I ran a 5K last weekend.  It felt good to know I could do it.  But it’s just not my thing.  I respect those who run.  But deep down I’m a strength athlete, plain and simple.  I respect raw, brute strength, and the insanity required to achieve the strength.

I remember the first time I lifted 500lbs off the floor, no straps, just my hands caked in chalk and wrapped around the knurl of the bar.  And I remember the 550lbs.  And I remember the 585lbs conquering me.  But mostly, I remember smiling to my wife Nikki like a small boy, proud of my feeble accomplishment– knowing that the amount of weight I could place on the bar was theoretically infinite, that I just had to keep coming back and watching it rise over time, and that this feeling of strength, efficacy, accomplishment, could be replicated indefinitely.

There is a long-standing, and needlessly stupid, rivalry between bodybuilders and powerlifters.  Powerlifters don’t train to look a certain way, just perform a certain way.  Bodyfat levels tend to be higher, and there is no emphasis on the aesthetics of one’s physique.  Bodybuilders tend to castigate powerlifters for being “fat”, “out of shape”, and “lazy”.  Bodybuilders, by contrast, do not lift weights for the sake of maximum strength, but to break down muscle tissue and sculpt the body.  As such, bodybuilders are not as strong, pound-for-pound, as powerlifters, and tend to obsess over symmetry, balance, and their overall look, rather than the sheer intensity of their workout.  Powerlifters have been known to laugh at bodybuilders for being “pretty boys”, “all show and no go”, and– in a nutshell– fake.

So which is harder, bodybuilding or powerlifting?  Bodybuilding is definitely harder in the sense that it requires discipline and attention to detail over time.  But powerlifting is harder– or at least, more hardcore– in the sense that it is the true epitome of intensity and will.

The bodybuilder’s exertion meter is measured over time– not a single workout, but weeks, months, and years of discipline, dieting, weighing, measuring, planning, training and improving.  Yes, this is difficult, but it is difficulty spread out.  Bodybuilding is a sport consisting of thousands upon thousands of moments that all create a sum total, to stand as a trophy or statue at end of days proudly presenting one’s physique to the world.

Then there is powerlifting.  Powerlifting is true calculated insanity.  It is about taking everything you have within you– every single micron of energy, rage, fury, fire, will, strength, exertion– and applying it against a cold steel bar for less than 5 seconds.  Motivation, as an abstraction, is always about switching to the next gear.  In most sports, that gear has to be shifted into, slowly, time after time after time, until the event is over.  Even with football, you’re looking at 60 minutes of play, and you have numerous chances and plays and quarters to shift into your highest gear, to try to make up the distance at the end, to finally turn the shock meter to a thousand percent and bury the needle.

Powerlifting is a different, and scarier, animal.  You have to bury the needle all at once.  There are no second chances, third legs to the race, or fourth downs.  There is just this one moment, this one lift, this one attempt.  The bar goes up, or it doesn’t.  You insanity conquers gravity, or you are conquered and destroyed, all in the blink of an eye.

Watch the pre-lifting rituals of a powerlifter, and you will see insanity on a different level.  They slap themselves in the face prior to a big lift, simply to increase adrenaline, often drawing blood:

The athletes are not the long and lean frames seen on athletes of other ilk.  There is nothing “esthetic” or “beautiful” about the prototypical powerlifting physique.  And that’s the point.  These men and women are pure animal, beasts and bulls and bears with bulging necks and bald heads, traps that sit high upon their shoulders and bear witness to the thousands upon thousands of pounds pressed, pulled or dropped down to the floor, into the bucket, supported by thighs thick like oak trees:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo1tU1YqPp0

Powerlifters do not like creature comforts.  They do not like air conditioned gyms and well-lit areas.  They are monsters that lurk in the recesses, hidden in the basement, amongst chalk on the floor and ammonia in the air, waiting to unleash everything all at once, a nuclear explosion and meltdown, a supernova of energy.

The mindset required to step underneath 500, 600, 700lbs is not possessed by many.  But they go bigger.  They step under 800, 900, 1000lbs.  A few elite individuals step under 1100lbs or more. Or press it off their chests. Or rip if off the ground:

They practice, they train, and they build their bodies through the torture of moving mountains, to the point where, one day, at an official meet, they will step up against a bar weighing more than they have ever moved, and make it move.  They will channel all of those training sessions into this one moment, this payoff, trying to drain everything all at once, the great compression before the Big Bang, shoving it into a funnel and condensing it into one moment of calculated insanity.  There will be no “recorded race time” at the end of the event, as there is with a 5K.  The powerlifting event does not occur over time.  It occurs in the blink of an eye, genesis, like the instantaneous creation of force within the cosmos.

And that, is power. That, is calculated insanity.
-David A. Johnston

I have said before that you have to create your own purpose, that the universe will not come down and hand you the gift of purpose.  It’s a hard lesson to learn.  Over the years, I have had numerous gym members sit before me during a fitness consultation that were completely lost, both outside and in.  I invariably ask, “What is your goal? What are you trying to get accomplished?”  And amazingly enough, I have been told far too many times to count, “I don’t really know– what am I supposed to want?”

When somebody tells me, “I want to be healthy“, I ask them, What does that mean to you?  “I dunno’. Never really thought of it“.  They snatch the concept out of thin air, as a buzz word they heard on an episode of Dr. Oz, completely detached from reality, from the concretes and the moments that contributed to the idea in the first place.  “Health” does not mean to these people all the moments of feeling strong, virile, able-bodied, efficacious; it does not mean years of looking yourself in the mirror with pride, or years of great sex, or years of feeling 20 inside a 40-year-old body.  “Health” is simply something they are “supposed to” care about.

The real problem is, you can’t make somebody care about something, despite all the “supposed-tos” in the world.  You can’t make somebody do anything, really.  You can plant the seed of an idea, of a value, but even that presupposes they are already focusing on the external world, and receptive to that seed in the first place.  But if the mind is shut off, if the passion is extinguished, then no amount of prodding and poking and aggressively selling somebody will get them on-board.  That has to be done within the individual.

No, goals do not come down from the stars.  They are selected.  They are willed into being.  We wake up, we look at the world, and we decide in which direction to move.  Some of us, anyways.  Some of us, by contrast, decide not to move– decide not to select a goal, or a purpose.  And those individuals sit passively throughout their lives, awaiting the inevitable.

Much of the confusion on this issue comes about when one thinks of goals as intrinsically right or wrong, better or worse.  I started playing the drums right before my 9th birthday, after my Dad brought home a cheap drum set.  Instantaneously, I felt I had found my life’s purpose.  I remember talking to other kids growing up, in middle school and high school, and asking them “what they did”– and what they planned to do when they grew up.  Ninety percent of the time, I was met with a blank stare– “I don’t know, I haven’t really thought of it”.  The answer bothered me on a deep level, as if I was talking to an unfortunate individual who had been placed on this earth missing a soul.  How can you go through your days, and not know who you are, what you are, what you are going to be and where you’re headed?  Isn’t that overarching goal the thesis or theme that is going to define the outline and necessary steps that will constitute all days to come?

I had such a strong reaction to music, such a strong calling, that I could not fathom being confused about the future.  But as I got a little older, I found the “purposeless-syndrome” was more common that I ever had expected.

As an adolescent, my wife was similar in her undying passion, but not for music; instead, she was driven by her sport of choice, volleyball, which propelled her to excellence all through high school and college.  Even after college, her days were defined in large part by coaching future players.  But then the day arrived: she had to admit she was no longer defined primarily by being a volley player.  And a sense of malaise and dread spread throughout, infusing her limbs, and choking off her inner motor– “If that’s not who I am, then what do I do?”

I went through the same thing several years earlier when I decided that music was no longer my primary passion.  I turned my passion instead to philosophy, and then later, to bodybuilding.  But I always sought that passion, that outlet– that goal.  I always knew that, in order to justify getting out of bed in the morning, there had to be some driving force compelling me to move, to learn, to research, to work harder, to be better.  I have now watched my wife struggle through it and admit to herself that there is no intrinsic purpose to life, that we select our own purpose at any given moment in time– but that there must be purpose.

That purpose can be great or small.  It can have larger philosophical or moral import, or it can be more humble in nature.  But one thing is for certain: in order to lead a purposeful life, you must select that purpose, and then throw yourself into it wholeheartedly.  That’s precisely what “passion” is, and that is what separates the great from the good from the average from the rotten.

So yes, I want to be a bodybuilder.  I want to work overly hard, and deprive myself of common worldly pleasures, and spend lots of money, for a stupid plastic trophy.  It’s no different than golf, or stamp collecting, or horseback riding, or skydiving.  It is an activity, a lifestyle, a destination and a path.  It is a means of organizing one’s activities and steps from beginning to end. And if and when it becomes boring, it will be time to select the next purpose.  But one thing is for certain: there will always be some purpose there, until the day I die.

-David A. Johnston

Do you know Heaven? Have you had the blessed opportunity during your days on this planet to find that thing, that person, that activity or event or song or painting, that transformed this clump of mud into clouds and sky? Have you found your Heaven? Have you found your bliss, your rapture, your radiant awesomeness?

Have you found that which makes you cry? That which makes you soar? That which is not open to laughter or jokes, but is held as the sacred, the not-to-be-touched, the private and personal? Have you seen the world from the perspective of an angel, your heart overflowing with love and joy? Have you found your secret, and stowed it away in an airtight box? Protected it from daylight and the grubby fingers of those around you who would smudge it up and tear it down if given the chance?
Have you felt ecstasy? Passion? Pride? Have you found that which forces trumpets to blare?

“My love for the game I don’t think can be measured man… I think if they took my heart out it would be a basketball… When I’m in between those line… I feel at peace… I feel free… I’m in paradise… I feel like I’m in my sanctuary… That ball, and that basket, it just makes me complete… Being in the zone… it’s an out-of-body experience… it supersedes the physical because… the world kinda’ goes away… and I’m just flying. I can’t hear anything out there on the floor. I can’t hear the crowd… you don’t see a hand in your face…. You know, it kind of feels surreal to me… like a superhero inside”.

“When I’m between those lines… I feel at peace… I feel free… I’m in paradise… I feel like I’m in my sanctuary”. For these men, it is basketball. For me, it was music– then philosophy– then bodybuilding.

People ask if I win money at the shows I compete in. No, I actually pay money to participate. Why? Because it is my Heaven. It is my sanctuary. And when I’m the gym, I feel at peace; I feel free. It’s the only time I turn my phone off– turn my brain off– don’t worry about schedules, agendas, or anybody else’s problems. It is my meditation. It is my private realm. It is that time when I am allowed to bear my soul, my true essence, to the world, without fear of repercussions or judgment or injury. It is just me, and a bar, and my ability to move it or not. It is when my eyes look inwards, and not outwards; it is when I hold my breath and stop talking. It is when all that matters is the next 60 minutes. It is my Heaven.

Have you found the pure, the white, the sparkly and bright? Have you found that which you would gladly give anything and everything to do, just one more time, if you only had one more moment to live? Have you found that which defines you, a title– “painter”, “sculptor”, “mother”? Have you found your salvation?

Do you know Heaven? These men do. These men are athletes– they are warriors– but not here, and not now. Here, they are simply souls gliding across wooden boards. They are grateful, at peace and free. There are no problems, no worries. There is simply bliss. There is simply a reason to awaken each day with a light step. There is simply a blazing fire that licks at the inner lining of each player, and forces his feet faster down the lane.

Have you found your Heaven, your patron saint for being? Is it the beaming smile of your child? The unguarded laughter of your wife or husband? Smashing a volleyball across the floor? Being placed in the middle of the lineup because, you know deep down, you’re in first place? Inventing a new recipe that makes mouths drool? Sticking a landing that seemed to defy physics, or inventing a new skill not yet named? Singing until your throat hurts? Pulling a heavy barbell off the floor? Holding a yoga pose in silence? Seeing your team take first? Is it the warm spring breeze blowing through the blinds on a sunny day? Or the rain falling to the ground, grouping in puddles to splash through like a little kid?

Do you know Heaven? Have you found that which cleanses, purifies, and leaves you new, unstained, unhurt, unblemished? That activity that stands as your symbol on your internal coat of arms? That which only your truest friends and loved ones can even begin to understand? And maybe even they don’t– maybe it’s just you, maybe it’s a feeling you can’t trust to share with the world. Maybe it’s your way of plugging your spirit directly into the fabric and lining of the universe, of becoming one with the world. Maybe it’s the only thing that can return an atomized existence, split and rendered into untold quantities of separated entities, into a singular plurality. Maybe it is your glue, your substrate, the aether of your universe, the pure fresh air and clear sky breathed by gods, unchangeable, permanent, forever.

Do you know Heaven? And will you fight for it, now and forever? Will you never let it go?

-David A. Johnston

You grab the edge of the Band-Aide, peeling up the very corner, ready to pull back, and you stop– there is a flash of hesitation and fear– you know that it’s going to hurt no matter how you remove it, that you can try to slowly peel it back and hope the pain is reduced, spread out over time and thus dulled; or instead, you can rip it off full-force, no hesitation, with a strong and severe rush of sensation that hits all at once, but fades almost as quickly. What do you do?

You approach the edge of the pool, enjoying your vacation, ready to cool off and relax. You stick the tip of your toe into the cool, clear water, and feel that it is far colder than the surrounding air. You were ready to jump in, until you felt that cold, and then, there was that falter– you know it’s going to be uncomfortable no matter how you get in, that you can slowly submerse your body inch by inch, trying to acclimate to the cold, gritting your teeth, chattering, and shivering; or instead, you can dive in, feel the pin pricks cover your entire body from head to foot, feel the pain of frozen flesh, all hitting at once, but fading almost as quickly. What do you do?

This is the un-fun decision. Life is full of un-fun decisions. Most people try hard to never face them. But they seem to follow us, whether we like it or not.

A change in careers– un-fun decision. The choice to start focusing on your health after decades of neglect– un-fun decision. Pulling up your roots and moving across the country– un-fun decision. Walking away from a family member, a loved one, a friend, because you know you are enabling, you know they are halting forward progression, you know rationally you are a better person than their presence permits– un-fun decision.

The majority of the time, we try to compromise. We say, “Okay, next time… one more time… one more chance… next week… next year… if it happens again….” And we let it continue, and perpetuate, and drag us down. The fear of the momentary sensation, the ripped Band-Aide and cold water pinpricks, stops our limbs from moving in the fashion our rational faculty dictates is proper.

But you can override this, with a strong enough command center. It has to be final, and principled. Approximations and half-ways do not resolve problems. The Band-Aide must be pulled quickly, and diving head-first is always better.

I’m a firm believer in burning bridges and not allowing the capacity to mend, if and when one has gathered sufficient evidence that the other side of the bridge is the right place to be. They say “the grass is always greener”, as if waffling back and forth between two options, like a confused puppy dog torn between wanting “in” and “out”, was any way to go about life. The puppy continues to repeat its cycle of spur-of-the-moment whimsical nowhere-going. Hopefully, the human being does not, and instead learns from his encounters and paths walked.

Like many things clichés, the “grass-is-greener” bromide is based on an illusion or half-truth. The grass is never greener, at least in a patch that has been burnt to a cinder. Then, it’s just blackened ash-earth. If the bridge is burned, one cannot be tempted to cross back over; one is forced not to repeat tracks and trails that have already been pursued and proven useless and impractical. Rather, one must move forward, linear, straight, towards a new region. Let the bridges behind you burn and fall to the ground, in search of truly ever-greener grasses. The trail of smoke and dust will be a reminder of a path chosen, pursued, and committed to. It will not erase all sensation of pain, but it will allow the transition to truly greener, and ever-improving, pastures.

Sometimes, ripping that Band-Aide off can be like walking through hell. In Greek mythology, Orpheus traveled through the underworld to pursue his lost wife, Eurydice. Hades agreed to give Orpheus and Eurydice a second chance, this one time, allowing them both to return to the land of the living on the condition that he lead her out without ever looking back. Orpheus began his journey, literally marching through hell in order to recover the love of his life, in order to reach that truly greener pasture. He could have sprinted; he could have thrown each and every ounce of energy within his person into his march. Instead, he questioned himself– the doubt crept in– and he began to grow afraid. He knew rationally that his only chance at making things work was to not look back and rely on Hades’ word. He knew he had all the evidence he was going to receive. But standing on principle and not looking back was an un-fun decision. It proved too much– he looked back– and saw his wife, Eurydice, standing there for a moment, before being pulled back, eternally, into the underworld. They did not make it to a greener pasture. On his march, Orpheus did not burn the bridge leading back into hell. And as such, his wife returned to the charred and ashen ground of her past– a pasture far less green.

There comes a point where you must commit, you must pull the trigger and decide on a route, a course of action, no matter how painful. The only question is how you will face that pain. Will you let it infuse your soul all at once, hit you like a ton of bricks, wash over your person– and then leave? Or, will you suffer it over, and over, and over, and over again, making the same mistakes, letting fear of the un-fun decision rule your life?

I am striding toward truly greener pastures, and leaving no bridges for a possible return. Let the trail of smoke remind me of where I’ve been.

-David A. Johnston

Wolverine, by contrast, does not have a pretty bone in his body. He is gruff, and nasty, and animalistic. He constantly tows the line between being a good guy and a villain. And yet when he took center stage on the big-screen during the X-Men movies over the last several years, audiences loved and admired him.

It isn’t Wolverine’s adamantium skeleton that makes him superbly unique. Rather, it was his ability to heal– to not be hurt– that allowed for the adamantium skeleton in the first place. Let’s back up…

Wolverine was born with a genetic mutation that allows him to heal at an accelerated rate. Almost any wound or disease is corrected for by his body. This allowed Wolverine to survive the military’s experimental process of fusing his skeleton with a near-indestructible metal called “adamantium”, thus making him virtually impervious to harm.

Wolverine’s real power resides not in his claws. It resides in the fact that he cannot be scarred too deeply; it resides in the fact that his wounds are not substantial wounds, not deep, but mere flesh wounds, to be felt and glossed over, felt and forgotten as soon as they are experienced. His wounds do not stop him, and they do not define him. They happen, and they pass.

All my life, I let things affect me too deeply. I placed too much importance and too much weight into little things– all things. I viewed everything as important, as a life-and-death issue.

But as I grew, I wanted to be Wolverine. I wanted to be able to walk away from a battle– from stress, problems, drama– without a scratch. I wanted to be impervious to harm. I watched those around me affected by the trivial, caught up in the mundane, freaking out about little things and missing the bigger picture.

Now a new look in my eyes, my spirits rise,
Forget the past, present tense works and lasts.
New life in place of old life, unscarred by trials.
A new level of confidence and power.
(Pantera, A New Level)

And I learned: yes, Wolverine still feels pain, but it only touches him so deep. It only goes down to a certain level, and then it stops… and sits… and nobody and nothing can force it to hurt more.

So I decided I would be Wolverine, but my own version, without the genetic mutation. I would be impervious to pain, and guilt, and fear. I would make the decision to not let things touch me so deeply. I would learn to let it roll off my back.

“God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time. Enjoying one moment at a time. Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace.”

I decided to lace my own bones– my own spirit– with adamantium, to make it impervious to the small and trivial blows dealt by life. Certain things matter. Many things matter. And many things don’t. I decided to take the time to sort them out, to tell the difference and rank them.

The decision to be Wolverine, to be indestructible, is not something magically discovered. It is not something one is born with. It is a choice. It is choosing to fully accept and acknowledge the fact that only you are responsible for your own happiness; that the circumstantial and uncontrollable aspects of your life are ultimately irrelevant and contribute in no large part to your current place in life. Lining your soul with an adamantium skeleton and attacking life with adamantium claws is not hard-wired in one’s person. It is not gifted from an external source. It is selected, consciously, as a method and mode of approaching the world.

Whatever my future may hold, I am fully aware that only I can determine my state of happiness and joy.

That state is not something handed to me by others, or something that I will stumble upon while wandering aimlessly through this life. It is, rather, waking up with the choice to be happy, overjoyed, and blissful.

So fly away, Superman, and save the world. Your life is near-perfect, and that’s great– must be nice to be born with alien powers that make you super-human.

The rest of us, by contrast, will be left to undergo our own experiment, to see if we can withstand the transformation from beings of terminable resolve to beings of indestructible spirit.

To see if we can face our trials, and come out unscarred.

To be less than perfect, and still be perfect, just without the fairytale curl atop our brows and flowing cape and tights.

True strength is not an innate trait. It is the ability to make the most of everything around us. It is an orientation towards the world. It is the resolve to keep external factors from affecting us any deeper than we decide is acceptable.

It is a trait we choose, and must continue to choose, each and every day.

-David A. Johnston

Time will not, however, help us out upon request.  “Wait up a second…”– time doesn’t have a second to spare.  “If you could give me just a moment…”– time has no moments to give.  Time just marches on, it just is, and we have to fit into it.  In this sense, time is not a sympathetic friend.

There are no dress rehearsals in this world.  There are no practices.  There are no second chances.  Every time you put that bar on your back, and every step you take, and every word you place on paper, is there forever.  There is no editing that.  There is no reversing that. There is no reversing anything.  In this sense, time can be incredibly harsh and cruel– it is an impartial judge, unwilling to budge in the least.  It does not allow for do-overs.

Look, if you had one shot, one opportunity,
To seize everything you ever wanted, in one moment,
Would you capture it, or just let it slip?…
You better lose yourself in the music, the moment,
You own it, you better never let it go.
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow,
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime.
(Eminem, “Lose Yourself”)

In the above sense, there are no practice hits; every hit goes down in the books.  There are no mistakes, only failures– failure to do what you said you would do.  Time moves in a singular direction.  And you are the totality of the reps, steps, words and moments that led to this instant.  Each one matters, each one counts.  Every moment of your existence requires some degree of “motivation”, in the sense that you have to find reason, or justification, for putting forth the energy to do something.  The alternative is to do nothing.  “Life is a process of self-generated, self-sustaining action” (Ayn Rand).  And to that end, we find the answer to the question posed by my friend from my column several months back (Determination)– “I totally understand the need/desire to constantly seek the best within yourself, but doesn’t everyone need a break sometime?”  And the answer to that, quite literally, is: sure, when you’re dead– when time has left you in its wake, and continued to move forward without you.

…but…

But what about beginnings?  We all love fresh beginnings.  Everybody loves a good do-over.  And while there are technically no such things as do-overs, in another sense, life is an infinite series of do-overs.  Time is nothing but a sequence of moments repeating ad infinitum, a never-ending reel of opportunities to try your hand again at something, to practice and perfect and get better at and excel at some activity.  Because we have the capacity to carve time into chunks and segments inside our minds, we can view a series of missed opportunities as a singular period, or practice run, necessary in order to finally achieve our goal.

The easiest way to track the story of our lives is by carving it into larger headings, into chapters or epochs.  And each chapter needs a heading, an opening line…

…So we begin our paragraphs, our sentences– our “new periods” of success– with clearly-delineated sentences– –such as, “Today, January 1st, 2011, is the first day of me being successful.  January 1st, 2011, is the first day of the rest of my life. I resolve to finally accomplish my goal”.

A resolution is the grand-daddy of do-overs, the final do-over committing to no more do-overs.  It is commitment to the notion that there are no more dress rehearsals, that every moment matters, and that it’s time to ensure you quit repeating the same mistakes, you quit asking time to wait up, to spare a second, and instead, jump on board the train marching tirelessly towards its destination.

New Year’s Day– and resolutions, in general– are both potentially awesome and frightening.  On the one hand, it’s the biggest “beginning” of the year.  It is the official “Day of the Do-Over”, your public chance to call the last year, or several years, a dress rehearsal, a mere practice prior to this year, this moment in time, when life will truly begin, when you will stop trying to be successful and actually be successful, when you will stop wishing for greatness and actually hold onto greatness.  New Year’s Day gives people that blank page needed, that fresh chapter heading– “And now, we enter this stage”.

But at the same time, it’s just another day, like any other day, filled with moments, like all the other moments of the year.  And each moment and each day is a fresh beginning, a new chapter, a blank page that you have to fill with writing.  Even though we carve it up in our minds for the sake of cognitive clarity, time is not there to be carved or split or manhandled.  It is a juggernaut endlessly striving.  And in this sense, New Year’s Day is just another day; and a resolution is not so simple as declaring, “This is now how it will be”, and watching the events fall into place.  Like taking up a new sport, one cannot “resolve” to be great at it and expect instant success; yet one cannot spend the entire game staring at the playbook.  The timer continues to count down the seconds, and the end of the game is right around the corner.  Keep your feet moving, drive towards the goal, and complete that game, that chapter; then look forward to the next game.  Practice, drill, sweat until you have perfected the skill of being skilled per se, of being efficacious, of living within time, rather than watching it from outside, from the sidelines.

Look, if you had one shot, one opportunity,
To seize everything you ever wanted, in one moment,
Would you capture it, or just let it slip?…
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow,
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime.
(Eminem, “Lose Yourself”)

Every opportunity comes once in a lifetime.  Resolve, this year, to live every moment with that mindset– to live in the moment, rather than outside of it.

Good luck with this newest chapter, “2011”.  May it be the greatest chapter in your story so far.
-David A. Johnston
12-31-10

Think of it like building your ultimate dream house. You would not merely settle for what was “available”. Once you had the property purchased, and the shell or structure of the home placed upon that property, you would then focus on the bigger task at hand– turning that “house” into a “home”. Which would mean what, exactly? It would mean picking your colors and your decorations– your paintings, the music in the background, your lighting. It would mean arranging your furniture in a way that was practical and used the space economically, meeting your needs and hopefully helping you to function at peak efficiency. It would mean replacing the tacky wallpaper with beautiful rich colors, or ripping out the stained carpet in favor of rich hardwood flooring. It would mean making each and every aspect important, and perfect.

I have long been a fan of the stylized movie– Hero, House of Flying Daggers, 300, The Matrix, Sin City. The films show an individual at the helm who leaves nothing to chance. And even if you think these movies are terrible, and thus might not be a fan of the end product, there is no doubting the internal logical consistency of the universe presented by the artist.

But what if we could reverse the process? What if we could take the model of the film, where every aspect is consciously selected, and apply it to our own lives? What if we could make our lives into movies?

I have often said that at the end of the day, I want my life to play like a highlight reel, a series of stories and tales so far-fetched and ridiculous that a stranger, upon hearing them compiled, would refuse to believe they belonged to a single real person. I want to make sure my life is lived not like a naturalistic character study, replete with drawn-out shots focusing on the mundane; but rather, a stylized action movie, with over-the-top romance, melodramatic persona’s, ridiculous series of events that could never happen in the real world…

…the real world… an interesting concept. And by that, of course, we mean “the average world”. We mean the world of not rocking the boat, right?

But what if we took it upon ourselves to rock that boat? To go on strike against that world, and reinvent it? What if we were to treat our lives like a script that had to be narrowed down to 120 pages, and we wanted those 120 pages to have internal consistency, excitement, stories bursting off the page, characters unique and never-before-encountered? What if we had to select the music to go along with particular scenes? What if we had to choose the costumes, and the lighting?

When I sense those moments of importance in my life, I try to step back, to hover above my own body, watch from a third-person perspective, and take it all in, like a scene from a movie. I try to understand the beauty of the situation, even when it’s painful or difficult, and see how it logically flows from the previous scene, and necessitates the next page of the script. I try to take a mental snapshot– not a memory, but an image containing how I feel, what I think, what I heard, what I smelled; I try to hear the music, and the particular phrasing, and how the grammar and word choice rolls off the tongue; I try to make a lighting-fast edit in my head and ask, “Does this make for good copy?; Will this sell tickets to my movie?”

I have to remind myself that I’m the producer, and the star, and the final product is mine to be proud of– or not. I have to remind myself that there is no director of my film besides myself, no one waiting in the wings to yell “Action!” when something needs to get done, and “Cut!” when I get a break. There is no one to coach me on my lines, or my presentation.

There is just me, and my movie– my life. And it can be internally consistent, with a logical beauty and elegance; with hand-selected colors and sounds; with movements echoed by sonic swells; with physical appearances reflecting the internal status of characters. Or it can be a hodge-podge of elements randomly thrown together, with no theme song, no motif, no beginning, middle or end; no moral to be told; no rhyme or reason; a simple product of happenstance, with the protagonist at the end declaring, “How the hell did I get here?”

I vow to make mine the former, with all 120 pages jam-packed with so much ridiculousness that nobody will ever believe it all belonged to one person. Fully stylized, and fully rocking the boat.

-David A. Johnston

“See, I don’t train for reps, I don’t train for time. I train for failure. I like to see my body fail. I like to stay in bed for a whole day because that’s how tired I am from working.” – Ray Lewis – Baltimore Ravens

We have had it hammered into our heads that failure is okay. Over the last decade, the politically-correct thinkers out there, full of nothing but love for their children, have removed “rules” and “points” and “winners” and “losers” and “grades” from sports and schools and just about any activity conceivable, so as to not shatter poor Johnny’s fragile ego.

The first step towards accomplishment is in identifying that success– achieving goals– matters.

And we see now all around us the result of removing said rules, points, winners, losers, grades. We see not one, but generation after generation getting progressively softer, slower, fatter, lazier, whinier, rotting at our cores. We see that the supposed rally to protect self-esteem, by means of removing the necessary cause of self-esteem, has led to a world where there is no concept of “worth”, and no concept of “esteem”. Nothing matters when everything is equal.

The second step towards accomplishment is in identifying that because success matters, failure is not okay. It is to be avoided.

One of my clients this week informed me that her sister, a grade school teacher, now has to allow her students continued chances to re-write their papers for class. If a paper is written and submitted– and is poorly done– the kid can then rewrite it (with the teacher’s comments in mind, of course), and then rewrite it again, and again, and again, until it is perfect. This client of mine joked, “I plan to attend a school board meeting when my daughter begins school, and inform them that my child is not allowed do-overs”. Nothing quite as fantastic as breeding the mentality that you will be allowed an infinite number of chances at mediocrity.

So I began to approach the world with the idea that failure is not okay– that doing “just enough” is not enough. I, too, have approached the high dive. I, too, saw it as a child, and was scared. I, too, was ashamed that I was scared. I was embarrassed. I knew I was weak. So I forced myself to climb it, again and again and again. And belly flop. And it was painful. But being scared and weak was more painful.

The third step towards accomplishment is in identifying that, in order to have continued success, one must have numerous failures first.

There is not a single pro athlete with a perfect record. No basketball player sunk every shot. No running back scored on every down. No bodybuilder took first in every contest. There is no millionaire with a perfect investment record. There is no beautiful overture that was written perfectly the first time.

I trained a client once, a very accomplished 17 year old soccer player, who started crying halfway through a set of dumbbell shoulder presses. I asked her what was wrong. She told me through tears, “I’m used to succeeded at everything, I’m not used to failing at anything, and you make me fail on every set!”

The fourth and final step towards accomplishment is in embracing failure, actually chasing it, reveling in it, on the understanding that it is necessary for success, that it walks with success, that the two are twins holding hands, and meeting with one means you will have to talk to the other.

My soccer player did not understand that failure, in weight training, is success. She had not reached the fourth step.

Ray Lewis mentions training to failure, making his body fail, and loving exhaustion. Some might call this masochism. Others will recognize it merely as the mindset of a champion. Ray Lewis knows that to fail is to succeed, and therefore, he chases that feeling.

To stare failure in the face, to acknowledge fear and own it and walk with it, to embrace pain as a road to pleasure– these are the means to success. Or you can remove the rules, the points, the winners and losers, and see what happens. I, personally, am not optimistic.

When I took my class at the Maryland State two months ago, as overjoyed as I was– as in-love-with-life as I was at that moment– I remember a surreal feeling that I couldn’t then identify or name. It was a feeling of partial emptiness and sadness. It was the feeling that I had won my class, and therefore had “done good enough”. In a way, it was terrible. For the first time, I was told I had gotten there. It felt like I was being given permission to slow down, to not push so hard.

And I thought to myself: how lucky that I did not win the overall, so now I have a reason to continue pushing. How lucky that I was beaten, because now the next two years of my life will be fueled by a demonic fury to be better, to grow stronger, larger, leaner, to propel myself down a path towards continued success. My failure became a step allowing me to ascend to the next level of success.

I will chase failure, and fear, and pain. I will seek out the things that scare me, and stare them down. I will not be satisfied “conquering fears”, but will instead come to love that which scares the hell out of me. And when I encounter the twins of success and failure, I will court them both, equally, as the two halves of life.

-David A. Johnston

Why? Because when your goal is that of a bodybuilder– to get as lean as humanly possible, while retaining as much muscle mass as humanly possible– the body does not need fruit, or Gatorade, or trail mix. The body, in reality, needs very little to achieve that goal and sustain itself.

Being successful as a bodybuilder is about identifying the principle that “need” is relative to “goal”, and that most people multiply their purported “needs” well beyond true necessity. The principle of Occam’s Razor– paring variables down to absolute essentials, that there is elegance in simplicity, and that the easiest answer is most often the right one– applies well within the context of a bodybuilder’s diet.

The principle can be applied, of course, on a larger scale. The concept of “need”, as used by many individuals today, is completely divorced from its actual meaning. We are bombarded with commercials, advertising, billboards, and updates on our electronic devices alerting us to precisely what we need now, at this precise moment, don’t wait, don’t hesitate, GET IT NOW!!! We are told by friends, by family, by coworkers and associates, what we need to do next. The truth is, we don’t really need any of that stuff. In most instances, we want it. Why, precisely? No answer– blank out– because we’re told to– because it’s advertised– because our friend has it– because there is a line around the block outside of the store, and I simply won’t feel content until I’m a part of that culture!

…re-set…

“Need” has been rammed down the throat of every American for quite some time. And it has unfortunately turned us into a society of screaming infants, with virtually no work ethic, no delayed gratification, no attention span, and no concept of what really matters, if anything. Wanting everything, inevitably, turns into wanting nothing, as the over stimulation of the senses becomes numbness, a mind immune to anything and everything.

In the vast majority of cases, “need” is, in fact, a relative term. Relative to what, exactly? To a goal, or purpose. That is to say: one needs something in order to achieve or attain a given value. And that value then allows one to continue setting goals and purposes, in order to achieve more values.

“Take a look at your life today. What are your main priorities? Are you focusing on them? What can you let go of or improve so you can use more of your energy to get you closer to where you want to be?” – From  http://rawgirltoxicworld.wordpress.com

The above is a fancy way of saying: create a value hierarchy.

What is a value hierarchy, you ask? It is a listing, or ranking, of what matters most to you, in order– what are you going to invest the most effort into, down to the least effort, and everything in between.

If you’ve never done this, it’s an interesting experiment. Seriously, take five minutes to grab a pen, list everything that matters to you, and then try to rank it. I want quantification here, people– how much of your daily energy and effort are you willing to devote to each category or item or abstraction? You can’t give equal attention to “my kids” and “my job” and “my health” and “my new car” and “my big screen TV”. What makes the list, and what doesn’t? How many gadgets made the list? Or clothing? Or tangible items in general, for that matter?

In the above clip, bodybuilder Dave Pulcinella was told to “live a little”, and as he notes, “living a little” means different things to different people. To some, it means having a general feeling of happiness and comfort throughout their days, surrounded by peoples and foods and situations that are non-threatening and non-difficult. To others, it might mean temporary discomfort to achieve a larger goal– foregoing the comfortable situations, the comfortable people, the comfort foods. To a few, “living a little” means “living a lot”, or better, “living the most”, or best, “living the most possible”– having a clear-cut notion of what matters and what doesn’t; having a ranking of priorities, and acting each and every day to achieve the things that matter most; dropping the irrelevant, the trivial, and the unimportant; and constantly and consistently imposing a laser-like focus on what is truly important.

Whichever category best describes you, I encourage you to fix your value-list to the fridge, or the mirror, or wherever you will see it every single day. And live a little– or a lot– or, hopefully, the most possible.

-David A. Johnston

It was a cold and windy day in Chicago, November 1989. I was ten years old, and walking out of the Rosemont Horizon with my parents and brother, having just attended the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. As much as I enjoyed the elephants and clowns and motorcycle stunts, the real treat came upon setting foot outside the venue. There on the light-up marquis stood a sign advertising upcoming events. Mixed between monster truck rallies and concerts for old people stood my fate: “November 28th: MÖTLEY CRÜE”.

I don’t remember how I acted on the car ride home. I was probably a terror. All I know is that the next day, I somehow conned my parents into taking me to a ticket scalper and paying an exorbitant amount of money for Mötley Crüe tickets. So began the journey to my first concert, with my father, at the age of ten.

I had been growing my hair for two years and it was already pretty long. I had two earrings in my left ear, and a leather jacket with patches up and down the backside. I knew what was going to happen when I got older: I was going to be a rockstar. I had to be a rockstar. The universe knew no alternative.

As I sat in the front row of the first balcony, I waited for opening act Warrant to finish their set. The lights dimmed. The electricity generated by all of the equipment on stage, combined with the unchained energy of nearly 19,000 fans, created a heavy churning in the air, a thick wall that laid heavily upon my skin. I could feel the imminent explosion on the horizon.

Before Mötley Crüe took the stage, I could see the red lights of their amplifiers. There were over 200 individual Marshall Stack amps on stage– far more than any band would ever need to play a show of this size!

It was complete and total overkill. And that’s exactly why we loved it.

And then, without warning, they burst through a hole in the floor, launching right into “Kickstart My Heart”. There were lasers. There were pyrotechnics. There were explosions, and distortion, and drum sets attached to the ceiling on a rig that rotated to the beat of the music. There was everything.

My father held me by the tail of my jacket, trying to prevent me from tumbling over the railing of the balcony as I screamed and sang along with thousands of fans. My fists pumped in the air, my hair swirled around my head. As the band gave me their music, so I threw my soul back at the stage with every ounce of might I could muster.

Twenty years later, I realized the impact of Mötley Crüe, and Guns N’ Roses, and all of the other bands I loved as an adolescent. There was one overarching theme to the “hair rock” genre: it was unnecessarily big. It was bigger than life. Comically big. And it made no apologizes for the fact.

Everything about this band– and this video– is bigger than life. Giant hair. Costumes. Fireworks. Pyro. People going crazy. Girls going crazy. Sticks twirling and tossing. Amplifiers lining the stage from floor to ceiling. A rotating drum set. Lasers. Not one second of this video has an “everyday” feel to it.

Mötley Crüe was known for their bad behavior, and above all, for doing everything huge. They never went 90%. They were consistently over the top. That was their M.O. And I fell in love.

I fell in love with the concept, the abstraction, that life is supposed to be huge. As a ten year old boy, I lived my life under the impression that fireworks were supposed to go off when you entered the room; that lasers would accompany and punctuate your conversations; that dressing in costume wasn’t reserved for Halloween, but should be a year-round function. I somehow missed the memo that to live like this was “unacceptable”. I missed the classes on “quietude” and “reflection”.

Twenty years later, I am not a rockstar in actuality. But I am in spirit. I hear these songs, and they still send shivers down my spine. I still sing along. Instead of big hair and costumes, I have now opted for big muscles. Instead of lasers and fireworks, I have noisy weights and squat racks and an oversized lunch box. I still expect fireworks to go off when I walk into a room.

The hair, the makeup, the outfits; the guitar solos, the made up stage names; the fireworks, the rigging, the amplifiers; the backup singers, the offstage antics, the stories– all of these things existed at a level beyond “normal”. They were super-normal. They were simply “beyond”.

I still spend a large chunk of my free time searching for music that fulfills this “beyond” category– music that will help inspire me to push beyond my limits, beyond my pain threshold, beyond my exhaustion or fear or whatever else happens to be holding me back at the moment. This music helped carry me beyond my previous best during my contest preparation this year, when calories were gone, sleep was gone, comfort was gone, when all that was left was adrenaline shot into my heart with music. I use that music to punctuate moments in my life, like a scene from a movie, to set the stage, the atmosphere, the emotion, to find that momentary spark inching me up the ladder.

I look for that music that exists at a level beyond normal– at a level beyond.

-David A. Johnston