Happiness and Failure
Happiness and Failure
How About Happiness IN Failure?
Worth Listening To
“This is the same thing across all the profiles. Your strength is your weakness, and your weakness is your strength. Learn to manage it, wire to the strengths, remediate the weaknesses. I encourage everyone to be more metacognitive. That way, if you’re a poet, you can be really, really poetic, but it won’t ruin your life.” - Arthur Brooks
I strongly recommend listening to Dr. Peter Attia’s the drive episode with Arthur Brooks.
Learn to manage your emotions and not let them manage you (For the Harry Potter fans, Snape would strongly agree).
This is the essence of discipline!
Motivation says, “I want to work out.”
Discipline says, “I’m going to work out, even though I don’t want to.”
“If it feels good, do it” is the worst advice imaginable.
To the above point, we would NEVER work out!
Learning to differentiate between what seem similar: *Enjoyment and pleasure*
“Fear should be extremely episodic.” Adrenal fatigue is very real.
Reconciling “purpose” with “transcendency.”
Something I struggle with daily! Does nihilism win, or does overconfidence? Where is the balance?
*Really good advice from grandma* (1:08:30)
“To will the good the other as other.” — Thomas Aquinas
“Take charge of your health. You’re the CEO of your life. The CEO doesn’t do what feels good all the time.”
Lastly, a question for you, the reader: Which one are you? You can take the quiz with the link in the caption. I am a Mad Scientist. At first, I was very surprised by this; but, after thinking about it for a day, I wasn’t surprised at all.
Why is this important? Now I can MANAGE the mad scientist in me. Trivial example: when I lose a game of online chess, I can slow down and reflect on why instead of rage quitting.
Other podcasts I found interesting this past week:
Huberman Lab AMA — Why we get more colds and flus in Winter months
Chris Voss on Huberman Lab — Negotiating to get what you want
Dean Phillips on All-In — Why he’s running for president
Jared Kushner on All-In and Lex Fridman — Middle East
Palmer Luckey on Invest Like the Best — Why he’s building Anduril
Conversations With a Personal Trainer
This particular client is a high school teacher, and we often discuss the similarities between his role and mine as a personal trainer.
In this conversation, we discussed the increasing pervasiveness of technology in our lives, especially kids. “20 years ago, every kid was participating in class discussions. That’s gone.” We theorized possibilities:
I postulated that it was first social media 15 years ago, and now AI is only going to make it worse. But he took it one step further. It’s not just the tools; it’s what they represent. If you were afraid to speak up in class before social media, you only risked being embarrassed in that classroom. Who cares? But now, the risk is EVERYONE finds out.
It was something I had not previously thought about, but if I think back to my time in high school — luckily graduating just before Facebook became popular — I was terrified of looking dumb in class, and that was then. I can’t fathom how I would behave in today’s high school environment.
Using Exercise to Embrace Failure
My wife, Jasmine, shared this wonderful article with me a few weeks ago. The author describes her first experience with strength training, coming from a distance running background. She explains what I believe many of us would agree with: It’s easy to like doing things we know we won’t fail at.
“I found it easy to largely avoid failure in my workouts: When I went for a long run, I know I would complete the distance, even if I did so slower than I planned to.”
A question for you to think about as you read this: As you’ve gotten older, how often do you enjoy learning new skills? Learning a new language, learning to code, learning how to work out properly, the list goes on. I’m going to guess the answer is “not all that much.” Me too. It’s hard! Writing this newsletter is something new, and it takes a lot more work for me to write this than to pick 350 pounds up off the ground.
Why should we do it then? Because “the CEO doesn’t do what feels good all the time.” It’s natural for us to want to do what we’re good at it. It feels good doing it. But learning a new skill involves a ton of try, fail, try, fail, try, fail. And dammit, we don’t like failure!
Why the hell not? Failure is what teaches us; failure is how we grow; failure is how we earn what Arthur Brooks calls satisfaction, a key macronutrient of happiness.
Yet, as the author of this article points out, we are raised to fear failure. If we fail as kids that means something is wrong with us. So, we avoid doing those things. You’re terrible at math, ok, no more math. You’re terrible at writing, ok, no more writing. It’s infuriating to think of how damaged we are as we become adults and leave the sheltered world that is our education system.
This is why I love what I do. Many of you hate working out. It hurts, we’re sore afterward, and it takes a lot of energy. Moreover, I will often ask you to do things that are much more challenging than you would do on your own. I do this because, in the short term, I want you to fail. I want you to push yourself to your limit. This doesn’t mean you should leave a workout feeling exhausted and defeated. Quite the contrary. You should end every workout feeling exhilarated and a tremendous sense of accomplishment. That you did something truly difficult, maybe even enjoyed it a little, and you know you are building towards something off in the distance.
When we do these things, we find our point of failure, our limit is ever-expanding. We are expanding our foundation — similar to how expanding your heart rate zone 2 range expands the foundation of your aerobic health or how reading expands your foundation of words from which you can pull from.
“Almost a decade after my first failed attempt, and now at 40 years old, I walked up to the judges at a competition and stared down at the 55-pound dumbbell resting on my feet. The first time I tried to press it, my nerves took over. I missed the rep. For my second attempt, I shook off the frustration, planted my feet in a better position, hoisted the dumbbell to my shoulder and — finally! — nailed it.”
If there is one thing I hope you take away from this piece, it’s that the next time you try to do something positive for yourself that you know will be difficult, you approach it with a smile on your face and say, “Hello failure my old friend.” And yes, I am talking to myself as much as I am talking to you.
Envision Fitness Update
Workshops inbound!
Starting this month, we will be offering workshops at the gym. We’ll spend 45 minutes covering a wide range of topics, focusing on one specific aspect of health each time.
These workshops will help to not detract from our time in boot camp classes, or your one-on-one sessions. They will give you a more solid foundation on which you can better manage your body while working out, doing yard work, walking, or deciding what to buy at the grocery store.
There will be a small cost to these workshops:
Members: $20 per workshop
Nonmembers: $40 per workshop
If you bring a friend who is not a member, your workshop fee will be waived!
Our first month will cover lower back pain — its many different causes, muscular imbalances, actionable steps to reduce the pain at home, and what to think about when you’re moving!
It will be hosted on Saturday, December 16th, 10:00am at Envision.
I would also love to record these workshops. If know a videographer, I’d love to connect with them!