NOT MOTIVATION, NOT DISCIPLINE, NOT WANT, BUT IDENTITY

The longer I exist in this space, the more I refine my thoughts, which to the outsider can be interpreted as changing positions/opinions or just flat out flip-flopping, but the reality is that we often begin with a primitive operating premise that becomes more complex and sophisticated as more information and a better understanding presents itself.  Much like how many trainees are so upset that Jim Wendler dared to IMPROVE 5/3/1 over the years (which is to say, it worked just fine at the start, but now it works even better) or how people got mad at Louie Simmons for basically doing ANYTHING, it seems many in the physical transformation sphere (and, in truth, humanity) prefer that, once an idea is had, it never changes.  These are the people that listened to all of ACDC’s albums, despite them all sounding the same, and got mad at Madonna for reinventing herself every 3 years or so.  But, ultimately, what I want to discuss is where I’ve currently landed in regards to what it is that compels us to act in regards to physical transformation, because, quite often, this question gets asked.  “How do I start training hard and eating right?  Every time I try to start, I fail”.  This then turns into a question of how do I get motivated enough to do this, to which the individual is chastised because they have to be DISCIPLINED enough to do so, meaning they lacked the necessary degree of willpower, and even I have made a mistake because I claimed it was a matter of WANTING the results…whereas, now, I realize (for now) that it’s a matter of identity.  Much like my notion of “being that which does”: we do the things we do because we are the thing we are. 

In turn, some of us are REAL scary

So again, back to the beginning (as that’s a good place to start), we like to believe that the road to physical transformation begins with an initial spark of motivation.  We see that montage from a Rocky film or New Year’s rolls around and we decide that THIS is the moment that we are going to totally transform ourselves.  We’re going to start working out EVERY day, and we’re going to cut out the junkfood and soda and eating nothing but kale and chicken breasts and we’re going to get ripped inside of 3 months.  And by day 4, we’ve slept through the alarm, stopped at the drivethrough on the way home, and our shaker bottle smells rancid because it’s been in the back of the car for 3 days and hasn’t seen any use beyond the first shake.  What happened?  The internet tells us that motivation failed, and we needed DISCIPLINE all along.

 

What is discipline?  It’s what compels us to act even when we don’t want to.  We don’t brush our teeth every day because we’re motivated to brush our teeth: we do it because it’s part of our routine, and we are disciplined about following our routine.  The same is true of the training and the eating: we do it out of duty.  But here’s the thing: discipline is implying that we are working AGAINST our nature.  Discipline is a noun and a verb: we discipline people so that they will DEVELOP discipline, and, quite often, discipline applied as a verb is unpleasant, in order to compel someone to perform unpleasant things.  The military employs discipline in basic training in order to compel new recruits to have the proper discipline to function as a solider, which is to break them of their individuality and have them conform to the needs of the unit.  But how does one develop the noun of discipline in the absence of the verb?

How very Nietzsche of you

To this, my answer was willpower, which I defined as the energy that was developed and proportional to the incongruity between who we wanted to be compared to who we are.  The question is frequently asked “how do I develop more willpower”, and my answer was “you have to be so upset with what you are compared to what you hope to be that it empowers you to take the actions necessary to rectify the situation”.  Much like newbie gains: the further away you are from your maximum potential, the more rapidly you accelerate toward it, and as you get closer, it moves slower.  That individual that is only half a pound away from their goal weight isn’t going to have as much willpower to accomplish it compared to the individual that is 200lbs away, assuming that the dissonance between the two is strong enough.   But, the more I pondered, the more I learned, the more I realized that willpower is, in truth, a finite resource.  It eventually runs out, and any method dependent upon it as the sole means of accomplishment will eventually fail, and fail hard.  When we’ve been relying PURELY on willpower to not eat the donut everyday for 4 years, when that dam breaks, we are eating ALL the donuts, to include all the ones we didn’t eat for 4 years.  So, if not willpower, what then?

 

My initial thought was “want”.  Almost in a means of going back to motivation, we simply needed to WANT the results of the effort MORE than we disliked the effort.  THIS was the only real way for us to perpetuate success on the realm of physical transformation.  Humans will, fundamentally, ALWAYS do what they want.  The only way to get them to do otherwise is through motivation, discipline (verb and noun) and willpower, and, as we’ve observed: ALL of these are finite and prone to failure.  Motivation frequently fails, willpower runs out, and disciplined soldiers will eventually crumble if the situation is dire enough.  But want NEVER runs out: it simply changes.  In the instance of the 3 aforementioned failures, one observes that the WANT changing is primarily what impacted things.  At that moment of failure, we simply no longer wanted physical transformation more than we wanted something else instead.  When we comply with the diet, it’s because we want the results of the diet more than the 4 years of the donuts.  When willpower failed us, we wanted the donuts more than the results.  So then it simply becomes a matter of WANTING the results more than anything else, and once we accomplish that, we’re in the clear!

 

In truth, I still like that theory…but it definitely falls into an issue of being reductionist.  And, of course, now the question becomes “how do I MAKE myself want this?” and we’re back to square one, trying to get motivated again.  No, instead, where I’ve settled is this: in order to achieve our goals (true, in physical transformation, but even in other spheres), we must change our identity to suit the goal we pursue.  And no, not change identity as in get a new name and issued identification card: we must change who we ARE in order to change what we DO.  A reverse of Nicomanchean ethics, which presented the idea that virtue was what we practice, this concept premises off the idea that who we ARE dictates what we do. 

 

Joey is, in fact, an entire swarm of locust

How do I mean this?  I get up at 0400 4 days a week to exercise.  People ask how I do this, and I don’t have an answer to give.  Why is that?  Because it’s not motivation that makes me do it, it’s not discipline, it’s not willpower, and it’s not want: I am simply the guy who gets up at 0400 to exercise.  It’s who I am.  It’s what I do.  To NOT do it would be to go against my nature, and THAT would be difficult and cause me some manner of cognitive dissonance.  Similarly, I don’t eat processed food.  To the point that I don’t even recognize it AS food.  I’ll walk through a grocery store or a gas station, surrounded by all the shiny boxed products claiming to be some form of food, and it doesn’t register in my brain as “this is something I can eat”.  Like an alligator looking at a piece of bamboo or a panda looking at a fresh killed elk, I can recognize that it’s food for SOMETHING: just not me.  Why?  Because I’m the guy who doesn’t eat that.  It’s simply who I am. 

 

And this is CRUCIAL for the success of physical transformation: we CANNOT transform into something we aren’t.  Attempting to do so is simply fighting our nature, and our nature ALWAYS wins.  We can attempt to hide from our identity, but it always shines through at the end.  It’s why we see former Biggest Loser contestants put all the weight back on (and moreso): they were always a fat person, even when they lost the weight.  Lottery winners will go bankrupt in a year, because they were still poor, even with money.  Whenever we try to white knuckle and willpower a change to happen, we’re simply stretching that rubber band of our identity, and when it snaps, the results in a vacuum that is filled with some sort of binge behavior to course correct us back to who we are.

It IS rather impressive how his calves remained the same size.  Bodybuilders take note.

 

Which means, when embarking on a journey of physical transformation, the question is not “can do I do these things”, but “can I become the person who does these things?”  It’s not “can I wake up at 0400 to exercise”.  Anyone can do that.  Either through motivation, discipline, or willpower, we can get ANY person to wake up early and exercise.  But to keep doing it?  How does THAT happen?  It happens by BECOMING the person who does that.  We stay on point with nutrition not because it’s the right thing to do, not because our discipline compels us, not because we have a competition coming up, but because we ARE the person who eats this way.  Which means, when we see these challenges, we ask “can I become the person who does these things”.  And, fundamentally, we KNOW the answer to that question.  One of the greatest tools we, as humans, possess IS the ability to become that which we need to become when the situation presents.  We CAN reinvent ourselves to better suit our environment.  We BROKE natural selection through the power of our intellect and allowed ourselves to become what we needed to be in an environment that is completely alien to what nature ever intended for us.  We are the single most adaptable species on the planet: what CAN’T we become?

 

Herein, you stare down Sartre’s horrible “radical freedom”.  You have no limits here: it’s all a matter of, can you become what you need to become in order to accomplish what you desire?