BARBARISM IS MAGIC

I’m not even going to try to keep this to keep this to 1000-ish words, because I came up with this last week when I was on a cruise and had no ability to vomit it out on paper, so it’s just been marinating in my head and growing bigger and bigger as it goes.  But it also means I’m excited to get this all down.

 

Once again, I get to write about Dungeons and Dragons, because I had a really interesting revelation recently.  I’ve written before about how “conditioning is magic”, and it’s an interesting thing for me to say when I am very much AGAINST magic when it comes to the world of Dungeons and Dragons.  Ultimately, magic is just too complicated for me, and I don’t have fun playing magic users for that very reason.  Instead, I am always drawn to the Barbarian, because they are a VERY simple class to play: they simply hit harder and are tougher than the other classes, to include the Fighter class, at least at the most basic level (more on that later).  So why would I go on to say that conditioning is magic, if I hold magic in such low esteem?  And why, in turn, would I equate barbarism with magic in a similar way?  Because as we just observed: the Barbarian is a class you can choose INSTEAD of a magic using class…which indicates to us, the player, that what magic is for the magic user, barbarism is for the barbarian.  Barbarism IS the barbarian’s magic.

"I cast 'sleep spell'."

 

Let’s talk about those magic users, because there’s a lot to learn there.  I’ve written extensively about them in my “Dungeons and Diets” series, but for a recap: there’s ultimately 2 different kinds of magic: arcane (black) magic and divine (white) magic.  The prototypical arcane spellcaster is the wizard.  The wizard gains their spellcasting ability through EXTENSIVE study of dusty tomes and ancient scrolls and all other books arcana.  The amount of time vested in cultivating this knowledge and skillset is reflected in the AGE of a wizard: they start the game older than anyone else, because all the other classes acquire their basic skills much quicker.  One of those classes are the users of divine magic: the clerics.

 

Whereas wizards gain their magical ability though extensive study and research, clerics receive their spellcasting ability by gaining the favor of their god/deity.  They dedicate themselves not in study, but in worship and prayer, and for their loyalty and faith, they are gifted the ability to employ divine spellcasting.  Whereas the arcane spellcaster is granted arcane magic for their efforts (fundamentally destructive magic), the divine spellcaster is granted “white magic”: healing and blessings they can impart upon the party.  And, of course, you true nerds out there are already upset with me because I’ve summed this up to the point that it’s not really accurate, but for the sake of telling this story allow me to rush just a little bit.

I can feel the nerd rage through my monitor

 

Both of these spellcasters have magic as their ability.  So what is the barbarian’s “magic”?  Barbarism!  The barbarian does NOT engage in extensive study, so much so to the point that barbarians are the YOUNGEST characters in the game when they play.  They have also NOT been granted any sort of unique ability from the gods, which Conan the Cimmerian author Rob E. Howard perfectly captured when he wrote “What use to call on [Crom]?  Little he cares if men live or die.  Better to be silent than to call his attention to you; he will send you dooms, not fortune!  He is grim and loveless, but at birth he breathes power to strive and slay into a man’s soul.  What else shall men ask of the gods.”  How about some divine spells?!  But no, that quote is actually perfect for discussing the barbarian’s magic of barbarism, for it is that very power that defines what sets the barbarian apart.

 

The majority of the barbarian’s advantages are PASSIVE rather than active.  Whereas a spellcaster has to cast a spell, the barbarian simply has to BE a barbarian.  They naturally move faster than other classes, they naturally roll more hit points per level than other classes, which is combined with a natural ability to absorb damage, making them tougher, they naturally are able to sense traps, avoid ambushes/backstabs, etc.  Their only real “active” ability is the ability to enter into a rage, and even then, once the rage IS active, the bonuses it grants are passive: the barbarian’s strength and constitution (stamina/hit points) increase and they gain immunities to mind altering magic.  All this does is simply make them better at what the gods granted them: the power to strive and slay.  And rest assured: they are QUITE talented at striving and slaying.

It's really a pretty awesome thing to be good at

 

But…here’s “the thing”.  The character classes are SUPPOSED to be balanced.   If there was simply one flat out superior character class, EVERYONE would just pick that one and the game wouldn’t be very fun due to a lack of diversity.  It means that, when the game designers were designing these character classes, THEY decided that a barbarian’s barbarism was EQUAL to a spellcaster’s magic.  From that, we determine that barbarism IS, quite literally, magic.  A spellcaster has magic and a barbarian has barbarism, and these equal each other to make these balanced across the playing field.  It would be UNFAIR for the barbarian to have magic…just like it would be unfair for a spellcaster to have barbarism.

 

But here is the OTHER thing: BECAUSE the creators of Dungeons and Dragons present the classes to the player in alphabetical order in the “Player’s Handbook”, that means that a player’s FIRST exposure to ANY character class ends up becoming The Barbarian.  They come before the Bard, before the Fighter, before the Cleric, before the Wizard, etc.  The Barbarian becomes the baseline for which the other classes are compared AGAINST.  It means that a player is first exposed to the idea that a character is given the power to stride and slay, and from there, in the absence of this power, magic is given as a form of COMPENSATION.  “We’re so sorry that your wizard is NOT a barbarian: here is some magic to make up for it.”

The magic won't help with the teasing though

 

What does ANY of this have to do with physical transformation?  Honestly, the creators of Dungeons and Dragons gifted us with an OUTSTANDING allegory and metaphor to be able to understand this process.  Between the wizards, clerics and barbarian, we have all the facets of physical transformation covered: knowledge, gifts, and barbarism, or, to put more succinctly: effort.  For that, ultimately, is what barbarism is: simply trying HARDER than the other classes to achieve what Crom has breathed into us: the spirit to strive and slay.  A barbarian will swing the club harder, will run faster, will withstand more abuse, and will just simply fight harder than the other classes.  “That’s my business.  That’s what I do.”, to quote Nicky Santoro in Casino.  And with THIS understanding, let’s analyze exactly what we can learn from this metaphor.

 

Well let’s keep exploring this metaphor.  If the Barbarian is effort, what is the Wizard?  The Wizard is knowledge: the Wizard’s power comes through extensive study and practice.  What do we OBSERVE with the wizard?  At low levels: they die.  They’re ALWAYS dying.  They have TONS of knowledge and lots of POTENTIAL…but it hasn’t been realized yet.  They can only be SO powerful with that knowledge: what they NEED, now, is experience.  And in DnD, it’s quite amazing how literal that demand is, because you acquire “experience points” through killing monsters and completing quests, and through that accumulation of experience you eventually level up, grow more powerful, and realize more of your potential.  All that knowledge can FINALLY be applied, ONCE we have enough experience to do so.

Bruce Banner might be one of the smartest beings in the universe...but the Hulk knows how to be big and strong better

What of the cleric?  The cleric is, quite literally, blessed: they personify genetics.  Some of us WILL be blessed by the gods in our pursuit of physical transformation.  Some of us will respond rapidly and well to training and nutrition, and some of us will have much greater potential than others as a result of these blessings.  …and some of us won’t.  Some of us may simply be doomed from the start.  No blessings whatsoever.  Clerics will ALWAYS be in the party, because we always need them, and either we are them or we aren’t.  What do we take from this?  If you ARE blessed, then be blessed: be the cleric of your party and maximize that potential to the greatest extend possible.  Go fill the role that the gods have granted you: that of the blessed.  But you know who DOESN’T get a divine blessing?  Who DOESN’T get spellcasting abilities from the gods?  Who is only given the will to stride and slay?  The Barbarian.

 

The Barbarian is effort personified.  Effort is ALL the barbarian brings to the fight.  With that effort comes tenacity, toughness, brutality, endurance, etc, but all these are simply manifestations of a being that survives PURELY as a result of the effort they put out.  And, in turn, surviving is what the barbarian thrives at.  Whereas wizards die off by the score at the start of the adventure unless they have a meat shield to protect them, the barbarian IS that meat shield!  The barbarian is so tough as a result of his effort that not only can HE survive, but he can survive for OTHER PEOPLE.  Often, a party without a thief to check for traps will simply send the barbarian ahead so that they can soak up the damage from the trap and spare the party the harm.  They occupy the front lines of the battlefield and present such an enticing target for the enemy by wearing minimal armor and displaying reckless disregard for their own welfare that the rest of the party can rest easy in the background, preparing spells and distance weaponry while the Barbarian simply excels at what they excel at: trying harder than everyone else around them.  And as the game goes on, and the party gets more experienced, levels up, and unlocks their abilities, the barbarian DOESN’T change: they still just keep trying harder and putting in more effort than everyone else.  While the fighter learns more tricks, while the monk gains superpowers from ki, while the Paladin eventually becomes more blessed, while the Ranger is granted powers from nature, the Barbarian just continues swinging the club harder and absorbing damage better.

 

It sounds stupid until you realize it actually makes you a demi-god

What do we learn from this?  Effort is the CONSISTENT variable for physical transformation.  Effort ALWAYS works.  Is it always the ONLY answer?  No.  Much like how a barbarian can become “outclassed” by a high level wizard or cleric, there can certainly be a point where more knowledge is necessary to progress, or where we simply need to be better blessed if we wish to progress forward, but the absence of this effort will absolutely doom us: it needs to ALWAYS be there.  And “always being there” means from the START.  Much like how a level 1 barbarian will survive the journey to level 2 with greater ease than the low level wizard, the trainee who simply works hard diligently is going to progress with much greater ease than the trainee who tries to out-think the training from day 1.  The trainee that is able to COMBINE that effort with knowledge as they progress in experience will be able to progress even further, which, for you nerds out there, totally get how I just described “multi-classing” in DnD: start out as a barbarian, gain experience, level up and take levels in Wizard, creating some sort of terrifying hybrid that can MAXIMIZE that knowledge by combining it with effort: a barbarian that can cast some sort of “enhance strength” spell on themselves before raging and getting even STRONGER. 

 

And once again, recall how the barbarian is our FIRST exposure to characters in DnD: so too must effort be our FIRST experience in the realm of physical transformation.  We simply need to TRY something and try it hard and learn from that experience of effort.  When I engaged in my first bout of physical transformation at age 14, I had no knowledge, and I certainly had no blessings: I was a lifelong fat kid that decided I didn’t want to be anymore.  I cut my food portions to a third of what I was eating before and worked my way up to 200 push ups and 200 crunches a night, along with running daily, gradually working up to a casual 8 miles a day, EVERY day, alongside all sorts of other physical activity before I saved up enough money for a weight bench so I could bench and do preacher curls every day.  Was ANY of that well informed?  Hell no!  But the effort was there, and I lost 25lbs over the summer and completely transformed myself through sheer stupid barbaric effort.  Over time, I gained experience, developed knowledge, and found out WHAT my blessings were (I am effectively farm machinery granted sentience and build solely to deadlift), but NONE of that could have occurred without the effort having ALWAYS been there from the start.

Start 'em young!

 

And it’s because barbarism IS magic.  And unlike the arcane or divine arts, it’s magic that we are FULLY in control of.  In a world of fantasy, where magic is real, barbarism EQUALS actual motherf—king magic: just IMAGINE the significance of that in our “real world”, where magic is an illusion but effort is real?  You HAVE access to magic: go do something incredible with it.

 

 

 

      

IN CONTEXT

It seems like such a pivot for me to want to discuss context and nuance when SO much of my writing is about how the details don’t matter and how it’s just the big picture stuff that we need to focus on (to include one of my most recent writings), but herein is a shinning example of all that “duality” stuff I talk about, and hey: chaos is the plan.  This is honestly one of the fundamental issues when it comes to discussions of physical transformation: EVERYTHING is spoken in the context of SOMETHING, and without understanding that context, we cannot correctly apply the information that is being offered.  The further bit of comedy is this: the more experience you have, the more you understand the context to the point that you can correctly apply it in the absence of it being stated and, in turn, the less prone you are TO stating what the context is.  Contrast this with the junior trainee: they’re such the “babe in the woods” that they take everything at face value simply because they haven’t been exposed to ENOUGH different contexts to know when information does or does not apply.   Already this has become dizzying, so perhaps I can provide some examples.

Some of ya'll never pick up the clues here...

 

I recently wrote about Jim Wendler, and people being upset with how often he releases new material, but Jim is ultimately a slave TO context in that regard.  When Jim first released 5/3/1, he designed a program for HIMSELF: a former D-1 football player turned powerlifter with a 1000lb squat who weighed over 300lbs and wanted to become athletic again.  And when Jim tested the program, WHO was he surrounded by?  CHAMPION powerlifters and high level athletes, many who had been training for decades and reached the top of their respective sports.  I’m not even touching the topic of PED use here, because you can run a pharmacy full of PEDs and still not get the sheer physical benefits and qualities that come from a LIFE under the bar and on the field: that’s simply a different BREED of human compared to…who Jim works with NOW. 

 

NOW Jim works with high school athletes, and consider the context of high school athletes NOW vs when Jim grew up.  In an era before the internet (which I know many of my readers can’t even FATHOM), kids spent MUCH more time being active, simply because there wasn’t anything ELSE to do.  I’ve brought it up several times, but I grew up as a “90s fat kid”, which, already, is another example of “context”, because when I say “fat kid” today, you think 300lbs at age 11, and, in turn, I looked like how most kids just plain look today when I was “the fat kid”, but just picture the majority of the kids in the movie “heavyweights” for…context.  And all this aside was to point out that, even AS the fat kid, I was enrolled in t-ball, soccer, ice hockey, swimming, Tae Kwon Do, football and wrestling, and in my downtime my friends and I rode bikes, rollerbladed, ran around playing war, would go on walks to the store to buy comic books/trading cards, played lazer tag/paintball, etc etc.  When I started lifting weights at age 14, I had SOME sort of athletic base to build upon.  Today, you can legit have a kid that has NEVER played a sport of any variety grow up to the reach the age of 18.  They’ll have spent their entire childhood in front of a screen eating processed junk.  Many of you simply cannot FATHOM the state of physical neglect one achieves through that sort of existence…but for Jim Wendler, THIS is the stock he has to train.

Yes, THESE were fat kids in the 90s

 

Those are two WILDLY different contexts for training populations…which is WHY Jim is constantly producing more material: the context changes.  5/3/1 worked in 2009: for the context it was written under.  If it didn’t work FOR YOU, it’s most likely because you did not fit that context: you needed Jim’s later work, which ALSO works.  All these things WORK: they just work WITHIN a context.  If we try to apply them outside of that context, it’s not a fault of the program: it’s the fault of our application. It’s like attempting to treat a fleshwound with sunblock: it’s not a failure on the part of the sunblock, it simply isn’t the right tool for THIS job.

 

The same holds true in the world of nutrition.  I absolutely LOVE the books “Super Squats” and “The Complete Keys to Progress”, and both of these books feature EXTENSIVE nutritional advice regarding how to add slabs of muscle onto your frame, which include drinking a gallon of milk a day AND partaking in the “get big drink”, which is comprised of “a full day’s worth of Bob Hoffman’s hi-proteen powder, 2 quarts of whole milk, 2 cups of dry skim milk, 2 raw eggs, 4 tablespoons of peanut butter, half a brick of chocolate ice cream, 1 small banana, 4 tablespoons of malted milk powder, and 6 tablespoons of corn syrup”.  And right away, those that are reading this TODAY think this is absolutely bonkers…but again: context.  When J.C. Hise was pioneering high rep breathing squats paired with copious volumes of milk and food, it was the 1930s, in America.  The Great Depression was transpiring, and there was no obesity epidemic.  We had the opposite issue: American males were TOO SKINNY.  When World War II rolled around, several men were denied entrance into the service because they could not meet the MINIMUM weight requirements, contrast with today, where most American males are too FAT to serve.  This was a result of the VERY strenuous lifestyle that many engaged in as Americans paired with a lack of access to adequate nutrition.  In THAT context, a gallon of milk a day along with a LOT of food was a genius move: milk was delivered to us by the milkman and was sure to grow a big strong man just like it grew a big strong bull.  And, in THAT regard, if you look at J.C. Hise, he certainly doesn’t look like what most modern-day gymbros would wish to emulate, but in the 1930s?  He was a goddamn Hercules! 

In the land of 98lb weaklings, the man with a 36" waist is a god

 

And, of course, the milk ITSELF back then was different as well.  It was RAW milk, straight from the dairy, often with the cream on top.  Herein, again, we observe the differing context of the advice.  Is this to say that a gallon of modern day milk WON’T result in weight gain?  No: it certainly will…it’s simply a question of if you, the modern day trainee, need to undertake that approach.  The same with the “Get Big Drink”: in an era where it seems that EVERYTHING has somehow managed to get high fructose corn syrup snuck into it, do you really need to add 6 tablespoons of corn syrup to anything you are ingesting?  Hell, do you even NEED a get big drink?  But did it work in the context it was written in?  Absolutely!

 

Which is the crux of all of this: whenever we read or hear anything in the realm of physical transformation, we must seek to UNDERSTAND the context that this statement is expressed in.  People want to ask questions in a vacuum because that’s easier to ask, but it’s HARDER to answer, and, in turn, the answer you get will be not applicable, because it will most likely exist outside of your context.  “Are squats a good exercise?”  Good for what purpose?  What kind of squats?  Hell, what does “good” mean here?  As in “won’t cause me injury” or as in “will get me jacked?”  “What’s the best assistance exercise?”  What are we trying to assist!?  “Can you gain muscle on keto?”  Are you a 300lb strongman athlete, or a 120lb high school wrestler?  Because we KEEP running into the theme that EVERYTHING works: it’s WHY there is so much material out there in the sphere of physical transformation.  It’s how Mark Rippetoe can have such a following despite never going above 5 reps: there’s a CONTEXT where that approach applies, and when those within that context apply that approach, they succeed.  The same is true of conjugate, sheiko, HIT, etc.  The same is true of keto, vegan, skiploading, Velocity Diet, etc.  It’s on US to think, analyze and understand when the context does and does not apply, and to understand that nothing applies universally all of the time…except that very statement.

BIG TOOLS FOR BIG CHANGES

This idea hit me while I was driving this morning, as many of my ideas do.  It’s rather interesting to think about how the biggest changes we employ in our approach are what are responsible for the biggest changes we observe in our journey in physical transformation.  That should seem like an obvious concept, yet, when observing the thoughts and actions of trainees, we frequently note a preoccupation with the SMALLEST and least significant drivers of progress.  Jim Wendler’s “majoring in the minors” concept.  I feel it’s necessary for us to step back, observe the similarities that exist in (what appears to be) vastly different approaches to physical transformation so that we can understand the significance OF the big tools employed to affect big changes, and thereby be able to appreciate when and why the small stuff matters.  I adopt the analogy of a sculptor: when they start off with the large bit of stone, they hack away at it with hammer and hatchet at first, and as they get closer and closer to the fine details, THEN they switch to the smaller, more precise tools.  If you try to start carving a sculpture with a fine chisel and tiny hammer, you will drive yourself mad and achieve nothing over the course of your lifetime.

Maybe if you had 600 years...or 17...

 

What’s one of the biggest tools we have available in our toolbox of transformation?  ACTION.  Simply do SOMETHING.  Again, that seems obvious, but consider HOW many trainees run into “analysis paralysis”.  I’ve known of “trainees” that have spent MONTHS researching an approach before committing to it…and during that time, they simply resumed their current state of inaction, engaging in NO training or nutritional protocol whatsoever, since they had not completed their research yet.  Let us all appreciate the common variables here: no one ever changed by doing the same thing they were doing: change only happens when we change SOMETHING, and we can change something by DOING something.  Simply doing 10 push ups a day, every day, will achieve SOME sort of change compared to NOT doing those push ups.  So if we’re ever in doubt of what needs to happen to achieve physical transformation, we can agree that action is required.

 

From there, we also observe the common variable held across all systems of physical transformation: they make the trainee do SOMETHING.  HIT is different from Crossfit, is different from Deep Water, is different from 5/3/1, is different from Easy Strength, is different from bro-splits, is different from Reactive Training Systems, is different from Juggernaut, etc etc.  They employ different exercises, sets, reps, methodologies, etc…but they all have the trainee do SOMETHING, and there is an expectation that the trainee will do this SOMETHING in good faith: with honest effort, dedicated toward the pursuit of physical transformation.  And as I just recently wrote on the subject of willpower: as long as you aren’t FAKING it, and are actually trying, all systems will work.  Dan John went on to say “everything works…for about 6 weeks”, which is WHY we had monthly muscle mags that came out with a new program each issue: it was just in time to switch off your old “stale” program and start a new one, which would work until the next one.  ACTION is required for change, and these protocols afford us an ability to vector that action along a specific trajectory, but that’s all they are: a vector.  Programs are organized methods to balance the variables of intensity, volume and recovery: they (in theory) help direct on how much and how hard to train to create the stimulus to change, and also dictate the frequency in order to facilitate our ability to recover and, therefore, GROW from the stimulus. 

What happens when we have too much recovery and not enough stimulus

 

We see this in the nutritional sphere as well.  Every nutritional intervention is that: an intervention.  It’s a hard and sharp stop to what we’re currently doing and pivoting to a different direction, primarily because, again: what we were doing WASN’T working.  The biggest pitfall of most people regarding nutrition is the sheer fact they don’t think about it at all.  Most folks have NO plan when it comes to nutrition.  That may seem baffling when written out like that, but when you stop to think about it, it’s true: most people are just “winging it”.  People will open their fridge or pantry HOPING to find something in there: not even KNOWING what food they have in their OWN house.  These people wake up in the morning, either skip breakfast, grab something out of a box in their house, or pick up something on their way to work/school, figure out what they’re going to eat for lunch when lunch rolls around, and pick up something for dinner on the way home, the entire time only stopping the intake of food once the food has run out.  For these people, ANY manner of nutritional intervention is going to achieve physical transformation.

 

This is why we see successes with vegan, keto, paleo, carnivore, IIFYM, Weight Watchers, Vertical Diet, Snake Diet, Intermittent Fasting, the Mediterranean diet, etc.  ALL of these approaches require the user to stop and THINK about what it is they’re putting into their face.  That ALONE is a huge driver of change.  Beyond that, quite often, it’s not about what you’re eating but what you’re NOT eating that is the driver of physical transformation.  Carnivore is an all meat diet, the Vertical Diet will have the trainee taking in rice by the THOUSANDS of calories as a backfill…but both programs are about NOT eating seed oils, processed foods, and so many of the other nutritional pitfalls out there.  Even the critics OF extreme approaches like carnivore relent that it’s STILL better than the standard American diet, because even IF someone focuses a diet entirely on a “known carcinogen” like red meat, AT LEAST that person isn’t eating Pop Tarts, Captain Crunch, deep fried Twinkies, beer, peanut butter cups, and all the other ridiculous nonsense that makes up the current diet that we FOR SURE know is killing us.

Oh for f**k's sake it's COOKIES FOR BREAKFAST! It should come with an insulin syringe for a prize

 

And herein we’ve already identified a roadmap for success: pick A program and A diet and you will accomplish about 90% of whatever your goal is.  You will affect the BIGGEST changes toward physical transformation WITH these biggest tools: a MASSIVE overhaul of how you train and how you eat: effectively, how you live.  NO nuance needs to be discussed at this point: we didn’t NEED to wonder if whey protein isolate was a better post workout protein compared to concentrate, we didn’t NEED to wonder if dumbbell lateral raises were superior to cable raises, we didn’t NEED to ponder the impacts of fasted cardio vs fed cardio: we simply needed to get the big rocks established.  But WHY are we so inclined to break out the small tools before the big ones?

 

Because when we observe those that have achieved success, it seems like ALL they discuss ARE the small tools. About how nutritional timing was the ONE thing that was holding them back, about how turning their pinky on lateral raises FINALLY got their medial delts to respond, about how sets of 6 were FAR superior to sets of 5.  If this is what the best of the best are pre-occupied with, why not those who wish to walk among them?  Because these folks ALREADY mastered the big tools: they EARNED the right to focus on the minutia.  And at THAT point in your development, the minutia IS what matters.  Everyone in the final heat of World’s Strongest Man already KNOWS how to get big and strong; now it’s a matter of WHO has the best gameday plan: who has the PERFECTLY timed pre-event nutrition that digests well, doesn’t elevate the heart rate and controls insulin spikes?  Everyone at Mr. Olympia already KNOWS how to achieve a champion-level physique: now it’s a matter of who can best present it on that HOUR of that day.  No one got here by screwing up the big tools and mastering the chisel: they were ALL masters of the mallet and hatchet.

Axe mastery and being jacked tend to go hand-in-hand

 

But if you go check out someone like Dan John, you find someone who specializes ON these big tools, because Dan recognizes that, as far as generating the MOST significant impacts on the most significant portion of the population, THIS is what needs to get focused on.  And when you read what Dan writes and hear him speak, he is the master at getting right to what matters: little and often over the long haul.  And when you hear Dan talk about his programs, the language makes it clear as well.  “Use a heavy weight here” “Use a weight where you don’t need to strain”.  There’s no RPE calculation, no percentages, no need to know your maxes: you simply have to SHOW UP and train.  His nutrition recommendations are the same “Eat protein, vegetables and water”.  Why?  Because if you get THAT part down, the rest will follow, but if you can’t even do that: what good will it do you to have the best protein supplement?  It’s a supplement for a reason: it’s supposed to be employed AFTER the nutritional protocol has been established: not in PLACE of the protocol.   

 

The big tools create the big changes.  A plan creates change: it doesn’t matter WHAT that plan is.  And BIG changes to the plan create BIG changes in turn.  If you’re not gaining weight, you’re not going to suddenly start doing that when you add 100 calories to your diet.  100 calories is a rounding error when adding mayo to a sandwich.  100 calories is when you accidentally take a 3rd Oreo out of the sleeve instead of a second.  When we want to create significant change, we need to use BIG tools to hack, hammer and cleave away.  When we want to gain, we LIVE gaining for that period, and we take on the ridiculous programs like Super Squats or Mass Made Simple or Deep Water and we eat the COPIOUS amount of food to recover from the skullsplitting training.  THERE are the big tools: SUPER hard training and SUPER big eating.  It’s a gallon of milk a day for Super Squats, PBJs for Mass Made Simple and pounds of flesh for Deep Water, but we see the common trend: it’s a LOT of food.  And when we lose fat, we see the big tools there: LESS food, because that’s how we lose fat.  We’re not going to get there with baby steps and a light touch: big tools for the big changes, and, eventually, we earn the right to break out the small chisel. 

YOU CAN’T FORCE WILLPOWER

As a man who finds himself a fan of brute force, as evidenced by my admiration of Marvel Comic’s “The Juggernaut”, alongside my penchant to always play the Half-Orc Barbarian in Dungeons and Dragons, alongside all the ridiculous and absurd sh*t ya’ll have seen me engage in over these decades, there’s a bit of comedy in me acknowledging that willpower itself CANNOT be produced THROUGH sheer force of will.  So many trainees honestly try to force themselves to HAVE willpower, and they attempt to do so through the capacity they tend to have in abundance: intellectualism.  But, of course, if nerds could be jocks then we’d have no nerds or jocks: just the fabled philosopher kings that Plato wrote about from the mouth of Socrates.  No dear reader, willpower is not something you can think your way through, nor can you fake it until you make it, it simply IS, and if you are unwilling to do what is necessary in order to achieve your goals in physical transformation, rather than try to force yourself through, you must analyze WHY you have this absence of willpower.  You can’t force willpower: all you can do is vector it appropriately.

Sadly, not even then

What sparked these thoughts was the idea of how there are SO many successful training programs out there, and many of them have WILDLY different approaches.  Deep Water and GVT’s 10x10 protocol is wildly different from HIT or DoggCrapp, wherein a trainee does ONE big set for each muscle group and calls it a day…but they both have demonstrated success.  Super Squats has produced results for decades, and in Easy Strength you do NO squats whatsoever.  Sheiko and Westside Barbell have both produced champion powerlifters.  Jamie Lewis has expressed outright hatred at the approach of Stuart McRobert, and both individuals have produced training programs that have achieved success in their trainees.  Lists go on and on, and there are authors I’ve never even HEARD of that are out there producing results, and there’s also a chance that, of all the programs and authors I’ve listed above, you’ve also never heard of any of them and have STILL achieved results.  There are SO many avenues for success in the realm of physical transformation…so how do some STILL manage to fail?

Because WILLPOWER is the essential driving element to success.  And I want to be clear that I am saying that in stark contrast to the notion that it’s a matter of discipline.  No: I do NOT agree that it’s simply a question of having the discipline to make the pursuit of physical transformation a “lifestyle”: many people live lifestyles that are wholly unbeneficial and unproductive.  Alongside that, all discipline does is establish a routine.  People equate training to brushing their teeth: something they do simply because it is a part of their daily life.  Their “discipline” has instilled in them the habit of always training.  Well when is the last time you got REALLY fired up about brushing your teeth?  When did you determine that you were going to have the BEST oral hygiene of anyone you knew?  When did you decide to be a paragon of clean, white, perfectly aligned choppers?  Do you want to employ the enthusiasm you dedicate to teeth brushing toward your whole body transformation?

Yes: Schoolhouse Rock beat me to the punch on this

WILLPOWER is essential to the process of physical transformation, for it is the driving force that produces the intensity necessary to actually enact some manner OF physical transformation in the presence of the discipline that got us INTO the training space in the first place.  Sure sure, it took discipline for you to get to the gym every single day: it takes WILLPOWER for you to actually EXERT yourself under the heavy bar on another set of squats when you feel like your soul is escaping through every applicable orifice of your body.  WILLPOWER compels you through those horrific conditioning sessions where you’re pretty sure your lungs are bleeding and you taste copper in your mouth.  WILLPOWER is what allows us to “stick with the diet”, whatever the hell that happens to mean at that exact moment in time.  …but what is it that produces this willpower?

We cannot FORCE ourselves to have willpower: that is self-referential.  That’s like trying to pick yourself up by your ankles to get to a higher point of elevation: you are going to fall flat on your face.  It’s like plugging a surge protector into itself to have “unlimited power”: it doesn’t work.  No, willpower is produced through faith.  And no, I am not referring to believe in the almighty (although, sure, that will actually do just fine for many), but faith in THE SYSTEM: WHATEVER system that may happen to be.  Because I see SO many trainees who operate in a total absence of faith and then wonder WHY they aren’t succeeding despite doing “everything right”.  You aren’t doing everything right, you forgot the one thing that actually matters: work hard.  And you work hard BECAUSE you have the willpower to do so.

Laugh all you want, but you're literally going nowhere on your treadmill

All of the programs I mentioned earlier work.  It’s simply the truth: we’ve OBSERVED these programs working.  We KNOW they work. BUT, we also know they can fail.  And a trainee who believes that the program they are on will fail…will fail.  Irrespective of how well designed the protocol is, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: you believed you would fail, and you did.  Man, what an awesome superpower you have: the ability to predict AND control the future.  WHY are you using this power for self-destruction instead of self-improvement?  One must have unbreakable, unquestionable, unwavering faith in whatever approach it is that they are undertaking, for it is THIS faith that creates the willpower necessary to succeed.  The INSTANT a seed of doubt creeps in, it is time to abandon course and find a new path.  

If you select a way forward simply because it’s “the best”, but you personally do not have the necessary degree of faith in the approach to actually believe that, you will NOT have the necessary degree of willpower to actually create the stimulus for physical transformation.  You will limply pay lip service to the protocol, doing all the required reps and sets with all the required weight and eating all the right foods and completely removing the HUMAN element from the equation.  You will be robotic and mechanical, and reap the rewards of such an existence.  Your vehicle does NOT get better with more repetition: it tends to actually DECLINE with use.  The same is true of most machines: they decline, break down, and become obsolete.  When you undertake a process mechanically, you achieve a mechanical outcome, but when you take on a challenge as a HUMAN, you benefit as humans do.

Don't get me wrong: The Terminator was pretty cool, but Conan got to go on and become a King!

This isn’t a question of motivation: motivation is fleeting, and subject to manipulation easily impacted by current mood, environment, atmosphere and circumstances.  Motivation can carry one through a workout: willpower carries on TO victory.  And again: this is NOT something that you can logic your way through.  Willpower is NOT a reasonable process: willpower is what we employ when reason FAILS us.  When a mom lifts a car off of her child to save their lives, they abandoned ALL reason in that pursuit.  Reason told that mom that there is no way she can lift that vehicle: willpower empowered her to do exactly that.  You thinking your way through a program, dutifully analyzing how the frequency of the movements balanced against the volume and intensity has produced the most optimal outcome simply will NOT give you the necessary force of will to violently execute the training ONCE the time arrives: THIS is from willpower.

In turn, we can make use OF illogical means in order to obtain this willpower.  People are in such a rush to point out when a logical fallacy occurs, as though it’s some sort of secret trump card in the game of life we’re all playing that instantly secures victory.  It could not be further from the truth: when we’re attempting to elicit an emotional outcome, logic is simply holding us back, and appeal to emotion, in and of itself, is a logical fallacy, which ends up proving how inconsequential these tools are.  SEEK OUT confirmation bias: intentionally ignore the failures and focus ONLY on the successes.  When I first discovered Jon Andersen, it was the best thing that had ever happened to my training: FINALLY a guy out there eating low carb and training STUPIDLY intense and getting ALL the results from it: a pro-strongman AND a pro-wrestler AND a pro-bodybuilder, with the strength and physique and crazy conditioning to back all of that up.  Hell yeah: looks like my approach is going to be just fine.  The same is true when you read Super Squats: Randall Strossen cites EVERYTHING in that book, and the academics LOOKING to fail will point out that the citations employed by Randall don’t meet THEIR scientific rigor.  But for those of us looking to turn into monsters?  Those citations are amazing.  NOTHING Mike Mentzer says makes ANY sort of sense…but if you operate off the premise that “doing what everyone else is doing will get you the results that everyone else is getting”, suddenly doing ALL the wrong things is the ONLY right thing to do.

Especially true when you find out he is Odin

You can’t force willpower.  You can’t outthink it.  You can’t produce or create it.  All you can do is channel it.  Find your appropriate channel and use it to your fullest extent possible.  If you find that your current approach is stifling your ability to do so, abandon it and go find something that works.        

SCHEDULED SUFFERING

I have run into this situation SO many times, and it’s happened recently enough that I finally figured it was time to write a post about it.  People read my blog or see my youtube videos or follow me on reddit and decide that I am a guy who knows things about physical transformation, and they end up seeking my advice on things (you fools!)  An individual ended up finding me from youtube, set up a chat with me, and laid out his situation for me to advise on.  He worked a hard physical job that was exhausting him, especially since it involved shift work, and on top of that with the training and being a dad, he was exhausted.  He wanted to know my solution for recovering better.  And I asked the question that I KNOW everyone hates to hear from me, based on the responses that I get: “Do you do any conditioning?”  

How I imagine it feels when I ask this question

Right away, I got the response I tend to always get: “I consider my job to be conditioning”.  So then, I persisted: “That’s cool, but do you DO any conditioning?”  “Aside from the job, no.”  “Ok, so you’re NOT doing conditioning then.”  Which is how I quickly lose friends and alienate people, but it’s ALSO one of the reasons I never accept money for any of this stuff: I’m beholden to no one, I can say whatever I think or feel, and people are free to take it or leave it.  I never need to bend my message to make it easier to hear or prevent cognitive dissonance.  And to this dude’s credit, he told me he would TRY to add some conditioning to his training, primarily because I gave him my whole “conditioning is magic” spiel (which, for shorthand, not ONLY does conditioning help you recover BECAUSE it gets restorative bloodflow through your body, but it ALSO makes it so that you are better, stronger and fitter WHEN you are called upon to perform, do it’s doubly beneficial).  And through that dialog, it dawned on me: we ALL will have to endure the same AMOUNT of suffering: it’s simply a question of WHEN.  So why not schedule your suffering for when YOU want to experience it?

We go back to that dude with the physical job: at his job, he suffers.  The work is hard and it physically exhausts him, and it taxes him OUTSIDE of the job due to the physical demands.  That person has scheduled his suffering to his work hours.  BUT, suppose this individual, instead, decided to engage in some regular and hard conditioning work?  If, for 20 minutes a day, every day, he did some brutal challenge that jumped his heart rate through the roof and made his lungs catch on fire?  Every SINGLE time he did this, he would suffer (at least, if he wanted the effects of the conditioning), BUT…outside of that he would NOT suffer.  When he goes to his physical job, he would be more fit for the tasks before him and better able to handle them.  The job would no longer detract from his recovery: it would simply be ADDITIONAL physical activity, and in that regard, possibly even RESTORATIVE physical activity.  And when he engaged in the conditioning again, it would help recover from the demands previously placed upon him.  

Unlimited power!

…but the suffering doesn’t change.  That’s the takeaway here.  We must be at peace with the reality that there is no ESCAPE from the suffering.  It is our plight as humans to endure suffering.  And I’m not profound in saying that: I’m pretty sure Buddha beat me to that by a few thousand years.  But it STILL holds true.  And once we stop trying to hide from it, we can do the one thing that IS within our power to do: schedule it.  We suffer on OUR terms.  Previously, we were at the whim of the universe: suffering happened as a necessity.  In order to earn our livelihood, we had to suffer.  Like some sort of awful trap from the movie series “Saw”, we endured suffering in order to continue living.  But now, we suffer not to survive, but to THRIVE.  We suffer, on OUR terms, so that we become a BETTER human: a superior member of our species.  We suffer on OUR terms so that, when the universe attempts to MAKE us suffer, it simply cannot conjure up the degree of suffering that matches what we have already inflicted upon ourselves.

I experienced this exact exchange in that grappling competition I wrote about recently.  I showed up without having engaged in any grappling training for 18 years, but I had scheduled MUCH suffering in that time and, in turn, showed up in significantly better shape than my competition.  Those folks were more skilled, but they did NOT schedule their suffering as I had done.  The result?  THEY suffered in the competition: I felt their stamina leave them, their breathing become labored, and their strength fade.  Meanwhile, as they tired, I would find another gear: my stamina INCREASED, my strength improved, I smelled blood and went in for the kill.  I had scheduled my suffering in advance, I ALREADY suffered, and so, when it came time to perform, I was able to perform.  As exhausting as grappling CAN be, it did not match up with the suffering I voluntarily endured,

The conversation my body and brain regularly have with each other

“Cry in the training hall and laugh on the battlefield”, once again: I’m not original for coming up with these observations, but they continue to hold true, and are also apparently STILL worth bringing up because all these thousands of years later folks still think there is some sort of cheat code to avoid the suffering.  That’s what the “fitness industry” is always trying to sell: how to succeed WITHOUT suffering.  How do you lose fat WITHOUT being hungry?  How do you get jacked WITHOUT hard and heavy workouts?  How do you transform without suffering?  The answer?  You don’t!  BUT, we have the freedom to decide WHEN we suffer.  Do we suffer when we go to the beach and have to wear a t-shirt because we look like a beached whale, or do we suffer in the gym with the hard training and in the kitchen with the sound nutritional decisions?  The suffering WILL happen: but WE can decide the when and the how.

THAT is our power, and it is a huge power to wield.  Don’t squander it.

ON SELLOUTS

I’ve become something of a Jim Wendler apologist over the years, which is frustrating, as the man can speak for himself and it’s ultimately a waste of my own time to engage in this habit.  And no, I’m not speaking about being an apologist for how he presents his personality (because he can ESPECIALLY handle himself there: I have zero interest in engaging in that dialog): I’m referring to his 5/3/1 programming methodology.  And, in that regard, TODAY I’m referring to the fact that he has released multiple books ON this methodology (some other day I’ll tackle how people butcher the method), because it appears that lifters are, indeed, a fickle breed and are genuinely upset at being provided with an ABUNDANCE of quality material rather than an absence of it.  Quite frankly, as someone that’s been training (and obsessing) for 24 years, this attitude baffles me to the point of upsetting me, because my transcendent envy comes through and I think to myself “you kids don’t know how good you got it: in MY day, we’d KILL to have SO MUCH quality content from a single author”.  But really, what confuses me is this: do you people ever listen to music?  Play video games?  Eat out?  Why are you so forgiving in THESE situations, yet so strict with those in the sphere of physical transformation?

We spent too much time wondering if we could and not enough wondering if we should

Seriously, consider this: bands (good ones at least) will release MORE than one song.  And we EXPECT them to do that.  There is no reasonable human out there that gets upset, saying “They already made a song: why are they making ANOTHER one?” To say nothing of whole albums full of songs.  To say nothing of MULTIPLE albums with multiple songs.  We CELEBRATE bands that do this.  And, quite often, we seek for these bands to EVOLVE over the era that they’re releasing these albums: to change and grow as culture changes and as the ability of the band changes too.  And yet, when we really break down what music is: it’s just different sounds arranged in a certain order that we (often) find pleasing.  The core principles of music remain the same, but we can EMPLOY these principles to generate a near limitless amount of songs and sounds.  And we EXPECT that from those who call themselves musicians: for them to do otherwise would make them unfit for the task.

You understand how this applies to the other media I mentioned.  Can you imagine if all video gaming ended at Pong?  “You already MADE a video game: why are you making MORE?!”  If all fast food ended at the hamburger?  “What are you doing adding CHEESE to that burger?!  We already HAVE a burger!”  Heck, we tend to enjoy these two things concurrently: smashing the latest Taco Bell monstrosity while we engage in the 7th hour of our Call of Duty binge.  And we cannot WAIT for these latest iterations to come out.  We anxiously anticipate the newest console or latest edition of our current favorite game series, we drool over the commercials of the latest nutritional debauchery to be foisted upon our gullets, we love and DEMAND innovation, newness and creativity.

Ironic for a show that came out in 1999 and keeps getting rebooted

BUT, we also understand that the development of these new things does NOT invalidate our enjoyment of the old stuff.  We can STILL enjoy that first album from our favorite band just as much as we enjoy their 14th.  Sometimes we enjoy it EVEN MORE, because it was that original sound that hooked us.  I STILL have my original Nintendo Entertainment System plugged in, and I regularly find myself playing the original Fallout that was released in 1998.  Sometimes, a regular old Whopper from Burger King hits just right.  Through this, we recognize that the presence of new stuff does not somehow make the old stuff no longer enjoyable or effective at achieving its goals.  We realize that we simply have MORE good stuff now.

Why should it be any different when it comes to lifting programming?  I’m going to use Jim Wendler here in particular, but this applies to MANY authors in the lifting sphere.  People FREQUENTLY bemoan how many books Jim has released on 5/3/1.  “Looks like Jim needed more money: he released another book!”  “I guess I’ll just have to get ANOTHER book to learn that program.”  “How many books do I need to buy to learn how to do 5/3/1?!”  Etc.  Again: how ridiculous.  You’re going to be upset that an author wrote MORE material?  You’d rather he NOT share more information with you on how you can achieve your goals?  That, after he spends time in his lab, trying out new things, tweaking older formulas, finding new ways to succeed he just…do nothing with it?  Why?  For what reason could you possibly be upset that you can now have MORE material from someone that is out there producing results?

As opposed to...

The new material does NOT invalidate the old material!  5/3/1 worked when Jim started writing about it in his training log in 2008 on Elitefts.  If you were to use THAT particular method, you would succeed.  The stuff that was in the first edition book?  It all worked.  Same with second.  Same with beyond, powerlifting, and forever, AND all the stuff on his blog, t-nation articles, and the things he talks about on youtube.  All of these things work, and 1 idea working does NOT make another idea NOT work.  This isn’t a zero sum game: we’re ALL winning here.  And along with that, there is no SHAME to be had in enjoying/preferring the old stuff over the new stuff.  We don’t need to be hipsters or die-hards here: there is no prize to be had for ALWAYS using the latest and greatest.  And just like music, it’s also possible to enjoy A song from an artist and NOT go and purchase their full catalog and listen to every song and become an expert on them, much like we can appreciate A program from AN author, use it and move one.

The biggest bit of comedy here is that Jim IS a musician, and when you hear him speak, his passion really seems to lie IN music rather than training.  Training is a thing he does to stay fit, capable and sane, whereas music is something he does to become fully self-realized as a human.  And, in turn: of COURSE he’s going to have his craft evolve over time…it’s what we EXPECT to happen with his REAL passion.  And I also imagine he finds it just as ridiculous to be held to one standard for one craft and a completely different standard for another.  As should you.

Seen here, giving away all the secrets

It’s fine to enjoy things that are enjoyable and appreciate things that are appreciable.     

WE GOT TO WHERE WE ARE BY DOING WHAT WE’VE BEEN DOING

We humans are a delightfully flawed species, which, if you’re the religious type, you may refer to as “original sin”, or if you’re the philosopher type you may simply think of Nietzsche’s “Human: all too human”, the latter individual also claiming that God is dead showing the unification of two contrasting schools of thought arriving at the same conclusion.  But already I’ve digressed before I’ve started: one of the fun ways we are flawed is how often we seek familiarity as a form of comfort.  This is, most likely, an evolutionary trait that served us QUITE well in an era where we were running from sabretooth tigers and trying to remember which mushrooms we could eat vs which ones killed us dead, but in the modern age this comfort seeking behavior is ultimately one of the many causes of our downfalls.  And even those that believe that they have saved themselves by engaging in the process of physical transformation manage to fall for this trap, for, quite often, these individuals constantly seek the comfort of familiarity WITHIN their process of physical transformation.  But herein we realize the error of that way, for physical transformation IS a process OF transformation, and in order to transform, we must BECOME something different than what we are…whereas we got to where we are by doing what we’ve been doing!

Chewing bubblegum and kicking ass got him this far...let's see what he does without the gum!

 

This STATEMENT seems obvious, but consider how many trainees turn a complete blind eye to it.  Let’s establish a very simple baseline premise: one does NOT engage in physical transformation IF one is satisfied with their current selves.  That seems agreeable, no?  Outside of some sort of situation wherein one engages in physical transformation purely as a lark (exercising Sartre’s “radical freedom”), the vast majority of trainees MUST have some sort of catalyst to drive them.  Perhaps they watched a movie with a training montage and got inspired, perhaps they put on a swimsuit, looked in the mirror and had an “oh sh-t” moment, perhaps they decided they wanted to compete in a physical event and realized they were WOEFULLY underprepared for it, but whatever the case, those seeking to transform are NOT satisfied with what they currently are.  Well how did we get to where we are?  We got there by doing what we’ve been doing!  All decisions and actions up until this point have resulted in THIS outcome.  We understand the equation put in front of us: X+Y=Z.  So now, we look to change either the X or the Y (or both) to arrive at a new answer!

 

We intellectually understand this…but emotionally, we’re a wreck!  Our stupid lizard brains WANT familiarity: it wants things to be the way they’ve ALWAYS been.  But doing what we’ve been doing has gotten us right where are right now…UNSATISFIED!  We need to remember that as we embark on this adventure.  We’re going to have eat differently, we’re going to have to sleep differently, we’re going to have to train differently (or at all, for that matter), we’re going to have to LIVE differently.  None of this even assures that we are going to IMPROVE, but it DOES ensure that we’re going to CHANGE.  So far, we are EXPERTS at being what we are: to become something else, we will need to become amateurs once again.

Although sometimes those previous expertise are STILL pretty useful

 

…Do I hear “noobie gains?”  You bet!  We’re going to experience that rapid change that occurs when you transition from doing a thing you’re good at to doing a thing you’re bad at.  “White belt mentality”: it’s outstanding!  You never move faster than when you start from nothing, as you have nowhere to go BUT up!  THAT, alone, is your insurance policy through this period.  SO many folks are SO afraid to try something new, but what could you possibly have to lose?  You have to face the fear of the unfamiliar, but remember: you didn’t choose to pursue transformation because you were SATSIFIED with what you are: you wanted to be different.  Well here are the keys to that kingdom!  Embrace the weird, the alien, the different: do what you HAVEN’T been doing to get to somewhere else.

 

But this isn’t just about the stat of the journey: those that are in the PROCESS of transformation absolutely need this lesson as well.  BECAUSE we experience that rapid growth the first time we change direction, it’s quite easy to fall victim of the trap of infatuation: we soon become zealots of our new way, because we KNOW it produces the results we seek, and we fall in love…and refuse to change!  THIS is the way that produced the results!  This is the NEW way!  …but, eventually, we find ourselves STILL unsatisfied, STILL seeking transformation, in which case…what do we do?

No

 

We stop doing what we’ve been doing!  The principle STILL applies.  We have to recognize when we’ve wound up in yet another rut: when we’ve EXHAUSTED the new way and must, instead, move on to ANOTHER new way in order to, once again, NOT be where we are.

 

Anyone that has followed me has recognized this exact pattern unfolding.  This very blog started with me espousing what a fan I was of abbreviated training, only to immediately take a HARD pivot into stupidly high volume work, and here I am back to abbreviated training with some recent runs of Super Squats and Mass Made Simple, with all sorts of wild journeys in the middle.  I employed abbreviated training through my second powerlifting meet, was unsatisfied with having failed a 502lb squat AGAIN, and ended up going in a completely different direction and trying 5/3/1, which allowed me to finally get my 502lb squat AND a 601lb deadlift in a meet…all before I completely switched gears and started competing in strongman.  Oh, and that powerlifting phase came AFTER I hung up my gloves after 12 years of martial arts training/focus.  All of these approaches worked…until they didn’t, and then it was time to do something else.

This is what PTSD looks like

 

And, of course, I’ve annoyed so many of you with my nutrition, but once again, I’ve broken out the etch-a-sketch on that SO many times and just completely obliterated all my previous approaches.  I’ve gone from a Gallon of milk a day with copious amounts of PBJs to a paleo style approach to dirty keto to low fat/low carb (THAT was really stupid) to shakes only to carnivore, and in every instance, it was the same situation: I was unsatisfied with what I WAS, so I needed to do something different than what had gotten me there.  And EACH and every time I did that: it worked!  And that’s the feedback loop we need: the re-assurance that, each time we stop doing what we’ve been doing, we WILL get to somewhere else.  Through the repetition of the experiment, we receive consistent confirmation that these changes WILL produce results, and we develop the habits and skills of a being CAPABLE of change, which, in turn, allows us to continue onward in a process of consistent transformation.  A stagnant being never changes, but a being that transforms gets there THROUGH change.

 

Make yourself a being of consistent change.  Find your current paradigms and smash them all to pieces.  Slaughter all of your sacred cows, disavow all your gods, blaspheme and forsake, so that YOU can become something other than what you are.