Limiting Beliefs and the Terror of Joy

So, the journey started and if it had gone according to plan this would be the shortest post ever written. But that never happens. We think we know what we want but there must be a belief, first, but more importantly a desire. If life is comfortable there is no will to being on the change. No hammer hovering our heads to pound us into gravel if we fail. The belief we have is often what we have been brought up to believe. That we are doomed to be unhealthy because it is what our family is like. We are all overweight. If we are too skinny, we are met by our grandmother as we walk into the house with cries of “manga manga” as they shove bread and pasta down our mouths. This works fine when we are 13 and weigh 125 pounds and drinking weight gain powder to put on weight for football because we cannot gain an ounce no matter how hard we try. My post-football practice regimen consisted of two double Whoppers with cheese, a large Coke, and two large orders of fries. And I could not gain weight.

As the years go by the metabolism slows down and those double Whoppers turn into single Whoppers, and the weight you fought so hard to gain now refuses to go away. This is when you remember the family message. The overweight grandmother in Georgia. The grandfather was dead at 64 from a heart attack. Rampant diabetes. Eventually, cancer hits you personally, so you start thinking that here it is, the family curse, so why try? It does not matter, does it? The thyroid is lost, and the weight continues to grow, until one day you wake up and you’re 313 pounds.

But that’s not true, is it?

You did not wake up one day at 313 pounds. It came on gradually. A pound here, a pound there. One month you’re 180, and the next you’re 190. 

And the worst thing is that now you are someone you both expected and feared your whole life. You are the worst version of yourself. All the inner fears, the inner demons, the self-confidence, or lack thereof, are magnified 100 times over. So, you crawl further inside yourself. You seek out others who help you self-destruct, ignore those that want to help, and become involved with people you feel you deserve, no matter how bad they are for you.

There is history here.

No matter the situation growing up, in personal and professional situations, I always felt like the oddball, the outlier. I rarely felt comfortable in most situations. Even though I am confident in my own knowledge, my experiences, and my ability to share that with others, I am easily made to feel inadequate. Then, after a situation happens that I should have spoken up, I spend the rest of my week wondering why I didn’t.

Even going back to school days when I knew an answer, I would never raise my hand. I would have to be called on, and even then, I was never confident enough to say what I thought or felt the right answer was. I never feel like I own the moment. Even when I am the boss.

There was always a belief that the Sword of Damocles was hanging over my head, or right behind joy there was someone with a knife ready to cut my throat. When I met someone, I would not fully trust it. I would convince myself that I was not the “first choice” and that eventually someone else would come along and they would be gone. 

I have tried many things to combat this throughout my life. I have been to therapy. I have gone through self-talk; I have a degree in Psychology, and I minored in Philosophy all in the hopes of finding John. To move me to John 2.0. My fear in meditation is that I will realize nothing here makes sense. A Buddhist will say that if you meditate long enough it will all makes sense but looking into the dark abyss of John and in the end determining that there is nothing there is terrifying. Self-awareness is needed, necessary, and scary as fuck.

And this is all traceable to how I was raised and my environment growing up.

Yes, I understand that at my age these things should have been dealt with, but it’s not as easy as it sounds when put into action. Being sexually abused affects you. It is not something that just goes away. Having a girl in 5th-grade scream “OH GOD NO!!!!” in the middle of class when she is told by your friend that you like her affects you. Having your wife take off on you with a so-called friend while you are at sea serving your country AFFECTS YOU. These are things that take up residence in your psyche and make themselves comfortable, living rent-free for decades, and the only way to evict them is to FACE them and throw their asses out.

But these experiences build walls. High, unscalable walls that even Pink Floyd cannot bust through. You develop limiting beliefs in yourself, your world, and life in general that prevent you from pursuing your goals and living your best life. They put boundaries on you, limiting your behavior, and effectively fencing you off to potential greatness in life, love, health, and well-being. That pretty girl that is smiling at you from across the room? She must be looking at someone else. Promotion at work? I’m not near smart enough to do that job, plus I grew up poor and probably always will be so it’s not worth the effort at this point. 

And yes, they develop as you grow up. These limiting beliefs make you feel that you cannot do or achieve something because there is inherently something wrong with you. That is one mighty wall to get over. I doubt even John Stark could climb that one.

This is a fixed mindset. A collection of beliefs that make us who we are there is not much we can do about it.

That, my friends, is a myth.

What if I'm wrong? I've been deceived all along. What if I'm wrong?

What have I done? Did I waste a life just for fun? What have I done?

What did I do? I did what voices told me to. What did I do?

Where will I go? Will I sink through the fire down below? Where will I go?

Any chance of salvation? Any chance for me?

Alice Cooper, “Salvation”

There is truth to the belief that once you have true meaning behind what you want to do, the energy to accomplish that goal is found, as if by magic. This is seen in Huichol’s “Dance of the Deer”. The Huichol are Native Mexicans, living in the Sierra Madre Occidental range in the Mexican states of Nayarit, Jalisco, Zacatecas, and Durango. The Dance of the Deer ceremony can last long periods of time, all day, and all night, for days upon days. They can be endless endeavors, non-stop dancing with short breaks, using unknown amounts of energy, but they get through it because the exercise has meaning to them (“Fit Soul Fit Body” by Secunda and Allen, pp.93-94).

Learning your goals, and your purpose in both life and training is not the only piece. It is the first piece. The next step is to pay attention to this knowledge and put your short-term goals together to eventually reach this endpoint.  This requires FOCUS and focus can be the hardest thing to find, especially with the way life in this world is today. It is important to find a way to quiet your monkey mind and reflect on the goals you have made. Setting aside time each day to focus on the goal and how you envision it coming to fruition is key to realizing the dream you have.

My original goal was 220. This was because I fell into the false assumption that I would look awful at 180 pounds. That and the thought of losing 100 pounds seemed insurmountable. When you are so heavy for so long you lose sight of what is “normal”, and you fool yourself into believing that there was no way you would look right at your healthy weight. Because it was so far away you couldn’t see it, or you had never been there in the first place. Men 100 pounds overweight thinking, well, if I lost 50, I’d be OK with that.

True. 

You might. 

But your body won’t be, no matter how hard you try to fool yourself. You’re still overweight, just not AS overweight. True change starts with the acknowledgment of the issues that are holding you back. Until you face those fears you will not make one inch of progress. It is NOT about a diet. That is only a piece of it, though admittedly it is the main piece. Regardless of what far too many bloggers and television hosts will tell you, there is no such thing as a healthy overweight person. It is fine to be comfortable in your own skin and be accepting of others regardless of their point in their journey, but to pretend that someone 100-200 pounds overweight is “happy” or “ok” is just an exercise in denial. 

Want to know how we know this?

Ask someone overweight if a magic pill were invented that would make them a healthy weight overnight with no dangerous side effects, would they take it?

I harbor a guess that the answer is greater than 96%

As I said earlier, it is not just about weight, but weight IS the foundation of all health. And it should be the primary focus. But it must be your choice and not something imposed on us by an outside force. Your wife might tell you that you either lose weight or she will leave you, but while that might work for a little while, and you might lose weight, it will not last because it was not your choice.

The foundation is weight, or finding and maintaining of a healthy weight level for you. This is where guidance through a knowledgeable source comes in handy because we, as individuals, don’t have any idea what that is. When I started finding this path, I was asked by my soon-to-be coach what weight I thought I would feel best at. My answer was 220 pounds. At that point I was 281 pounds, flirting with morbidly obese, and could not even envision myself lighter than 220. A 61-pound weight loss was years away in my head, and because I was seeing no success no matter how many programs I tried, I thought even 250 was going to be fine. The only problem with that is 250 pounds, and even 220 pounds, was still firmly in the overweight to obese category. 

We get used to being who we are. We kid ourselves into believing that we are OK and would be fine with just a few pounds off, and this is a problem worldwide but especially in the United States. 

In the United States, it is estimated that 93 million Americans are affected by obesity. Individuals affected by obesity are at a higher risk for impaired mobility and experience a negative social stigma commonly associated with obesity. Socioeconomic status plays a significant role in obesity. Low-income minority populations tend to experience obesity at a higher rate and are more likely to be overweight. In 2000 there were NO states with an overall obesity rate > 25%. In 2012 there were NO states with an obesity rate > 35%.

In 2020 there were 12 states with an obesity rate of over 35%; Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi (the highest with 40.8%), Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia.

“Truth is like poetry.

And most people fucking hate poetry.”

Adam McKay, The Big Short: A Screenplay

Those are the facts, and we can quibble about facts all we want, but the truth is the truth, and I don’t think most of us can argue against any of these things. It is important to note that there seems to be a correlation between high obesity rates and lower income. The reasons for this are clear; bad food is cheaper, and lower-income people tend to be less active (my thought on that is it’s usually because they are the ones doing the more back-breaking labor during the day and have less time for “leisure” once that day is done, but I have no data to support that).

Being affected by excess weight, obesity or severe obesity significantly increases the risk of developing many other diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, osteoarthritis, and much more. Severe obesity is characterized by an individual weighing more than 100 pounds over their ideal body weight or having a body mass index (BMI) of 40 or higher. Behavior, genetics, and environment are all contributing factors to severe obesity. In 2002, 25 percent of individuals affected by severe obesity were being treated for six or more obesity-related conditions. The issue is really what is the ROOT cause of obesity. Are the co-morbidity issues causing the obesity, or is the obesity causing the co-morbidity?

Much like the “5 Why’s” method of root cause discovery, if you don’t weed out the underlying issue, or the ultimate cause, then the issue will never change. Excessive caloric intake is a proximate cause of weight gain, not the ultimate cause. It is dangerous to assume that because two factors are associated that one is the cause of the other. This is much of the problem with the “Calorie In Calorie Out” theoretical framework. It is ridiculously simplistic in design and theory.

Chasing Shadows

While running along a local route a few years ago I caught myself doing something subconsciously that became an analogy for what I was seeking in this endeavor and where I was going wrong. The trail followed a nice 4.2-mile circle through oak-lined streets. At one part it veers off to the left toward a local YMCA and ballparks, which are also nicely lined with trees. The trick is that the trees are on one side of the street, and there are parts that are broken up, so depending on the time of day you are running, the shadows can be anywhere. What I was doing this day was locating the shadiest portions and crossing streets here and there to stay under the shade as much as possible, even though it costs you a little bit in pace to wait for cars or slowing down a bit to spend a little more time under the cool oaks. It makes for an easier run.

At least in your mind.

Runs being what they are, your mind can tend to wander, and I catch myself doing this all the time. I started thinking about “chasing shadows” during this run and then started thinking about how we do this in many aspects of our lives. We chase shadows in our personal lives, trying to find the easiest way to live in order not to feel the uncomfortableness of the “sun” or the “heat”. We try to find the easiest path. We also do it in our work. We don’t go for the hardest job, or the one we really want, because we have bought into the limiting belief that money is more important than liking what you do or enjoying your job …. So, we leave positions that we love to make more money and end up hating every minute of the day.

What’s the lesson? Do we stay uncomfortable in the heat, or seek the easiness of the shadows?

When I lost my job at a cancer center and spent the better part of a year unemployed it was eye-opening to me. I left a position that I loved, and with people I enjoyed working with, to take a job that offered more money and opportunity and KNEW within two weeks that it was a mistake. But I gritted my teeth and did the best job I could, which was essentially unappreciated by most people I worked with and eventually cost me my job because of a childish grudge from a staff member. Normally someone who had done a good job and made huge improvements would be fought for in this situation, but I was terminated for an issue MANY people at this company participated in and had not been terminated over. I am not saying that I did not make the mistake, because I most certainly did, but fairness and equal treatment is a big thing for me. I was singled out and made an example of when others were doing the same thing, and that just doesn’t sit well with me.

I have learned to make decisions that are good for my soul, not for my wallet. Money cannot be the focus of your decision-making, nor can comfort. We cannot grow and change with a degree of discomfort. In fact, I would argue that discomfort is a requirement of change. I was not comfortable being forced to look at my life and admit to the mistakes I had made.  But I also have come to understand that this was a required part of the reawakening I have had in the past year. I had to be honest with myself, and with others, and let the fallout happen with the knowledge that at the end of it all I would be a better person, a better man, a better friend, and a better brother. 

There is nothing wrong with chasing shadows to give yourself a second wind, but eventually, you must get back out in the sun and learn how to survive in it. Surround yourself with those that support you and stand by you and rid yourself of those that do not. The pruning of the tree had begun in my life in 2020, and new growth was already being seen.

But even with clarity of thought and plan, there are always pitfalls, and being relentless once the decision is made to change is the key to success.