Hey everyone,
Though we haven't seen each other in about 20 years, our next guest writer, Brian VanNostrand and I had remained in loose contact on Facebook. Every now and then, he would send me a message about he appreciated my writing.
Knowing that Brian was always very smart, literate and funny I held his praise in high regard. When he decided to sign up for the Die Mighty online training program I was beyond thrilled. I was extra excited when I received his blog.
We can all make change. We can all grab the sword. We can all Die Mighty. We just have to break the paradigms and barriers we can spend years building for ourselves.
Please comment, like and share if you relate to this or think it can help inspire someone.
Ladies and gents, here's Brian's guest manifesto.
-Fury
#diemighty
SEEING PASSED THE PARADIGM
A Die Mighty Guest Manifesto
By Brian VanNostrand
English Teacher
I
was never good at sports – at least that’s the way I remember things. I wasn’t some kind of cliché;
bespectacled and clumsy and always picked last for kickball at recess, but I
wasn’t very good either. I suspect
my ineptitude at physical games was the result of being overweight as a child,
and my tendency to fantasize about the origins of Star Wars characters when I
should have been paying attention to what was flying at me in right field. My classmates and (especially) my
teammates were always quick to point out my mistakes in the oh-so-gentle way
children have of criticizing each other, so naturally I started to shy away
from physical games pretty early on.
My parents encouraged me to join different league sports – soccer,
baseball, football – I tried them all and dropped them all pretty quickly. I just wasn’t the “athletic type”.
Now,
what I was good at was academic pursuits. As early as I can remember, I was praised for my grades and my ability
to comprehend things passed my age. I was highly imaginative, and loved to draw and make up stories, and
many of the adults in my life reinforced this by commending me on these
pursuits. Because of all this,
somewhere along the way, I unconsciously decided that this was what would
define me.
I was creative, an
intellectual.
Physical activities
just weren’t for me.
Some people were
sporty and others weren’t. I knew
where I belonged. This pattern,
this paradigm, dividing people into these two groups (the physical and the
intellectual) unconsciously dominated my thinking for decades.
Oh,
there were a few moments of defection. I briefly played football in the 8th and 9th
grade, and lifted weights for awhile in high school, but I really did these
things to try and impress girls, and didn’t ever take either very
seriously. No, for the most part,
I worked on developing my mind and neglected my body.
And
this way of seeing the world persisted for decades. Here and there, I would try and get on a “health kick”, but
I always ended up quitting and returning to a sedentary life of bad food and
plenty of beer.
I got married, had
kids, started a career, and bought a house. These were all good things, but they also made it easier for
me to ignore my health.There was never enough time to exercise, I was too busy
to diet; the excuses were very easy to come by.
Then,
a few years ago I was diagnosed with high blood pressure. I started taking the medication and
just kept going, eating and drinking like a sailor on shore leave. My doctor would suggest exercise, and I
would agree (“I really should, but there’s never any time…”). Meanwhile a little voice in the back of
my head would be muttering, “Exercise? That’s for jocks! Can’t she
see we are an intellectual?”
The
high blood pressure diagnosis was soon followed by high cholesterol and another
pill I had to take everyday. Still
I kept going, pushing on, ignoring what my body was telling me. I would exercise for a little while,
then drop it, the old subconscious paradigm still nagging me.
A few months ago, just before my
forty-third birthday, I was prescribed my third and fourth daily
medicines. I was despondent now, I
thought of myself as an unsustainable organism. I would look at my wife and kids and imagine what their
lives would be without me. How
would my children remember me when I died of a stroke or sudden heart attack? Something needed to change. I realized I needed to change, but I
wasn’t sure how to go about it.
After
reading the first few blog posts from Coach Fury, I saw a way I could help
myself. I could take charge of my
physical life in the same way I had always taken charge of my intellectual
life. I needed to see that old
paradigm as just what it was – an old thought that I had been thinking for too
long. I had repeated it to myself
so many times over so many years, and used it to define myself within such
narrow parameters that I dragged myself into disease and danger.
I started to see beyond that old
perspective, and realized that I could be better; better for myself, better for
my wife, and (most importantly) better for my kids.
I want to be healthy for myself, sure, but I also want to
show them that the only limits we have in life are the ones we put on
ourselves.
I want to show them
that these self-imposed limits are artificial, just a thought we had and have
been thinking too long.
We humans
are not defined in only one way or the other – we can be all things at once.
I want them to know that I’m in
this life for the long haul.
-Brian
Along with creating Die Mighty, Steve “Coach Fury” Holiner is a trainer at Mark Fisher Fitness in NYC and is an Original Strength Lead Instructor, a Master RKC Kettlebell Instructor and a Master DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training Instructor. Through his leadership roles, Fury travels throughout the U.S. and internationally to teach. Fury has also written for Mark Fisher Fitness, the RKC, DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training, Bodybuilding.com, Details Magazine and his own site.
He’s also a big Godzilla fan.
Want to dive deeper into Die Mighty? Fury is available for online training and is teaching workshops.
Follow me at: coachfury.com, FB/coachfury, IG@iamcoachfury/, twitter@coachfury
Show the world you chose the sword with I WILL DIE MIGHTY shirts!
Order here: teespring.com/iwlldiemighty
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