When I was a younger man, I discovered a community and a whole world within dance music. When I started to fall in love with this scene, I began going to events where people danced until sunrise, were obsessed beyond measure with niche artists that no one’s heard of (but we gag over), and made fast friends with the strangers standing next to you. When going to events, the thing that I probably loved the most was how connected to people I felt. I felt as though I had permission to say hi to the strangers next to me and ask them about themselves. Some of my closest friends to this day came from these sort of interactions - probably because if a person is at that sort of event, you can ascertain that you have things in common.
Experiences like this are healing. Most of the time, we walk around judging each other as if we’re high and mighty, everyone is in our way as we indulge our egos and try to get through our respective days. But in these moments, we can mostly let that go and connect to our humanity and our sameness which I believe is something this world is truly missing. We don’t love and support each other enough which is why in my work, I consistently encourage people to engage in a healthy community because we need each other. Period.
Now, as many of you know…the festival/dance music world also tends to involve a lot of drug use. I don’t think it’s any secret that part of how the vibe is cultivated is through the use of performance enhancers. For me, that piece of the experience needed to be fully removed for my own health and safety. I still love the vibes and the party, but it’s my responsibility to engage in a different way at this point in my journey.
This past weekend, I competed in a CrossFit competition. It was the most “legit” competition I had ever done and at the highest level. Throughout the weekend, I kept thinking about how this felt a bit like a festival. I’d been to this event and others like it before, but I didn’t compete. This weekend, I truly got HIGH off the experience. High off laughing with my teammates about selling our souls during work outs, high off fist bumps with the guys next to us in the tent before we went on stage, and high off crossing the finish line. The coolest thing about a community like CrossFit is that we get high, but we work REALLY hard for it. I am so grateful that I found my way to this world because it allows me to feel the highs of the festival scene with a community that has a lot of love - we just deem that part of the entrance fee is busting your ass to get that high. I think that’s pretty amazing.
All of this is to say, community matters. It doesn’t have to be CrossFit and if you love festivals or a music scene (I still do lol) and you can engage in that in a healthy way, that counts in my book too! But there’s so many communities that cultivate a vibe where the shared experience prevails and you can pick any one of them that feels good for you! Obstacle Course racing (Spartan, Tough Mudder, etc.), Triathlons, Olympic Weightlifting. The point is….whatever you’re into, do it with people. Go to events. Lean in. Make friends, push each other to improve your craft. Find that healthy habit that you can work on and support your peeps on the journey.
Keep Thriving,
Greg
Thinking about self-limiting beliefs today. Are there limiting beliefs that you’ve held in the past that have kept you stuck? How did you move past them?
This is the perfect place to build your tribe! Feel free to authentically and boldly share what’s going on with you, relevant parts of your health and wellness journey or any helpful information you might come across.
NOTE: This is a community for men. Women are wonderful, but if they are found in the community, they will respectfully be asked to leave.
Keep Thriving,
Coach Greg
One sentiment that is, in my opinion, easily identifiable in our modern culture is the concept of “Safetyism.” When I say this word, I mean an obsession with safety, being risk averse to the point of being pathological. The increase in fear in our consciousness is very apparent, so what could be driving this heightening fear? I think the truth of the matter is that people have a perception that things are more dangerous than they are because they have been informed by a less than credible internet source or their perception is skewed by their feed. As an example, many people believe there’s more violent crime being committed now than some years ago. Meanwhile, FBI data illustrates a different picture of this, showing that since the 1990s, crime is overall on a downswing. What could be the reason for this stark contrast? I would posit that it relates to the availability of information through the internet and social media. It’s much easier for violent crimes and atrocities to come into ...
I’ve been reflecting about the concept of rest and why it appears to be very difficult for many of us in the current state of affairs. When I say rest, I mean both physically and mentally…but especially mentally. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that we’re all very overstimulated and I think because of this, our ability to push the “off” button has become…suspect, at best.
We are existing at the corner of hustle culture and an attention economy (social media, instagram, etc.) that has made it seemingly difficult to unplug and just be. I often find that if I’m honest with myself, a lot of time that I’m “resting” I’m not even rested, nor relaxed because I’m consuming two or three forms of media at once. This is not relaxing….it might be relaxing if we’re just intentionally allowing ourselves to scroll but the thing about a living, breathing algorithm is that we don’t even know what we’re going to get sometimes. We could be trying to relax and in pops a ...
Yes, I know the title of this might turn some people off but hear me out. We have entered a state of affairs where the concept of medicine is entirely divorced from the spirit in the Western world. Even in psychological medicine where the topic of consciousness is very relevant, most dare not to enter the realm of belief, God, higher powers, or anything of the sort. Certainly, there can be plenty of merit in discovering why we think the way that we do, or trying to think better thoughts. Though frankly, I do think as a society we are incredibly excellent at analyzing ourselves to death with little in the way of results. It’s all well and good to understand why you’re crazy, miserable and unhealthy, it’s an entirely different thing to actually behave differently.
While a certain side of me does empathize with this idea that we need to intervene at the level of thought or simply in the body to help people get better, I question how we as a species can divorce the soul from this equation. I ...
