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By
Phil Stevens |
“Out of Control”
“You cant….”
“You cant…” are the two
most powerful words in the world for us. This rings true for both
negative and positive actions. It’s all that it has taken for
me time and time again to do the opposite and “DO IT.” A
challenge. We are content and happy as long as we aren’t bored,
as long as there is further to go, more hill to climb, places others
or few have been. Parts of us can sit idle but most of our being has
to be striving for a goal, pushing the limits and proving everyone
and ourselves wrong.
Those words are it for us. They are
the on switch, the final straw. I’ve seen it in myself and
in others like me. Those simple words muttered at us by someone
else, or even ourselves, is all it takes to set us in action.
If you didn’t read the first
part of this series (click
here to read that) I gave a rough overlay of being a strong
willed, type A personality. What I call the “addictive, all
or nothing personality” and that we can be both our best friend
and our worst enemy.
In this second installment I am going
to continue to pull from the long learning experience of my own
life. My looking back at myself honestly and viewing the pinnacles
Ive reached, hurdles I've overcome, as well as, and the topic of
this installment, the falls Ive taken. The rock bottoms Ive hit,
and why. What is it that caused the falls. Where are the some of
the seemingly very fine lines we walk between great positive success,
and success at huge personal cost?
ID some of the major ones for you,
and show where, and how, people like us can be at one minute on
top of the mountain due to our abilities, and the next sliding out
of control. Sliding due to again our own ability. Our strong headed
ability to put the blinders on our own mind, emotions, feelings,
and physical well being in order to reach a goal we have set for
ourselves, or to simply prove others wrong, or even just in spite
of others : ).
‘Stress and
Goals, our Ying and Yang”
And often though we live on these
we allow them to get WAY out of balance. We have the ability to
get out of control. Not so much the world around us getting out
of control, as we are excellent at controlling our surroundings.
Even micro managing it with relative ease, but our own selves getting
out of control. We can lose hand of our own selves. Get so focused
on a goal we snowball. Inner stress builds. As a trait we thrive
on stress. We seek it, and it’s the fuel for the fire in our
furnace, but it to can get out of hand. It’s a fine line between
healthy and harmful levels. When we don’t have stress we tend
to put more on our plates, shove more cola in the belly of the stove
to the point of overload. Then Due to our strong will and ability
to make things happen we can continue on. We don’t unload but
we do what ever it takes, and that can cause serious bodily harm,
or even death.
To reach extremes
we go to extreme’s
And largely you MUST. I have said
it and will continue to say it time and time again. I don’t
care what you do if you aim to do something MORE then average your
going to have to do two things accept some negatives, to go to extremes
in anything other things will suffer by Alaskan King crab and all
the finest appetizers and drinks at the same to. To be the best
or even above average at anything you will have to let other things
suffer, and you’ll have to go to extremes to reach extremes.
Where we differ is we go to EXTREMES!!!!!!
and sustain those extremes for LONG periods of time. We use the
American mentality to everything. If a nice big dose of something
is good, then a BOAT load must be friggin awesome. Like training,
Man look that guy broke the world record and he used this training
program for this amount of weeks. If I take that same thing ramp
it up a bit, tack on this and this and this and then also take that
deload week out, extend it from 8 weeks to 16 and end at even higher
volumes and intensities. MAN How friggin yoked will I be then SWEET!!!!!!!!!!!!
DO IT, No quit, suck it up and get it DONE.
Same thing in reverse if a lot of
something is Bad then, then to hell with that crap, NONE of its
good. I’m never touching a carb again, they are PURE evil.
If a person loads up on highly processed carbs for long periods
of time as a basis of there diet Look, they are signing the death
warrant. That means they are EVIL, and I shall never touch one again
be it sugar, or apple or potato, NONE.
“False empowerment,
or hatred”
Oh Boy but we do it. In our quest
to reach goals and sites we have we tendency to slip off the ball
and actually lose control when were not careful. We end up giving
power to inanimate objects that don’t deserve it power. In
our quest to control more of our surroundings we label them and
give them the ability to be hated, rise emotion, and hell even fear.
You see it all the time people doing this to a carb, a fat, a group
of others with goals opposite of your. It’s a fault that can
be slipped into and you must watch for. Others having cravings and
whine and piss and moan about his or that. We have a tendency to
make those same things a point of evil or disgust. We give them
as much power over us in a negative controlling and limiting way
as those who seem weak to us, but just in a different sense of the
term.
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I think that will
cover it for this installment. All encompassing of the negative
in which we must watch for, maybe not but it surely covers
the largest categories and the one in which I know if you
avoid you’ll be well on your way to new heights without
the self inflicted pains as prior. I hope this strikes some
good dialogue. I feel this can both be good for those with
this personality.
Those who have
experienced many of the same things or those who are at risk
of it. As well informational for those who don’t have
this trait of simply making anything they desire happen, and
possibly showing that they to can learn these skills where
we have to learn to harness them they selectively can adopt
them
Until the next
installment. Go kick those negative traits in the virtual
junk , ID them and make something positive happen.
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About The Author
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Coach Phil Stevens is an accomplished
strength athlete with considerable experience in both powerlifting
and strongman competition. Phil is the 2007 APA World Champion
in the 242-pound class (total). He currently holds the APF
275-pound class raw National bench, squat, deadlift, and total
records. Phil’s marquis lift was his 700-pound raw deadlift,
performed on February 14, 2009 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Phil has been ranked in the
“Top 10” in the deadlift Nationally across all powerlifting
federations, and in addition to his coaching duties at Staley
Training Systems, he also serves as the Arizona State Chair
for the North American Highlander Association, as well as
the founder of Lift For Hope, an annual strength-competition
with proceeds donated to Charity (www.Lift4Hope.org).
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