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Don't be lazy, have higher standards
I bet you are thinking I mean you should go out workout more and workout harder. Memories of all those times you said you would wake up and work out and you didn’t will run through your head. You might remember those workouts during which you were tired and you did not push as hard as you feel you should have, But nope, that is not what I mean. That is just your guilt. Your consistency on a given program is often not a laziness problem as much as an organizational problem. How hard you can push on a given workout is very seldom a willpower problem, as it is a self-regulation problem. I am not here to guilt trip you. Let me tell you what I DO mean.
Just Chill, Commit to Mastery
No matter what skill you choose, you can visualize mastery. You can see it. Now imagine what it would take to get there... I bet that in your visualization that mastery does not happen in 6 months. In my mind’s eye I can see myself creating awful noises for quite some time before actually playing a tune. I imagine that if your thing was to master German, in your vision you can see yourself stumbling through words before you can actually write amazingly good emails. By the same token, I bet that if you imagine your teachers for that journey, you don’t see slicky guys selling you fast results or trying to trap you with hard sells and gimicky marketing. In that vision, mastery is a continuous, long, and difficult process of learning. It’s slow and tedious. This is why it’s so rare. (In other words, mastery is what Hollywood movies show in a super fast montage with the subscript “five years later”.)
Plateaus are part of the process, Embrace the stuck!
Plateaus are often understood as problems. As stagnation, as if there is something wrong. Plateaus are a fundamental part of the process. Understand this, and you will be able to surpass them.
Some Things I Learned from my Son's Birth
When you don’t know how to start writing, stop thinking and just start. I learned that after 5 years of dissertation writing. The funny thing is that I used to always refer to my dissertation as my “parto” (the labor, the moment of childbirth). This is a common Spanish phrase to refer to something that is long and gruesome. Two days ago, my son Elías was born. After 48 hours of difficult and painful work from my wife together with a great team of medical specialists he is here in the world cute as fuck, healthy and ready to kick ass. I must say I will never call again something a parto, unless it really it is. A dissertation, challenging as it is, not a parto my friends. And my dissertation is not a baby.
Slay your inner troll!
Trolls suck, and even though they are an Internet creation they are pretty much everywhere IRL too. Yes, they might be called douche bags, and they are not constrained by gender, race, or religion. The only thing that unifies them is that they are just a waste of time and energy. But my experience is that when it comes to fitness and nutrition, we all have an inner troll. And to be honest, this is the worst kind of troll there is.
Embrace your Complexity
It is so easy to underestimate us, humans. It is easy to see the negative impacts we have had in this world as a sign of lack or that there is something intrinsic evil in us. It is easy to fall for the existentialist trap of believing our lives to be ultimately meaningless. Sure, we...
