Category Archives: Insights

Insights, Quarantine, Self Improvement

Quarantine Series: Death By A Thousand Cuts

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I can never really tell if life tries to point me towards certain things by having them pop up repeatedly in during my day or if the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon is to blame. Recently, the concept that has been showing up over and over again is the idea of the compound effect. This is the practice that small changes over a long enough timeline lead to huge changes. No one argues that this is true, but it’s hard to get really pumped about getting rich over the course of forty years or getting ripped over the course of a decade. For the last few months of quarantine, I’ve been playing with my morning routine and diet. About four months in and I think I’ve reached a point where I’m getting benefits from all of the changes that I’ve kept and not really putting in too much work, so here’s what has been up.

For as long as I can remember, I have always been about doing the least amount of work for the most gain. In the past, I took this to mean that I should absolutely crush myself for a short amount of time to reach a goal quicker. Sam ages eighteen to twenty three can tell you that that does not quite work. I was a big fan of spending forty or so hours a week in the gym to get shredded out of my mind or super strong for some event and then when burn out eventually took over, I would go back to square one. We can blame having to hibernate in Ohio and needing all the body fat I could get, but let’s just say it was my approach’s fault, for the sake of this post. Then something would come up and it was right back to killing myself to rush back to this point. I did the same with learning a new skill or about a new subject, which is something I still regularly do but not all at once like I used to. So let’s get down to how twenty seven year old Sam keeps up the same results with probably ten percent of the effort.

One Brick At A Time

In the past, I approached everything like I was trying to build a house in one day. I overworked, I cut corners and used shoddier materials. I would take on tasks that took others years and blast them out in months. Find me the cheapest version and let me smash my way through. It’s the type of things that look really good on Instagram. “Check out this skill I learned in a week” or these abs I busted out in two months. Unfortunately, you can’t learn the intricacies of a skill or build an actually functional aesthetic body in only two months. Eventually, the missing parts start to show. The foundation can’t bear the weight of the home and you end up in a worse spot than when you started. This house analogy works better than I originally thought. I know some of you that know me are thinking “But Sam prides himself on overindulging in whatever he is doing…”, yeah, sure, but now I’m a little smarter about it.

A few years ago, I would spend every waking hour learning a new skill. Then as soon as I had confirmed I learned the skill, I would have spent any free hour I had for several months getting in insane shape, excited for any chance to rip my shirt off(my natural state) and expound on whatever latest fitness thing I was infatuated with. (Unfortunately for my close friends, that hasn’t changed too much.) At the end of all of this, I would have forgotten most of the skill and I’d be too riddled with injury to do anything with my newfound strength. These days, I spend a little time every day working towards some of those things.

This actually accomplishes a few things. I am a very obsessive personality type, if you hadn’t noticed. I overindulge in things immediately, throwing all of my money and attention at one thing the moment it interests me. This way of approaching things allows me to get as involved as I like, but because I am rationing a small window of time for each new thing, I have to choose the most important things to start/purchase to begin whatever the new thing is. If this interest falls off, I’ve invested less time and money than I do when I dive headfirst into something like I’m prepping to be the leading expert in three months. It also gives me a better means for course correction. When diving fully into a new topic, it’s easy to get misled by one source or miss important steps in the beginning. Spreading this learning over a longer amount of time allows me to figure out which means allows me to learn new topics works best for me.

This transfers to new skills in that I can usually look at a new offering and tell if it will fit my learning style, regardless of how quality the content is. My favorite consequence of this new way of approaching things is that I overindulge immediately, and then have to cut off all of the fat for it to make it into my regular routine. I can relax my whole body stretching every individual muscle when that’s at the top of my list, but if I’m being honest, stretching commands at most ten minutes of my regular day and usually ends up happening while I’m doing something else. Now, when I learn something new, I rip through all of the information and then when it gets put into practice, I figure out what pieces are giving me the biggest bang for my buck and those are the pieces that stick around and become habit.

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Easily the best thing about my passion for making myself a guinea pig is that my friends get to benefit from it. Nobody wants to try all of these weird diets or random subjects, but knowing the finest points are invaluable. So here’s the good part, some actionable steps to start compounding change.

First, you’ll need some self awareness, which could be the thing you are trying to use compounding to achieve more of in the first place. Figure out what the best way to motivate yourself is. Regardless of how much I preach finding happiness outside of spending money, the easiest way to motivate me is to throw some money, then I’m bought into the whole ordeal. Prior to things being locked down, I would sign up for a competitive version of whatever I was trying to get into. I would tell people, so the fear of embarrassment was a secondary motivator, but paying for the event was always the thing that made it real in my head. These can help, but no one knows how to motivate you better than you.

If you’re not sure, you can cheat and use some known easy points. Want to start something new and can never mentally make yourself do it over over watching Netflix? Find the smallest way to add it to your day and add it into a part of your day where you are naturally context switching. Do you usually finish working and then make dinner? Throw in ten minutes of that activity before you make the dinner. It’s much easier to add activities into gaps that already exist than to get up in the middle of something you likely already enjoy more and do it. Remember, the key is to make all of this stuff easy.

Second, overindulge at first. This advice fits my personality, but I think it’s the most consistent way to get things to stick. Want to start eating a certain way? Throw everything away that doesn’t fit that diet. Stick to it for an entire month. Likely during that month you will find certain things that were in your diet that you could do without and certain things from the new diet that you enjoy adding. Boom, your regular diet has improved just like that. Humans are really good at enduring things as long as they know an ending exists, so try to do these things for about a month. If nothing else, it helps flex that self restraint muscle that we all tend to leave so underutilized.

Last, find the parts that bring the most benefit and incorporate them in a way that fits nicely into your day without being inconvenient. Perfect is the enemy of good. Focus on adding a tiny amount of quality progress every day towards something new. These small changes will gradually add up to big changes before you know it.

That’s it. I’ll leave it at that. Do a little bit now for future you, then they’ll have to make good choices to repay past them…or something like that. Until next time, take care of yourselves and wear a mask.

Insights, Quarantine, Self Improvement

Quarantine Series: Building A House To Live In, Not To Sell

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This blog mostly stood as a place to chronicle all of the things I was doing while traveling so that I wouldn’t have to repeat full stories a billion times. Following my 2019 half year trip, I spent some time back in Ohio, where I wrote one more blog post. I then went on a month long road trip from Cleveland to Utah and then down to Texas. During that trip, I accepted a job in Austin, Texas and never wrote about the trip or any of the cool stuff I’ve done since I got down here. I’m not going to write posts about any of it, but my first tournament in Texas was played alongside an AVP main draw player as a random pickup and then Ryan and I trained with Beachbox Camps again in Cuba. Maybe I’ll try to get back to writing if we’re ever allowed to travel again, but I figured there were some things I’ve been meaning to write about and what better time then when we’re all trapped in our homes. I’m going to try to take a break from working out/working/playing video games to write one of these every so often now. In January, I got injured to the point where I couldn’t train for a while. It’s not the first time, but this time I have the past few years of learning about the human body and how to take care of myself in general. That is what this post is about.

If you’ve been reading these, you’ll know that I have slowly been switching my mindset from a brute who wills his way through things to a mindful human who does things with purpose so that I can continue to do them in the future. Don’t miss the word “slowly” there. Since moving to Austin, one of the things I picked up to make more friends was bouldering. My climbing skills are pretty sub par, but my brute brain is really good at firing all of my muscles to make me accomplish things. For those wondering, that is not the correct way to climb. On a particularly large reach, I caught my body weight almost entirely in my left shoulder and felt something shift in my my upper back. Needless to say, I’ve done a lot of dumb stuff and hurt myself. I’m pretty good at recovering, so I did the necessary stretches, iced and left it alone. Unlike usual, this pain didn’t go away and my range in shoulder and neck became limited.

If you know me at all, you’ll know most of my training is usually based around what I look like without a shirt on, so something like this wouldn’t keep me out of the gym. Nowadays, I’m a little more focused on the future of my body. I switched almost entirely to mobility work, strengthening my joints and tendons and working on flexibility. After a month or so, no luck from that healing factor. I got myself a physical therapist (who also has done work with the South African Olympic weightlifting team) and she got my shoulder fixed up in two sessions. Working with her, we found that some of the smaller muscles in my left shoulder were not firing. Through baseball, boxing and volleyball, my left arm has always been more precise, never bringing much in the way of power. Because of this, it never had to learn the correct movements for generating that power. A few additions to the morning routine later and I’m back in the sand, better than ever.

In a functional movement workshop I took during my time away from volleyball, I found tons of areas where I was weak or unstable or lacked mobility. Usually, these areas push us away, but by spending more time on them then the things that come easily, everything comes more easily. My hips are tight from lifting weights and sitting at a desk, but frequent attempts to work towards the splits have slowly maybe them one of my most mobile areas. The instructor of the workshop made a small comment at one point in the workshop, “Build a house to live in, not sell.”, which now seems in line with my newfound approach to my physical and mental state. I no longer care about what these things look like form the outside, physically or mentally, just that I feel more comfortable with them daily. As a result, I think the outward performance has actually come quite a bit easier than when that was my main focus.

Pulling Out The Weeds

In the book “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind”, Shunryu Suzuki mentions “Pulling out the weeds, we make nourishment of the plant.” This is in reference to the gardening technique of planting pulled weeds around a plant to give the plant more nutrients. Finding weaknesses in yourself, physical or mental, allow you to work through those things. Not only are you now more complete, but you understand how you got that way. My shoulder was not firing correctly, so now I start every day with some stretches and exercises to train my muscle memory for my shoulder to begin firing correctly. This technique has obvious physical benefits but it doesn’t stop there.

Everyone has different things from their past or from their genetics that function as triggers. Maybe certain topics or occurrences fill you with rage or depression. Practices, such as mindfulness, can help to alleviate these responses. Anger and sadness are not negative emotions, they are just emotions. That is an integral part to moving past certain things, to remove the judgement you feel towards them. If you can view certain responses without judgement as to if they are right or wrong, you can acknowledge why you feel that way or why you act a certain way. These things can be used to inform your decisions going forward or to understand why you react certain ways. You’d be surprised how easy life becomes when you just get out of your own way.

The Invitation

Our current world situation is forcing a lot of people to confront personal limitations that they have likely been using social interactions, hobbies and work for neglect for a long time. Rather than avoid those things by binging television or wallowing in sadness and ice cream, I invite you to spend some of this time to investigate those things. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do the aforementioned things, we all know I’m over here hoarding ice cream. But, now is the perfect excuse to work on things you’ve been putting off. Is your entire night thrown into disarray just by the thought of a certain topic? Try to sit with that thought and really think through why it causes you so much distress, without deeming your feelings as incorrect. Do your shoulders feel tight from sitting at your desk all day long or your hips are ablaze from simply crouching down? There are a ton of free routines/workouts from wonderful people on the internet to work on all of those things. You can even work on that stuff while you binge watch. Do you see people in movies doing things you envy like play music or paint? Take this time to royally suck at them. Use all of your quarantine time to suck at that thing until you accidentally get good at it. I’m currently doing this with piano, probably to my neighbors’ dismay. If you don’t know where to start with any of these things, feel free to reach out. I’ll do my best to point you in the right direction. My point is to leave this situation with more than you walked in with.

I am not telling anyone what to do because I think I know or am better. I am currently also trying to do all of these things. Some days of this quarantine, I’ve played video games for the duration of me being awake. But others, I’ve spent all day drawing or playing piano or really working on stretching my hips. While we’re all currently forced to spend a lot of continuous time with the mind and body we have, now just seems like the perfect circumstance to make it a better space to live in.

Insights, Self Improvement, Traveling

New Game+ (Or Is It Weird To Be Back?)

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You wake up in Bangkok, Hanoi, Dharamshala. You wake up in Riga, Milan, La Spezia. If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person? These lines similarly echo one of the first scenes of the Chuck Palahniuk/David Fincher collab “Fight Club”. This scene popped up in my head frequently as I would wake up in different countries day after day. Most mornings, I was in a different city, if not a different country. Was I the same person in Koh Phangan, Thailand that I was in Vienna, Austria? Will I be the same person in Cleveland, Ohio tomorrow that I was before roaming the planet for one hundred and sixty seven days with just my trusty backpack? I hope not. For the last month, I have woken up in the same place, and to be honest, my brain is still adjusting to being the same person. That difference, however subtle, is what the post will be focused on.

I did a way better job of keeping up with this blog while traveling than I originally thought that I would, only missing the weekly post a few times and usually making up for it with a longer post. So I didn’t write a blog post about Madrid or New York, but it wasn’t too blog worthy. In Madrid, I walked around like I always do, I ate a lot of food and I went out to the second biggest club in Europe to cap off all of my traveling. I had an uneventful trip to the airport and flight to New York, stayed with a friend and got to watch pros play volleyball and was able to see my buddy, Chaim, who helped improve my game in Thailand, play some other pros. There’s an Instagram/Facebook post about it but otherwise, we’re just starting with me being back in Cleveland. This post is titled after the ever famous “New Game+” mode where games would let you restart the story, bringing along your experience, skills and items from the previous playthrough. I have returned to Cleveland, the same story, but with more experience and skills (but definitely not more items).

Where Do You Get All Of This Energy?

“All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.” Does that last sentence sound familiar? That’s the inspiration for the somewhat odd blog name. Chuck Palahniuk single handedly got me back into reading in college. His unique, often dark, writing style and view of the world helped to guide me when I wasn’t sure what kind of person I wanted to be, or would be happy being. I think about this quote often, my driving force for continuously doing more when I just want to lay on the ground and do nothing. If you knew me at all before I left, you would remember that there wasn’t much time left unused. Wake up, stretch, go to work, go work out, play volleyball, hang out with friends, work on whatever side project/new thing I was learning, sleep for five hours, repeat. I was living most people’s entire week in a single day. A driving force was something I had found, or maybe become. The drive to never be boring may have gotten a little out of control. My ever constant movement usually made me miss enjoying things, being focused on what was next on the plate, and quite frequently left my mental state in somewhat of disarray. I have the passion and determination to be an unstoppable force, but do I have the clarity and persistence to be an immovable object?

I like titling these things after sentences that have been said to me, or are said frequently, and I constantly get asked where I get all of my energy. Peaks of energy are not something I tend to experience. Some might say intermittent fasting is the cause, as it has been a mainstay in my life since 2012, but if my energy levels change with my diet, I don’t seem to notice. I either do something, or I don’t, having the energy is never the question. I firmly believe most of that is mental, as mental strength is something I have heaps of as far as determination. The image of Goku flexing and an aura of ki energy bursting around him when he is beaten and bruised always tends to pop up in my head in those instances when most people say they don’t have the energy to continue. Where the body is weak, the mind must be strong. This explosion of energy and determination is great in situations where you must push beyond your limits, but that passionate fire isn’t the answer for every situation. A campfire that refuses to go out in cold winds keeps people warm, an uncontrollable wildfire leaves destruction in its wake. All things with balance.

Preemptive no, I am not an immovable object. I did not become a stoic monk in the mountains of India. I still come off as overly aggressive when you catch me being competitive. I still can not stop talking about something when it is currently piquing my interest. However, I am aware of these things now. Most people would guess that sitting in Rishikesh, India, learning yoga and meditation and the philosophy behind both are the cause of this increased awareness. You would be right, but I think the entirety of the trip are the cause. Whether it was learning to go with the flow because nothing goes as planned in Asia or listening to someone wow me with information about something that I personally don’t believe in (read as: previously would have laughed in your face if you even began talking to me about it) because I promised to go into every situation with an open mind, all of things things helped make the change.

One thing I always disliked about my constantly working brain was that I am fully immersed in things that I like, but in that constant movement, I never slowed down to appreciate what was happening. Much of the trip exists in small snippets of memories, or just these blog posts, because I didn’t stop to appreciate it when it was happening. I still do this, and I am sure it will happen forever, but for much of the trip, I got much better at consciously appreciating things while they were happening. I am sure it annoyed everyone around me, as I would often say it out loud, but I stopped to consciously appreciate. To withhold my ever present radiation of energy, even if just for a moment, to take a mental picture, to acknowledge that I am somewhere I had never been, that I might never be again, that people dream of. For all of the bad things that happened, all of the difficult days, I was lucky. When the power went out in Dharamshala (a frequent occurrence) and I was freezing on my walk home, I was grateful to look up at the stars with no light pollution with my Lasik-fixed eyes and freeze in a peaceful place.

I Bow To The Divine In You

No, I didn’t drink the Kool-Aid, although I would have loved a glass of Kool-Aid when I was sitting in India. As with all things, I took the pieces of my yoga training that I aligned with or admired and tried to incorporate them into my life. If you have ever been to a yoga class, or seen a yoga post, or even heard someone mock someone who does yoga, you have heard the word “namaste”. Bowing to another person with this word is not an uncommon occurrence in some areas of India. The combination means “I bow to the divine in you”. Essentially, thanking the other person for this interaction. If I learned one thing on this trip, and hopefully I learned a few more since that is what this whole post is about, it is that everyone enjoys being appreciate and nobody appreciates quite as much as they could. Appreciate more, thank more, acknowledge the good things people do more. A common suggestion when giving a criticism is to pair it with a compliment. If you can, leave off the criticism. If you see someone do something well, even if it is expected or not as good as someone else near them, point it out. If you see someone doing something you have seen them do before and they are doing it better, point it out. If someone does something for you, even if it is minuscule or their job, thank them. It takes a ton of mental fortitude to push yourself to do things all day and even a single notice is usually enough to re-energize someone. It costs you nothing to smile and be kind to something.

People Will Stare At Me

The amount of people who won’t work out at a gym because “people will stare at me” has always surprised me. Let me prefix my actual point by telling you that anyone staring at you at the gym is either mindlessly looking, has a tip for you but won’t tell you because of gym etiquette or thinks you’re doing something wrong because they don’t know what they’re doing. Keep going, then they’ll stare because they’re impressed. While I don’t remember ever feeling that way about the gym but it has certainly stopped me from doing other things. I have definitely skipped events because I was so in my head about everyone staring at me and how all of my imaginary brain people would ridicule me and I would die from actual shame. I mention this in the Learning To Learn post but if you are that worried about this stuff, and don’t mind throwing yourself in the deep end like I like to do, I have a suggestion. Go live in Asia for a few months. Not the touristy areas. Do what Ryan and I did, take a motorbike through the actual countries of Asia. Go to cities where they may have never seen a white person other than on television. After a few weeks of entire restaurants of people turning their heads as you walk by, you can do anything without fear of people staring, because they will be staring. Then come back to America or Europe and try your hardest to worry about people staring at you.

What Do You Miss Most?

The most frequent question when you tell someone you have been traveling for over five months. I hate answering these types of questions. They are mostly asked by people who personally don’t know me, so when I answer “laying on a couch watching movies” or “taking a hot bath when I’m sick”, all I got is a weird look. None of the things I missed are what people think they would be, they are the things that were constants in my life. Of course I missed my family and friends, but thanks to the internet, I was able to keep in contact with them. I couldn’t lay on my Simba pillow, no hot baths anywhere, and watching movies on a tablet is not the best. The duration of the trip really brought to light the things that I missed most.

The bright side of this is that now I know which things to intentionally make time for. I never really had a problem with it, but now I have no hesitation about it. I wasn’t a big drinker when I left, and have never enjoyed hanging out at bars, but after the amount of fun I had over the last six months with drinking being a part of it less than a dozen times, I have no qualms skipping going out or telling people I don’t want to meet them at bars. I would much rather sit somewhere and watch a movie or eat ice cream, so that is what I will be doing.

Boy, It Sure Is A Hot One Today, Huh?

Even before I left, I always hated things like small talk. I get its purpose in our society, but it isn’t fully necessary. It’s so lukewarm, you will never offend with it, but no one will ever leap at their excitement to make small talk with you. Hit me with random facts, stories or just blurt out a sentence, and I’m in. I was never one to sit around and randomly chat about the array of appropriate strange small talk topics. I had things to do, places to be. Traveling alone for over two months definitely pushed me further away from small talk (read: made me even weirder socially), but it magnified my awareness of how important talking to people is.

Traveling alone, you can go days without talking to people, if you aren’t careful. Throw in some headphones, hop from train to bus, hostel to hostel, and don’t say an unnecessary word to anyone. As much as I prefer to do things solo, I don’t think that much alone time is healthy for the human mind. I don’t think zero alone time is healthy either. Again, all things with balance. What I did learn was that most people will happily participate in a real conversation if they aren’t busy and you aren’t being a total weirdo. Western society seems to dictate that you shouldn’t go talk to strangers without a purpose. People tend to enjoy new interactions, especially if it requires no work on their end. Chatting with strangers at restaurants or in public places is always something I have had no problem with in group events, but towards the end of the trip, I was doing it more at random. For the most part, it tended to end up in a decent conversation. I mostly utilized this when there was no seating somewhere and one or two people were sitting at a table with an open seat. We’ll see how it works in Cleveland when I give it a shot.

One Foot Out The Door

Towards the end of my trip, I really burned myself out on travel. In my last seven days, I hit eleven cities. This really drove home the reality that I was constantly living with one foot out the door. Every city I was in, I had a train booked to another city. I had my next night book at another hostel. Any human interaction had a predetermined deadline. Maybe I would see this person again, but how much effort could I put into a relationship that was shorter than a season of a television show. All of my interactions skipped the standard “Where are you from?”, “Where have you been?”, “How long are you traveling?” conversations that happen between every traveler. Thank God. Monotony is my kryptonite, but everything doesn’t always have to be in a constant state of change.

This consistency of always having one thread of my brain focused on the next trip has been going on since I first went to Iceland in 2016. It’s my main reason for loving physically exhausting things like Spartan Races and beach volleyball. In a true state of exhaustion, all power is diverted to the task at hand. There are no side thoughts about what else needs to be completed, just here and now. So I’m back, and not planning a next trip. We all know there will be one, but I’m here for now, so I will keep my focus on being here.

Look At The Bright Side

For a long time before I left, I really began to take notice of just how negative most people are, myself included. I consciously made an effort to not say negative sentences. Most people start conversations with negative content. That’s not just bad for your attitude, but it starts any interaction on a bad foot. Life isn’t that bad. Many of those famous self help gurus preach to write down what you are grateful for every day, as a positive kickstart to your day. You can always follow any negative sentence you say with a positive sentence. I am not sure if it has gotten worse since I left, or if I am just more cognizant of it, but it feels like everyone has even more negative stuff to say since I have been back, even strangers. All of the negative energy is exhausting.

Life is good, you live in a Western civilization. Your biggest worry is likely someone else’s smallest concern. The unfortunate part of this realization is that suffering isn’t universally relative. One person suffering more does not make another suffer any less. However, it is personally relative. Go check out other cultures. Go talk to other people. Write down all of the great things that you have in your life. Remove all of the excess and find out what is really important. Even if you have nothing, being positive is free.

A Last Minute Thank You

Over the one hundred and sixty seven days I was gone, I have been to so many incredible places and done so many incredible things. All of those things pale in comparison to the people who have been a part of the journey. I’m not sure there are words in any of the languages that I learned to describe how grateful I am for all of the people that I have met and spent time with over the course of this adventure.

To everyone who laughed at my stupid jokes, listened to my drawn out stories, appeased my need for volleyball, joined me while I ate ice cream (especially all of you), or just took care of me, intentionally or not, I want to extend all of my thanks to you. For months, I was away from everything that I know so well. People, places, languages, all of it. Because of all of you, I never felt alone. You’re all beautiful and amazing people. I love you and unfortunately, you will likely have to see me again. The man who left on Christmas is not the same man who arrived in Cleveland lsat month and you were all a part of that. Until next time, friends.

I also have to add a little snippet in here for everyone who followed along with the blog posts as I traveled around. At no point would I have guessed that as many people were reading it as have told me since I have been back. The messages following the posts were cool to see that people weren’t just completely ignoring them. There likely won’t be any new ones for a while, at least not any travel ones. Thank you for spending your most precious resource reading what I thought was important.

You’re Up

Everyone keeps asking what the takeaway is, well, there are a ton. Hopefully, this post shared some of them. I am sure most of them are only takeaways for me specifically. It’s all of the things that you already know, that you read in motivational Instagram posts. Slow down to appreciate things, be kinder, do things that scare you. To truly feel the importance of these words, it was important to live all of these situations. Like any advanced math test, the answer gets you very little, you must show your work to get there. So, if you don’t like my takeaways, sell all of your stuff and run away for half of a year and write your own.

Insights, Self Improvement

Learning To Learn

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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.