New Year of Learning by max el-hag

The more I experience life, the more I realize that life is an opportunity to learn - learn about life itself, learn about love, learn about triumph, learn about reality, learn about yourself, and learn about how ignorant we are to this human experience. I am writing this blog as a reminder to my future self of all the lessons I learned (or re-learned) this past year, and also because I think they could be valuable lessons for most people. I write my blogs using stream of consciousness so this is not an exhaustive list of things I feel I’ve learned this year, but hopefully I will remember 2016 as a pretty transformative year in my life, and am excited to push into 2017 and continue to build momentum for the time life offers me.

- Momentum seems to function as an exponential, so try to always keep it moving forward.

- People, especially “experts,” usually don’t know what they don’t know.

- Control of outcomes in life is an illusion.

- True work ethic needs to be developed through adversity and struggle.

- The ‘pursuit of happiness’ can in fact create more unhappiness.

- Love is extremely powerful, but largely misunderstood.

- We are simultaneously completely alone and completely interconnected.

- Variability of behavior, movement, mood, attitude, and mindset seem more useful and enjoyable in life than rigidity and a constant sense of self.

- Over-explaining, by definition, is useless. Say only what is necessary. (people who follow this and know me know the irony of this lesson)

- Surround yourself with great people – in business, life, and love.

- True trust and loyalty feel good, but all require continuous vulnerability.

- Belief is one of the most powerful (and scientific) forces in life

- Life changes everyone

- “Success” in a sport is largely governed by focusing on the correct things.

- There is no one size fits all way to do anything – training, nutrition, business, or life.

- Understanding a concept intellectually is different than truly understanding it.

- External circumstances don’t have to alter internal circumstances.

- The psyche is a powerful, yet fragile, system.

- Information, knowledge, and wisdom seem to be similar things that evolve along a continuum with experience.

- Competition breeds growth, but also breaks people if not done with the correct perspective.

- Shame can be a healthy emotion.

- To consciously choose is to be human.

- Money makes life (and business) easier and more comfortable, but easy and comfortable don’t make life ‘better’ or more ‘happy’.

- It’s very rare to find people to help you who actually care about your self-interest - cherish them.

- Being taken advantage of by people is part of life, and while it sucks, it will lead you to make better decisions in the future about who to associate with.

- Coaching is an art form. And all arts are hard to understand and can be explained in many ‘languages’ including: math, science, stories, metaphor, etc.

- All forms of training are movement.

- Most people have different definitions of words than I have for terms like: movement, training, belief, love, trust, honesty, etc.

- We are all hypocrites, better to know your hypocrisies and accept them than judge others’.

So, what else do I want to learn in 2017? What does life have to offer me in this next year of existence? How many new people will finally discover how crazy I am? Which of my athletes will stand on podiums this year?

No one knows what the future holds for us, so instead of trying to create goals in the material world, I have a couple simple goals for 2017…

1- Keep learning.

2- Keep progressing.

3- Live.

~ MAX

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Max El-Hag
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