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