16 April 2022
0026
;tldr
– Being healthy has much positive spillover by way of energy and disposition to the other spheres of your life.
– Regardless of the marginalisation of physicality in modern life, people will still judge you by your physical fitness and attractiveness. They will literally treat better looking and healthier people better. You will feel more confident and self-assured as a result. This will make you happier.- It’s easy to forget, even if subconsciously, that in order to get better at anything in any sphere, you need to invest effort and sacrifice comfort. Working on your fitness is maybe the most tangible, physical, quantifiable manifestation of that idea, and one that when deeply imbibed will make you more effective at pretty much everything else in your life.
Details
Firstly, physical health is important. Without belabouring the value of being healthy, here are a few thoughts:
– Being more physically fit gives one more both more energy and a brighter disposition towards life that is readily transferable to other spheres of life. The body cannot survive without the mind just like the mind cannot survive without the body. As humans, our entire existence is encapsulated in both, and it is of value to maintain both. The salient point here is that the benefit of one does not only not detract from the other but feeds and nourishes it.
– Despite the erstwhile abstraction of value and its production in our society (from hunters to warriors to engineers to entrepreneurs), we are still very much physical beings. We still judge each other on the basis of our health and physical attractiveness even if at a subconscious level. The Halo Effect is still very real. Beyond genetic measures outside of our control like facial symmetry or height, health and fitness definitely adds to attractiveness, and crucially, is within our control. I think this is important, and accounts almost entirely for the confidence boost gleaned from getting a fashion makeover or getting in better shape. You’re not just feeling better about yourself in a vacuum, people are literally treating you better. This is important.
Secondly, and this is perhaps the crux of the argument: life isn’t easy. We all have goals, most of these are predicated on us being a particular kind of person. An idealised self, if you will. This platonic self is inevitably superior to us along many (perhaps all) of the dimensions that we use to judge a person (including our own) value.
This simple truth is easily disheartening. When there is a gap between who we are and who we want to be, we are faced with a choice, either:
– we push ourselves to get closer to our ideals (think growth mindset if you’re into the whole Carol Dweck thing)
– or we compromise our ideals and bring them closer to where we currently are (think fixed mindset)
I’d argue that the second is an absolute tragedy for many reasons. I leave coming up with arguments for this as an exercise to the reader.
Let’s consider the first, then. Pushing ourselves to be better is arduous. It involves a lot of suffering and personal sacrifice. It involves delayed gratification. We all do this whenever we put ourselves through the discomfort of learning something. Importantly though, I think a person’s willingness to delay gratification or put themselves through discomfort is relatively limited in the short term. It’s easy to think that the ultimate gain is not worth it, or worse, that it’s impossible to get better.
We forget, more subconsciously than consciously, more in our habits and lifestyle than in our rational decisions, that in order to get better at something, we need to invest effort and suffer immediate discomfort.
Working out, I’d argue, is the most visceral, physical, literal manifestation of the idea that in order to get better, you need to work, be uncomfortable, and do so consistently. But that there is payoff, that this is tangible, quantifiable, real.
Lifting weights, even when it hurts and you’re weak, demonstrates this as clearly as I can imagine. You start lifting a certain weight, fail at a higher weight, keep lifting, and are eventually able to lift higher weights. And seeing that consciously is inspiring. It reminds one as physically and literally as possible of the absolute necessity of effort and discomfort in the pursuit of betterment.
This is why I think the gym is so valuable. It puts you in the mindset of possibility rather than inevitability.
Ofcourse, the natural rebuttal is that this applies to pretty much every act of deliberate learning. But what’s particularly nice here about the gym is that the discomfort is immediate and noticeable (rather than me vaguely procrastinating my math homework), the gainzz are clear and quantifiable (I can measure how much more weight I can move), and finally, the community is diverse, supportive, and largely agnostic to the kind of person you are. Everybody from bankers to housewives want to be fit. They’re all a bunch of people striving to get their lives together, and being a part of that community holds you accountable, helps guide you, and empowers you to action.
That’s why despite the barrage of thirst-traps, I don’t think gym-rats are so bad.