This philosophy is the guiding principle I use every second of everyday, what are you doing right now, right this second, are you developing yourself for the better or just passing time? As you are here reading this then I assume you are attempting the former and are hoping to either take those first tentative steps into the often confusing world of health and fitness or are seeking further inspiration and knowledge on your own winding journey.
Not surprisingly this mindset of being a little better today than yesterday was, for me, first fostered in the gym, where striving to pick up a little more weight or eek out a few more reps each and every week gradually but relentlessly built who I am today. I personally have always been motivated more by the pursuit of performance than by aesthetics, although they are always a welcome bonus.
Many a young man or woman who first enters the arena that is the gym, may at first be motivated solely by the more vain benefits of working out, however a healthier more performance based psychological profile can soon be developed that promotes an overall healthier approach to life in general. No matter what the motivations for starting your fitness journey are, the important first step is simply getting in the gym... so what's the point...
It has been said that if exercise could be administered in pill form, every doctor everywhere would prescribe it as a matter of course.
Entire volumes can and have been written on the benefits of exercise; physical, physiological, psychological, etc. but in the interests of brevity we'll stick to the subject in the title of this post.
Making a conscious effort to always be aware of your actions and there impact on you is an admirable psychological trait, are these actions contributing to building a better you or are are you just wasting time. Our time in this world is finite, are you making the most of it.... next time you sit down to watch an episode of Love Island or some other such distraction, pick up a book, make something, learn something new or at least watch something with value.
Are you watching mindless entertainment purely because you are unaware what your own personal interests are? If I were to ask you what your interests are, what would you say? Do you actually have any? It's amazing how often people struggle to answer this question, there is a crisis of identity, we are a population of hollow shells filled with nothing but the latest gossip from cheap entertainment.
Advances in technology have freed up hours of leisure time and provided resources that previous generations did not have the same levels of access to, so what have we done with this time... are we a land of philosophers, scientists and great thinkers, I think not, these people are the exception and not the rule. We are sheep caught in the machinery of consumerism, doomed to sell our labours cheaply in order to buy tat we don't need.
For sure it's easy to blame government and the money spinning machine that is capitalism for all our woes, however as ever the onus is on ourselves to strive to be better, assume responsibility for your situation and you take control of it.
So you've decided to take control.... So what do you do with this spare time...
Develop an interest in something and research the balls off it, be inquisitive in the world around you, ask why/when/how/what of everything, be critical in your thinking and become interesting..... the pursuit of knowledge is always a productive use of your time. I'm forever researching something of personal interest, for me that usually has something to do with cosmology, physics, biology, ecology, politics, economics, ancient history, cooking, health and fitness and all manner of other obscure subjects, learn something new and drop an interesting fact on a friend or colleague, challenge them to do the same.
Build something, I've always liked using my hands and there is much satisfaction to be had from building something yourself. I have a fascination with the natural world and in particular ants and other social insects, at university we had a formicarium (ant farm) in the lab packed full of industrious little leaf cutting ants, hours can be wiled away watching these creatures go about their various tasks and indeed much of my dissertation was spent doing just that (an ironic waste of time you may say.... but still better than Love Island). So a few months ago I decided to build my own, after much research on YouTube and time spent chasing ants around the garden I now have a mini ecosystem in a glass box complete with a waterfall.
Read, read, read and read some more, books are a window to the world, some personal favorites as far as expanding the consciousness and changing the way you view the world are Sapiens and Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari.
There is of course a disadvantage to this new found thirst for knowledge, in that, it will never be sated, as Albert Einstein once said "The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know". Instead of spending your day trying to fill time you will endlessly pursue the accumulation of knowledge and curse the little time you have
once you start down the path of the endless pursuit of knowledge
Failing all that you could just go to the gym.... start your journey of constant self improvement and book a session today.
Be better every day
Mike Murray
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