Goalodicy
In 1996, a team of goal-driven climbers continued to the peak of Everest against the wishes of the meteorologists at Basecamp. The weather was simply too dangerous. But the goal of reaching the top was greater than the journey and experience of climbing, so they carried on. The next day, they were dead.
Psychologists, call this “goalodicy”
Passion, as Ryan Holiday says, in this sense is just ego. Pure and plain destructive ego. It’s self-absorption at the expense of reality.
Banks rarely lend money to people following their passions. They believe, and rightly so, that a passion driven entrepreneur is much more likely to lose the money than make something worthwhile with it. The dispassionate, yet smart, business person who is serving a market with a problem is almost always the better option.
This is a great metaphor for overexercise in the gym.
“The biggest mistake people make in the gym is overexercise” — Nassim Taleb
There’s a part of my workout routine where I have to use the weights section. My least favourite part of the gym. This cauldron of testosterone filled with beefed up steroids junkies, trying with all of their might to lift the heaviest weights possible.
And I’m thinking — come on, look at yourself pal. If you knew how little the other meatheads cared about you, I’m sure you’d relax a little.
But then I remember that we all get a little self-conscious in the gym. And that’s what this competition is. It’s insecurity, manifesting in testosterone. I remember how often I feel like that, so now I feel sorry for them. The passion to reach the goal, or goalodocicy, forces people to lose sight of what matters most — so, amongst the internal battle of inferiority they push and push and push.
Kayleigh and I are in Tbilisi, Georgia. It’s not easy to access a gym so we’re working out in the park and I feel a similar insecurity. If you haven’t been to Tbilisi, the locals are, to put it nicely, a sedentary folk.
So while the locals sit and stare at the two of us doing star jumps and squat crunches, I feel my anxiety levels rising. “What are they looking at?”, “what’s so interesting about this?”
On day one, I barely cope. I’m thinking about the privacy of our rented apartment. Indicative of a type of seclusion I’ve become a little too accustomed to while travelling.
But on day two something interesting happens. Suddenly, I’m not so bothered about the staring. Day three, is again, even easier.
After four days of exposure to public staring I’m revelling in the park routine. My mind shifts from embarrassment, to noticing how much more healthy outdoor exercise is, both physically and mentally.
And then I forget that anyone is looking. So I workout, for me. Which reminds me of the gym meatheads. If they’re truly doing it for themselves, would they push themselves to the limit? I’m not sure they would.
A 2011 trial by the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry, concluded that outdoor exercise improves mental and physical wellbeing over indoor exercise.
The study found that most trials showed an improvement in mental well-being: compared with exercising indoors, exercising in natural environments was associated with greater feelings of revitalisation, increased energy and positive engagement, together with decreases in tension, confusion, anger and depression. Participants also reported greater enjoyment and satisfaction with outdoor activity and stated that they were more likely to repeat the activity at a later date.
So exercising outside, instead of the gym, sounds like the best option.
To be honest, I find the gym odd. A large square-ish room filled with equipment designed to replicate many exercises we can perform without them, often outdoors. I mean, for hundreds of thousands of years we built strength and stamina outside — pulling carts, lifting rocks, building houses. And then, for the last hundred years, or so, we’ve moved all of this shit inside and made it artificial.
We drive to the gym to spend 30 mins on a running machine. Doesn’t that just seem, well, totally fucking insane to you?
Travelling the world forces you to innovate. Richard Meadows, off of The Deep Dish, ditched weight training and took up Calisthenics while travelling. A decision that helped him drop 20kg
In the gym the goal is too often aestethics — but exercising outside feels mentally healthier. It’s literally like a mental health exercise. I’m out there working on my fitness and my mental health is improving, too.
When 11 time World Surfing Champion, Kelly Slater, was on the Joe Rogan podcast he mentioned that his ethos to training was to work less intensely than anyone else.
What?!
Yep, and his reason is pretty solid, too.
Kelly believes that a moderate intensity of exercise over an entire life will prolong his career. At 48 and skill competing at the highest level, do we have any reason not to listen?
Maybe people who commit to a life of moderate exercise pose the possibility of being able to exercise well into their 80s. Those pushing too hard risk serious injury in midlife — thus risking a sedentary heyday and a shorter life.
Summary
Alain de Botton said that “perhaps those of us who chase partner or become CEO are, in fact, the unwell ones”.
The people I know who take part in ultra-endurance races are business or career driven people. Heuristically, this makes sense. Especially in a world that applauds chasing goals and making it to the top.
But we may be missing something.
My take on that is that, often, the people who do Ironman or insane endurance races are seeking a high octane escape from their hectic lives. Are they too, in fact, the unwell ones?
Of course they’ll all now say that’s untrue. I’d do it anyway. But would they? And is there any way of knowing? Perhaps this is how they’re wired.
As always, this advice is autobiographical and your mileage may vary, but I have a hunch that the illness that drives them to claw away to the top of their profession is the drive that pushes them to climb the tallest mountains. And, against the consensus, I don’t think that’s entirely healthy — physically, and, more importantly, mentally.
