More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Joe De Sena
In my mind, you just commit to something and then get it done, no matter what.
In a Spartan Race we always confront competitors with mud puddles and swamps, things you only run through out of necessity. These obstacles help condition them for “the mud” of everyday life, the stuff that drags us down, or at least tries to.
Physiologically, what you’re doing is resetting your body’s set point for stress. Our fight-or-flight mechanism is supposed to kick in when we are running from a lion to save our lives, not when our brussels sprouts are slightly undercooked, and not when we are worried that our house isn’t as big as that of a former classmate who we just reconnected with on Facebook. The easiest way to convince your body that sitting in traffic is not worthy of a stress-induced freakout is by showing your body what real stress feels like, in the controlled setting of your daily workout.
The Stoics of ancient Greece believed that the greatest obstacle was not death, not pain, not suffering, but cowardice. By training themselves to accept what they could not change and to be courageous in front of any obstacle, they eliminated their fear of death. Tibetan monks identified the lack of control over the mind as the greatest obstacle. So the monks spend days making sand mandala paintings, and when they’re done, they sweep away their work with a broom. It’s not about the destination; it’s about the journey and the process that gives them the opportunity to practice awareness, focus,
...more
All not a big deal anymore, because you’ve built obstacle immunity.
I would complain about things that I wanted or that weren’t “perfect” in my life. Truth be told, I was a spoiled brat.
In retrospect, this downward financial spiral was the best thing that could have happened to me, because it totally recalibrated my frame of reference. It made me appreciate many of the things I was used to and was bored with earlier in life. I was happy with much less, so anything above that baseline meant much more.
We are training, teaching, and being hard on them to make them appreciate what they have and to become better human beings.
I have approached almost everything in my life this way by getting “ahead” of the project at hand, whether it’s doing my homework in advance or training for a race.
when you sign up for something, you’re forced to train for it. Just like in a business: you’re forced to work. Just like having a kid: you’re forced to take care of it. All of a sudden, you become accountable.
thought. At those moments, everything else that I thought was important in life, all the things I had stressed over for so many years, vanished. My determination to push my body to the edge became a parallel effort to understand what drives folks like me.
Believe it or not, you can make it eight days beyond the moment when you think, “I can’t take another step.”
when your mind cannot only play tricks on you but also compel you to quit or will you forward.
Our Everest-like highs in life are fleeting, if we are lucky enough to achieve them at all. They are a time for reverence and humility, not fist pumps and chest bumps.
Swedish adventurer Göran Kropp. In October 1995, he left Stockholm, Sweden, on a bicycle and rode it to the base of Mount Everest, arriving there in April 1996. He climbed Everest, reaching the summit with no oxygen mask and no help from Sherpas. He descended the mountain and eventually pedaled back to Sweden.
Today we think of doing an Ironman as a phenomenal accomplishment: 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride, and 26-mile run. Or a marathon: people train six months to run one, and when they cross the finish line, it’s the coolest thing they’ve ever done. Well, Lewis and Clark did that pretty much every day for twenty-eight months.
It all depends on your frame of reference.
They were too busy trying to stay alive to mope around.
Yet today, depression is rampant in our society, including among the well-to-do. All this material wealth hasn’t made them happy.
MEN WANTED FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY. SMALL WAGES, BITTER COLD, LONG MONTHS OF COMPLETE DARKNESS, CONSTANT DANGER, SAFE RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOUR AND RECOGNITION IN CASE OF SUCCESS. ERNEST SHACKLETON
workplace. Think about what you need to accomplish each day, make a list, and get it done. Just because five o’clock is getting close doesn’t mean you should give up and delay something until tomorrow. Push through until the end, check that item off your list, and start with a clean slate in the morning.
Then there are those with modest talent who nonetheless work on their skills and hone their talent through daily vigorous practice, over a long period of time, and become extremely successful as a result.
“Grit entails working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress. The gritty individual approaches achievement as a marathon; his or her advantage is stamina.”
You can go farther by actively attacking those things that you least want to do. To use a gym analogy, if you hate squats more than any other exercise, you will enter the gym and head straight to the squat rack, almost embracing the discomfort.
My wife thinks I am nuts, but I will stretch or exercise in public places while I have time to kill. She gets embarrassed, for example, if I am doing burpees in an airport. But being healthy should never be embarrassing.
We assume things will keep unfolding as we expect, that we’ll eat another meal, live another day, and grab another paycheck, with nothing out of the ordinary derailing our steady progress. That is, until something derails it.
We sit, we watch, and eventually we get cancer or some heart condition and die, an anonymous statistic.
Deep inside each human being is a spirit that hungers for movement and for growth. A live and burgeoning ball of energy, the spirit naturally moves, expands, gyrates—dances, even—purely by virtue of its desire for freedom. It craves beauty over entertainment, meaning over triviality, and knowledge over sensation. American society devotes few harbors to the trade of truth. Too often we sacrifice the pursuit of knowledge, distracted instead by sparkling material things.
“Life should not be a journey to the grave,” said Hunter S. Thompson, “with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, ‘Wow! What a ride!’” Don’t take this the wrong way. It doesn’t mean to abuse yourself; it means to use up your time wisely—explore, create, and get what you want to get done in life done.
Preparing for the unexpected is easy. You just need to do the unexpected.
Compare the satisfaction of eating a banana after Thanksgiving dinner to eating a banana after a weeklong fast. When not eating, we gradually grow accustomed to being hungry; we recalibrate our frame of reference.
Let’s say his hundred-dollar steak is cooked medium instead of medium rare, or one of the brussels sprouts was slightly undercooked. Well, the chef ruined his evening. This guy has become used to such luxurious cuisine that he can’t tolerate anything less.
Happiness = What I Have Now – What I Had Before
sitting in quiet stillness for an hour every morning, people can recalibrate their brains. The internal chatter they’ve grown accustomed to hearing in their minds seems noisy in comparison to their meditation time.
Epictetus, the great Stoic, defined wealth not as having numerous and extravagant possessions, but as having few wants.
The key to true happiness, therefore, is regularly recalibrating your frame of reference. It makes life simpler, healthier, and more enjoyable.
It helps cells repair themselves, and it quite literally heals the effects of stress through the release of something called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF. Researchers have found, not surprisingly, that when students exercise regularly, their stress levels drop. Upset? Stressed? Mad? Run. Still feel that way? Run faster. You’ve got nothing to lose but weight and stress. Regular
“Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles.”
Just like the Spartans, I’m training my body to work through pain and discomfort. Only by placing ourselves in a state of disequilibrium can we grow stronger and tougher.
In fact, if you never want to get sick again in your life, do thirty burpees a day.
high-intensity interval training. HIIT,
found that sprinting as fast as you can for thirty seconds sets off a hormone blast that lasts for two hours after the sprint.
“Paleolithic man had to walk five to ten miles an average day just to be able to eat.” You probably won’t be devoured by a wild animal because you were unfit to escape, but you’ll be much likelier to die later from cancer, heart disease, or type 2 diabetes. The only real difference is that your death will be long and painful rather than short and painful!
The Spartan diet is mostly plant-based, including an abundance of vegetables and fruits. It’s moderate in grains and animal food products. It eliminates processed foods, added sugars, and trans fats. Our meals are prepared from fresh foods. They don’t come in a box or a wrapper.
“The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.”
Spartans would dine as groups of roughly fifteen in settings akin to the modern-day military mess hall. The communal nature of the meal ensured that no one starved and no one ate more than they needed. This eliminated the temptation to consume excess in private, the
I often train on little or no food, too. I have had better athletic performances on raw fruits, vegetables, and nuts than any other diet, and I know many endurance racers who would agree. I
During an extended workout, I might indulge in coconut water, but that’s about it; otherwise, I push through pain and discomfort. You want to give your body a break as often as you can from digesting and processing food, and you want to force your body to tap into fat storage.
but most of us have never experienced true hunger.
humans can actually live thirty to forty-five days without food if properly hydrated.
