SELF-LOATHING OR SELF-PITY

 

Today’s blog comes by way of @flappinit over at t-nation, which, if I may take a moment to gush, is definitely on my list of names if I get to pick teams for the apocalypse (future blogpost idea).  In brief summary, this dude started running Building the Monolith a week before the world shut down for COVID, and rather than take that as a sign it wasn’t meant to be, he BUILT his own gym using cement buckets and 2x4s for squat stands along with an amalgamation of saw horses, a hand built bench, and various odds and ends of assembled weight sets in order to still crush the program, while ALSO still eating the dozen eggs a day and 1.5lbs of meat while the world was frantically stockpiling supplies, ONLY to go on to run Deep Water immediately afterwards.  We could all stand to have a little more of that in our lives. 

F**k your excuses

Anyway, Flappinit made the observation that there is a stark difference between self-loathing and self-pity, and many confuses the latter for the former, and this observation is HUGE and absolutely true.   This distinction becomes imperative in my previous discussions regarding willpower.  Ultimately, I don’t believe in the idea of willpower: I believe all humans will only do the things they WANT to do, and from there it’s simply a question of finding out what people REALLY want vs what they say they want.  Herein is where self-loathing comes into play: the person with the most self-loathing will have the most “willpower” as it relates to doing the things that result in physical transformation, as these people will simply WANT physical transformation more than other people will.  If one is satisfied with their current physique, they aren’t going to do anything to make it better: satisfaction breeds complacency.  If someone is marginally unsatisfied with their physique, they’re most likely not going to have much willpower when it comes to pursuing physical change.  They’ll go for a brisk walk or so some push ups, but that’s about it.  But the people that absolutely hate their current state and envision something much more significant out of themselves, THESE people will have endless willpower.  They will squat until a lung ruptures, pull a 17 second deadlift that ruptures every bloodvessel in their face, and vomit blood during a conditioning workout, because the gulf between what they ARE and what they want to be is SO massive that it results in an unfathomable amount of self-loathing, where the ONLY cure is physical transformation.

 

This self-loathing is NOT self-pity.  The latter, in fact, has the complete reverse effect: it is a surrendering, rather than a call to arms.  When one self-pities, they merely LAMENT their current status: they do not RESENT it.  Oh sure, they may use similar language as the self-loather, but the spirit and intent behind that language is different.  The self-pittier says “I hate my genetics” and uses that as a justification for being “less than”, whereas the self-loather says “I hate my genetics’ and views this as THE reason why they must work SO much harder than everyone else.  Their genetics are just one more thing in the way of them realizing the greatness that they’ve already established that they are DUE, and, in turn, they will absolutely destroy that obstacle, because their self-loathing is so great it propels them onward.  The self-pittier says “I have a fast metabolism” and simply believes that to be enough of a “reason” for their failure: the self-loather is busy drinking a gallon of milk a day and going through a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter every day with all the sandwiches they’re putting away.  They HATE what they are SO much that they’re taking EXTREME measures to fix it: the self-pittier falls into depression and does nothing.

"That's my secret Cap"...

 

And we see the “yin/yang” here: loathing and pity are opposites, where the former is anger and the latter is depression.  And yes, from a mental health perspective, balance is ideal, and we’d like to aim to avoid all that, but there IS something to be said about mental health being improved when one’s physical image is in harmony with their mental image OF said physical image.  And the two possible avenues to address that are to alter one’s mental image (lower your expectations) or to alter your physical image THROUGH the process of transformation, in which case, we NEED that anger to get us to eventually reach a state of peace.  Depression is spiraling and self-perpetuating: you can pretty much always get more depressed until you reach “the end”.  Anger is ultimately not sustainable: one can’t be angry all the time.  It’s exhausting.  It’s why the Barbarian rage in DnD has a finite duration and results in fatigue when it’s done (BOOM, still got my nerd cred).  But this, in turn, is why we rely on anger to get us to peace: eventually the anger runs out BECAUSE we finally got to the image we needed to have.  We no longer NEED that willpower, because we got where we needed to be.  No one is going to pity themselves there: it’s going to take an immense amount of self-loathing until we’re finally ready to NOT hate what we are compared to what we could be.

 

Take a vector check and see where you fall on the spectrum.  Do you have pity or do you have loathing?  Do you wish you were better, or will you accept nothing BUT being better?  Do you choose passivity or activity?  Do you find excuses or challenges and obstacles?  Is the world out to get you, or is it you VS the world?  The two can NOT be confused for each other, and those that attempt to do so are doomed to fall into a vicious cycle of self-perpetuation and failure.  The only escape, the only solution, is the white hot anger of loathing, KNOWING that greatness is out there: it just needs to be obtained through skull splitting brutality, spurred on by the “willpower” that results from a wide gulf between what we ARE and what would could be.