitness routine, the bottom line is the same:

In order to progress to the flashy stuff that gets people's attention, you have to spend hundreds of hours down in the dirt and weeds of the basics to build mastery. 

In my life, that means fitness and movement skills, but I think it is equally as true in music or art or working on cars.

It's easy to go on Instagram and see expert-level individuals performing beautiful skills. You can literally scroll all day and see hundreds of posts on handstands and cartwheels, digital paintings, or any number of awe-indpiring feats. But what is not visible is what is going on beneath the surface. Down underneath the dirt.

So what are fundamentals?

It might seem fairly obvious, but fundamentals are not always given the credit they're due. 

When you listen to a lead solo guitarist, you might think that to emulate them you just need to practice those complicated arpeggios over and over until you can repeat them flawlessly.

And that is certainly an option.

If you watch parkour, you might think that going out there, jumping between buildings, and trying to do backflips is how you build that skill.

I would argue that trying to improve by practicing high level abilities is the wrong way to go about meaningful development.

Here's why:

Let's go back to the analogy of the guitar solo.

Before picking apart that solo, you need at least some basic knowledge. You need to know what the notes are and have the ability to form the basic hand positions to play those notes on a guitar. That alone probably represents dozens or hours of study!

So let's say you practice enough to have the basic skill and knowledge to understand the structure of a guitar solo.

Then you go straight to learning the pattern of notes required for that favorite piece. One by one you learn the pattern of notes and put in dozens or hundreds more hours to speed it up, repeat it, and eventually you can approximate that solo.

You did it! You're a master musician, right?

Well, no.

Even though you've spent hundreds of hours so far, developing an affinity for a specific routine, you probably can't play other solos or create your own songs now.

Why is that?

That investment of time in still skipped a bunch of fundamentals. When, at the beginning, you developed the skill and knowledge of the basic hand positions and ability to read music, there are dozens of other fundamentals. Chords. Scales. Music theory. Composition theory. Progressions.

The same principle applies across the board: in order to perform at a high level of technical skill, a broad base of mastery over a lot of fundamental skills is required.

I think a lot of that comes down to perspective.

I'm going to switch back to physical development (a topic I'm much more versed in!)

If we look at bodybuilding, let's say, we can identify a number of recognizable patterns as fundamental. This would be basic lifts like the squat, deadlift, and bench press. If someone wants to get into weight training, these lifts are seen as an entry point.

But fundamentals aren't simply stepping stones to greater abilities. They're not just boxes to check off before moving down the list. A bodybuilder might do any number of highly specific exercises to target highly specific areas of their lower inner pecs, but they'd never tell you they "outgrew" the need for a straight bar bench press.

Why?

Fundamentals build intrinsic capability. Without a strong core, stabilizer muscles, muscle-memory for that pressing pattern in the shoulder girdle and elbows, doing other exercises won't have the same quality. That's what it comes down to. Fundamentals create mastery by creating a framework, creating a fertile and stable environment for growth. If your basics are very strong, the new skills will show it. They also create a familiarity with pattern that starts to have greater meaning in relation to other simple patterns. As the familiarity with those simple patterns grows, and your understanding of their relationship, you gradually come to your own natural expression of how those patterns can be put together or advanced to new patterns.

The seed has sprouted.

It might not seem like it at first, but spending a lot (and I mean a LOT) of time putting in the time, trying out the basics and seeing what does and does not work to transition, link, smooth out, slow down, speed up those basics leads to embodying that art. 

You can't pull on a sapling or yell at the dirt to make something grow faster. You grow the plant by watering it, watching it, culling away unwanted growth and competitive plants in it's environment. Similarly, you can't jump ahead to greater skill without attention, care, fixing bad habits, and proper rest.

You can try to go straight to the guitar solo, but you risk killing the plant or stunting it.

And everybody can tell if you're faking it.

So I encourage you to spend time in the dirt. Spend time on the basic stuff that nobody sees. Spend those hours to build control, understanding, and patience. All that time isn't spent on "basics", it's spent in growing a magnificent blossom.

Get dirty and enjoy your time growing.

Flow States

Flow is something I've come to appreciate in movement. The quality of being able to link movements together, to feel myself get wrapped up in a movement practice and feel myself being coordinated is very enjoyable. I practiced Tai Chi as my primary movement practice for most of the 2010s, after all!

So I wanted to take a while to explore the idea of flow, physically and psychologically, and meander around the idea to see what is pleasurable about it, what is functional, and what I think makes it not only worthwhile, but even possibly essential to life.

In my opening paragraph I described flow as "linking movements together" and "feeling coordinated." This is, in essence, what encapsulates the concept of flow.

In fact, it's impossible to live at all without flow. Life itself is a series of movements linked together, a slideshow of moments interconnected by transitions, highlights, slow points, and no-points. 

From the moment we wake, there's is a certain flow to our life.

We get out of bed and then proceed to take a series of actions until we get back in bed to sleep, and then repeat that process day after day, season after season, year after year, with repeating themes, patterns, habits, and motifs.

But flow is, I think, more than just a sequential ordering of life. Flow is a quality of that experience.

Think about it like this:

Imagine you are driving on the highway.

It's rush hour and you're on your way home from work. There's so much traffic that every 15 feet you have to stop and sit, and then traffic crawls at a snail's pace for the next 15 miles. Then, oh joy of joys, the traffic breaks and you get to speed along, finally making progress... Before hitting that back up again.

Now imagine that it's 3 am (as it is during the time of my writing this!). You're on the interstate and there's nothing ahead of you except the streetlights and the curves of the road. You can sail along for miles and miles, hours even, before seeing another car. You can cruise the open road at your own, unobstructed pace.

Both experiences demonstrate different qualities of the same experience. One is turbulent- with stops and starts. It's choppy. Uncomfortable. The other is smooth, fluid, and uninterrupted.

In fluid dynamics, they qualify this difference as turbulent flow vs laminar flow. Turbulent flow is less efficient, indicating a loss of ease, whereas laminar flow is a description of the opposite phenomenon.

People, too, can experience flow in movement (or mentally, too; we'll touch on that in a bit). If you've ever been a runner, you'll recognize the point where you've got your stride, feeling "in the zone" where you feel like your body is moving on its own. There is effort, but it's equivalent to the task and equivalent for your goal and endpoint.

Obviously the experience of laminar flow is preferable, with no interruptions and getting to the point of being "in the zone". You would have experienced this in hobbies, playing music, playing sports, etc. These moments of being "in the zone" are highly rewarding.

Physically, they're also quite useful! The ability to be in the zone and flow sinuously indicates a development and level of mastery over components of physical abilities, as well as physiological adaptations. In basketball, the layup demonstrates an ability to jump, rotate through that highest point, land, and then continue moving in a very dynamic pattern. This pattern requires practice. Practice is repetition of component skills over many, many hours.

This kind of repetition of a plyometric skill generate adaptations in the neuromyofascial (nerves, muscles, fascia) system, leading to increased force-generative, force-absorbing, and quick reactive capacity. We'll ignore the mechanism for that, just suffice to say that it's easily observable in the perceived quality between a highly skilled vs a newly-learned layup.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author and psychologist, has spent a great deal of his career studying and explaining just this quality of flow. Flow in life. He describes the flow state as an intersection of high demand and high capability; when the requirements of an activity meet with the level of your ability. If it's too difficult for your ability, you get frustrated and the flow breaks down. If it's too easy, there's not an absorbative quality. You get bored or can think too much to reach that flow state. 

He says in his book "Finding Flow" that flow experience tends to happen at work more than in leisure. So that even experiences that don't FEEL as comfortable or enjoyable can still be very rewarding internally.

So let's recap briefly.

Flow is a descriptive quality of activity. It's laminar when it's observably continuous, coordinated, and has a level of ease. Flow is absorbative and fulfilling when a high level of demand meets a high level of skill, and through the repetition required to express that skill, there are physiological and neurological adaptations that occur to increase the body's capacity to express that flow.

This leads to some very tangible takeaways.

First, practicing the basics or fundamentals of a skill or process is imperative to achieve a functional ability to meet the demands of that skill or process. Looking at the example of the layup, you need to practice jumping, landing, changing direction after landing, performing the move from both sides in case your angle of approach needs to change, etc. This builds potential capabilities for unexpected contingencies.

Second, is the ability to shut out distractions. In our example of driving in heavy traffic, the experience of driving was marked by continuous starts and stops. In your basketball game if you're thinking about a project at work, for example, you might miss opportunities for that layup. The ability to harness your attention in the moment and avoid internal roadblocks is highly conducive to laminar flow.

And lastly, ensuring that your demand and skill levels are equivalent. If you aren't being pushed, you won't experience that flow. And if you aren't very skilled, some challenges will remain too difficult to experience flow for very long. So, focus on the fundamentals but look for ways to have meaningful challenges that can increase your capacity. 

I believe everyone can experience and benefit from pursuing flow states. In sport, in fitness, in life, and in leisure, flow and the capacity to flow brings about unique opportunities to feel oneness and the satisfaction of performance. I wouldn't call it peace, necessarily. Tranquility, perhaps.

I hope you are able to take some concepts of flow and practice them, have a meaningful time exploring them, and use them to get better at the things that are worthwhile to you.