Physical Intelligence - Day 39
CityVP Manjit
Experiencing a sort of groundhog day type focus where the logging from last year looks eerily the same as the logging this year. That lack of discernible difference represents a learning gap and just like last year, the only reason I contemplate physical fitness is due to the daily protocol of logging the 90 days and whether it is start small or achieve a manic sweat, the net change is not significant - the same attitudes persist and worse last night I regressed to staying up to 3am.
Is the word sabotage appropriate to describe this - that what we engage has larger issues attached to them? This is what Debi Silver believes and her TEDx Talk is actually compelling in how she articulates this relationship. Sabotage is a more appropriate word than procrastination because my best workouts have occurred with motivation to read a compelling book, but there are only a handful of compelling books, or compelling events but these too are bit pieces.
If procrastination emanates from deferring action, sabotage emanates from a more nefarious habit which is learned helplessness. Debi Silver does not confront learned helplessness, she ends her talk like an advertisement does - first describe the pain and then the pleasure or reward. With learned helplessness we look for quick fixes and instant solutions, we buy into panaceas and short-term thinking. To confront learned helplessness we need to confront that which we don't have to do and also what we may also hate to do.
The net result of this sabotage is longer-term dissatisfaction, a dissatisfaction which we learn to accept and finding stop gap solutions for, which ultimately form the ingredients that cook the cake of learned helplessness. We know we are at that point because in the talk that snake oil food or fitness equipment sellers provide, we are ready to listen to superficial advice, and even dangerous advice - a danger that will one day may even breed long-term chronic illness
It is also easier to relate to what we don't like until we don't notice that "don't like" begins to filter into other areas and this is a part of that sabotage or vicious cycle. There is value in hearing what others "don't like", even a fitness instructor who created his own personal brand but then shoots off a 16 minute video where he riffs and rants about his fitness industry. There is a reality in his rant which is not him falling into learned helplessness, he is taking a lot of stuff that he needs to literally get off his muscle-strong chest :
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