This Week's Superset

• Brain - A Note on Resiliency & Perspective

• Body - Portion Everything You Eat

• Book - Overcoming a Reading Rut + Running To the Edge

  • Breakthrough of the Week - Homemade Greek Yogurt S …

Brain - A Note on Resiliency & Perspective

I was listening to The Nick Bare Podcast this week (Episode 80 - 5 Traits You Can Master So You Can Go All-In), and was caught by a powerful couple of minutes of the podcast where he discussed some things that have happened in his life that he now feels more resilient because of.

He opens the section discussing the difference between hardship and hard things, which I believe to be an important distinction. Hardship is unexpected or undesired things we have to go through, where hard things are difficult things we voluntarily take on. Both can provide an increase in our overall resiliency, but as time passes by, we typically look back on those moments of “hardship” as the things we grew the most from.

Nick gets vulnerable in discussing his hardships, and his perspective now on how he changed for the better because of them. He discusses experiencing an eating disorder when he was 14 - 15 - but closes it with his newfound perspective around food as a fuel for his body. He discusses getting held back in Army Ranger school multiple times - but closes it with his newfound perspective that he has the ability to keep going when he fails. He discusses losing his mother to cancer - but closes it with his new perspective around life, how short it truly is, the impression he wants to leave as a parent on his kids, and the ability to keep going through devastating trauma.

It got me thinking about some things in my life that I now can look back on as events that made me more resilient. We often try to block the dark times of our life out so we don’t have to relive them. Deep down though, while we might forget the instance, we never forget the lessons. We continue to become the person we are because of the lessons we’ve learned through those hardships. They are all a foundational part of our life story.

What are some things you have been through that you can reflect on as events that ultimately made you more resilient, or provided useful perspective? Are there things that have happened to you that you haven’t sat down to provide closure on? I believe it to be a useful exercise to go through your life’s events and try to find a meaningful positive outcome for all the hardships you have faced. Your perspective today was formed by it.

“View that hardship as an opportunity to become more resilient.”

Body - Portion Everything You Eat

You go into the pantry to find a snack and browse the shelves. You see all of the bland items you picked out on your last grocery store run with your diet and meal prepping in mind. You’ve eaten your eggs and English muffins for breakfast, your chicken and rice for lunch, but dinner is a couple hours away and your hungry. Lucky for you, your significant other bought a bag of Lays chips that are staring you down in the pantry like a single girl who just bought you a shot from across the bar.

What can a few chips hurt? You think. So you grab the bag with good intentions to just satisfy a quick salt craving, open the bag, and dive in. One handful turns into 10, and the next thing you know you just doubled the 800 calories you had eaten in the day in a matter of 5 minutes.

This story is me, and it is probably you. Us human’s simply can’t rely on self control at all times. We have to identify our blind spots, and put in systems to help combat those. One of the simplest forms of this in dieting is putting a stake in the ground that you never eat anything from a container or that you haven’t portioned out yourself.

It’s much easier to stop eating the chips after you have had the 2 ounces you put in a zip-lock baggie in the first place. It’s much harder to stop when the bag is still ¾ of the way full. Freestyling your spread of peanut butter on a sandwich makes for a tasty snack, but instead of the 2 TBSP serving on the label, you have covered your slice and quadrupled the calories you intended.

It’s an easy habit to instill, and one that will ensure you stay on track and don’t need to rely on your willpower. If it has a serving size on the label, measure it out. Simple habits repeated over time = results.

Book - Overcoming a Reading Rut + Running To the Edge

The last week and half was a good reminder that no growth curve in life is a linear line. I have been consistently reading now for about 8 years. Only over the last 4 - 5 did I reach the point where I was taking down 2,3,4 books a month. Through all 8 of those years, one thing has remained consistent that I know about myself - 2 - 3 times a year, I will go through a reading rut.

When I began reading and I reached this stale point, it would stretch on for a month, maybe even longer. Completely debilitating of forward progress. I have learned to take these periods for what they are now though, and get back on the wagon quickly. I now know that when I reach these ruts where I don’t want to read, that it is 1) an expected occurrence, and 2) that I need to find a “slump buster” book to get reinvigorated. Take a break from whatever I am currently reading, and find something new that I will want to speed through.

Alongside this reading slump, I have started to get the never-ending itch to get back into training for a race of some sort too. These two periods often come hand-in-hand. This time around, I have picked up “Running To The Edge: A Band of Misfits and the Guru Who Unlocked the Secrets of Speed.” The book is about renowned running Coach Bob Larsen, who is largely credited with getting America back on the map on the national distance running stage. The book covers his life and how he came to the ideals he taught countless runners - ideas he developed through personal experience and experimentation.

I will do a recap on this one in a coming issue, but this passage below is an early one I have made note of. And on top of this, just a reminder that your reading journey is like any other journey you embark on. Know you will fall short some times - just get back on the wagon as soon as you can.

“We relish those fights against time and decay and death, even if we know the yare ultimately unwinnable. With each step, each stressed breath, every elevation in the heart rate that restarts the process of improved oxygen circulation and capillary production and metabolite efficiency, each extra second we save on a clock that measures how we are, or are not, letting time slip away, we can better fool ourselves into thinking that aging and expiration are optional. Or that they are delayed for another day.”