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.
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.
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.
The last travel post left off with me arriving at Akshi Yogashala in Rishikesh, India after some treacherous travel days. This post was postponed due to a weekly update off my life in the ashram not being very interesting, so I figured a big post covering the whole thing would be more worthwhile. Unfortunatly, that means this post will likely be four times as long as a usual one, and due to the fact that I wasn’t with my phone much, it will have significantly less pictures. That just means I will have to keep your interest with information.
Posted up with my favorite view
To start, “My Soul On Fire” is the name of two of my favorite episodes of Scrubs from its final season (the best show in existence, if you didn’t know) and ever since hearing the title, I have been obsessed with this phrase. Throughout this trip, I have had this constant feeling of my soul being on fire. Travel more, read more, learn more languages, write more code, make more friends, more more more. I was excited to finally write a post titled “My Soul On Fire” and saw yoga, meditation, and pranayama as the perfect chance to do so. My original thinking was that maybe all of this stuff would set my soul ablaze, and I could aptly name it, but after a month of slowing down, I realized that my soul has been on fire for a while now.
Akshi Yogashala ended up being the perfect choice for me. Rishikesh is brimming with yoga schools and I just wanted one that was Yoga Alliance certified, and they all are. My engineer skills came in handy when going through and cross referencing all of the reviews, number of reviews and types of yoga/classes taught at each. I got it from over two hundred down to five and then class starting time and tuition cost ended up putting me at Akshi. It was away from the busy streets of Laxman Jhula, had a nice courtyard right when you walked in and due to me being the only guy, got me a private room. So now for what I did there.
The view from outside the yoga hall
Just to keep this post a little more organized, I am going to break down each of the areas that I was taught then cover some things about Rishikesh and India and then do my usual story telling style. Without further ado, let’s begin.
The Only Routine With Me Is No Routine At All
I was never shy about saying that I was scared about spending a month in the ashram. It is likely quite obvious that I am a busybody and am always doing a million things at once. The daily schedule for the ashram was as follows:
05:30am – Tea
06:00am – Hatha Yoga
07:45am – Pranayama
09:00am – Breakfast
10:30am – Anatomy/Philosophy/Teaching Methodology
11:45am – Mantras/Adjustments and Alignment
01:00pm – Lunch
02:00pm – Break
03:00pm – Anatomy/Philosophy/Ayurveda
04:15pm – Ashtanga Yoga
06:15pm – Relaxation/Meditation
07:30pm – Dinner
Everyday. For four weeks. On Sundays, our day ended after lunch and Wednesdays, we had off entirely besides a planned excursion (I will cover these), but otherwise this was my life for a month. Needless to say, this was a significant change of pace for me. After the first week, I stopped going down for morning tea and opted to use that time to listen to music in my room. I am not going to give you a lesson on each of these things, but here’s a rundown of what each generally is and what we did in them from day to day.
Forget What You Know
This entire post really needs to be preempted with the fact that I signed up for this certification for the same reason I sign up for anything, I wanted the information for myself. If I can use the information to help someone else, perfect, but otherwise, I saw the potential for yoga to help me increase flexibility and reduce to some common injury areas for me. Also, doing things slowly, taking time to meditate and generally just focus on being calm are outside of my usual comfort zone, so I wanted to see if I could do it. I was pretty certain daily meditation or being a vegetarian would kill me, and I was almost right, but we will get to that later.
Spiritual is not a way that I would ever describe myself, and I tend to think that a lot of that stuff is just ignorance of facts but the more I have learned about things I had originally written off, I have found that it is just different words for the same thing. The amount of things that the Western world considers spiritual voodoo, is actually backed by science, but they just aren’t using the medical terms for it. A lot of the stuff I learned, works and is based on actual science that we also learned. Some of it is a bit more out there, and likely won’t make it into my normal routine.
Namaste all day
For the entire month, I made an agreement with myself that I would go into everything wholeheartedly as if it were something I believed in my whole life and after the month I would pick and choose which I would continue. I recommend this approach, it let me learn and enjoy a lot that I would have likely blown off had I not been so open minded.
Handy Notes
Here’s some quick terms that I am going to get out of the way so that I don’t have to repeat a million times and you don’t have to be confused when I mention them. Shoot me a message or an email if there’s a word I use in this post that doesn’t get covered.
Prana – Sanskrit for a unit of universal energy. Breathing brings this in and out of our bodies.
Asana – Sanskrit for pose. Techniquely means stable and comfortable, so even if you are in the correct pose, you are not in the asana unless you are holding it comfortably and stable.
External Yoga
Hatha Yoga is one of the six main paths of yoga. It is known as external yoga, because it covers the physical portion of what yoga pertains to, with Raja Yoga covering the internal. Hatha is the slow stretching yoga, usually paired with Vinyasa to create the fitness style yoga that is so popular in the Western world, but not here. Every day at 6am, we would slowly stretch out our bodies. A slow, monotonous daily routine that my brain took weeks to cope with without feeling the need to fall asleep once we hit the laying poses. Different sanskrit names and asana sequences filled the normal Hatha routine compared to our more standard Ashtanga practice. Hatha could change day to day depending on what part of us the teacher felt like we should be stretching that day. Hatha is likely the style I will teach anyone who wants me to introduce them to yoga, as it is less intense than Ashtanga and can be customized to each person or for specific goals. This class gave me a much greater understanding of the role each muscle and tendon plays in sitting, stretching and laying down.
The Expansion of Energy
In Sanskrit, Prana means energy and Ayama means expansion, so pranayama is the expansion of energy. Mostly, this was different breathing techniques. We learned a new one every day for the first few days and we would do a few sets of each breathing technique before adding a new one. By the end, each day consisted of doing an increased number of repetitions of five sets of different pranayamas. Each pranayama is described as helping different things, as well as being advised against for people with different ailments, from anxiety to depression to high blood pressure. Some increased the flow of energy, some slowed the heart rate, others increased focus. Alongside their desired effects, learning these techniques also taught us how to do different types of breathing. Abdominal, thoracic, ujjayi (throat) and yogic (all three at once) were all taught over the course of the class.
Alongside the different breathing types, we also learned to apply locks. These are said to keep energy from leaking out. There is a throat lock, an abdominal lock and the pelvic lock. Certain pranayamas called for different combinations of locks in their more advanced forms. The abdominal locks were actually a very common bodybuilding trick in the Frank Zane era for showing off abdominal control, which was an interesting skill to be taught and already know from the past. All of these further just increased attention to and control of the breath.
This class also included the shat kriyas, or body cleansings. Of the different ones, we had to practice three of them. The three we learned included the neti pot, rubber neti, and a specific dhauti. The neti pot, you have likely seen for cleaning your sinuses. Lean forward, pour in one nostril and watch water come out the other nostril, easy. The rubber neti required you to put one end of a long piece of rubber up your nostril and put it in until it entered your throat, at which point you pulled it out of your mouth. This was a big point of tension for a lot of people, but was no worse than anything in a Spartan, so I did it like it was an every day occurence. The final dhauti required you to drink three cups of warm salt water and then to vomit all of the water out, cleaning your stomach and esophagus. As I mentioned with one of the posts about food poisoning, I taught myself to puke on command year ago, so this was super easy for me, but not such a pleasant experience for everyone else. Overall, a cool class with an awesome teacher covering strict control of your body.
The rubber neti shat kriya
I Am A Soul, I Have A Body
The anatomy classes were things I had already learned during school and my personal trainer certification. These focused mainly on how breathing worked in the body and the functions of the spine. Learning each section of the spine and the muscles/tendons controlling these areas helped us to learn why certain asanas required certain muscles to be engaged or why certain adjustments should be made. Important for me, it helped with correcting some lower back issues caused my tightness from weightlifting and sitting at a desk. Other portions of the class were dedicated to showing the relation between yogic teachings and actual medical realities. For example, yogic teachings state that breathing brings prana into the body, so essentially oxygen, and the prana moves through seventy two thousand nadis to carry the energy throughout the body, which correlates to the blood vessels where the oxygen is carried through. How correct it is, I didn’t bother to check, but it was close enough that I never bothered fact checking.
This class was a bit slow for me as I knew it all, and being one of the only native English speakers, essentially functioned as a class for me to translate Indian English to something the other classmates could understand. It’s one thing to be fluent in a language, but to be able to understand technical terms is another thing entirely, compounded by the fact that those terms are being said by another non native English speaker. Overall, a good class to keep my scientific brain from writing off the whole experience as witchcraft and conspiracy theories.
Why Though?
The Philosophy class covered all of the things taught in the yogic teachings, from the definitions of all of these sanskrit words, to how energy functioned in the body, to the different types of yoga. Some of the main things were the main principles of yoga, such as the rules and regulations, as well as the different types of yoga and their uses. A ton of information here that helped keep things clear in the other classes.
Those Who Can’t Do, Teach
For three days, we had a teaching methodology class. This mainly covered things like how to structure a class, how to approach different situations, how and when to speak. A lot of this information we learned by experiencing our two yoga teachers lead us through sequeneces every day, but this covered a lot more of the planning and situations that will arise. A good course to have before our required teaching.
One Om Together
The course I was least excited for, mantras, ended up being one of my favorites. The course teacher was the wife of the director of the school and she was originally from Russia. She was awesome and was very clear about the fact that although all of the mantras mention different gods and Hindi things, that it was not inherently religious. We discussed different versions of mantra chanting and had to memorize about ten mantras. After learning them, we heard them everywhere, as they are usually sung over a melody and played like normal music anywhere else. The most simple mantra was just “Om” (Aum) which is the universal sound. It technically means god, but it is more symbolic of universal energy. This chant begins and ends almost every other mantra. Once you got the hang of it, it came more from your chest than from your vocal cords, and frequently, after about a dozen chants, you were told to focus on the feeling that was created from the chant. Try it, it makes focusing so easy.
The other mantras we learned were all meant for different things. Many were to receive help clearing negative energy or the create a bond with a teacher. Ashtanga yoga has a set opening and closing mantra. There is also a mantra that was done before any time we ate. My personal favorite was one to Ganesha (maybe you’ve heard me mention him before), that is said to help remove obstacles. Overall, a great class but we only had it for the first two weeks.
Good, But Could Be Better
Adjustments and Alignments were a source of dread for me when they started. Bulky muscles are not something that seemed to be common in the yoga community of Rishikesh, so mine were a common point of criticism for the classes. They held me back from certain things, as my muscles were able to counter a lot of the adjustments done, especially since the girls in the course were about half of my size and I can only relax my muscles so much. Add on to this that I work on computers and my hips and hamstrings are even tighter from that, and my flexibility is shot. My flexibility is quite high for someone my size thanks to volleyball, but the leg muscle from volleyball decreases my flexibility in certain areas. Oh well, many painful classes later, some of those issues have been reduced.
Showing off my newfound hip flexibility
The class essentially ran us through some common poses and what you can do to help adjust a student to the correct version of the pose, or variations you can give them to strengthen their body for the correct pose. It also covered some great things to do to open up your hips, hamstrings, shoulders and chest, all of which I plan to add to my normal routine so maybe one day I can actually be flexible.
Just Add Turmeric
Ayurveda is basically Indian Life Science. It covers the idea that each person is made up of some variation of the three doshas and each person’s personality and health is diffferent based on this combination. It was kind of cool to learn about, as my main dosha, Pitta, explains my body type, eating habits and generally necessity for cold and sweets. It covers different foods for people to each depending on the weather, eating and sleeping tips and some other things. Most of it was interesting, and if nothing else just promoted a healthier lifestyle. Some of the things were counter to what I have learned and personally experienced with nutrition, but like everything else, I will take the useful parts and discard the things I find less useful. This was another three day course, but there are many course offerings on just Ayurveda, so maybe one day I will learn more.
The Eight Limbs of Yoga
Ashtanga Yoga means the eight limbs of yoga. This form of yoga covers internal and external yoga. Unlike Hatha Yoga, this form is unchanging. Their are six different series, with each needing to be mastered before you can move onto the next. We learned the first series, which we were told takes about five years of daily practice to master. There is a set sequence of poses (which takes about an hour and a half) and specific moves for each inhale and exhale. This course was done by tradition, so we did the class with doors and windows closed, no fan, and no water, even though it was over one hundred degrees. They believe the sweat is purifying, so maybe I overpurified.
Personally, this was my favorite. I will cover the teachers later, but our teacher had been practicing daily for three years, and he was a great teacher. He brought a strict following of tradition and his voice was powerful. This was an hour and a half of constant poses, which is an insane amount of work. While it didn’t satisfy my body’s necessity for powerful work, it did leave me feeling like I did something. Unfortunately, due to lack of exhausting me, a lot of times it had me ready for a more power related workout following.
This is likely the type of yoga I will (and have been) continue practicing daily to keep up with practicing. It is a bit harder to teach, as it requires a bit more dedication and teaching the sequence took us about ten days of daily class. Not really something you can teach a beginner, and much less likely to appeal to someone who would be a more casual yoga practictioner.
Relax Your Forehead
Here is where the issue with my body being trained for powerful work after intensive cardio or stretching comes in. Following Ashtanga, we had relaxation or meditation. The same teacher as pranayama, his voice was one of the most soothing things I have ever encountered. Regardless, my body is always ready to work, and when it’s primed to go, relaxing is not an option. Sometimes I could full on meditate for about fifty minutes before becoming restless, but if I was already hyped up from Ashtanga, I would spend the entire hour restless.
My ability to enter a meditative state is pretty good, but staying in one is pretty weak. This is pretty common for me, as I don’t tend to rest. A normal person gets seven to nine hours of sleep, and during that gets one to two hours of deep sleep. As a reference, I get four to six hours of sleep a night, and get three to four hours a deeps sleep during that. I am all about efficiency, and that stands true with resting as well. When I shut it down, I shut it all the way down, but not for long. This is something I will work on, but I think going back to harder exercises will remove some of my restless, so I will play it by ear.
The course covered different meditation techniques, including things like staring into the flame of a candle, and different relaxation techniques, like relaxation. A really interesting class and something I would like more experiencing leading, and I think it was helpful to experience.
The Cast
In past posts, I only mentioned someone outside of Ryan and myself if their introduction is pertinent to a particular story. With this situation, I think at least a short introduction is necessary just to cover the different personality types. I was the only guy in the course, which growing up with all sisters prepared me for. There were seven other students in the two hundred hour course with me and one girl finishing up her final week from the previous course. There were also five other girls completing their three hundred hour course, as well as a translator for them as most of them were Russian and spoke little English. There were five teachers and some other people working at the ashram.
My classmates consisted of girls from Russia (the one completing her final week), two from Taiwan, one from Germany, one from Ireland, two from Brazil, and one from Chile. The other group consisted of four Russians and another Chilean, with the Russian translator being from Ukraine. Most of my time not speaking English was spent speaking Russian and Spanish, so I was happy to have that knowledge going in. Each of them came from different backgrounds, professions and varying levels of yoga experience, from current teacher to limited experience. On top of this, I was the youngest person in the course by a good margin. I was a bit worried about my lack of flexibility and being the only guy, but they all immediately felt like family and it was a joy learning all of these things with them.
A fire ceremony kicked off our time together
I will go into a bit more detail with the teachers, as their unique personalities brought something different to the table, which I think allowed me to construct what I think my desired teaching style will be if I ever pick up teaching yoga. We had to teach a one hour class for our certification, so I already practiced this a bit, but experiencing the different classes daily let me experience different teaching types to pick and choose the parts I liked best.
The Hatha teacher, who also taught Adjustment and Alignments, was very intelligent and straight to the point. A lot of his instruction came off as a bit harsh as a result, but the information was always spot on with no time wasted. From him, I learned a ton of techniques for working on flexibility issues, as well as what to look for when adjusting myself and others.
The Pranayama teacher, who also led meditation and relaxation, was a class favorite. The energy in every interaction with him was always pure joy, regardless of the situation. Even when he taught us the uncomfortable shatkriyas, he was coaching mental strength to people and brought such a positive attitude. As was mentioned before, his voice and manner of speaking was extremely soothing. For my required meditation in my class, I definitely stole is speaking style and cadence, which the other classmates said worked alongside confidence to make the experience very calming.
This man exudes to positive energy
The Anatomy teacher, also taught Philosophy and was the director of the school, was wildly intelligent and had an insane confidence in teaching any information. We had less personal time with him, but the knowledge he taught us formed the backbone of the other teachings.
I tried to convince him that he was a perfect height for volleyball, but something about dedication to yoga
Our Ashtanga teacher likely did the most in forming my teaching style, as his strict following of tradition as well as pinpoint accuracy in his means of communicating adjustments and alignments made everything so simple. As every inhale and exhale has a corresponding movement in Ashtanga, there is limited time to give or receive information , so every word must be chosen careful. This combined with his confident way of speaking allowed you to follow his voice and let your body follow along almost unconsciously. An admirable skill in a teacher of anything, especially something as intricate as moving the human body in odd positions for over an hour.
He only taught me Ashtanga so I’d be stretched for badminton
The Mantra teacher taught me the use of mantras as a focusing technique amongst other things, while pointing out their usefulness. They also allow you to introduce the class to following instruction and bonding together before any asanas are performed. Prior to this class, I usually stayed silent during mantras, but hearing an entire class perform a mantra is a pretty amazing thing.
I didn’t even know she was Russian for the whole first week
There were many other people in the ashram, including the people from the other course, but I think two of them deserve a special mention. Mukesh was mentioned in the previous post as he was the one who picked me up on a scooter and drove me back to the ashram at night when I arrived. He handled seemingly everything at the ashram. He led pre meal mantras, he handled our payments and any forms we needed, he fixed any issues we had. All around, he was delightful and helped whenever we needed it. The other person was Vidarth, the son of the director and mantra teacher. He was two and a half, spoke some Russian, Hindi and English, and generally brought joy to all of us. I have missed my neices and nephews since I have been gone, but this was the first time I had any extended time to hang out with kids. He sang mantras with us, flirted with the girls and was generally just a funny kid.
My man, Vidart, already spreading his vast knowledge
Becoming My Polar Opposite
Regularly throughout the course, other classmates would expound on how calm I was, and how they hoped to approach situations with my level of calmness. This isn’t me bragging, this is to point out how different my life was last month. No one who knows me would describe me as calm. I am all fire, usually competitive and on the move.
Beyond this, I am an avid meat eater. As of this writing, it has been thirty two days without meat for me. I plan to eat meat when I get to Europe, but said I would stay vegetarian for my stay in India. The first couple of days I felt tired and weak, but this was also likely from the significant decrease in protein, fat and overall calories. The sattvic style meals mostly consist of vegetables, broth and chapati. Occasionally, there are lentils and chickpeas but the amount of protein and fat was definitely not what my body was used to. Once I rectified this difference with desserts and the occasional dish outside of the ashram, I felt a bit better. I still noticed a significant decrease in size, although only a slight decrease in actual weight, but this could also be due to lack of blood in my muscles from not working out and not having any creatine in my system. Either way, it has been fine, although the focus has been more on carbohydrates with protein being harder to get. I miss the texture of meat and can’t wait to get back to it, but it allowed me to try some dishes I likely would have never tried.
Sometimes the meals at school definitely didn’t satisfy my American appetite
The cafes held it down on Indian food though
Rishikesh as a city is known as one of the holiest cities in India and the birthplace of Yoga. The holy river Ganges runs through the city and the area near where I took my course was literally filled with yoga, ayurveda and similar things. There were no other options, there was no meat sold anywhere, no books to buy outside of these topics, no alcohol. Living in Rishikesh almost forced you to live this lifestyle. I think the lack of choice made the reality easier to stomach.
Realistically, I sucked at keeping my focus purely to the practice. I spent eight hours a day meditating, doing yoga and learning similar topics. Never in my life have I had to study for things, my brain excels at holding information. Instead of studying the material we learned every day, I spent my minimal free time learning German, practicing web development, watching movies and reading books. So standard Sam stuff. I also spent some of the time practicing volleyball on the roof by myself, because I took our ball from Thailand, which helped keep me from being restless and helped me work on some stuff I learned from my olympic friends. Only so much can be changed at once I guess.
After the initial weakness from diet change, everything flowed pretty easily. With temperatures topping out at over one hundred and my general disdain for routine, there was a bit in the middle where I dreaded going to the lectures. A day or two where I spent sick in my room gave me a necessary break. Beyond this, the entire experience was amazing and allowed me to clear some things out of my head. It also allowed me to make some decisions that have been mildly haunting me about my future, as I couldn’t reconcile what I actually want and what I think I should do. Meditation definitely has its place in the busy mind.
All Work And No Play
On our full days off, we had one scheduled excursion. The first one was a mountain sunrise “hike”. I was pumped, I woke up at 4:30am excited to hike. What we really did was take a truck over an hour around the horrible, winding roads to a big staircase leading to a temple to view the sunset. A beautiful view, but not the hiking I was looking forward to. The second one was a Ganga Aarti performance. A nightly sunset ritual with mantra chanting and people moving varying sizes of handles set ablaze. Concluded with the standard blessing and forehead painting, this was a nice experience to see something more traditional on the river. The third excursion was rafting down the Ganges. I love rafting, and in the heat, the ice cold Ganges was perfect. Most of the girls had never been rafting, and the stronger rapids led to all of them screaming at the top of their lungs. This trip also included some jumps off of rocks into the water, which is always a fun way to increase your heart rate. The final excursion was an hour hike to a sacred cave which housed a Baba, a man whose life was entirely dedicated to meditation. He meditated in the cave for twelve years. After meeting him, we were brought into the cave. After the initial opening, we were asked to go further into the cave, which was a smaller opening used for meditation. One of the girls didn’t want to enter due to claustrophobia, and I wasn’t able to enter due to being too big for the narrow pathway leading to the second room. We meditated in the initial room with the Baba while the others meditated inside. Overall, each one exposed us to something new in Rishikesh.
Posing at the view where we saw the sunrise
The Ganga Aarti performance
Climbing back in the raft after leaping from that rock behind me
It’s really easy to grow your hair out when you just meditate in a cave all day
Outside of the excursions, we made many trips into town for dinner, dessert and to check out the shopping options. I found some new dishes that I will likely be ordering from Indian restaurants and desserts I will be making for events. I also got asked to play volleyball by some locals, which was a fun experience. The net was in the middle of a dirt field, and although some of the locals were good, they all insisted playing opposite me, so most of it was spent playing three versus eight or nine. They were also all hard court players, which isn’t exactly my favorite style of volleyball. Otherwise, I was hiding in my room or hanging out with my classmates.
The Holy City
Rishikesh was my first real exposure to India besides the ride from Delhi. There are a lot of similarities to Southeast Asia but tons of differences. The city is mostly silent, besides cars and scooters laying on their horns for almost no reason. Scooters and cars ride in both directions on the almost single lane roads. Trucks are filled to the brim with humans and drive with almost no logic. People ride scooters across bridges and down walkways that are too narrow for two people, yet they will lay on the horn behind you as you are blocked by another scooter or a cow. Patience is key here.
I guarantee both of this scooters were laying on their horn when I took this
Cows are sacred in India, and thus they pretty much do as they please. They block narrow walkways and lay in the middle of the street. The go to the bathroom wherever and whenever they want. Occasionally, an entire horde will block an area and you just have to sneak past them. They are nice enough though, so we pet them and fed them our flower necklaces every once in a while. They are absolutely everywhere in the city though.
There is at least one cow in Rishikesh
This cow got my respect and Thays’s flower necklace
Most of the month, Rishikesh was above forty degrees Celsius (over one hundred Fahrenheit), so sweating was constant. This made it almost impossible to have the energy to do anything outside of yoga. Luckily, the holy Ganges River was only about a ten minute walk and stays between ten and fifteen degrees Celsius ( fifty to sixty degrees Fahrenheit) and we headed there whenever we got the chance. The extreme temperature change gave us a chance to cool off, as well as time to work on some meditative breathing to be able to enter the water. Trips to the river also included locals approaching you to take selfies or facetime their friends video of you, with or without asking permission. Overall, a saving grace in the brutal heat.
I will never get sick of Ganges views
Other than that, the city is mostly yoga schools, ayurveda clinics, merchandise shops or cafes. Your options are limited on what to do outside of the yogic lifestyle, so we usually opted to just hang out in cafes or walk around. The girls spent a lot more time shopping than me, because I have no patience for this. There are some things I will miss about the peaceful city, but I was ready for a change when I left.
The Culmination
My meditation guiding skills are enough to put everyone to sleep
Our course came to an end with each of us having to teach a course. My course consisted of a beginning and ending mantra, five minutes of pranayama, one hours of asanas followed by ten minutes of guided meditation. It was interesting to see how everyone turned the same information into completely different classes. We also had to take a short multiple choice test on the information we learned, which we all passed.
The whole crew got their certificates
And then got real lazy after a long photo shoot
Our final day concluded with a ceremony where each of us got to talk about our experience, followed by the teachers telling us about their experience teaching us and then each of us getting our certificates. Following getting our certificates, we all ventured to cool off in the Ganges.
One day, I will grow up and get serious
But for now, I’m just an overgrown child
Now, with another certification, my soul is a little less aflame, I am a certified yoga teacher, and back to living out of a backpack. Before leaving Rishikesh, I visited the famous Beatles Ashram and then made my way to Dharamshala, home of the Dalai Lama, but that’s for the next post. As usual, let me know if there’s anything else you want me to expound on or especially bored you. Until next time, Namaste.
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.
