Redefining Fun

I was reading “Everything Is Fucked: A book about hope” by Mark Manson this morning and I read a few lines that really stood out to me.

As the oxymoron of a title suggests, this book is about hope and ultimately how to live a better, more purpose driven life.

Here was the first section that really stood out to me where Mark was talking about a friend who used to love partying and doing drugs on the weekend but her priorities shifted after a trip to build homes for the less fortunate:

But here's the funny thing about value hierarchies: When they change, you don't actually lose anything. It's not that my friend decided to start giving up the parties for her career, it's that the parties stopped being fun. That's because "fun" is the product of our value hierarchies. When we stop valuing something, it ceases to be fun or interesting to us. Therefore, there is no sense of loss, no sense of missing out when we stop doing it. On the contrary, we look back and wonder how we ever spent so much time caring about such a silly, trivial thing, why we wasted so much energy on issues and causes that didn't matter. These pangs of regret or embarrassment are good; they signify growth. They are the product of our achieving our hopes.

FUN is the product of our value hierarchies.

Huh, what a way to think about it.

This got me thinking about fitness and how so many people struggle with their health, fitness, and maintaining a healthy weight.

It feels so hard to do the workouts, to track the food, and to go to bed at a reasonable hour.

It feels like a chore - the farthest thing from fun.

But if you were to talk to the people who have successfully gotten ripped, shredded, and transformed into a Greek God - chances are, this wasn’t the case for them.

Going to the gym, eating nutritious food, and checking the boxes every damn day was fun for them.

They got off to that shit, it wasn’t a chore.

Outside the normal hedonistic human tendencies, based on this section of the book my guess is that doing those things to get or stay in shape are not “fun” for you because you don’t value them or the benefits that come along with them.

Sure, you wish you looked way hotter with your clothes off so you could do it with the lights on for the first time in 10 years (or more), but right now you value the comfort of staying where you are more than you value the benefits of getting into shape and being a healthy person, especially since it’s an uncomfortable shift.

I know, it can be a real bitch being a human these days. Especially one trying to get fit as fuck and feel their best.

In order to make the journey of change much easier, and MUCH more fun, you need to change your values and the fun will follow.

But still, having the discipline and self control to do the thing(s) can be a mountain to climb in and of itself.

This brings me to the next section that really stood out to me.

This section of the book he’s talking about your feeling brain and your thinking brain - or the rational side of your brain and the emotional one - and he uses Jocko Willink as an example of self control.

Other times, you can just tell your Feeling Brain stories that might or might not be true but that feel true. Jocko Willink, former Navy SEAL and author, writes in his book Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual that he wakes up at four thirty every morning because he imagines his enemy is somewhere out there in the world,° He doesn't know where, but he assumes that his enemy wants to kill him. And he realizes that if he's awake before his enemy, that gives him an advantage. Willink developed this narrative for himself while serving in the Iraq War, where there were actual enemies who did want to kill him. But he has maintained that narrative since returning to civilian life.

Objectively, the narrative Willink creates for himself makes no fucking sense. Enemy? Where? But figuratively, emotionally, it is incredibly powerful. Willink's Feeling Brain still buys into it, and it still gets Willink up every damn morning before some of us are done drinking from the night before. That is the illusion of self-control.

Without these narratives-without developing a clear vision of the future we desire, of the values we want to adopt, of the identities we want to shed or step into-we are forever doomed to repeat the failures of our past pain. The stories of our past define our identity. The stories of our future define our hopes. And our ability to step into those narratives and live them, to make them reality, is what gives our lives meaning.

So my two questions to you are this:

1. What do you value? And are your values in line with what you ultimately want to achieve in life?
2. What’s the narrative you can tell yourself to create the illusion of self-control? For me, it’s not thinking of my enemy’s waking before me because, well, that’s ridiculous in my scenario.
   1. But seeing people with less talent than me, do more with their lives and living with the fear of not living up to my potential…ooooohhh baby that lights a fire under my ass.

I know that was actually 3 questions, not 2, but whatever - cry about it!

-Eric

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