I was at lunch yesterday when a colleague asked me how I lost the weight. I think the initial shock of losing the weight has subsided – it’s been almost 9 months now – but it’s now the consistency. It’s not that it’s off. It’s that it’s stayed off. And some days, if I do say so myself I actually am getting leaner – though I have entered the world of body-recomposition, which is a new way I get to torture myself.
He was curious though. Not in the way that people are where they think it’s this trick that they hope they can get from me to jumpstart themselves – I’ve learned to say walk more – but actually the mechanics of it. Not what, but how.
I wrote a whole blog previously about calories and the science of it. That matters. You need to educate yourself before you lose weight. You need to learn if you want to do something, but that’s not what this is about.
I told him it was a series of little changes. That if I were to tell myself what I do now when I first started to work on my health and fitness I would have quit right then and there. It snowballed into something bigger. Greater than I could have ever imagined.
And that’s the rub because I still feel less than in my weaker moments. I still feel like I’m not great. The pressure still mounts. Daily, hourly, sometimes it can flip in a moment of seconds. You look left in the mirror and smile, catch your right side and grimace.
There’s deeper stuff at play there. Things that date back to childhood and food and weight and hating the concept of organized sports on a Saturday morning when N64 was waiting for me in my basement that I don’t need to go down in this moment.
The reality is to be great, you first have to be good. Not just good. You actually have to be real good, consistently. Then you can be great, in spurts. Then maybe 50% really good and 50% great. Until more often than not you are great.
Greatness is not a switch. It’s a series of routines that you improve upon day by day until you don’t even notice that you are great but you are. It’s the feeling that you are still challenged every day, not because you aren’t progressing but because you are making it harder. You stopped eating dessert? Great cut cream and sugar from your Dunkin. You don’t eat pizza? Great measure your pasta to an actual serving size.
It’s a combo of masochism mixed with the true desire to be the best version of that thing you can be. This isn’t just food. This is music, art, writing, work, friendship. It’s anything and everything that you can sink your time into and find meaning from while we are here.
But do you know before you are really good, you are just good. And before that you are okay. Fine. Adequate. Serviceable. Beginner. Novice. Bad. Really bad. Really, really bad. Really, really, really bad. And before all of that you are nothing.
I’ve been nothing yearning to be great. That sums up my whole twenties. Waiting for opportunity to come while not trying to challenge myself the world I was interested in pursuing. If only I had the chance. If I just had the time. Whatever.
This isn’t a post about getting on the horse and taking it on. This isn’t supposed to motivate. This isn’t to say you can take over the world.
This is a post to say strive to be bad. Work hard to be bad. Because you’ll be better than really bad.
Only once you aren’t bad anymore can you actually know if you like something anyways. You don’t know if you like something if you barely understand it. I have dreamt entire lives around things I have never even tried. That’s not romantic. That’s cowardice.
Bravery is failing. It’s cherishing the failure. Because the only way you are going to get great at something is to make good really hard that you will fail. You will double you pasta portion because honestly how can’t you! You will get the Dunkin with cream and sugar because that’s the point of Dunkies damnit! You will mess up. Slip. Every step of the way if you are doing it right.
And then you will try again. And get more consistent. And overcome the seemingly impossible. Only to start again. Finding a new impossible task. That you be bad at. But that you when you were bad, when you were nothing could have never even fathomed – like eating hearts of palm pasta instead. Willingly.
So here’s to sucking. The building blocks of greatness.
The Beacon Beats 