“And then there is the most dangerous risk of all – the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.” ― Randy Komisar, Monk and the Riddle: The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur
I am so worried that I wont be able to make heads or tails of my life. That I won’t make a difference, that my life won’t matter. I grind every day to make money doing something I have no real passion for. The only thing that keeps me going is staying up late working myself into the ground in the empty hours of the day
I frantically fill up the empty hours of the day with more work–an attempt to build something that I can eventually create a life of meaning around.
People place too much weight upon the expectations of others. They make decisions and choices based on a vision of success someone else has defined for them.
And of course, I think it is hard sometimes to identify your own goals, and your own purpose, free from the influence of the voices of others. We’ve been conditioned all our lives to listen to the voices of others. We have been told, since childhood, what the looks and measures of success are.
Have you graduated college? How much money are you making? How much power? Are you recongized by others for your accomplishments? Do you have a happy marriage–are you married at all? Do you have children? One? Two? Do you have a big house and a backyard and some dogs? Do you have two cars? Can you take two vacations a year?
It starts when you’re younger and grows up with you, in you. And then you are an adult and you find that you undervalue happiness and overvalue this predefined notion of success.
You’ll choose a job that makes others happy, jealous, proud–your parents, your peers, your ex’s and so forth. You tie yourself down, settle in before you’re ready, because its expected.
You never stop and ask yourself–what is success–for me? What is happiness, for me?
So my advice is to step back. Your unhappiness and anxiety in your life, with your decisions, are usually a product of trying to meet someone elses expectations & ideals. Figure out what will make you happy–and make that your goal, your standard of success.
You still got to work to live, but if you’re not happy–well, youre wasting your only life. Happiness should not be ‘optional’ to success.
I think we all agree when it comes to the importance of play and movement, especially for children. However, it frequently seems that children are the only ones allowed to indulge, and that as a society we not only have forgotten its value to teens, adults, and seniors but resist it. We verbally dismiss and label it as unproductive, self-indulgent, and immature, tell others to ‘quit playing around and get back to work, to ‘grow up’, and communicate a story that play is inappropriate.
Yet for those of us who dare to play, we are rewarded with some incredible benefits. Beyond the obvious increase in physical fitness & health, you also will find that stress levels drop, our learning and memory is more complete, social interactions become easier, and our ability grows to see opportunities in places we would otherwise have overlooked.
Play contributes deeply to our development as individuals, regardless of what age.
While we could deeply examine ways our resistance to play manifest in societal behaviors, I’d like to just scrape the surface of the story being told by the built world.
The city seems to be devoted to designing, building, and renovating places to play… for children. Inevery city there are hundreds of playgrounds and public spaces, but how many are open to adult and teen play?
In Central Park alone there are 21 designated playgrounds. Of those 21, a grand total of 0 are designed for teenagers or adults, and most go a step further to display signage barring use. (There is ‘fitness equipment’ available for use, but we’ll get into that in a second.)
Teens and adults could try to creatively re-purpose these youth playgrounds for their own purpose and play, but at their own risk–social and civil. Considered a nuisance to parents-they’ll be met with dirty looks and an of concerns for the safety of the children. Considered a danger by the city, they will be ushered out by rangers and possibly even ticketed. Signs are posted, fences are built. Boundaries pop up around play.
The built world is literally telling us that play is not for the rest of us.
Of course, we are living today in what could be considered the renaissance of Play. And the City has taken notice of the importance of getting up and out on your feet (2). There are a growing number of campaigns, programs, and facilities to assist adults in cultivating an active, healthy lifestyle.
However, a gym is not the same thing as a public playground, and does not offer the same set of complex benefits. Those four walls keep a lot of people and experiences out of the equation, and unable to participate.
Outdoor Gym ≠ Playground
In 2012 NYC opened its first official ‘adult playground’ and has plans to build two dozen more by the end of 2014 (3). This is a great start.
However, calling these spaces playgrounds is a gross exaggeration. Playgrounds are spaces that require creativity and imagination, storytelling and social negotiation, problem solving and exploration – and these ‘adult playgrounds’ lack all of that… because they are just outdoor gyms. Gyms come complete with rules and regulations, signs and directions, notions of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, expectations around achievement and behaviors. There is little creative thinking required and social interaction is avoidable.
While there is the benefit of improving economic access to a socially permissive space for physical activity (and that it smells significantly better than a box gym), so much is still lost and missing. Not to mention that the story being told about movement for adults is one of prescription and conformity.
(I will note that there has been some effort made to provide spaces for teens, but mostly in the realm of skateboarding-contingent upon the signature of a waiver and specific equipment requirements. There also was a recent project to build a playground for teens in Hudson Yards, but no others that I could find slated for construction. )
All spaces considered, there is no deny the unacceptable and near complete lack of opportunity for teenagers and adults to engage in free, unstructured, social, creative movement play.
What Next?
Now, I know here many will say that NYC has so much open park space. But in reality, in a Park your options are to walk on this path or that one, or to sit on a bench, in the shade or the sun, or to buy a vendor hot dog & people watch. There are tons of bike paths if you’re able to afford a bike, or you could throw a ball in the field, if you’re allowed on the grass, and only as long as you don’t disturb your neighbors. Any deviation from ‘normWhat next?al’ behavior will still be met with the social kickback we talked about above.
We need physical spaces complete with policy and permissions that permit play.
Thus with the lack of options it should be no surprise to hear that in NYC more than 1/2 the adult population is either overweight or obese(4)(5), especially when compounded with the fact that many of the opportunities that are available to get moving are too expensive, difficult, competitive, or, to put it plainly, not a whole lot of fun.
A sustainable, healthy lifestyle needs to be more than gym workouts, expensive specialty classes, and competitive team sports. We don’t need more gyms and classes in our city; we need more playful infrastructure and community spaces to support play across all ages. We need spaces that are complex, inter-generational, and flexible, that allow adults & teenagers to develop and explore their own open-ended challenges. Colorful. Social. Open to chaos, exploration, creation. A place that is safe, welcoming, accessible, and fun.
We need to stop looking at play as a distraction or diversion from reality, but rather as an integral element of our continual, healthful development. We need to design the places we live to support living a life in play.
Below is the a rough transcription of a talk delivered at The Feast in 2013.
Can we have a heart to heart for a second? Exercise can suck! I’m sure many of you agree that getting fit and staying there can be a pretty tedious task. Running on the treadmill for hours can be mind-numbing, as can strapping into exercise machines, and lifting weights…over and over, day in and day out, all in the name of meeting some unrealistic standard of beauty…
When approached like that, yes, fitness is absurd. When we are forced to do such repetitive and simple movements, that sometimes are so physically enjoyable, of course we just zone out, stop paying attention, and try to just get through it. We find ourselves counting down the minutes, the seconds, until we can leave the gym and just go home!
We miss out on all the joy movement has to offer. and to me–that’s whats absurd.
The human body was designed to move, and designed to enjoy movement. Our ancestors ran through trees, climbed over rocks, and play games. Movement was a defining part of life. And somehow over the last century we’ve redefined it as a chore–no more important than doing the dishes or taking out the trash or mowing the lawn, if you’re lucky enough to have one!
So I’m here today to change the way you think about exercise–to give you an alternative to the fancy gym memberships, expensive equipment, and ultra competitive team sports. I’m here to give you a tool that can turn the hard work of exercise in to play… and that tool is Parkour.
Parkour is a discipline focused on natural human movements. Movements such as crawling [action] balancing [action] jumping [action] swinging [action] and vaulting [action] Beyond the movement, Parkour is a discipline of overcoming obstacles, both mental and physical. You can be both creative and critical. You learn the difference between good risk and bad, and how to cope with the uncertainties in your life. You can begin to understand your capabilities and where your limits lie.
Lessons from Parkour
I’m sure at least a few of you are wondering–How can the practice of Parkour teach you these things? Well–lets take a closer look:
1. You can first practice Parkour in its safest form–by staying low to the ground and focusing on control, patience, and building an understanding of your body in space.
2. With time, you can advance and begin setting yourself isolated challenges that are either more physically demanding, which requires a deeper understanding of your abilities, or more mentally demanding, forcing you to face fear and trust in yourself
3. Alternatively you can utilize dynamic movements and focus either on: (a) building greater efficiency, which forces you to problem solve and quickly resolve a path over under through or (b) fluidity, which gives you space to be creative and innovative with your body.
4. You can even just opt to practice Parkour through games, which lets you to think less on the technique and focus more on just enjoying movement.
The list goes on. There is no right or wrong in Parkour, for utlimately you set the rules. We have no standards of success or gold medals to win. You need only to come out and try your hardest. Because in Parkour we celebrate effort over achievement. It doesnt matter if you cant balance your first day or jump. Maybe you wont be able to get up and over your second try or third. Inevitably you will fall but you will also learn to get back up and to try again. This is because you are not working to be better than everyone else but better than yourself.
And therein lies the first, and most important thing you need to know about Parkour, and movement in general, and that is–that there is no barrier of entry. There is no such thing as being too old, or too weak, being too busy or not good enough!
But I dont expect you to completely believe me when I say fitness can be fun, especially after 5 short minutes. As Buckminster Fuller once said that “If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don’t bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool the use of which will lead them to new ways of thinking.”
So, after a short demonstration by members of our community, I’d like to invite you all over to play, and, perhaps, pick up that tool that will change the way you think about fitness and yourself.
It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”— Epictetus
Want to know the biggest block to growth? These two words:
“I know”
I constantly encounter this phrase from students in the classes I teach, especially where we work on our foundational movements. I hear it from fellow coaches when discussing how to improve class experience. I hear it from myself, even, as I receive critique and feedback about the things I need to work on, and see it sometimes in my practice as I avoid working certain skills.
In some cases it’s because we think we know better, in others its because we think we know more, and sometimes it’s because we think we know enough. And while this I Know mindset might block out unuseful, unsolicited advice, it also makes us blind and deaf to information that might actually help us grow.
The I Know mindset most commonly emerges in places where we long to appear competent, superior, or one of the group. It feeds on our fear of failure and shame, as well as our resistance to critique and lack of humility. It grows in our lack of self-awareness. And it kills any hope for achieving mastery–in your movement, work, and life.
Familiarity vs Mastery
The I Know Mindset is wild.
During class yesterday we worked on our jumping. As I began reviewing good form and walking through the lesson, one student pointed out that we learned jumping last week and that they wanted to learn something new. In response, I began setting up a number of different challenges. I walked over to a rail and asked-can you jump to this and land without falling? I pointed to the steps – can you jump up these steps, 2,3,4 at a time all the way to the top without stopping? Jump and land while ducking? Jump with one leg? Precisely?
It’s easy to confuse familiarity with mastery. My student understood the fundamental elements of jumping but lacked the ability to masterfully deploy his skills across a number of situations. His ‘I Know’ mindset limited his vision.
‘I know’ is often a declaration that we are superior to practice, that we have completed the circle, that there is nothing left to learn from the knowledge we already have.
Yes, developing brand new skills can be very exciting. It expands language, reveals new challenges, and, without doubt, can assist in helping overcome tougher physical, intellectual, and motivational plateaus.
But, if you are to truly master your movement or mind and achieve life-long, sustainable physical and mental fitness, you must be consistently developing both laterally and deeply. It requires coming from a place of constant inquiry and the rejection of the ‘I Know’. It requires constantly seeking out how to see differently, do better, create new things with old tools.
The work on our minds and bodies only completes when life completes.
Do Better
Ask Yourself: Where in your life are you saying “I Know?” What triggers it (desire to belong, to appear competent, boredom, etc)?
Find new places to test out old skills, new people to talk through established beliefs. Try different approaches, even if you think your approach is better.Take your skills and practice in a new location
There is a great podcast interview with Laura Dern where she talks about actively seeking out characters who she initially hates, often out of a desire to understand them, and hopefully come to love them.
I constantly hear clients complain about the lack of time they have in a day to consistently exercise and stay healthy.
I want to be sympathetic to this sentiment but the reality is that there are 168 hours in a week. If you work a 40-hour week (9-5) and sleep a full eight hours each night, you are still left with 72 hours. 72 hours. Lets even subtract another 21 hours so that you can cook yourself healthy dinners and get some family time in. And subtract another 10 for commuting (A nod to you New York, with almost an hour long commute!)(1). Even after all that, you still have over 25 hours.
Public health guidelines only recommend about 4 hours a week of exercise in order to stay healthy (which I disagree with but…)
You don’t have time, you say?
You’re right, what you don’t have time for is excuses.
The Epidemic of American Life
Americans, especially New Yorkers, are always on the go. We race around every day to make more money, to improve our status, to catch up on our work, trying desperately to get ahead. We burn the candle on both ends, juggling family with hobbies, as we work to carve out our own little version of the american dream.
And we suffer from an epidemic of obesity and frailty. We overindulge in fast foods, liquor, and drugs. We sleep too much or we sleep too little. We are indoors more than 90% of the day (2), behind computers and televisions, playing games, posting on facebook, and living digitally.
We feel like we don’t have enough time to exercise because we are too overwhelmed and exhausted by the mixture of financial burdens, family obligations, social media overload, and work. We fail to prioritize our health alongside all the other elements of our life not because there is not time, but because we can’t be bothered.
As time passes, your bones weaken and muscles soften, and though you might be surrounded by nice things now, you also earned yourself a body that ultimately will fail you.
Mindset Shift: From Work to Play
We need to stop viewing exercise as work. If you hate running, then don’t go spending hours on the treadmill. If you hate team sports, then don’t go join the local baseball league. Movement comes in many forms–it is just a matter of identifying the one that speaks to you and brings you joy.
If you don’t enjoy what you are doing, you will make sure there is never any time.
We need to learn to take delight in movement, to seek out fulfilling forms of play, and to indulge ourselves. It is not about getting healthy and fit, but being healthy and fit–enjoying movement for life, as an integral part of that life. We need to find forms of play that we ultimately will give the same weight of importance as our work, family, and other pursuits.
For play is work of the most serious and important kind. Physical play is where we explore who we are, where we encounter our insecurities and face our limitations, where we learn to cope with insecurity and begin to define and exceed our capacities. Play allows us to be healthy and fit without having to feel like we are working on being healthy and fit.
Playing, and living healthy, demonstrates respect for ourselves.
Do This
So stop making excuses. You do have enough time! Go find your form of play and start respecting your body and your self.
Journal: Sit down and write down your daily routine. You can do it on a napkin even. What is blocking you from finding time to move and play each day? Re-write your ideal routine, and revisit it once a year at minimum, if not each season (weather really kills my routine).
Find Your Play: Ditch the gym and find a new way to play (meetup.com anyone?), and keep trying new ways until you find something that sticks. Better yet, find a community that loves to move and play–its proven that your community impacts your lifestyle and behaviors.
Start Small: Add some movement snacks to your day (stand on one foot while brushing your teeth, take a walk for lunch, start and finish the day with 5 minutes of stretching).
