I want a Divorce

*knock knock*  Is anyone out there?

It's been a while.

I'm not writing this post for anyone except myself.  If you're reading it, it's not because I led you here.  I'm just trying to give myself a swift kick in the ass.

It's time to wake up.  It's time to stop screwing around with my life.  It's time to start behaving as if I want to live.

Because right now, I'm dying.

I'm not in immediate physical peril, but I am dying.  My biggest issue is that I'm accelerating the process with choices that are obviously detrimental to my well-being.  In the last couple of years - the time between writing my last post and this one - I've seen some pretty dramatic (and mostly negative) changes in my corpus mundi.

First and most obvious is the fact that I am bloated and fat around the middle.  I'm squeezing my ass into 38" pants - a far cry from the 34" pants that I was wearing just a couple of years ago.  How much discomfort is required to break the pattern of destructive behaviors that will quite literally kill me much sooner than I am ready?  Reflect back to yesterday and the 36" adjustable waist pants that you were wearing that felt like they were crushing your junk every time you sat down.  Do you need to feel like you're trapping your nuts in a fabric vise every day before you say, "Screw this.  Let's fix it"?

You haven't slept in a proper bed for years.  The couch is being ruined because your loud-ass snoring self is sleeping on it night after night.  The effects of this behavior are obvious - your wife sleeps alone in a separate room because your wall-shaking snoring keeps her awake; your relationship with her WILL suffer ill effects of such separation.  Do you even care?

Your body is constantly racked with pain.  Your knees are being stretched beyond their normal limits.  Your shoulders are constantly in pain due to the way you fold them over each other at night.

Your example to others in the dojo is not a good one.  You are yudansha.  Your body is one area of the self that you should control, and yet you treat your body with contempt.  Is that what you want for students who look to you for what it means to be yudansha?  Is that honor so insignificant that you blow off the responsibility of being a proper example?

Let's not forget that nidan testing is coming, and in your condition the test might very well kill you.

Yours is not healthy behavior.

And what's with all of the shit you are eating?  Your online bank statement reads like a who's who of fast food joints in town.  Whatever happened to eating food... you know - REAL food.  Fruits, vegetables, whole meats - that stuff that is good for you - should be the norm, not the preservative-laden pseudo-food that you've been eating non-stop for the last few years.

Let's list a few other symptoms that are besetting you right now:

• heartburn
• abdominal pain
• ulcers
• headaches
• fatigue
• sore feet
• mood swings
• digestive issues
• crappy skin
• chest pain/pressure
• numbness/burning in your leg (compressed disc)

Man.  Looks like life is great.  You appear to be doing everything right - if you're looking to park yourself in a 6' hole...

Yep.  Time to fix this problem.  And not just for yourself.

C'mon man!  Look at this website you've built here.  Look at the after pics from just a few years ago.  YOU LOOKED EFFING GOOD for a dude in his late 30's/early 40's.  GET THAT SHIT BACK while you're still alive to enjoy it!

Last point, and maybe this will push you down that better road.  4 kids.  You've got 4 kids that are counting on you to see them graduate.  2 girls that want you around to walk them down the aisle.  2 boys that would probably want you to see the kind of man they grew up to be but still need to call when they have a question.  4 kids that want to have a father for years and years to come.  You're dicking around with THEIR futures, pal.  Not just your own.

Now.  When you get home this afternoon, you greet your wife.  You tell her, "Honey.  I love you and the kids very much, and I'm sorry I've been treating my body like shit.  I'm changing things, starting right now."  Then get a bottle of water and drink it.  Grab some good food and eat it.  Then walk that beautiful woman you married down to work and get your ass home, into a change of clothes, and off to the gym.

Sweat.

Breathe.

Struggle a bit.

And live.

And when you get home, take a long hard look in the mirror.  Tell that dying entity looking back at you that you're tired of being in pain.  You're tired of the struggle.  Tell him that you're done with him.  You're moving on.

I want a divorce.  From my lazy, fast-food-eating, unhealthy 'other' side.  And that divorce is final as of today.

44 years old is not too late to change your life.  In fact, it's just the beginning...

Decisions Become Habits

Over the course of any given day, each of us makes hundreds - possibly thousands - of decisions.  Some of them are completely inconsequential - which pair of black socks to wear or which pen to sign our names with for example.  Others have a far more profound effect on our lives - to move or stay, invest in a company or not.  No matter how monumental or insignificant the decision, we are actively deciding our way through every day of our lives.

The thought occurred to me the other day as I was pondering the nature of why we do what we do.  We say things like, "That's such a nasty habit," when we see someone dipping tobacco or biting their nails.  So how does one get from the point of making a decision to having a habit?

What is a habit except a decision that we no longer think about?

Until about 14 years ago my in-laws smoked cigarettes.  After 30+ years of smoking, the activity had become completely habitual on multiple levels.  They habitually bought cigarettes whenever they went to the store.  They habitually lit their cigarettes, smoked them, crushed them out, and repeated the process time and time again each day.  It was automatic, mindless, and performed flawlessly each and every time.

Until one day, they decided to stop smoking.  Now they had to perform an entirely different set of actions.  They had to consciously decide to NOT buy cigarettes.  They had to consciously decide to stop lighting cigarettes and smoking them.  And over time, their new decision making process became a habit - performed flawlessly and mindlessly every day.  Today, 14 years later, they no longer even think about smoking cigarettes.  They have a new habit.

Fitness and diet operate on the exact same level.  Some of us have a current habit of buying food that is not good for us.  It happens automatically - I know it did for me.  I would literally find myself standing in line at some local dive buying food that I knew was bad for me.  Because I had done it so often, I just repeated a habit that was the product of a decision I had made years earlier.  The only thing that ever changed was the venue.

In order to change my body, I had to change my habits.  I had to consciously decide to eat nutritious food that gave me energy and nutrients.  I had to decide to change my shopping practices and eating preferences until the healthy decisions could be performed unconsciously.

Laziness is a profoundly difficult habit to break.  Sometimes people become automatons - wake up, go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch TV, have a snack, go to bed, repeat.  One of the saddest testimonies to laziness came from a couple in my circle of influence that knew exactly what channels they were going to watch on any given day of the week from 6:00 in the evening until bedtime.  The routine never varied unless a show came along and bumped a standing program from their self-designed television lineup.

In order to make any change in our lives, whether it be fitness related or otherwise, we have to consciously make decisions that are in alignment with the goal we want to achieve.  Rather than unconsciously ordering the #3 Combo with extra pickles, we have to consciously decide to order the garden salad with vinaigrette.  Instead of mindlessly deciding to plant ourselves in the recliner for hours on end, we have to make a focused decision to go for a walk.  Eventually, the new patterns will take hold and become habit. 

Living your life consciously is the only way to effectively change your future for the better.  We are all subject to the effects of our decisions and habits.  The body does not discriminate between "good" decisions and "bad" ones.  It makes a habit out of whatever you do.

Make your decisions healthy and happy ones, and your life will surely follow suit.

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Visualize the Body You Desire

While I do not consider myself a student of metaphysics, I do think there is a lot to be said about the power of positive thinking and visualizing a desired outcome.  Many years ago I read a research study on the power of visualization in which 3 groups of people were tested on their ability to shoot basketball freethrows.  At the beginning of the study they shot freethrows to establish a baseline performance level.   After establishing a baseline, the different groups were given different sets of instructions.

Group one was the control group.  They didn't have to do anything differently.  They just went about their normal lives.  The second group was asked to practice for a certain time period or number of shots every day.  The third group was asked to imagine successfully shooting freethrows for a certain length of time each day but they were not to actually shoot freethrows. 

After 30 days, the groups were again evaluated on their freethrow shooting ability.  Group 1, the control group, showed no change in their ability to shoot freethrows.  Group 2, the group that practiced freethrows consistently showed a 24% improvement in their performance.  Most remarkable, however, was Group 3, the visualization group.  Although this group hadn't touched a basketball during the entire experiment period, their freethrow shooting ability increased by 23%.

Whenever we visualize something, our brains begin active recruitment of body systems to carry out the task being visualized.  If you want to shoot more freethrows, practice AND visualize.  If you want to throw more strikes in bowling, hit better tee shots in golf, or blast more home runs in church league softball, visualize your goal and the path leading to it and see if performance improves.

The process of transforming your physique isn't immune to the effects of visualization.  Here are a couple of ideas on how to visualize the body you want.

Meditate

Sit or lay in a quiet, comfortable place.  Darkness helps.  Close your eyes and visualize your perfect physique.  Make sure every body part is accounted for - arms, shoulders, chest, abs, waist, back, thighs, and calves.  Imagine them as being lean, muscular, and rippling.  Imagine yourself running and not being tired.  Imagine that you are lifting weights you never imagined and your muscles are responding to the activity exactly as they are supposed to.

Further, visualize the inside of your body - the heart, circulatory system, and lungs.  Imagine a perfectly clean circulatory system - no clots, plaque, or other harmful deposits in your veins or arteries.  Imagine your lungs as clear and able to take in as much life-giving oxygen as possible with every breath.  Visualize every cell in your body working as it was designed to work.

These visualizations don't need to take a long time - 10 minutes or so should suffice - and can actually be done when lying in bed before sleep.  If you fall asleep while visualizing these things, all the better since they will be the last thing your conscious mind contemplates just before entering subconscious patterns.

Conscious Visualization

I'm not exactly sure what to call this practice, so I'll just call it conscious visualization.  Back in 2008 when I was working on getting out of the rut my life had fallen into, I was working in a position that had me sitting all alone in a building (a double-wide "office") monitoring a database.  The job afforded me a few nice perks, one of which was a dual-monitor computer setup and a laptop.  When I wasn't tied to using both monitors, I would leave the picture you see to the right on the second screen.  If I was using both monitors, I would pull the image up on my laptop.  I always had the image in front of me.

The body in that image belongs to Jamie Brunner.  The head was from one of my before shots.

The color was bad, and the image looked a little funny, but what I was trying to do was visualize myself with that body.  I got the idea from a Body-for-LIFE video that I got back in 2000 in which Hank Johnson used the technique to create an INCREDIBLE transformation of his physique.

All you need to do is find a picture of the body you want to walk around in, superimpose your head onto that body, and save the image.  You can print it and put it on your fridge (the trouble spot for many a would-be physique transformer) or put it on your bathroom mirror as a reminder that yours is a body under construction and the picture represents the goal.

Hopefully all of this makes sense and doesn't sound to woo-woo for anyone out there.  There is a lot to be said about the power of the mind over the body.  Tap-in to this potential gold mine and put it to work in your favor.

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Labels and Self-talk.

What’s your identity?

We assign labels to ourselves all the time – sometimes intentionally, sometimes not so.  We also allow, usually passively, others to assign labels to us.  Some of those labels are constructive.  Too many are destructive.

Think for a moment: how do you describe yourself?  Here are some possible labels that you might have used: “I’m fat.”  “My thighs/butt/hips are big.”  “I’m too tired.”  “I don’t like to exercise.”  “I love food too much.”  “I hate vegetables.”

Statements like those have an impact on how you see yourself and how you behave.

We reinforce beliefs about ourselves by repeating them, either to ourselves or others.  I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve looked in the mirror or stepped on a scale and reinforced to myself that I’m fat.  I also used to tell people that there were 3 things of mine that you shouldn’t mess with – my family, my money and my food.  Because I reinforced my identity (as a fat glutton), I lived my life accordingly.  I ate poorly, rarely exercised, and my body reflected my behaviors.

Personal labels can also be unspoken.  I’ve seen people wear clothes that tell me they embrace a slothful lifestyle.  A year or so ago I saw an early teenager (13-14ish) wearing a bright yellow shirt that looked like a Lay’s potato chip bag.  It said “Lays-e” No surprise this kid was obviously overweight. 

Do a quick search for “Lazy t-shirts” or “Fat t-shirts” and you’ll see that many people don't mind assigning the ‘lazy’ and ‘fat’ labels to themselves.

You might be saying, “Those shirts are supposed to be funny.”   That may be so, but the fact of the matter is our brains can’t tell the difference between truth and fiction.  Every time our eyes see the message on a self-deprecating shirt, a message is sent to our brains that tells us we’re lazy or fat.  Our subconscious mind files away that assertion and helps us conduct ourselves accordingly.

Looking at this from another angle, we sometimes passively allow others to label us.  I know a mom who used to call her son “little Buddha” due to his abundance of baby fat.  Not surprisingly, the child has been noticeably fat through toddlerhood and into childhood.  Unless the child is de-programmed (by parents or by himself), that label may well follow him into his adult life.  Spouses label each other all the time – often as a term of endearment – but with similar negative overtones.  The labels often become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Any of my readers own a La-Z-Boy recliner?  The chairs are not so named because they encourage 30 minutes of physical activity every day.

The offset to all of this destructive input is to identify ourselves with uplifting descriptors.  “I eat healthy foods and live a happy and active life.”  “I eat exactly what my body needs every day.  Nothing more.”  Think healthy thoughts, say healthy words, and your brain will help you behave accordingly. 

Make your thoughts and words action oriented rather than person oriented.  Saying, “I’m a good person for choosing water over soda,” actually sets us up for future self-recrimination later on (e.g. does drinking soda make me a “bad” person?).  This goes for talking to others as well.  Saying “good job” beats “good girl” every time.

Don’t let negative labels sabotage your progress.  Over the next few days, try paying particular attention to what you say and think about yourself.  Notice whether your self-dialogue is uplifting or desctructive.  If you find yourself being "mean" to yourself more often than you are being "nice," it's time for some re-programming.

A good remedy for destructive self-talk is to write down the negative labels you assign to yourself and thoughtfully consider alternatives that put your situation in a positive light.  For example, instead of “I’m fat,” you can say, “My body is in a state of constant improvement.  My actions are in line with that process.”

Give it a go, and see how your body (and mind) reacts.

Be well!