SIX CORE IDEAS
⚫️ The Real World - Engaging with reality differently for a more authentic and meaningful experience of the world.
⚫️ Green Face Meals - The food we eat can be a ritual binding us to the broader processes at work in the real world.
⚫️ Start with the Body - Physical health leads to a deeper, more authentic connection with reality
⚫️ For Everyone Forever - Why the mundane choices you make each day matter to the human race at large.
⚫️ The Enemy is You - There are lots of things in your way and most of them are yourself.
⚫️ A Network of Elites - Some people actively choose to make things better and these people should work together.
SIX CORE IDEAS - Introduction
Read the transcript
On the homepage at GymnasiOn.net I talk about Routines, Diet, Exercise, Goals, and how you can use these tools to live a life of Health and Fitness.
This stuff is really important and sits at the foundation that everyone should be addressing when pursuing a healthy life.
But - honestly - this is just the socially acceptable "shop window" for a much larger thing that I want to inspire you into.
Something that's hidden and deep and complicated.
But I hope to explain myself here (at least a little bit) so you can see why I care about this stuff so much and maybe get you to care about it too.
If we delve into what it really means to be fit and healthy - when all the definitions start coming together - it starts to get kind of vague. But that's not necessarily a bad thing!
It's like this ...
When you look at an object you can only see one side of it at a time (maybe two if you have a mirror!)
You can never see every side of an object all at once. But you know it's all there because you can look around the object and experience it from all the different sides at different times. Also an object might be used in lots of different ways, or fit into lots of different environments, or take different forms depending on who views it, so the object isn't just all these sides but also all these situations. And by holding each of these facets of the object in mind at once you can start to get a sense of what it really is and what it's for.
By fitting these together, we can identify a single form that ties all the sides of the object together. But you can only see or describe one aspect of the object at a time, you can never fully grasp what the object is in its entirety.
Every object, therefore, has a kind of hidden form that can only be really understood after getting a real, multi-dimensional experience of it.
No object is one exact thing or one situation or one definite image.
This is why Health is difficult to define.
There's a form to it that you can only really learn through experiencing these different aspects.
Health is obviously about being in great physical shape.
So of course it’s going to look like all the normal things we associate with it when you look at the definite examples; press ups, squats, todo lists, meal plans, routines, diet, exercise, goals, etc.
But it's not JUST about being in great physical shape.
It's much more than that.
Health is also about knowing how to achieve what we truly want out of life, knowing the right way to go and the right things to value, completing the long journey and finding the the path to an ultimate point where there is nowhere left to go.
It's not a fixed thing we can define in any conventional way. But you know it when you see it and you know it when you don't. It's a vibe. We experience it.
Fitness on the other hand has a pretty concrete definition.
I define Fitness as "Appropriate Action".
Action which is relevant and suitable to the starting point and the goal - in this case the goal of Health.
So "Fitness" isn't something you pursue for its own sake. It's constrained by the fitted-ness of the the actions in relation to the goal. Fitness is defined relative to context. It isn’t an abstract thing that is independent of the conditions under which is arises. Fitness is about how actions interact with their niche.
So I want to invite you to explore with me what it truly means to act in a way that is appropriate to the niche goal of reaching this indescribable, multifaceted thing we call Health.
We start with the body, where we have the most immediate influence.
We use routines, diet, and exercise to reach defined goals
But then by going through the process together with you, I hope to go further and pursue a more excellent version of healthy living that extends out for everyone forever.
I’m building this slowly, piece by piece. But distributed across these various materials and practices and concepts, I will be encouraging you to engage with a unifying thread of understanding that I want you to pick up on and follow.
So I'm just going to start with 6 core ideas which i will expand on in a series of published posts.
⚫️ The Real World
⚫️ Green Face Meals
⚫️ Start with the Body
⚫️ For Everyone Forever
⚫️ The Enemy is You
⚫️ A Network of Elites
This series will act as a kind of manifesto or an orientation for what Gymnasion.net is all about.
There's always more to be said and it’s always going to be a work in progress. But this is my way of giving you a flavour of what we are progressing towards here so that you have enough to go on if you want to join with me on the same journey.
So why "Gymnasion"? What does that mean?
Nowadays a gym is where people go to do some resistance and cardio training and participate in sports and leisure activities. But the origins of the modern gymnasium are rooted in the the schools of ancient Greece.
The word 'gymnos' means 'naked' and this type of school was called a Gymnasion because the attendees of these schools would train naked in the mediterranean heat.
But these schools weren't just places of physical training.
The philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle all taught in a Gymnasion. The training and research that was done in these places was far reaching and included study in all aspects of a good life. This was where people learnt how to exist in a society in a way that was mindful and virtuous.
While we no longer train in the nude these days, I still believe it is important to have an honest and unashamed approach to our self development.
Exposing ourselves to difficult work and hard truths is the first step to a better life. This is especially true when it comes to routines, diet, exercise, and realistic body goals.
But getting in great physical shape is only the very beginning. Beyond this surface level there is a much grander project and we ought to be intentional about how the training we do in the gym translates into benefits that proliferate into our lives and then further still into society at large.
Read the rest of this series of six core ideas and join me in exploring of how the simple, practical, tried-and-tested fitness advice I follow reveals something deeper.
Each idea shows a new and different side of what it means to be healthy, and by considering each facet, we can start to approach an understanding of what we really mean when we talk about Health and maybe even get a bit healthier along the way!
⚫️ The Real World - Engaging with reality differently for a more authentic and meaningful experience of the world.
READ THE TRANSCRIPT
Let me tell you a story ...
After a long journey I found myself walking up to the entrance of a dark cave. As I stood in the mouth of the cave I felt a mixture of excitement and apprehension. This was the cave where I began my journey and now I was returning, I was eager to reconnect with the others I'd left behind.
As I made my way deeper into the cave, step by step, I could hear the familiar sounds of a fire crackling and a quiet murmuring coming from the deepest part of the cave.
Eventually, I saw my old friends but they looked different to me now. They hadn't changed but I was seeing things about them that I hadn't noticed before. As I walked up to them, they all suddenly glared at me with suspicion.
"What do you want?" one of them growled.
"I've just come to tell you about my journey," I said and smiled to ease the tension. "It's been a long time since I was here. I wanted to tell you about what's happening outside the cave."
The group exchanged wary glances before one of them spoke up. "We don't care about what's outside the cave," he said. "We're happy here."
"But there's so much more out there," I said, pointing towards the mouth of the cave. "There's light and colour and beauty. You don't have to be stuck here in the darkness."
But the group just looked at me like I was crazy. "Here is just fine thanks. We're safe and we already have everything we need."
I tried to explain. "You don't realise what you're missing. You have to come and see. It's overwhelming at first but once you spend some time out there, you'll understand."
I was as convincing as I could be but I couldn't fully describe it in any way they would understand because they had never left the cave. No matter what I said, they refused to listen. Eventually, they became angry and defensive, and before I knew it, they were attacking me.
"Leave us alone!" they shouted. "We don't care! Go away!" One of them pushed me back and I stumbled as I tried to defend myself.
It was no use. Frustrated and disappointed, I left the cave with my head hanging low.
I don't think it's difficult to argue that the world we live in is NOT The Real World.
If you’re consuming this content on a website, If you are surrounded by machines and right angles, if you buy your food from a supermarket, then you don't live in The Real World. You live in a world that has been constructed (for better and for worse) by other human beings.
And as modern life continues to develop, we find ourselves surrounded and protected by technology, products, and media that buffer our experience of reality. Our perception is mediated by the features of a global civilisation that runs at industrial scale, and is so complex and distributed as to be almost entirely opaque.
But hidden behind all of this, The Real World still exists.
And what's difficult is being motivated enough to actually push apart all of these opaque layers to see through and experience it.
If you haven't yet properly taken the time to register the existence of The Real World, it might be a good idea to stop for a second and just give it some thought.
Now, you might come to the conclusion that this cushioned, caged world we live in today is a product of oppressive systems or deceivers that push self-serving ideologies. That might lead you into a state of feeling powerless and alienated and abused. These types of conclusions can be dangerous.
So I'm not going to spend time convincing you that you've been trapped. Because you've not been trapped.
Instead, I'm going to make the case for a new way of being that keeps you in contact with the The Real World as you enjoy the benefits of technology, media, industry, protection, and the things that have been built in good faith by other human beings just like you.
I want to invite you to spend some time away from the place where it is safe and familiar, and move out to where might be a bit overwhelming and a long journey away from where you are comfortable.
But it's worth it.
Reality is less like a series of objects and more like a series of processes, each with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Every one of these processes works within larger processes that are shaped in a similar way.
You might have heard this interesting fact before: Every 5 to 10 years the human body changes over its material so the atoms that make you now aren't all the same atoms that made you when you when you were a child. But you still exist from then to now as a continuous process that gathers, arranges, and exports material, according to a specific plan that's encoded in your DNA.
This process that has your name - otherwise known as you - can either work well or work badly inside the processes that surround it.
So The Real World is a complex web of these interconnected processes that sit inside each other and exchange material to create the world that we see. Instead of merely understanding the objects as they present themselves, an understanding of the processes will give us a greater understanding of The Real World. Reality is dynamic and constantly changing, but it is also composed of structures that remain the same.
The laws of physics, for example, remain constant throughout all the many reactions between the material of the universe.
But we're not just physical beings.
There are hidden parts of our lives that sit above, below, and behind what we can measure with instruments. We have thoughts, goals, identities, different emotions, and different personalities. And these interact just as much as our material bodies.
To stay alive, we depend on the idea that there is something to live for. There's meaning, there's hope, there's direction. This is the only reality that you can reasonably accept if you plan on staying alive. Every day we rely on the fact that there is a beginning, a middle, and end to what we do. And The Real World expresses this by showing up as a process.
A process that is deep and full of light, colour, and beauty because it governs the lives of real people like you and me.
By joining in with this process as it has been shown to us by many people before us, we can come together in a way that is healthy because we are working well with each other, within ourselves and with Reality.
So what does this mean practically?
It means doing things that have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The problem with that is it's hard to do these things.
And because it's hard, our modern lives are overrun by technologies that remove the burden of striving, so we don't have to suffer the hard things.
If you want a result, there's often a button somewhere you can press and in a few moments it's there. But this is not how things work in The Real World.
The Real World is like growing a plant.
You dig the soil, you plant the seed, you water it and keep the weeds and pests away. But while you are putting all that effort in, you're always working with forces that are outside of your control.
You can't convince the seed to germinate, or dictate when the sun will shine, and you can't make the plant grow from seedling to sapling to shrub in an instant. You have to wait for it to become what it will become. But that doesn't mean you do nothing.
In The Real World, your plant won't grow how you want it to grow unless you do the work. Even though that's hard.
Have you ever tried to raise a child?
When dealing with a real infant human being, you might have all kinds of ideas about how you want things to be but you will quickly be confronted with the need for acceptance, resourcefulness, tolerance, bravery, grace ... the list goes on.
It’s a slow, steady process with incremental changes as the child grows, and you learn along the way, changing even your expectations and aspirations as you go.
Similarly, when getting your body into great shape, you have to go through the process to get your body fit for life.
You could be the wealthiest person on Earth but you can’t just pay your body to be healthy.
So these are all examples of ways we can actually start to get back in touch with Reality and through that process, learn the virtues that help us navigate the world as it really is and build a life that has meaning, hope, and direction.
Instead of waiting for a machine or establishment that was built by someone else to immediately serve everything to us ready-made, we can build things together with nearby materials, a bit of teamwork, and some honest effort.
The Real World is a mysterious and difficult place. It can be heartbreaking when you find that things don't always happen exactly as you desired or with immediate effect.
But we can choose to accept and embrace The Real World by simply working towards something better and allowing that process to reveal what the world is really like.
This understanding of The Real World is one of the six core ideas that drive what I do at Gymnasion.net. This is the first part of a series expanding on each of the six core ideas.
The next part of this series is titled "Green Face Meals". With this idea I will explore The Real World in a bit more depth by talking about the food we eat.
⚫️ Green Face Meals - The food we eat can be a ritual binding us to the broader processes at work in the Real World.
READ THE TRANSCRIPT
Here’s a quick recap of "The Real World" ...
Rather than a collection of static objects, reality is a moving process that gathers, arranges, and exports material, forming stable structures that seem static, but are actually dynamic and interconnected.
We can fit our lives and actions to static ideas and technologies that may or may not last…
or - more appropriately- we can fit our lives and actions to the hidden eternal process that generates the reality we live in.
The Real World doesn’t have a button you can press to instantly get whatever you want ready-made.
The Real World is like growing a plant, raising a child, or getting your body in shape.
It requires patience, attention, effort, and the ability to let things happen the way they happen.
But there is still a lot you can learn to make it much easier to understand exactly what is happening.
The first big lesson we can learn comes from the food we eat to stay healthy.
When I first started personal training, I bought a book called “Ignite the fire: the secrets to building a successful personal training career” by Jonathan Goodman. It contained some great advice on how to interview well for gym jobs, how to develop client relationships, how to coach exercises effectively, and things like that, which was very helpful.
I still recommend the book for new personal trainers. But there was little nugget of advice buried in the text that I have taken and run with.
In a paragraph talking about how to reward clients for little wins, he wrote about how he would give clients a little green sticker on a chart every time they ate according to a “green face” diet:
“If they’re following the “green face” diet you can give them a green sticker; every 10 stickers, they fill out a certificate and get a series of better prizes …. everything they eat should be a “green,” or a fruit or vegetable, or should have once had a “face” (lean protein). If clients were sticking to the plan, they were on the green face diet.”
Here’s how I talk about Green Face meals:
“For as many meals as you can, eat something green, and something with a face…
* Something green means a vegetable like broccoli, cabbage, lettuce… but also carrots, and sweetcorn. They count as something green too!
* Something with a face means meat and any animal protein really so eggs count as having a face!
This is about eating Meat and Vegetables.”
There are people out there who recommend eating JUST vegetables for maximum health and there are people out there who recommend eating JUST meat for the exact same reason!
I believe in a middle way between these two extremes and encourage people to eat the same way we have been eating for hundreds (if not millions) of years:
Plants and animals, cooked and prepared yourself.
Even if you’re not cooking everything from scratch, before eating your Green Face meal, think about the plant as it was growing in the ground or the animals as they were moving around with the muscles you are about to eat.
Take a moment to be grateful for that.
Give thanks for the texture and the taste.
Give thanks for the nutrients and the calories.
Give thanks for your body and how it can use that food to do the things it does.
If you can, grow your own food, even if its just some chillis or herbs on your windowsill.
This way you can get a real sense of where that food has come from and what it really takes to transform mere dirt into something that is alive.
The modern world doesn’t make it easy to remember the connection between our lives and the life of the organisms we eat, each life literally feeding into and reinforcing the other.
But these things used to be obvious.
In the past, human beings were “hunter-gatherers”
* Sometimes we would use weapons and stalk after animals. Hunting is therefore related to focussing and grasping, collapsing all possibilities of where an animal could be into a definite kill.
* Sometimes we would use containers and search for plants. Gathering is therefore related to exploration and potential, being open to all possibilities and waiting to see which plants are ripe and good to harvest.
Because a human being is neither fully carnivorous like a lion, nor fully herbivorous like a cow, but OMNIVOROUS, our perception and physicality is universally attuned and capable of experiencing both of these sides of reality.
The Real World is driven forwards in a dynamic process from beginning to middle to end by this motor which is constantly flipping from openness, possibility and potential to focus, definition and actuality.
We need both sides to keep our own forwards motion in life. The perpetual dance between the things you know and the things you don’t know, the defined and the not-yet-defined, the seemingly static and the seemingly chaotic.
Like your heart beating in your chest and your lungs inhaling and exhaling breath, this process operates in a perpetual cycle of contraction and expansion that gives all things form and life.
Every action, every choice, every moment is a part of this grand choreography where all Being is Becoming.
Eating Green Face Meals reflects this universal reality.
It’s not just about nourishing the body; it's a reflection of this deep, hidden truth. Beyond consuming food; it’s engaging in a ritual that joins in with the mechanism of creation and transformation in The Real World.
The animal reflects our ability to focus, to chase, to achieve, and to create form.
The plant reflects our capacity for patience, observation, to receive, and to create space.
Through this lens, every meal becomes a microcosm of the universe.
Eating Green Face Meals is one of the six core ideas that drive what I do at Gymnasion.net. This is the second part of a series expanding on each of the six core ideas.
The next part of this series is titled "Start with the Body". With this idea I will explore why diet and exercise is the best, safest, and easiest way to learn how to truly understand ourselves, others, and the world.
Rather than a collection of static objects, reality is a moving process that gathers, arranges, and exports material, forming stable structures that seem static, but are actually dynamic and interconnected.
We can fit our lives and actions to static ideas and technologies that may or may not last…
or - more appropriately- we can fit our lives and actions to the hidden eternal process that generates the reality we live in.
The Real World doesn’t have a button you can press to instantly get whatever you want ready-made.
The Real World is like growing a plant, raising a child, or getting your body in shape.
It requires patience, attention, effort, and the ability to let things happen the way they happen.
But there is still a lot you can learn to make it much easier to understand exactly what is happening.
The first big lesson we can learn comes from the food we eat to stay healthy.
When I first started personal training, I bought a book called “Ignite the fire: the secrets to building a successful personal training career” by Jonathan Goodman. It contained some great advice on how to interview well for gym jobs, how to develop client relationships, how to coach exercises effectively, and things like that, which was very helpful.
I still recommend the book for new personal trainers. But there was little nugget of advice buried in the text that I have taken and run with.
In a paragraph talking about how to reward clients for little wins, he wrote about how he would give clients a little green sticker on a chart every time they ate according to a “green face” diet:
“If they’re following the “green face” diet you can give them a green sticker; every 10 stickers, they fill out a certificate and get a series of better prizes …. everything they eat should be a “green,” or a fruit or vegetable, or should have once had a “face” (lean protein). If clients were sticking to the plan, they were on the green face diet.”
Here’s how I talk about Green Face meals:
“For as many meals as you can, eat something green, and something with a face…
* Something green means a vegetable like broccoli, cabbage, lettuce… but also carrots, and sweetcorn. They count as something green too!
* Something with a face means meat and any animal protein really so eggs count as having a face!
This is about eating Meat and Vegetables.”
There are people out there who recommend eating JUST vegetables for maximum health and there are people out there who recommend eating JUST meat for the exact same reason!
I believe in a middle way between these two extremes and encourage people to eat the same way we have been eating for hundreds (if not millions) of years:
Plants and animals, cooked and prepared yourself.
Even if you’re not cooking everything from scratch, before eating your Green Face meal, think about the plant as it was growing in the ground or the animals as they were moving around with the muscles you are about to eat.
Take a moment to be grateful for that.
Give thanks for the texture and the taste.
Give thanks for the nutrients and the calories.
Give thanks for your body and how it can use that food to do the things it does.
If you can, grow your own food, even if its just some chillis or herbs on your windowsill.
This way you can get a real sense of where that food has come from and what it really takes to transform mere dirt into something that is alive.
The modern world doesn’t make it easy to remember the connection between our lives and the life of the organisms we eat, each life literally feeding into and reinforcing the other.
But these things used to be obvious.
In the past, human beings were “hunter-gatherers”
* Sometimes we would use weapons and stalk after animals. Hunting is therefore related to focussing and grasping, collapsing all possibilities of where an animal could be into a definite kill.
* Sometimes we would use containers and search for plants. Gathering is therefore related to exploration and potential, being open to all possibilities and waiting to see which plants are ripe and good to harvest.
Because a human being is neither fully carnivorous like a lion, nor fully herbivorous like a cow, but OMNIVOROUS, our perception and physicality is universally attuned and capable of experiencing both of these sides of reality.
The Real World is driven forwards in a dynamic process from beginning to middle to end by this motor which is constantly flipping from openness, possibility and potential to focus, definition and actuality.
We need both sides to keep our own forwards motion in life. The perpetual dance between the things you know and the things you don’t know, the defined and the not-yet-defined, the seemingly static and the seemingly chaotic.
Like your heart beating in your chest and your lungs inhaling and exhaling breath, this process operates in a perpetual cycle of contraction and expansion that gives all things form and life.
Every action, every choice, every moment is a part of this grand choreography where all Being is Becoming.
Eating Green Face Meals reflects this universal reality.
It’s not just about nourishing the body; it's a reflection of this deep, hidden truth. Beyond consuming food; it’s engaging in a ritual that joins in with the mechanism of creation and transformation in The Real World.
The animal reflects our ability to focus, to chase, to achieve, and to create form.
The plant reflects our capacity for patience, observation, to receive, and to create space.
Through this lens, every meal becomes a microcosm of the universe.
Eating Green Face Meals is one of the six core ideas that drive what I do at Gymnasion.net. This is the second part of a series expanding on each of the six core ideas.
The next part of this series is titled "Start with the Body". With this idea I will explore why diet and exercise is the best, safest, and easiest way to learn how to truly understand ourselves, others, and the world.
⚫️ Start with the Body - Physical health leads to a deeper, more authentic connection with reality
READ THE TRANSCRIPT
This is about far more than just basic health and fitness routines.
We're looking at the deeper, more complex aspects of wellbeing by exploring what health means from all different angles.
Instead of relying on the overly safe and convenient modern world to teach us the best way to live well, we look to the Real World where things are dynamic, and growing.
Even though it’s hard, we become healthier by experiencing things that reflect this reality and allowing it to change us and change the way we see the world.
We can start doing this by very simply eating meals made up of both plants and animals (which I call “Green Face meals”). This gives us an opportunity to connect to the ecosystem of processes that surround us.
* We are both direct hunters that eat animals
* and meandering gatherers that eat plants.
Eating in a way that honours both sides of this reality joins us to this perpetual living cycle; activity, and actuality moving into exploration, and potential, generating everything you see in The Real World.
This is just one example of how understanding ourselves, each other, and the world starts with the deliberate experience of life in a physical body.
Because EVERYTHING you do in The Real world is done with your physical body.
But it's more than just flesh and bones. It’s how we turn our ideas and concepts into objects that share in our existence so we can connect with them in reality.
In this way, your body is an expression of you who really are. When you learn to take your body through change, you also learn how to transform yourself in less obvious ways.
Sometimes we can think our problems are just in our minds - as if difficulties we have thought and talked ourselves into can be solved best with even more thinking and talking!
It’s easy to forget that our mental software runs on animal hardware. Your brain, your head, your heart, are all things we talk about in an abstract way but these are actual physical organs… Chimpanzees have them, dogs have them, elephants have them.
And like a rider on an elephant, our highly sophisticated thinking mind rides on top of a big dumb animal that has big dumb physical needs.
You wouldn’t use words and concepts to inspire, convince, or threaten an elephant into doing things. You use physical barriers and simple rewards. So it’s probably a good idea to start in the same way with your animal body.
If you want to do something with your body, you have to start with the body.
It’s much simpler and easier to see measurable effects when we deal first with hunger, sleep, strength, nutrition, etc. before we worry about the stories we believe.
I call this Elephant Training.
We start with the body where we can actually see if things are getting better or worse without having to create narratives that are easily manipulated and mistaken.
Often, by simply dealing with something in a physical way first, we can find that we have also been able to heal and develop mentally and emotionally. Problems like procrastination, self-belief, low mood, social anxiety, fear of failure, imposter syndrome, burnout, and indecision can make us avoid doing things in The Real World with our real bodies.
We might have experienced difficulties in the past that are informing our actions negatively. Too often these problems are treated in the absence of any new experiences that would teach us to act in a new way.
The simplest, safest, and best way to give ourselves these experiences in the modern world is through repeatedly moving the body in uncomfortable ranges against resistance while eating foods and organising our sleep and work to allow this to be done consistently.
In other words; Routines, Diet and Exercise.
I like to think of human beings in three key ways:
* Your mind that thinks
* Your body that takes action
* and your emotions that feel feelings
All of these aspects are YOU - they’re not separate - but by looking at human beings in these three ways, we can understand how the mechanisms interact so we can work with them, bringing them into alignment instead of working against them and letting them fall into disarray.
The body is like an old car. The back wheels are the emotions that drive you and the front wheels are the thoughts that steer you.
The way we see the body going is an expression of the direction and drive of your thoughts and feelings. But the body of the car also connects and orients the wheels. Without the body aligning to the road, the wheels just drive blindly and all over the place, taking you in all different directions.
So here are three ways we can make sure the body, the mind, and the emotions are all aligned and moving in a direction we actually want to travel …
1. Work towards a goal: If you have an idea in your head of how something can be better about your situation or your lifestyle or your body, let that motivate you to try and turn that idea into a real thing you can experience. Too many people have the idea and do nothing real with it.
2. Learn by Doing: You can read a book, you can visualise, you can explain and write things down. But if you haven’t done something in the Real World with your physical body, you haven’t actually learnt it. There’s nothing wrong with having book knowledge and academic ideas, but real knowledge comes from doing.
3. Listen to your body: With so much technology being developed to track our biometrics, we can kid ourselves into believing health is about reading a graph on a screen. By outsourcing this to yet another machine, we lose connection to the Real World. One day we will be sold a watch that tells us when to urinate! You don’t need more abstract data that is unconnected to anything you actually care about. You can tell when you’re feeling healthy and fitness is about more than numbers.
In the gym, we face challenges and learn about how to react to them in a way that keeps things moving in the right direction. The things that we learn by achieving body goals teach us lessons we can use in all aspects of life. We grow stronger, not just physically, but in how we think and react to difficulty.
The benefits of building muscle are not just about looking good or being strong or becoming more capable and longer lasting or being able to eat more without gaining fat (even though these are great benefits!)
By gaining muscle we learn how to live life fully. Everything you do in the real world is done with your body by contracting and lengthening muscles to create action. If muscles don’t do this, nothing is truly done.
Therefore a muscular body has undeniably experienced The Real World.
Getting fit and healthy is the most immediate way to participate in something real. We do hard things that create growth and transformation towards something we desire. In the gym we can do this in a way that is gradual, casual, safe, low-stakes, and fun!
You might think you already know this because you understand it abstractly after reading these words.
But you don’t really know it unless you experience it in your body.
START THERE.
Starting with the Body is one of the six core ideas that drive what I do at Gymnasion.net. This is the third part of a series expanding on each of the six core ideas.
The next part of this series is titled "For Everyone Forever". With this idea I will explore how we actually decide what is healthy or unhealthy for us.
We're looking at the deeper, more complex aspects of wellbeing by exploring what health means from all different angles.
Instead of relying on the overly safe and convenient modern world to teach us the best way to live well, we look to the Real World where things are dynamic, and growing.
Even though it’s hard, we become healthier by experiencing things that reflect this reality and allowing it to change us and change the way we see the world.
We can start doing this by very simply eating meals made up of both plants and animals (which I call “Green Face meals”). This gives us an opportunity to connect to the ecosystem of processes that surround us.
* We are both direct hunters that eat animals
* and meandering gatherers that eat plants.
Eating in a way that honours both sides of this reality joins us to this perpetual living cycle; activity, and actuality moving into exploration, and potential, generating everything you see in The Real World.
This is just one example of how understanding ourselves, each other, and the world starts with the deliberate experience of life in a physical body.
Because EVERYTHING you do in The Real world is done with your physical body.
But it's more than just flesh and bones. It’s how we turn our ideas and concepts into objects that share in our existence so we can connect with them in reality.
In this way, your body is an expression of you who really are. When you learn to take your body through change, you also learn how to transform yourself in less obvious ways.
Sometimes we can think our problems are just in our minds - as if difficulties we have thought and talked ourselves into can be solved best with even more thinking and talking!
It’s easy to forget that our mental software runs on animal hardware. Your brain, your head, your heart, are all things we talk about in an abstract way but these are actual physical organs… Chimpanzees have them, dogs have them, elephants have them.
And like a rider on an elephant, our highly sophisticated thinking mind rides on top of a big dumb animal that has big dumb physical needs.
You wouldn’t use words and concepts to inspire, convince, or threaten an elephant into doing things. You use physical barriers and simple rewards. So it’s probably a good idea to start in the same way with your animal body.
If you want to do something with your body, you have to start with the body.
It’s much simpler and easier to see measurable effects when we deal first with hunger, sleep, strength, nutrition, etc. before we worry about the stories we believe.
I call this Elephant Training.
We start with the body where we can actually see if things are getting better or worse without having to create narratives that are easily manipulated and mistaken.
Often, by simply dealing with something in a physical way first, we can find that we have also been able to heal and develop mentally and emotionally. Problems like procrastination, self-belief, low mood, social anxiety, fear of failure, imposter syndrome, burnout, and indecision can make us avoid doing things in The Real World with our real bodies.
We might have experienced difficulties in the past that are informing our actions negatively. Too often these problems are treated in the absence of any new experiences that would teach us to act in a new way.
The simplest, safest, and best way to give ourselves these experiences in the modern world is through repeatedly moving the body in uncomfortable ranges against resistance while eating foods and organising our sleep and work to allow this to be done consistently.
In other words; Routines, Diet and Exercise.
I like to think of human beings in three key ways:
* Your mind that thinks
* Your body that takes action
* and your emotions that feel feelings
All of these aspects are YOU - they’re not separate - but by looking at human beings in these three ways, we can understand how the mechanisms interact so we can work with them, bringing them into alignment instead of working against them and letting them fall into disarray.
The body is like an old car. The back wheels are the emotions that drive you and the front wheels are the thoughts that steer you.
The way we see the body going is an expression of the direction and drive of your thoughts and feelings. But the body of the car also connects and orients the wheels. Without the body aligning to the road, the wheels just drive blindly and all over the place, taking you in all different directions.
So here are three ways we can make sure the body, the mind, and the emotions are all aligned and moving in a direction we actually want to travel …
1. Work towards a goal: If you have an idea in your head of how something can be better about your situation or your lifestyle or your body, let that motivate you to try and turn that idea into a real thing you can experience. Too many people have the idea and do nothing real with it.
2. Learn by Doing: You can read a book, you can visualise, you can explain and write things down. But if you haven’t done something in the Real World with your physical body, you haven’t actually learnt it. There’s nothing wrong with having book knowledge and academic ideas, but real knowledge comes from doing.
3. Listen to your body: With so much technology being developed to track our biometrics, we can kid ourselves into believing health is about reading a graph on a screen. By outsourcing this to yet another machine, we lose connection to the Real World. One day we will be sold a watch that tells us when to urinate! You don’t need more abstract data that is unconnected to anything you actually care about. You can tell when you’re feeling healthy and fitness is about more than numbers.
In the gym, we face challenges and learn about how to react to them in a way that keeps things moving in the right direction. The things that we learn by achieving body goals teach us lessons we can use in all aspects of life. We grow stronger, not just physically, but in how we think and react to difficulty.
The benefits of building muscle are not just about looking good or being strong or becoming more capable and longer lasting or being able to eat more without gaining fat (even though these are great benefits!)
By gaining muscle we learn how to live life fully. Everything you do in the real world is done with your body by contracting and lengthening muscles to create action. If muscles don’t do this, nothing is truly done.
Therefore a muscular body has undeniably experienced The Real World.
Getting fit and healthy is the most immediate way to participate in something real. We do hard things that create growth and transformation towards something we desire. In the gym we can do this in a way that is gradual, casual, safe, low-stakes, and fun!
You might think you already know this because you understand it abstractly after reading these words.
But you don’t really know it unless you experience it in your body.
START THERE.
Starting with the Body is one of the six core ideas that drive what I do at Gymnasion.net. This is the third part of a series expanding on each of the six core ideas.
The next part of this series is titled "For Everyone Forever". With this idea I will explore how we actually decide what is healthy or unhealthy for us.
⚫️ For Everyone Forever - Why the mundane choices you make each day matter to the human race at large
READ THE TRANSCRIPT
So far we have spoken about how The Real World is a moving thing with a trajectory.
By looking at the world in this way we don’t just see where things are now but we can see where things are going and how they are interacting with each other.
We then covered why we eat Green Face meals (made from both plants and animals).
Through this we experience the dynamic process that moves everything forwards like a motor. One side of the process opens up like a gatherer looking for plants. The other side closes in like a hunter stalking an animal.
Then we spoke about how Green Face Meals are just one way to experience The Real World by Starting with the Body.
More generally, we aim to have an actual physical experience of things instead of merely imagining or feeling like we have done something real. The easiest, safest, and best way to do this in the modern world is to use routines, diet, and exercise to turn our goals into reality.
And now we will talk about the fourth Core Idea: For Everyone, Forever…
A big problem we all face is that the future is uncertain.
If you look far enough up ahead, all you are met with is darkness.
While we can find a lot of joy and satisfaction in doing things that have a beginning, a middle and an end, it’s made much harder by the fact that we just don’t know for sure what the end will look like.
For this reason, every plan is a guess.
We have to make decisions and take action without knowing all the variables and because we cannot predict the future, we must rely on history and trajectory to guess how things are going to go.
Unfortunately, this often leads to short-term thinking. If we can’t be certain about the future, why not do things that are guaranteed to be good for me, for now.?
Maybe you skip a workout to watch TV or order a takeaway instead of preparing a Green Face meal. Maybe you give a rude response that makes someone leave you alone or spend time scrolling through videos on social media instead of reading an enriching book.
We are always tempted towards doing things that give us the most immediate returns because the further into the future we go, the less predictable things become.
But then the future arrives.
The world moves forwards and we inevitably step into the consequences of the decisions we made yesterday.
Behaviours that seemed good in the moment reveal themselves to be taking us on a path towards things we don’t want in the log run.
* That TV show wasn’t actually that good and the missed workout has left you feeling groggy and stiff.
* That takeaway made your stomach feel awful the next day and wasn’t even as tasty as you’d hoped.
* That person you were rude to is now avoiding you and you need their input on some work.
* And that book you wanted to read is still sitting on the shelf unread.
Because The Real World moves forwards, we can’t just do things that are good for us for now. We also have to think about tomorrow.
And then when tomorrow comes, we have to think about the day after that!
The world is eternally driving forwards in this way. There’s no end to the tomorrows we can be aligning our behaviours towards. When we take action and make goals to do something good and right and healthy, we ought to think as far into the future as possible and do things based on history and trajectory we can predict will be good not just for now, but later today, tomorrow, and on for weeks, months, and years into the darkness of forever.
With this in mind, we must look outwards. In order to continue acting in a way that is beneficial for the years ahead, we can’t only be focussed on our own benefit. Staying healthy in our own lifetime involves the health of the friends, family, and community around us.
By thinking about our collective health, we contribute to a stronger, more resilient society, a healthier environment to live in, a positive example for those who look up to us, which then feeds back into our own healthy life and positively affects the generations that follow us …
Not just for you but for everyone.
Not just for now but forever!
This is about making the connection between our daily mundane choices and the long-term wellbeing of the human race at large. Sometimes, it might not seem that important to eat well and work out and rest properly but when we zoom out and see things from this much higher perspective, it starts to feel worth it to make the right decision in the here-and-now.
With this eternal perspective applied in our everyday lives, relationships become much more important.
Community is integral to a complete healthy life. When we focus on what really matters, instead of only thinking inwardly to our own gain, we work on deepening the connections that are necessary for long term happiness and wellbeing. When we build communities arounds us at a scale that allows the highest achievers and the lowest beginners to learn from each other, everyone experiences a felt sense of value and support. Things align both vertically upwards towards higher goals, and horizontally outwards, bringing our communities together.
Empathy sits at the heart of this approach, as it involves genuinely understanding and collaborating with others as we work together to make things as good as they can be. When we share lessons, resources, and opportunities we not only address basic needs but also generate a sense of belonging and vitality.
This creates a society where people don’t just survive, but thrive.
This creates true prosperity which transcends immediate material comfort and makes an impact which sends out resonant waves far beyond our individual lives. But it starts with the body. Doing something real. Everyone loves being around those who are healthy, happy, and successful. If we all lived with this in mind, the world would be a profoundly different, more enjoyable place.
Every time we plan to turn a goal into a reality, we are stepping out into the darkness.
We cannot know the ultimate purpose of this process. We don’t know what it looks like at the end. Every moment we have to guess the next step. But we’re not going in completely blind. We can base our plans on the reality we have already experienced and the lessons we can learn from those that have gone before us. So we look to history and previous data to inform our plans and make good judgements to bring about the best possible outcome.
But how do we decide on the best possible outcome?
Well, we don’t want something that is beneficial now at the expense of the future. And we don’t want something that is beneficial for us at the expense of others. Instead we want the outcome that benefits the most possible people for the longest possible time.
So we try to do things that are good For Everyone, Forever.
This includes doing things that are good for you right now, but at the same time extends eternally into the future good of all.
We might get it wrong! Nobody can perfectly predict the future.
But at every step we can check ourselves and use this perspective to see if our daily actions are heading in the right direction and put ourselves back on the path to a healthy life.
For Everyone Forever is one of the six core ideas that drive what I do at Gymnasion.net. This is the fourth part of a series expanding on each of the six core ideas.
The next part of this series is titled "The Enemy is You. With this idea I will explore why the biggest obstacle that stops us from achieving what we truly want out of life is ourselves.
⚫️ The Enemy is You - There are lots of things in your way and most of them are yourself.
READ THE TRANSCRIPT
We have spoken already about the first four of the Six Core Ideas; The Real World, Green Face Meals, Start with the Body, and For Everyone Forever.
In the next part we’ll cover the sixth and final idea, “A Network of Elites”. But right now we will explore idea number five:
The Enemy is You.
With this idea we are going to talk about your thoughts, your mind, and your sense of self.
But first, we have to Start with the Body.
Because a number of things come together uniquely in the bodies of human beings. Before we even begin to attempt to comprehend how our minds work, we must understand the physical hardware that constrains the software of our consciousness.
The way we think is primarily informed by the physical world and how our animal body is specifically made to fit into it. The energies that determine the form and development of things in the real world also knit together our muscles, nervous system, and brain. Every thought you have is also shaped by these forces because it has to run on this Real World physical platform.
So let’s begin by acknowledging a couple of things that human beings do a bit differently when it comes to their bodies and brains.
Firstly, we eat an omnivorous diet of Green Face meals, made from both plants and animals. Your mind therefore runs on the kind of brain required to feed your omnivorous body, adapted for both hunting and gathering.
* With your hunting brain at one extreme you can experience the stubborn oppressive trap of applying strict, fixed identification.
* And with your gathering brain at the other extreme you can experience the overwhelming infinite mess of contemplating every available possibility.
But with both of these sides of the brain interacting with each other you can play between these extremes, contemplating the possible and identifying the actual. This is how healthy human thought usually operates, in a balance that is neither excessively overloaded nor excessively compulsive.
With these opposing processes at work we continuously update our understanding of the world as we gather information and hunt for ways to fit it into what we already know.
By joining in with this process our minds slowly build up an increasingly accurate picture of how the body is fitting into the environment.
This is why it’s so important to do things in The Real World.
The world you live in doesn’t just show you how to understand the surroundings but also how to understand yourself.
Secondly, as human beings, we live in community with one another.
We share the tasks of living between us and pass knowledge on to each other by showing and telling.
Because of this, we’re not forced into doing only what’s good for us in the moment or learning only from our own experience. We distribute our thinking across the group and across generations so the sum of our collective capabilities is far greater than the achievements of any single individual.
By communicating and collaborating with each other we can think much further on into the future, not just doing things for our own immediate advantage but For Everyone, Forever.
In combination, these particular features allow human beings to develop a very unique kind of thinking that perceives the world through identity.
An identity is a kind of plan.
We use experiences to build a picture of our selves in real time. We call this picture “I” or “me”. We identify with it. We then go beyond that and use the picture to predict the future based on the results of our previous experiences.
This is a super quick way to decide what to do next without having to newly assess every experience individually. This is how we navigate the world and steer ourselves towards more experiences we want and fewer experiences we don’t.
But we then go even further …
By learning from experiences we are shown and told about by other people, we can update our pictures by copying others, greatly increasing the amount of information we are building our identities from.
By borrowing our identities from the group instead of relying only on our individual experience, we also avoid the need for excessive risk, ensuring safety and success.
We do this in our own lives by …
+ Listening to inspiring stories
+ Celebrating cultural heroes
+ Studying historical events
+ Watching fictional characters
+ Hearing persuasive speeches
+ Having friends we look up to
+ Reading helpful books and articles
+ Learning from people we know, like, and trust.
I call this “Rider training”
Our urges and emotions can carry our thinking mind into situations we don’t want. We can react like a big dumb elephant. But we can also steer ourselves in the right direction like an elephant-rider, by learning from others to inform our identity and motivate ourselves to act according to a plan.
But every plan is a guess.
And sometimes we get it wrong!
So our minds are made from not just one but a whole landscape of identities. These identities interact, come together, overlap, and break apart, like a swirling cloud moving in and out of view in your mind’s eye, guiding you towards different possible ways of being.
The identities of your friends, your family, the people you read about in books and watch in movies, all the people you have met, and every identity you can imagine join the identities formed from memories of who were before.
* Some align and call you forwards towards the things that are good for everyone forever. These identities are your friends so it is good to keep your attention on these ways of being.
* Some break off and lead you astray towards the things that distract you from that eternal good path. These identities are your enemies so it’s good to avoid these ways of being.
But it’s not always easy to tell which is which.
Every time you act in a way that seems right in the moment, you’re guessing which identity is good to step into and call “I” or “me”.
But when we do things in The Real World we might find an identity has in reality lead us on a path towards something unhealthy.
As you attempt to join the process that takes you forwards to the best possible outcome, you might discover the identity you are following is actually taking you in the wrong direction.
When things don’t go the way we expect them to go, it’s very easy to blame others. But more often than not it’s you who has adopted an identity that brought you into this situation.
Surprise! The Enemy is … You.
And the only way to get out of it is to let go of your current identity and take on a new way of being. Unfortunately, just like a lot of things in The Real World, it’s difficult to discard an old identity because it leaves you with two big problems:
1. You don’t get to have the things your old identity was offering.
2. You have to choose another identity from the landscape possibilities.
There’s always reason you decided to follow the old identity and it’s because The Enemy promised you an old reward. Maybe it was money, fame, a moment of happiness, freedom from pain. A lot of things can make the old identity seem good at the time. If you turn away from that life you are also turning away from these promises.
And in those moments when you discover you have been cheated by The Enemy, you will find it even hard to trust the promises offered by another identity.
For these reasons it can often it can feel easier to keep believing in the promise of the old rewards and the certainty of holding onto the identity you are already in.
But if you understand The Enemy is You, in the moments you discover you are wrong about the best way to be, it becomes easier to avoid that identity and quickly establish a new path to follow, turning back towards the rewards that are not just good for you for now, but good For Everyone Forever.
This is a cyclical process …
Opening up your mind to seek out the best identity you can find like a gatherer looking for good plants to eat.
Closing in your focus and executing that identity in The Real World like a hunter chasing down an animal.
This turns the motor that moves you forwards in life, repeatedly switching between these open and closed modes. The more willing we are to drop an identity that is taking us in the wrong direction, the more freely that motor can spin moving us forwards with greater speed and momentum.
When you are comfortable with the idea that The Enemy is You the identities that hold you back stop looking so attractive and it no longer feels worth it to hold on to them so tightly.
The Enemy is You is one of the six core ideas that drive what I do at Gymnasion.net. This is the fifth part of a series expanding on each of the six core ideas.
The next part of this series is titled “A Network of Elites”. With this idea I will explore how people who actively choose to make things better can work together.
In the next part we’ll cover the sixth and final idea, “A Network of Elites”. But right now we will explore idea number five:
The Enemy is You.
With this idea we are going to talk about your thoughts, your mind, and your sense of self.
But first, we have to Start with the Body.
Because a number of things come together uniquely in the bodies of human beings. Before we even begin to attempt to comprehend how our minds work, we must understand the physical hardware that constrains the software of our consciousness.
The way we think is primarily informed by the physical world and how our animal body is specifically made to fit into it. The energies that determine the form and development of things in the real world also knit together our muscles, nervous system, and brain. Every thought you have is also shaped by these forces because it has to run on this Real World physical platform.
So let’s begin by acknowledging a couple of things that human beings do a bit differently when it comes to their bodies and brains.
Firstly, we eat an omnivorous diet of Green Face meals, made from both plants and animals. Your mind therefore runs on the kind of brain required to feed your omnivorous body, adapted for both hunting and gathering.
* With your hunting brain at one extreme you can experience the stubborn oppressive trap of applying strict, fixed identification.
* And with your gathering brain at the other extreme you can experience the overwhelming infinite mess of contemplating every available possibility.
But with both of these sides of the brain interacting with each other you can play between these extremes, contemplating the possible and identifying the actual. This is how healthy human thought usually operates, in a balance that is neither excessively overloaded nor excessively compulsive.
With these opposing processes at work we continuously update our understanding of the world as we gather information and hunt for ways to fit it into what we already know.
By joining in with this process our minds slowly build up an increasingly accurate picture of how the body is fitting into the environment.
This is why it’s so important to do things in The Real World.
The world you live in doesn’t just show you how to understand the surroundings but also how to understand yourself.
Secondly, as human beings, we live in community with one another.
We share the tasks of living between us and pass knowledge on to each other by showing and telling.
Because of this, we’re not forced into doing only what’s good for us in the moment or learning only from our own experience. We distribute our thinking across the group and across generations so the sum of our collective capabilities is far greater than the achievements of any single individual.
By communicating and collaborating with each other we can think much further on into the future, not just doing things for our own immediate advantage but For Everyone, Forever.
In combination, these particular features allow human beings to develop a very unique kind of thinking that perceives the world through identity.
An identity is a kind of plan.
We use experiences to build a picture of our selves in real time. We call this picture “I” or “me”. We identify with it. We then go beyond that and use the picture to predict the future based on the results of our previous experiences.
This is a super quick way to decide what to do next without having to newly assess every experience individually. This is how we navigate the world and steer ourselves towards more experiences we want and fewer experiences we don’t.
But we then go even further …
By learning from experiences we are shown and told about by other people, we can update our pictures by copying others, greatly increasing the amount of information we are building our identities from.
By borrowing our identities from the group instead of relying only on our individual experience, we also avoid the need for excessive risk, ensuring safety and success.
We do this in our own lives by …
+ Listening to inspiring stories
+ Celebrating cultural heroes
+ Studying historical events
+ Watching fictional characters
+ Hearing persuasive speeches
+ Having friends we look up to
+ Reading helpful books and articles
+ Learning from people we know, like, and trust.
I call this “Rider training”
Our urges and emotions can carry our thinking mind into situations we don’t want. We can react like a big dumb elephant. But we can also steer ourselves in the right direction like an elephant-rider, by learning from others to inform our identity and motivate ourselves to act according to a plan.
But every plan is a guess.
And sometimes we get it wrong!
So our minds are made from not just one but a whole landscape of identities. These identities interact, come together, overlap, and break apart, like a swirling cloud moving in and out of view in your mind’s eye, guiding you towards different possible ways of being.
The identities of your friends, your family, the people you read about in books and watch in movies, all the people you have met, and every identity you can imagine join the identities formed from memories of who were before.
* Some align and call you forwards towards the things that are good for everyone forever. These identities are your friends so it is good to keep your attention on these ways of being.
* Some break off and lead you astray towards the things that distract you from that eternal good path. These identities are your enemies so it’s good to avoid these ways of being.
But it’s not always easy to tell which is which.
Every time you act in a way that seems right in the moment, you’re guessing which identity is good to step into and call “I” or “me”.
But when we do things in The Real World we might find an identity has in reality lead us on a path towards something unhealthy.
As you attempt to join the process that takes you forwards to the best possible outcome, you might discover the identity you are following is actually taking you in the wrong direction.
When things don’t go the way we expect them to go, it’s very easy to blame others. But more often than not it’s you who has adopted an identity that brought you into this situation.
Surprise! The Enemy is … You.
And the only way to get out of it is to let go of your current identity and take on a new way of being. Unfortunately, just like a lot of things in The Real World, it’s difficult to discard an old identity because it leaves you with two big problems:
1. You don’t get to have the things your old identity was offering.
2. You have to choose another identity from the landscape possibilities.
There’s always reason you decided to follow the old identity and it’s because The Enemy promised you an old reward. Maybe it was money, fame, a moment of happiness, freedom from pain. A lot of things can make the old identity seem good at the time. If you turn away from that life you are also turning away from these promises.
And in those moments when you discover you have been cheated by The Enemy, you will find it even hard to trust the promises offered by another identity.
For these reasons it can often it can feel easier to keep believing in the promise of the old rewards and the certainty of holding onto the identity you are already in.
But if you understand The Enemy is You, in the moments you discover you are wrong about the best way to be, it becomes easier to avoid that identity and quickly establish a new path to follow, turning back towards the rewards that are not just good for you for now, but good For Everyone Forever.
This is a cyclical process …
Opening up your mind to seek out the best identity you can find like a gatherer looking for good plants to eat.
Closing in your focus and executing that identity in The Real World like a hunter chasing down an animal.
This turns the motor that moves you forwards in life, repeatedly switching between these open and closed modes. The more willing we are to drop an identity that is taking us in the wrong direction, the more freely that motor can spin moving us forwards with greater speed and momentum.
When you are comfortable with the idea that The Enemy is You the identities that hold you back stop looking so attractive and it no longer feels worth it to hold on to them so tightly.
The Enemy is You is one of the six core ideas that drive what I do at Gymnasion.net. This is the fifth part of a series expanding on each of the six core ideas.
The next part of this series is titled “A Network of Elites”. With this idea I will explore how people who actively choose to make things better can work together.
⚫️ A Network of Elites - Some people actively choose to make things better and these people should work together.
- More to come ...