Playing to Lose

Imagine a steel beam bridging a 50-foot gap between two buildings.  It’s suspended 100 feet in the air.  You’re standing at one end.  And someone has just offered you $100,000 to run across to the other end without stopping.  Would you do it?

Most people would say no.  Hell, most people wouldn’t even think about it.

But what if you got that exact same offer and the beam was safely down on the ground?  Would you do it, then?  Of course you would.

So what’s the difference?

The difference isn’t just the presence of danger in the first scenario.  It’s what that danger does to your conscious mind.

When you’re on the ground, and danger is minimal or nonexistent, there’s no reason to stop and think about the consequences.  You simply trust your body to do what needs to be done, and your body complies.  And if you’re not abnormally clumsy, you can run across that beam without any trouble at all.  It’s a breeze.

But when you’re 100 feet above the ground and one wrong step could mean serious injury or death, you hesitate.  A lot.  Why?  Because the risk is significantly greater, and this causes your conscious mind to turn into the world’s worst backseat driver.  Imagine trying to drive a car with a passenger that is randomly screaming at possible dangers.  When you were driving alone, you were absolutely fine…but now there’s this person constantly screaming and trying to grab the wheel.  Now your chances of crashing are beginning to ramp up exponentially.

These situations are a metaphor for our lives.  We want to follow our dreams.  We want to start our own businesses.  We want to ask someone out.  But our conscious minds tell us that these are high-risk situations, and it doesn’t matter whether the risk is real or perceived.  Our conscious mind will begin over-thinking and screaming at us, trying to control us and make corrections that don’t need to be made.

So what do we do?

Many of us panic when faced with these situations.  Or hesitate.  Or give up entirely.  But, strangely enough, we never stop to realize that the entire situation is still within our control if we decide to handle it.

Instead of yourself, try imagining a hungry cat on the beam(a much smaller one, of course)100 feet in the air, with a delicious meal at the other end.  Do you think it would hesitate?  Not for a second.  The cat isn’t going to stop and rationalize all the possibilities of what could and couldn’t happen along the path of that beam.  The cat sees only two things:  the goal and the path.  And so should you.

So how do you do it?  Focus on the things that you can control, and try to accept the things that you can’t.  Whether you’re standing on that beam or preparing for a huge presentation, your goal is simple: get to the other side.

Shouldn’t I have some sort of plan first?

Of course you have to prepare.  Understand the steps that you’re going to take.   Take whatever precautions that you can.  But also realize that a plan is really just a list of things that can go wrong.

When you’re facing a moment of truth where important things hang in the balance…your huge presentation, your wedding day, your surgery…there’s never enough time to second-guess or hesitate. All you can do is close your eyes,  take a deep breath, and remember your preparation.  Control what you can.  And accept what you can’t.

So whatever your beam is, stay true to your path.  Forget the height.  Forget the risk.  Forget about getting to the other side altogether.  Just focus on what you can control…and start putting one foot in front of the other.  You’ll be there before you know it.

Thank you for reading, friends!  May you always put one foot in front of another(metaphorically, for those of you who are physically unable to do so)and I’ll see you on the other side…:).

In addition to the physical benefits of Parkour, there are also many psychological and mental benefits that come from pursuing and practicing the art.

Re-Defining Your Life

The very act of training for parkour opens your mind up to a whole new world of possibilities.  Modern society has cut us off from our animal natures and conditioned us to adapt to a life of convenience.  Modern conveniences like cars and elevators rob us of the simplest of human tasks, like walking and climbing.  In achieving technological progress, we have made our lives easier, it’s true, but we have also reduced our ability to grow.  Many of us have forgotten that growth is only achieved through adversity.  Why do you think obesity is higher than it’s ever been?  Our lives are simply too convenient.  The modern human is nothing more than a zoo animal.  We don’t have to hunt.  We don’t have to run.  Hell, most of us don’t have to go more than fifty feet to satisfy any given need.  As a result, we find ourselves stuck inside an invisible cage of our own creation.  Railings and sidewalks tell us where we’re supposed to walk.  Signs tell us where we should and shouldn’t go.  Modern man is defined by the boundaries that he sets for himself.

Pushing Your Limits

Parkour is about breaking free of the limitations that society has set upon you.  It’s about finding your own path…through your environment and through life.  When you were children, you went everywhere.  You climbed everything, you ran everywhere, you explored…and you enjoyed yourselves.  But eventually, people told you that it was wrong.  They told you that you had to stop, because that’s not what people are supposed to do.  In this, parkour is a step away from society…and a step towards yourself.  It’s not about learning something new.  It’s about forgetting what you were taught and embracing life as it was meant to be lived.  It gives you a new appreciation for what’s possible, both in your body and your mind.

Turning Obstacles into Opportunities

When you practice parkour, there are no more obstacles.  Only opportunities.  Every wall that you climb, every jump that you make, is a step towards making yourself something better.  You are the one choosing your path now.  It is no longer being chosen for you.  And the stronger you get, the more confident you get, both in your abilities and yourself.  Over the course of time, barriers are broken…transcended…and forgotten.  You can no longer define yourself by limitations, because the realm of possibility is ever-expanding. And this isn’t purely limited to the physical realm.  Parkour conditions your mind to approach each obstacle, physical or mental, with the confidence that it can eventually be overcome with training.  If you’re not strong enough, you can grow stronger.  If you’re not fast enough, you can become faster.  And if you don’t have an answer, you can eventually figure it out.  Your  mental and physical fortitude grow as one complete entity.

Respecting Your Environment

There’s a common misconception that traceurs are vandals, because we climb man-made structures and use them for our training purposes.  If you were to suggest this to a true traceur, they would get extremely offended.  Parkour ingrains in us a healthy respect for our training grounds.We work TOGETHER with our environment, because our movement is only as steady as the terrain which supports it.  The environments that we train in are considered…for lack of a better word…sacred.  One crack in a wall, one missing brick, could spell disaster for both us and our training regimens.

In fact, many Parkour groups across the globe have begun taking part in a world-wide Leave No Trace program.  The program encourages traceurs to keep their training grounds clean and safe…not only for our own safety, but also as a show of respect to the places in which we train, and the other traceurs who train there.

And that is ultimately what Parkour is about.  Creating a new-found respect for your environment.  Fostering your respect for others.  And, most importantly, strengthening your respect for yourself.

Learning More

If you would like to learn more about Parkour and how you can start practicing it, please visit American Parkour or Parkour Generations for some brilliant beginner tips and training articles.

Thank you for reading…and I hope that Parkour will improve your life sometime in the future.

-T. Johnson

Most people today have heard of Parkour.  The French art of movement has become highly popularized as an extreme sport in recent years, and many of the activity’s top traceurs, or Parkour practitioners, have been featured on popular media outlets, including G4, MTV, and the Discovery Channel.

However, in the aftermath of the growing media frenzy, many people have come to misinterpret the nature of the discipline.  As a Parkour coach, I’ve seen many young adults and children throw themselves into the discipline recklessly, not understanding the physical training and mindset needed to accomplish the more dangerous techniques. And in doing so, not only do they put themselves at risk…but they also miss out on the true value of the movements.

In the first installment of this two-part series, I’ll be discussing the physical benefits of practicing the art.

Getting in Touch With Your Primal Self

Parkour is a primal art.  When you watch an experienced traceur move, you’ll notice a lot of similarity to the movements of monkeys and other primates.  This is no coincidence.  Parkour is derived from an ancient form of human movement that predates upright walking and running.  It forces the practitioner to use every muscle in their body to propel themselves towards their destination.  This makes it one of the purest and most practical forms of exercise.

Why is this important?  Because it allows us to reach a level of human fitness that is unattainable by most people that bodybuild or run long-distance.

Bodybuilders may appear freakishly strong because of how much weight they can throw around.  But if we’re being completely honest, they’re not very fit in the Darwinian sense, because none of that is practical muscle.  Ask a bodybuilder to go rock climbing with you and see how fast they get up that wall.  The odds are pretty good that they won’t be able to keep up with a leaner rock climber with much smaller muscles.  The reason is that their muscles are sculpted for appearance, and not for function.

By the same token, long-distance runners are also, surprisingly, quite unfit.  Of course, they can run for miles at a time.  But if you study the musculature of most elite distance runners, you’ll see that their muscles have shrunk to minimize energy use.  This increases their endurance, but it renders them too weak to be of any real use in an emergency.

Both of these types of athletes are specialists.  They’re very good at doing one thing exceptionally well.  But life is not about doing one thing exceptionally well.  It’s about being able to deal with a variety of situations.  And that’s what parkour prepares you for.

More important to the casual exerciser, parkour has one huge advantage over most types of exercise: it’s fun.  It’s something you can see yourself doing on a regular basis, because the results are immediate and gratifying.  And it’s one of the main reasons I was able to lose 100 pounds over the course of a year.  If I didn’t enjoy it, I wouldn’t continue to do it day in and day out.

Your Sixth Sense: Attuning Your Body to Your Environment

One of the greatest benefits I acquired from Parkour is the development of my sixth sense.  And by “sixth sense,” I’m not referring to any strange New Age powers.  I’m talking about a wonderful thing called proprioception.

In layman’s terms, proprioception is the human ability to sense their body’s position in relation to their environment.

For example, let’s say you’re drinking a glass of water.   Someone starts talking to you and you put your glass down and turn to respond.  Halfway through the conversation, you get thirsty.  So you reach back and pick the glass up without looking at it.  How did you know where the glass was if you couldn’t see it?  That’s proprioception at work.

When you practice parkour regularly, you begin to gain an acute awareness of where things are in relation to your body.  You have to.  You need to know what to vault, where to grab, how far to jump, and when to duck.  Otherwise, you’ll never be able to flow effortlessly through your environment.  Even worse, you’ll end up seriously injuring yourself.

Thanks for reading…please stay tuned for the second installment tomorrow!

Here’s some shocking(or not-so-shocking) news for you: Out of every five Americans that promise themselves they’re going to lose weight, only one person ever really does it.

Guess why the other four fail.  Because they’re determined.

Now, don’t get me wrong, determination is a POWERFUL motivator.  It lights a fire under your ass.  It gets you eager to get out the door and start changing your life.  But if you’re working towards a long-term goal, determination alone won’t get you there.  It’s a great kick-start, but it’s not sustainable in the long run.

So Why Is Determination Ineffective?

Because it places you into a combative mindset.  It establishes that there’s something out there that must be defeated.  Maybe it’s your self-image.  Maybe it’s doubt.  Maybe it’s fear.  But determination makes you think that it must be conquered.  It makes you think that it must be wrestled with.  And that’s the problem with determination.  It makes you think that you must struggle to reach your goals.

When you’re entrenched in this “uphill battle” mindset, you can’t enjoy what you’re doing.  You won’t notice it at first, you’ll find yourself slowing down with every new obstacle.  Even if you tell yourself every day, “I’m excited to work towards my goal today!” your subconscious mind is going to know you’re trying to fool yourself.  And it’s going to protest.  You’ll slowly start losing enthusiasm over time.  Your performance will lag.  And at some point, you’ll stop entirely.

So what will make you achieve your goals in the long run?  Simple.  Love what you do.

If a couple stays married for over 50 years, do you think it’s because they’re determined to make their relationship work? No.  They love each other.  In the presence of love, obstacles are bypassed much more easily than with determination alone.

Maybe you’re thinking this has no application to goals outside of the relationship sphere.  Then I say you’re not thinking creatively enough.

Fall in Love With Your Future

I mentioned in a previous entry that I weighed close to 300 pounds at one point in time.  I made several attempts to lose the weight.  I went on various fad diets, and I was so determined to see them through.  But eventually, the determination waned and I just couldn’t fight the urge to eat anymore.  The weight shot back up three times as fast as I had lost it.

Then I had a revelation.  I was looking at my target weight as a number that I was determined to achieve.  I wasn’t thinking about what I would look like when I lost the weight.  I wasn’t thinking about how I would feel.  I was just thinking about numbers.  Bland, tasteless numbers.  And I don’t know about you, but I’m not the type of person who gets excited over meaningless numbers.

So, instead of being determined, I made a conscious decision to imagine the person I was going to be.  I imagined myself slim and muscular, walking down the street with complete confidence.  I imagined my life improving.  I imagined my world expanding.  And everytime I imagined it, I couldn’t help but think to myself, “Damn, I can’t WAIT to be that guy.”  I had basically fallen in love with my future life.

A year later, I weighed 190 pounds.  And it was every bit as great as I imagined it to be. I’ve maintained this weight for 2 years now.

The Power of Love

When you love what you do, love who you’re with, and love the possibility of what you can become, reaching your goals becomes much less of a struggle.  Even better, you won’t just achieve your goals, you’ll surpass them.

Loving what you do gives your goal an intrinsic emotional value that you can embrace completely, even on a subconscious level.  You’ll start seeing your obstacles as opportunities for growth.  Instead of resisting change, your subconscious mind will actually start ENCOURAGING you.  Instead of finding excuses to stop, it will dispel your doubts for you.  It’s a driving force that you simply can’t get from pure determination alone.

So put your determination aside for a little while…stop…and ask yourself why you’re really pursuing your goals.  Why do you want to lose weight?  Why do you want to make $100,000 a year?  What will your life be like when you achieve those goals?

Now craft a vision of your life as you want to lead it.  Begin as you mean to go on.  And then return to that well every so often to refill your flask of enthusiasm.  It will be the most fulfilling daydreaming session you ever had, I assure you.

Thanks very much for reading…and may you always be able to pursue the things you love most.

-T. Johnson

We’ve all hit the wall at some point in our lives.  Sometimes we get writer’s block.  Sometimes we get lazy.  Sometimes we lose hope. Sometimes we get intimidated by the sheer size of our goals.   Whatever form it takes, it definitely puts the brakes on whatever we were going to do that day.  So how can we fight back against this creeping menace and get our momentum back?  Easy.  Here are some of the tactics I use.

1. Create an action plan.

Yes, it may seem like more work in the short run.  But a single hour of planning at the start can save you hours of work down the road.  It lets you know where to start.  It lets you know when you’re finished.  And best of all, it lets you know how to get from Point A to Point Z.  It allows you to start from the ground up, instead of wasting time trying to build from the top down.

What’s more, when you have a definite action plan and you can see all the steps laid out before you, your big project won’t be so intimidating anymore.  You’ll know exactly what to do, you’ll know exactly what you’ll need, and you’ll know exactly how to proceed.

2. Start off slow and finish strong.

When you’re trying to reach a goal, most people will try to start out strong and keep that energy up until the job is done.  And that’s fine when you’re working on something small, but do you think that will really work for those big goals?  If you say yes to that, let me ask you this:  Is it possible to run an entire marathon at a full sprint?  Even if you have the world’s greatest cardio, I’ll give you 5 miles at best…but you’re eventually going to burn out and slow down to a walk.  Your body just can’t handle that much strain.  And neither can your mind.  Your work will be great and energetic at first, but eventually, as your energy levels wane, you’ll get lazy.  You’ll cut corners.  And you’ll finish your work on a low note.

So don’t think  like a sprinter.  Think like a marathoner.  Pace yourself.

I’m giving you permission to dawdle at the beginning of your project.  Organize your thoughts.  Consider your action plan.  Figure out how you’re going to attack it.  And THEN begin.  When you do, you’ll find that your work will be consistently good from start to finish.  And you might even have the extra energy to add the finishing touches to your good project, and make it into a great one.

3. Take it one stone at a time.

Many people labor under the faulty assumption that procrastination is the result of not having any ideas.  The truth is, procrastination usually comes from having TOO MANY ideas.  Too many things to do.  Too many things to think about.  A veritable mountain of things.  And when you take a step back, moving that mountain can seem overwhelming.  Impossible, even.  But it’s not.  Nothing is impossible.

Do you know how to move a mountain?  One stone at a time.  Forget about moving the entire thing.  Just think about moving the first stone.  And then the next stone.  And when you finally move that last stone, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find that the mountain has moved itself.

So when you start to get overwhelmed at the sheer size of your goals,  just calm down.  Take a deep breath.  And take it one stone at a time.

4. Let yourself out for recess.

Stop working.  Read a book.  Play a game of Bejeweled.  Watch some TV.  Step away from your work for a little while and do something else with yourself.  I know it seems a little counter-intuitive, telling you that you can stop unproductivity by stepping away from your work.  But there’s a method to my madness.

Professional athletes don’t exercise every day.  Do you know why?  Because your muscles grow faster when you give your best effort.  And you give your best effort when your muscles are rested.  If you work out every single day, your muscles will never grow.  In fact, they may actually grow weaker from overuse.

Now what does that have to do with non-physical goals?  Quite a bit.  Anytime you work on a project, you are exercising your mind.  But if your mind isn’t rested…if it isn’t fresh…you won’t be able to give your full effort.  You’ll burn out.  Why do you think schoolchildren get recess every day?

So take a break.  Lord knows you deserve it.

5.  Get your heart into it.

Go for a walk.  Or a run.  Or a swim.  And take a nice, long shower afterwards.  There I go again with the time-wasting, right?  Not really.  We’ve already established that working on a long project can be taxing on the brain.  But did you realize that mental fitness is also linked to physical fitness?  A perfect example of this is former chess champion Bobby Fischer.  A large part of Fischer’s pre-tournament routine was to swim laps underwater.  Do you know why?  To strengthen his cardiovascular system and increase the flow of blood to his brain.

Championship chess matches often go on for seven or eight hours at a time.  Fischer knew that the player who held the bigger advantage later in the match was the player who had more blood flowing to his brain.  That player would be less lethargic and could think more clearly because he had more mental endurance.  Fischer wanted to be that player.  So should you.

Thanks very much for reading, and I hope that these tips will improve your work habits as they have improved mine.  Have a productive day!

-T. Johnson

You heard me.  Or read me, as the case may be…

If You Don’t Play to Lose, You’re Never Going to Win.

Is it counter-intuitive?  Absolutely.  But it’s not incorrect.

You see, the world is filled with people that wish they could do better.  People that wish they could be the best at something.  But they rarely do.  Do you know what stops them from achieving their goals?  The fear of losing.  Losing the game.  Losing face.  Losing money.  Losing friends.  Losing hope.

The thought of losing is a nasty, pervasive little thing.  It eats away at our self-confidence.  It kills our motivation.  It keeps us afraid.

And if you can’t come to terms with it, you’re going to be living your life in fear, whether you realize it or not.  Have you done any of these things in your life?

• Avoided getting into a new hobby or activity, for fear of embarrassment
• Avoided demanding a raise because you were afraid of your boss
• Shied away from approaching that hot guy or girl you’ve always had your eye on
• Stopped pursuing your real passions and ended up in a career you didn’t want

You could miss out on money.  You could miss out on love.  Worst of all, you could miss out on life.  In other words, if you spend your whole life worrying about loss, you’re going to end up losing even bigger down the road, anyway.  It sucks, I know.  But there it is.

So how do we combat it?  Losing is an inevitable part of life, isn’t it?  Of course.  Being confronted with loss is unavoidable.  But it’s not hopeless.

The World’s Most Successful Loser

If you want to get around the fear of losing, you need to start broadening your perspective:  You need to realize that sometimes you have to lose some battles to win the war.

Let me turn your attention to one of the biggest failures of all time: Thomas Alva Edison.  Would you believe me if I told you that Thomas Edison was one of the biggest losers of all time?  It’s true.  It took him over 10,000 attempts to figure out how to create the light bulb.  10,000 failures.  10,000 losses.

But Thomas Edison isn’t remembered as “the guy who failed 10,000 times.”  He’s remembered as one of the greatest inventors the world has ever known.

Do you know what he said when he was asked why he didn’t just give up?

“I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.”

THAT is the power of broadening your perspective.  When you look at the big picture, you stop seeing your losses as evil things.  And when you stop doing that, they’ll start guiding you down the path to greatness.

Many times, it’s just a matter of taking a step back and looking at the big picture.  A lot of folks make the mistake of thinking(and wrongly, at that) that great people are born to greatness.  But that’s almost never the case.  Greatness comes through hard work, perseverance, and keeping your eyes on the prize.

Losing Your Way to Two 3-Peat Championships

Here’s a little question for you:  Which NBA player holds the record for most shots missed in a season?  You’d probably guess that it was somebody you never heard of.  Surely someone holding that record must be one of the worst basketball players of all time, right?

Wrong.

It’s Michael Jordan.  That’s right.  THE Michael Jordan.  He’s missed more shots than anyone else in history.  He’s choked on thousands – THOUSANDS! – of shots.  But nobody remembers that.  Because small losses wither and are forgotten once greatness is achieved.

Here’s a direct quote from the man himself:

I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

Starting to see a pattern here?  No fear.  Just acceptance.  MJ accepted long before that loss is a part of life.  He knew he made mistakes.  But it didn’t affect his future performance.  That’s what made him a champion.  It’s what makes him a legend.

The Big Lesson

Losing is inevitable.  Even the greatest of us have bad days.  But losses don’t matter.  What matters is your attitude.

There are a few simple facts about the human condition that we have to accept.  Loss will always be there.  Fear will always be there.  Your heroes are afraid, too, but they deal with it.  And so must you.  It’s how we grow.  It’s how we learn.  And it’s how we become the best that we can be.

Thank you for reading.  I wish you many happy failures in the future.

-T.Johnson

“Many of life’s failures are men who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

-Thomas Edison