Life's Macro Splits

Thursday Thought

Readjusting perspective is just like readjusting a macro split. It takes a bit of tweaking to get the right combination of protein, fats, carbs (or fulfillment, joy, energy) to find what works best. Or at least, that’s what it’s been for me. Over the last few months, I’ve been playing around with my split – alternating high and low carb (energy) days based on my lifting schedule. It’s been effective for the most part because it ensures that I have enough gas in the tank to push for PR’s, to lift heavier and heavier and to keep pushing forward. The low carb days are a struggle because I’m left feeling spent, without energy and constantly hungry. While this approach is effective to a degree, it’s not sustainable for long term successes.

I realize that the way to ensure progressive and continual positivity, to find a pleasant perspective in each of my days, I need to have balance. Sure, carb cycling can get me a new number on a lift, but it doesn’t help if the day following, I’m starved for sustenance! Much the same, constantly flopping between feeling fulfilled and enraged doesn’t do anything to readjust my perspective either. It’s far too difficult to find formidable strength when I vacillate between happiness and not. The ticket here is finding sustainable sources of fulfillment, joy, and energy – activities and actions to which I can return daily that consistently offer the same sorts of results.

For most of my life, writing has been one such activity that helps me find my way back to center. It’s been my rerack/reset … and for a long time, it’s worked. Sitting to pages has offered the elusive fulfillment that I’ve so ardently sought. Or at least, it did for a good long while.

Lots of my writing these last few months has appeared contended and joyful. I’ve looked for and sought out ways to express gratitude and joy because I thought if I kept on writing it, it would become a reality. There’s some truth to intention based living, but the real deal is that most of this has been a front. I convinced myself that the more I wrote about happiness and being fulfilled, then the more likely I would be to feel it. To find it, and to live it.

Turns out that’s a whole bunch of bullshit. Writing pretty happy things doesn’t make me feel any more fulfilled with what I’m doing than buying some Oly shoes makes a chick a lifter. If I want change (and I’m here now, I really do) then I actually have to do something about that … which starts with adjusting perspectives, seeking out situations in which I can give of myself to those who are in my world, experiences that allow me to share love and happiness. Just like a macro split, this formula is going to take some adjusting, for sure. But if I don’t adjust, then I don’t change. And fuck that. This shit is too whack not to change.