What are you capable of?
Just loaded up my Texas squat power bar at the gym, 925 pounds in total, that is nine plates, 25, and a five pounder taped on top. The interesting thing:
No fear.
The goal?
To me, courage is everything. Curiosity and courage actually mean the same thing; couer means heart. Same also goes with curate.
Whenever I max out the barbell, attempting to lift over 900 pounds, people are always befuddled and ask me why I do it, what the purpose of it is, etc. I never have a quick enough or witty enough response. Typically I just say,
To fulfill a personal curiosity.
The personal curiosity of the limits of a human body, my human body, how much I could lift, without taking steroids etc.
But perhaps, a better way to think about it is actually, I do it as a means to conquer fear. To me a perfect lift is a lift in which your approach it, give it your all without any hesitation or fear.
In fact, I believe that 99% of street photography is simply conquering your fears. To not let hesitation get in your way.
What do we regret?
I think I’d like, typically our biggest regrets or regrets related to cowardice, or fear. For example, you wanted to ask that one girl out on a date, but, you were afraid of getting rejected, and you never did. Or you were fearful for asking her to get married, and you never asked, because you were fearful.
I know for weightlifters, powerlifters, people like me who enjoy doing one rep max of times, I think the biggest regrets we have is when we want to lift a certain weight, but fear and hesitation gets in our way, and instead, we lift a lesser amount, afraid that we may “hurt“ ourselves.
However, an interesting thing that I’ve learned is the fear of hurting yourself is actually a good motivator to force you to focus.
For example, now at the gym, I’m laser focused. I don’t fuck around. I don’t rush my warm-up routine, and I’ve also been going harder in my warm up, stretching, yoga routine before I lift.