"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how."
As with any professional service, there is this initial period where you download as much information as possible about the person you are there to serve (be it coaching, discovery in civil law, your relationship with your parents in freudian therapy, or a medical work-up before a doctors appointment). For us, this is a consultation.
There are physical diagnostics that we look for such as how your body is currently composed (bodyfat) as well as how it moves and works. That gives us great insight into what you need. Those clues and insights are interesting but don't mean anything unless we know why that person is here.
The problem is, when we ask why someone is here, the same three answers get reworded over and over again:
'I want to look better'
'I want to perform better'
I want to feel better'
But WHY? Who cares? Why do you want to look better? Why does that even matter? It can quickly get to a nihilist wormhole where "nothing matters" but thats not the point of asking these deeper questions
The point is that everyone wants to adopt the behaviors that would make us feel, look, and perform better but only adopting behavior that we think we are supposed to have has never, not once, allowed someone to sustain a healthy practice of movement, nutrition, and lifestyle.
It's too shallow. This shallow goal will be overcome, at some point, with another shallow desire.
"I want to lose weight, that is until I'm tired and hungry and I haven't eaten all day and my boss was mean to me and I feel lonely and now, in this moment, my goal is not to lose weight it's to feel better so I'll have a _____________"
The reason you'll exchange goals and negotiate behavior is because they're not your own. Someone else told you that you were supposed to be healthy, or you needed _______, or your doing it to look smart, handsome or admirable.
John Keats once said that we have different levels of thought he called a "mansion with many apartments". One of those apartments he called the 'thoughtless chamber', where we unthinkably absorb values and the 'why of life' that happens to be around us.
That's why we fail; we live someone else's life we see on instagram or elsewhere that we will inevitably not sustain because we don't really know why we're doing it.
Go deeper.
Beyond the ego is a soul and a heart that we all have. Gosh, I guess that's true, right? I'd like to believe that behind the hard shell of having a life and job that looks successful is this ultimate desire of the heart to either be of use to someone or to something; To be lost in that effort.
That acknowledgement, or priority, is
way cooler
way more personal &
will drive behavior when motivation isn't in abundance.
The magic is in connecting something VERY important to you, back to the behavior and habits we initially said was the 'rote answer' for all of us.
For example, you determine that you really want to 'build wealth'. Ok great. Why? What does that even have to do with being healthy? Nothing actually, but you then mention you have this particular desire to build schools in Nepal for children. Wow, that's pretty rad. That's a long term goal, right? It's a 50 year plan. What’s involved in that? Longevity. Now when we talk about working out, eating well, & sleeping well, you have that all linked into longevity and a deeper purpose for your life; it's a lot more exciting and personally relevant for YOU.
Personally speaking, becoming a parent was the greatest thing that ever happened to me aesthetically & athletically. It gave me the priority beyond my selfish and egotistical desires (which are in abundance). I found that I loved them more than evolution required. I found a calling to be worthy of the undeserved happiness that they provided. Therefore, I felt a growing priority to show these girls what it meant to be healthy so they, too, could be healthy. I wanted to model a behavior that eating, getting enough sleep and taking care of yourself was, I don't know, somehow cool. (I also want to literally scare the shit out of all future male suitors, but again that might be motivated more by ego & insecurity!)
For me, it's been much easier to make the right choices when I know why I'm doing it and that I've selected something that is powerful enough to sustain me thru the hard days and the suffering (being a parent is also the least fun thing I do sometimes)
So, what's yours?
Don't worry if you can't come up with it on the spot. In fact, we're flirting with big existential questions so it's easy to get a little overwhelmed. The good news is you DO have one; everyone does. The other good news is we can help you tease that out; I'd argue it's way more important than the form of your air squat (but, you know, still get lower...)
If you'd like to sit down and think thru some of that together, let us know