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By Phil Stevens
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Rock Frigging
Bottom!!
Enough already! It was time
for a change.
I had succeeded in going full
circle to polar opposites. In the blink of an eye I took myself
from a miserable fat slob, to on top of the world in mind
and body, to withered away in body, mind, and spirit. Equally
or even more so miserable as I was in my initial starting
state.
At this point I had no further
down to go. I had ran myself to the ground. Life was not
being lived, but existed in. My health was shot. I questioned
any and everything I did, or worse, of was pondering doing.
The only thing I was good at was making myself Hurt. Inflicting
self pain and deprivation.
Much the same as the confidence
built from my initial transformation and positive/athletic
and bleed into the rest of my life. The hurt, the pain, the
doubt and deprivation bleed into all aspects of my life from
simple stupid dietary and nutritional choices.
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Its like a bad drug, you just get
sucked in and soon it takes on all your being. Your only worth and
mission in life, the only thing you know how to do is make yourself
feel further pain expecting the pain to bring you joy. it’s
a sad disgusting state and a VERY HARD one to kick.
Ironically, during much of this I
was preaching to others what I wouldn’t allow myself. Due to
my constant reading, research, and questioning of fitness and nutrition
I had gained a position of helping and aiding other people in their
mission to reach their fitness goals in an intelligent manner. Helping
them accept themselves. Make wise choice. Confident choices. Pick
their goals. Live an athletic lifestyle.
HA! It’s likely the best thing
that’s happened to me. Helping and learning from those I helped.
Listening to what I knew and was telling others but not implementing
in my own life. It took awhile but it was finally a smack in the
face.
To admit and see yourself in those
you help who have problems is a tough but powerful thing to do.
No regrets. Only live, learn, and
move the hell on. I learned, and continue to learn my lessons. I’ve
hit highs, and I’ve hit rock bottom, and I’ve learned
from each and every step and that’s what we got to do. There
are two things we can take from any situation; memories and knowledge.
That’s what it took to get me out of the hole, and to stay
out of that’s hole for GOOD.
How?
ACTION
Above all take home the importance
that action has in reaching any goal in life, be it physical, mental,
or professional. Not a damn thing is going to happen unless you
Act.
That’s what the whole of my first
transformation was. I was blind. I had No clue what he hell I was
doing but I did it. What happened? It worked. I made killer progress.
I kept it simple, basic, and effective. I did what I had to do and
did it every day. I learned as I went and fed off of the progress
and through out what didn’t.
Why did I falter? Reaction took
over for action. I was no longer leading myself where I wanted
to be, I was reacting to where I thought I should be. I was over
thinking. I was in paralysis from over analysis. I was spending
all my time questioning and reacting to things I felt, read, or
contemplated; instead of taking a stand and acting.
Reading, learning, thinking, and reacting
are good, but they at very least need come shortly preceding to
action, or even follow action. How does one learn in life? Largely
from ones actions. From ones mistakes. From falling down, picking
yourself up, and saying “Damn” I aint going to do that
again.” Your actions in life follow reactions from lessons
learned in life.
Read and Learn.
Take every chance and opportunity
to make yourself more knowledgeable. But, if you ever start to reach
a point of saturation, as I did, where all the incoming message
are starting to cloud and slow your actions. Shut it off. No more
reading or learning. Its time to just act. You have more then enough
to shift through. Its time for nothing but action. Take a stand
or you’ll be stuck in a spiral of constant questioning and
wheel spinning.
If a tennis player reacts to a serve
it's too late, they lost the point. If they continue to think, they've
lost the match. They’ve done their thinking prior. They get
on the court and use those lessons and act.
Fun and Confidence.
These come in second just due to the
fact you cant have either truly if you're in a constant state of
reaction. Other then that they are top dog and the truly beautiful
thing is they breed one another. Meaning the minute you are confident
or have real fun its all that much easier to have more of it. Take
every chance you have to have fun. If something is Fun, Do it again.
Build on that. Build on that and confidence will follow and a life
of fun and confidence is a beautiful thing. Anything is then possible.
In the same turn the opposite is true
and almost more so. If something SUCKS,
truly in not quality times STOP IT. Don’t do it again. It does
the same thing and has the same power. It sucks you in. The more
you live in a state of misery, deprivation and depression the worse
it will get.
Sadly, for some reason people seem
to repeat this much more the former. We have some odd attraction
to pain. Exercisers, they jump on a treadmill or a machine and
say, man that really sucked. That hurt. That sucked. But, if I keep
doing it some day its not going to suck.
What the hell are we thinking??
If I keep doing something that really,
really sucks. Something I hate. I bet I can get to a point where
its tolerable. It wont suck so much. It wont be enjoyable, but it
will no longer suck. Man when I get there. That’ll be the day.
Then guess what? I can search for something else that really sucks,
and try and make it not suck so bad.
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Get off the
suck mobile.
Have fun and don’t feel
bad about it. It should be fun. Life’s not supposed to
suck. Were not supposed to go through life facing things we
hate. Find what you love and do it and be happy about it.
If you like jogging, god help us, by all means run like the
wind my brother. You’ll excel at it for the simple fact
you like what your doing and your confident in doing it.
That’s it.
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Stop
the deprivation. Stop the struggle. Stop kicking you own ass, and
start kicking some ass.
Become an athlete. We all have the
ability, and it can be applied to any goal. Being an athlete is
a mind set. Its something we choose to be, not something we earn.
Awards and accomplishments are what you get for first being an athlete,
not the other way around.
About The Author
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Phil, while attaining both his
Bachelors and Masters degrees in studio art found another
passion, that of training and nutrition. A constant student,
his real-world under-the-barbell and behind-the-fork approach
has led to many an opportunity, experience, and change in
his life as well as those he has worked.
Phil currently, aside from his
varied work with Team Staley, is a working and showing artist
(http://www.philstevens.com).
His current personal fitness goals are to become a competitive
force as middleweight strongman competitor, while building
upon his power lifting experience in which he has seen as
high as a top ten national ranking; with a two year goal of
obtaining an elite ranking as a 242 or 275lb weight class
RAW power lifter.
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