We live in a world where it’s easy to focus on others, whether it be their successes or failures, far easier than reflecting on ourselves. So the power of influence has literally become a profession in time, on social media to promote everything from fad diets and religion to appropriated woke-ness. So many of the things we see on our screens including this hopefully might inspire someone to take that next moment and initiate a positive change in their life or feel part of a greater community that relates! So many others will only further instill that culture of comparison and feelings of isolation.
So how do we make sure what we are engaging with and taking in is serving our best self? It can be a challenge especially in a fitness context when it seems that everyone should have the best interest of others and authentic growth in mind. There’s a plethora of fads including diets and workouts that have caught on and their popularity has grown exponentially! Then on the other hand you have certified professionals who instead of giving factual feedback, feel like they are the judge and jury that is entitled to give the final damning verdict. I’ve seen many friends including myself struggle with nutrition, coaching methodologies, mindsets regarding training and the balance with rest. Some of us are doing our best to find that healthy selfishness in what truly works for us. I’ve seen individuals experience incredible joy once they found a workout or a method of eating that improved their quality of life only to be attacked directly or inadvertently by one of these professionals that doesn’t believe in the validity of the method.
It is not our place ever to pass judgement on something we haven’t ourselves experienced or diligently researched and tested. So why if something improves the health of an individual do the skeptics feel the need to attack? Because you are no longer listening to their channel!
FOOD
When I started I had little idea of how to fuel whether for a training session or on race day. I was lucky enough to be surrounded by a community of helpful people with different experiences that shared theirs. They didn’t offer this information (most of them*) to serve themselves or promote their channel of thinking, they offered it in an authentic nature hoping that I could benefit in my own experience. I have since experimented with different methods and as my own body has changed been open to sharing my experiences and trying new things. Again what works for me may not work for you, and vice versa. Also don’t be afraid to try something new if what you’re currently doing doesn’t work. Be diligent and be wary of even what may appear to be “expert” advice, if it’s not first hand then it’s likely driven by a personal not professional opinion.
MUSIC
When I started running longer distances, I would stress about the right playlist and if I had enough music to motivate me. As I was also teaching spin, music played a huge part in helping me motivate others. Music is such a powerful thing beyond the lyrics and into the beat. It can also be a very effective distraction. The first 50k I ran I had prepared a playlist with 8 hours of music ranging from hard banging beats to rockers to flowing house tunes that would hopefully motivate me and distract me from the daunting distance ahead. The irony was that I forgot to download the playlist and streaming in the park was spotty at best with cell service, so that meant two songs in and I was without my musical crutch. This was the hottest day and most challenging race I had ever attempted to run in, so my first thought was a panicked “How the fuck am I going to spend this whole day almost alone and in silence?”.
Luckily I was able to suck it up and find some pure joy in running. This was also one of the first races where I made friends on the course that I still have today. That wouldn’t have necessarily been possible with earbuds jammed in my head blasting distraction for 7 hours. So inherently music isn’t a bad channel, but it can be a crutch we rely on. And after that race I realized listening to that playlist on the roadtrip back home, the songs I picked were exactly that noise and distraction not motivation. I have also learned that so many podcasts have that effect on me even as I’m casually listening at work. Think of a scenario that challenges or frustrates you either on a run or at work, does it help when you feed your ears with more toxic noise? Whether it’s a whiny political pundit we somewhat agree with or the mindless pop song that is as shallow as a urine filled backyard kids pool, this is not allowing our minds to decompress, tune in or grown when we clog our own channel.
READING
Another channel of input I’ve struggled with up until making a mindful choice last year is what I was reading. So much of our world is in the moment when it comes to text and not in a presence form. Twitter, Facebook and instant messaging seems to have taken over. Books, letters and any other kind of long-form writing has fallen by the wayside. I was travelling a lot and starting to make an effort to not just sink into the Netflix and travel lull when I was away from home. School had somewhat tainted my joy for reading also, having to digest case studies that were really just shining examples of bad business by people that held higher education than myself from the institutions I was learning from. So I made a choice to start reading things that challenged and inspired me, both fiction and non-fiction. Stories of others experiences started to help me relate to the worlds challenges and feel like I was gaining knowledge again joyfully without an arbitrary endgame. I initially tried downloading books digitally out of convenience, but that was another easy distraction to jump down the wormhole of notifications on whatever device. The special engagement of a hardbound book has helped me fall in love with the process again, along with being able to pull it again on the shelf to revisit what I need or draws me in.
So ask yourself: what am I reading? How is it serving me? I also enjoy random culture commentary and social media posts, but why do we devote so much time to these channels that don’t serve us in a positive way. We have been conditioned it seems to think of 2 hours or more a day on a smartphone as productive as long as we’re reading or creating content. A practice I’ve started enacting in my own life to challenge this norm is to try and spend 30 minutes reading for every 30 minutes I spend on social media. It’s an incredibly telling experiment so far and has helped my focus already in two weeks of practice. My channels seem so much more clear and less time spent in the idle cycle.
TV
This is probably the channel of content that has evolved the most over the last decade if not also 5 years. We live in an ever more instant gratification centered culture of television where the DVR has developed into streaming full seasons of shows for hours on end. Netflix has monopolized cultural phrasing and it’s a whole new keeping up with the Jones’s except the Jones’s aren’t hypothetical rich neighbors with trendy material good, but instead they are mindlessly crushing full seasons of network television in single sittings. After training for an Ironman last year and realizing that what I used to distract myself on 5 hour trainer rides was some people’s main form of entertainment in the evening.
I grew up in a household where network television wasn’t a focus and we didn’t often eat in front of the television. But now with a computer in our pocket with the ability to stream all day long, it’s a simple task. Now this isn’t inherently bad and I’m not trying to start an argument judging your binge watching habits. What I am saying is that all too often we are filling our heads with cheap one-liners and hours of mind-numbing content without check. It’s seldom and probably rare that anyone is watching 4 hours of documentaries, but more power to you. So why are we allowing ourselves to fill this channel and feed it so often with things that serve no value to our lives?
Now to be clear I have a deep love for the experience of food and music in my life and am not advocating or looking to change that. What I believe in and am making an attempt in my own life to do is to restore value and genuine appreciation for these things and the healing or empowering role they can play. Even as I am staring at a screen writing this and you may be staring at a screen reading it, we’ve shared a spark of inspiration to seek more. It’s that value that we place in the channels we connect to that feeds our energy. It can be a true gamechanger, if we allow ourselves to tune in to what serves us best. So to borrow from an old Timothy Leary quote often misinterpreted as call to drug use (Turn on, Tune in, Drop out), let’s Turn on our brains and intuition again, Tune in to the world and positive channels around us, and Drop out of the mindless and shallow pattern of instant gratification or toxic whining. Check you channels and how they are impacting your mood, your mind and what you want most out of life!
Ad Astra Per Aspera