Let’s rewind a few years. After college, I got a cozy job doing something I enjoyed, had a girlfriend that cared about me and zero hobbies besides playing video games and the occasional gym visit. I was on the right path for the usually prescribed good life… and resenting it more and more every day. So how did I move from boring, stable job Sam getting fat behind his computer to constantly running to new locations, learning new skills every chance I get and genuinely enjoying my life? Let’s figure it out together and maybe drop some gems of knowledge along the way.

Every Journey Starts With The First Step

Feel free to jump to the next header if you just want the gems, here’s a little backstory to how this all started.

The first step came shortly after finishing college. Bored all the time, no fun to be around and generally didn’t know what to do. I had subscribed to the idea that I would finally be happy once I had some money. In fact, my entire life had been driven by the fact that once I reached the next accomplishment, I would feel content. The constant letdown was devastating and usually led to me being destructive in other parts of my life. Now I had money, I was working, playing video games and sabotaging relationships because I was unhappy that reaching the accomplishment didn’t give me a free pass to happiness. After I lost the girlfriend, things got a bit rougher. The same routine day in and day out was literally going to kill me, so I figured if I had to die, it should at least be a cool story.

In college, I had gotten in shape after I started boxing. Like with most things in my life, I found I enjoyed it and became wildly obsessed. It was all I wanted to do, read or talk about. Most of my early life was spent being obsessed with something and generally annoying everyone around me with it. This type of passion doesn’t tend to go over well if you do not know how to direct it, so I always just assumed I was crazy and couldn’t control my brain. After getting in shape, my brother in law, Jeff agreed to do a Warrior Dash with me. It was boring, super casual and not the type of difficulty our two engineer minds thrive in. Fast forward a year or two, I am no longer in shape and pretty much view my demise as a step forward. Jeff and I discuss a Tough Mudder and find that it looks like more of the same “Will You Do It?” type obstacles. Then we found Spartan Race with its “Can You Do It?” type obstacles.

Our first race motivated me to get back in shape. I didn’t want to be seen in a gym, so I started working out at playgrounds and in parks every day. Slowly, I learned more about calisthenics and generally how the body worked. Friends started asking me to show them how I was getting back in shape without the gym, and it required my obsessive skills to get all the answers for myself and for them. There was a lot of fear in the first few things I learned. Working out shirtless in public when I wasn’t in shape, not being able to complete the race or getting injured, all of those things were bigger mental hurdles than they should have been.

After our first race, I needed more to do to keep me in shape than racing. Jeff is a great volleyball player, so I signed up for one of the biggest tournaments in the area. Having never played volleyball at a competitive level, I thought the lowest level would be a breeze. I was in shape, I have always been able to jump high, who could that? A friend who also didn’t play and I practiced for one hour the night before and got absolutely stomped. It was so simple, yet I couldn’t do it. People had been playing for five or more years and were playing at the lowest level. I promised Jeff I would be playing against him in two years and I am sure he had a good laugh.

The second race required us to go to Boston on my birthday. I was trying to do things as cheap as possible, so I did all the research. I drove the full eight hours to the race, we slept, ran the race and drove all the way back. Happy birthday to me. I realized how little money we spent doing it this way. Why had I never been to Boston before if it was this cheap and only required the eight hours of driving? I had played video games for much longer than that in a day. What stopped me?

This question burned me. I had rarely left Ohio, but it was so simple. I had never left America, so how hard could that be? I got myself a passport. I called my best friend from high school, Josh, and told him I found super cheap flights to Iceland. Obsessive skills to the rescue, I planned the whole trip around Iceland and it went smoothly. It wasn’t exactly cheap, but it was cheaper than most people do it and it was my first attempt. Pro travel tip: getting to Iceland is insanely cheap, being there definitely isn’t. The fear that had kept me from leaving had resided. I made a ton of friends, I saw a ton of cool stuff and nothing bad happened. Obsession begins.

Throughout Iceland, meeting new people had been a struggle for me. Loud, confident and always vying for the center of attention, most people would assume I have no problem being in public alone. Realistically, my social anxiety was crippling and I often would just disappear saying I had other things to do when I was forced to be in public situations alone. Now I wanted more travel, and I wanted less restrictions. The next month I booked a solo trip to Germany and Czech Republic. It started with my getting lost at a train station and having a bit of a mental breakdown and ended with a minor anxiety attack in a small pub in Berlin, but the seed had been planted. I wasn’t killed or ridiculed. There were no repercussions for me being entirely alone in public.

This incredibly long winded story only took us from January to September of 2016. In December, I had begun regularly playing volleyball, I dragged my new friend, Ryan to Mexico for a trip against his better judgement, and Jeff, Sean and I had finished all three lengths of Spartan Race. Since all of this, I have been to twenty countries and twenty nine states, played volleyball in ten states and five countries and run twelve Spartan Races (including this hellscape of an Ultra Beast that cost me my mental and physical health but that’s for another post). I have also learned a little bit of over a dozen languages, excelled in my career and picked up a myriad of other skills. If you’ve seen any of the blog posts (if you haven’t, I promise there is cool stuff), I also quit a dream job, sold all of my stuff and abandoned everything I care about to drag my best friend through SouthEast Asia for months racking up cool experiences. Actually, I am writing this in bed in a yoga ashram in the “birthplace of yoga”: Rishikesh, India. All of this and the truth is that I am not special, it could be anyone writing this.

Okay, okay, this sounds like a crappy Facebook ad for someone to buy my Ebook on how to change your whole life in a few easy steps, but I don’t have an Ebook (yet) and I don’t want anyone’s money. Here’s the key pieces that I think helped push me so far in such a short time.

All I Know Is That I Know Nothing

This definitely was not the first of these skills that I internalized, but if someone wiped all of my knowledge and I could only keep one thing, it would be this. You don’t know everything, no one does. Everyone has this incredible fear that not knowing something makes you stupid or the butt of the joke. Be stupid, be the butt of the joke. Honestly, sometimes it works in your favor. Pretending I knew something that I didn’t has never worked in my favor. Being honest that I do not know something has always paid off. People are willing to help honest people who want to learn.

Want to get good at something? Overindulge in it. Watch it, read it, talk about it. Annoy everyone you love with it until you’re all alone with just it. I don’t actually recommend this but most of my friends can probably tell you that I take the advice to heart. If you genuinely enjoy something, smother yourself with it. People are drawn to passion. Some people are pushed away by passion, but we are shooting to be uncommon and that has a cost. There is no time to be embarassed about looking dumb. See someone doing something that you can’t do or want to do? Ask them how they learned it. Ask them to show you. Most people who are good at things are also a bit obsessive as well, they will usually help you. Worried about better people judging you and laughing at you? Make yourself the joke. Many people have heard me refer to myself as a “C player”(usually the lowest level) when making mistakes in volleyball, who can laugh at me when I am laughing at myself? Laugh with them, I promise it makes it easier to stomach. As for being worried about them judging you, this is common with people at gyms. “I can’t work out at the gym. I don’t know what I am doing and I look stupid. Everyone there is in good shape and is judging me.” As someone who has spent a lot of time in gyms, anyone that is in good shape doesn’t really care what you’re doing at the gym. They’re probably just staring into oblivion thinking about their next set or because you’re the first new person they have seen in the several weeks straight they have been there every day. Anybody that is in good shape started in not so good of shape, they understand the hard work it requires. Most of them are obsessed, they would love to give you a tip if you genuinely ask them something. Side note: Keep questions simple, please don’t read this as a suggestion to make a stranger your personal trainer. That about covers it. Stay humble, ask for help, consume all the information you can get.

All Of My Flaws Are Perfect

Living in this ashram has really solidified my belief in balance, so let’s bring it into this post. I just preached to you to be humble, but now let’s switch gears. Be wildly confident. There are a handful of things all elite athletes and celebrities have in common and the one I am pushing now is the illusions of grandeur. The only way you can do things that you deem impossible is to decide you are capable of them. My favorite quote to throw at any friends who are scared to do something has always been this: “What do someone who says they can’t do something and someone who says they can have in common? They are both right.”. One of the best volleyball players in the world right now is someone who is several inches shorter than all of the players who are deemed “undersized”. Regardless of anything else, he’s there because he believes he can be. Most of the greatest achievers of all time are known for how wildly conceited they were.

I am not saying to kill yourself trying to do things that you aren’t capable of, but always do your best to look at your limits and take a seat about three feet past them. The Navy Seals have the forty percent rule : When your mind says that you are done, you are actually only forty percent done. That means that you have more than half of your energy left to go. When your muscles are burning, your breath is coming in gasps and your brain feels like its about to ooze out of your ears, you’re just getting started. Exhaustion is your reward for going after what you want. It isn’t glamorous, but nothing worth doing is.

Trading Places

A younger me was stubborn. I was blessed with above average intelligence and I always knew the answer. Good luck arguing with me, I knew the answer and had the English skills to completely shut out your side. Here I stand to tell you that I now always welcome being wrong. In fact, I am constantly pushing to learn things I disagree with and think are wrong. If I learn all of the facts about it, I can confidently say that it is not correct. Most of the time, I have confidently learned that I was correct and found out why the other side believes the flawed information or I found out that my side was incorrect. Some of the time, both sides are half right. Realistically, most of the time, both sides are half right. Constantly be learning, be well rounded, know both sides.

The End Of The Weak

I spent a lot of time avoiding all of the things that did not align to my strengths. Literally, I had a messed up shoulder for the first few years of working out and just avoided ever using it because it was so weak. It’s been so long since that shoulder was an issue that I honestly forgot about it until I started this section. What I mean is that you should actively be chasing your weaknesses. Make them average. Another volleyball metaphor incoming. Neither Ryan or I are spectacular players, but we have had some level of success in our short time playing, even against people with significantly more experience. We did our best to be well rounded, never wildly excelling in one area, but never having glaring weaknesses. This allowed us to play consistently and picking at others’ weaknesses while doing our best to mitigate their strengths Now, we play at a level where excelling in multiple areas is required so I freely offer this advice to people just getting started. Humblebrag aside, this is what moved us further faster than our peers.

I mean this in more ways than physical. For as long as I can remember, my brain has been in a constant state of on. In my youth, it gave me horrible anxiety and usually caused my obsessions to drive me to the point of lunacy. Now I sleep well and control my emotion, but I still am in a constant state of moving, thinking, talking or generally not sitting still. Here I am, sitting in an ashram, doing yoga and meditating for eight hours a day. I do not think this will become my daily life. Nonstop going is near to my heart, but I am beefing up the weak part of not being able to control my mind when it is spiralling out of control. It has definitely not been super fun to stare at my weaknesses daily, but when it is done, those weaknesses will (hopefully) be lessened. So next time you make some comment like “That’s just the way I am.”, work at it. Let that be the way you were.

There Are No New Ideas

The answers are out there. If you have an issue, mentally or physically, someone has dealt with it before. Most of the things I have learned about thinking, learning and general self control are documented as far back as documentation goes. Most of the ideas about controlling your emotions are well documented in Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, written before 200 AD. Most of the things I learned while getting my personal trainer certification were being spotted by the first muscle heads in gyms in the 70s and 80s, and those same ideas appear in yogic texts from the distant past. Thai massage follows similar techniques to relieve muscle tension that modern day myofascial release techniques cover today and it was said to have been discovered over two thousand years ago. There are no new ideas. If you need answers, start looking at the things that have withstood the test of time.

Worst Case, You Die

In a famous story about Bruce Lee, a close friend told him that if they ran any further, he would die. To this, “Then die.” was Lee’s response. This is part of the inspiration for my answer to why I do a lot of the thing things I do, “Worst case, I die”, when a lot of the time that is a genuine possibility. Many ways of thinking discuss the fear of death being a restricting quality. Everyone will die at some point (spoilers!). You can sit around and do nothing and you will still die. You can go live out your wildest dream and it can go perfect, or it could be the last thing you do. I would personally rather it be in pursuit of something I wanted to do. The other meaning to this phrase is that most things are not life and death situations, but in our head, they are. If I fail at this thing, everyone will laugh at me and life will be over. If I don’t do this, I will lose everything I worked for and life will be over. Realistically, things work out and if they don’t, then you can die, I guess. Mostly, things are never as bad as you think they will be, so acknowledge that even the worst case scenario is not going to be that bad and push forward.

Pay It Forward

This one does not specifically have anything to do with excelling, but I think it is important. Always do your best to pay any good things forward. Help other people excel at things you are good at, some sort of spooky universe being will give you a magic currency for your hard work. That doesn’t happen (I don’t think), but it feels good and it does pay off. Whether you believe in karma or not, people are willing to treat you better if you treat people well. Don’t do it for the payoff though, being helpful changes your attitude toward the world. Maybe you offering to carry something heavy for someone less able than you causes them to do something nice for someone else and that chain reaction just keeps spreading. Offer the things you know, don’t worry about rewards.

This Could All Be Wrong

That’s not a clever header, I could be wrong about all of this. It has all worked out for me, but who knows how much luck plays into that. I’m currently 26, and probably don’t know what I’m talking about. Hopefully at least one of these things works out for you and you weren’t too bored reading it. Time to get some sleep so I can keep facing my weaknesses. I will do another non travel post next week (assuming this doesn’t get me slammed with hate mail) and the following week I will do a big post about my 200 hour yoga teacher training in India. See ya next time. Namaste.