Seneca art work, made via procreate on iPad and iPhone.

There are two things which are certain; you are alive at the moment, and one day you will die. Therefore the question, what life goals do you have?

Are goals a trap?

There are different schools of thought behind this. One thought is that having goals, or certain life goals is a trap. For example Nietzsche said that every philosopher knew that inherent in every single goal is a trap, or some sort of cul-de-sac.

My personal thought is that life goals are some sort of anchor. Some sort of general direction you could head towards.

Something I have discovered for myself is that the hilarity is that once you achieve life goal, it doesn’t feel that significant. For example, a simple goal that I had more recently was doing an atlas lift of over 800 pounds, and I have far smashed that record, going around 835 pounds.

Maybe we could think of life goals as a methodology or approach — maybe my life goal is not achieving some sort of static goal, or point, but rather, thinking of a life goal as a process of never ending growth and gains.

What do bodybuilders want?

What do bodybuilders want? Never ending gains.

For example, if you observe the career of Ronnie Coleman, every single year at Mr. Olympia he was bigger, weighed more, and had more muscle mass. Granted that he was juicing his eyeballs out with steroids and other strange things, the general just of a bodybuilder this to never stop building his body. And I suppose building means making the body bigger, more muscles.

For example, let us say that a bodybuilder starts off at 160 pounds, at 5% body fat, with a six pack. The goal isn’t to simply weigh more, but, to remain small in terms of body fat percentage, and to put on more “muscle weight”.

The foolish approach of a lot of people is that they obsessively weigh themselves, and it seems that their goal is to just become heavier, reach a certain target weight, or track their progress in terms of their weight on the scale. For example, a lot of skinny guys who aspire towards bodybuilding always want to weigh more.

However, the reason why this is foolish is because you want to augment your muscle mass and your muscle weight, not your body fat and your fat weight.

Also, the reason why you should never weigh yourself is that because it is impossible to ascertain when you step on the scale, how much of that weight is muscle mass versus fat.

For example, let us say that you’re 160 pounds, and then you go up to 180 pounds. If that is 20 pounds of fat, that is bad.

Therefore what we want is “lean gains“. That means, to retain your same body fat percentage, let us say that is 5%, and then just keep augmenting your muscle mass.

The secrets:

1. Intermittent fasting, no breakfast no lunch, only one insanely massive dinner. Aim to eat at least 4-5 pounds of meat a night. Preferably steak, beef ribs, organ meats, lamb, ground lamb, etc. Aldi or Costco Business Center is good to buy your meat.
2. Lift fasted. The big myth is that you have to consume something, either snack, or, have a protein shake before workout and after working out. Proteins shakes, whey protein powder, creatine, pre-workout powder, etc. Stick to plain water and black coffee.

I wonder … if in real life, we focused on hyping ourselves up very much like when we are attempting one rep max attempts, perhaps this could benefit us?

Podcast

Roll up my sleeves, chalk up, get under the bar, get jacked in, and just lift.

How does 8 plates and a 35 feel on your shoulders and back? Actually not that heavy.

835 pounds

835 pounds on the rack, seems foolish by most people. But perhaps it is my audacity and my foolishness which has allowed me to reach unprecedented heights?

1. Speak really loudly. Yell, shout, hype and amp yourself up!
2. Do things differently in an unorthodox way.
3. Pride yourself on being different and doing things differently. Desire different things as well.
4. Seek to disrupt traditional industries with massive markets. Fitness, diet, health, clothing and fashion, homes, living modes, cars are good ones. Also disrupt the art market (Banksky)
5. Think the internet. The ultimate way to become infinitely scalable. Anti physicality and physical spaces for disruption.
6. Think free or insanely low cost. For example how nominally cheap a web site and website host is compared to rent, a mortgage, a house, paying for a physical space etc.
7. Become more aloof, more disconnected. Creative disconnection is good.

You are worth what you’re willing to attempt: