Whether you’re tall, short, thin, curvy, or stout; whatever the shape you see in the mirror, the shape of your life will likely look much the same as every other. It rises up, arcs over and slides back down. Or does it?
This “normal trajectory of life” I’ve just described, that most of us have long ago accepted as a given, is not accurate. It’s a myth, a story to which our culture and history has given life.
In reality, these symptoms (and the declining body that goes with them) are much more likely the result of physical, mental and emotional fatigue from being over-worked, over-stressed, over-tired, over-fed and under-nourished, and just plain out of shape. All things you can change now, at any age.
No matter where you are in life, you have the choice to stop living in” the Gap” and create a resurgence and start growing younger, stronger and leaner today and each day forward.
In Strength for Life, page 13, I refer to this new higher trajectory for your life as creating the “S curve”.
Take the 7 question quiz in the video and then choose a future more brilliant than your past.
Until Next Week…
Stay Strong,
Shawn
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| About the Author | |
| Author, innovator and expert in Life Performance for two decades, Shawn Phillips is as respected for his physique as his wisdom. Working with his brother Bill (of Body for LIFE fame) he helped create the performance nutrition giant, EAS. For a "how to" guide to a Lifestyle of Fitness Freedom, check out Shawn's most recently instant best-selling book from Bantam BooksStrength for LIFE, called by Next-Level in Transformational Fitness, Here. |
18. May 2009 at 2:05 am
Hi Shawn,
You say that American culture and all other cultures in the world share a common view of how life evolves along a rising and declining curve.
This is a pretty srong statement that begs for facts to support it.
Based on the book “The Culture Code” by Clotaire Rapaille, who studies cultures and their underlying currents, I would say you’re wrong, at least in one case.
American culture is one that believes in eternal youth, like teens do, like they feel they’ll never die. What you propose is very much in line with this. You take a myth that exists only in your imagination (a myth that could be a fact for almost all the world too, if proven) and replace it with another one, which is an American one. You talk well to your audience, like a good politician.
Life goes according a certain cycle that can vary but is birth, life, and death. It is better for human beings to do what they can to live the best life possible. Here I agree with you. But we cannot change the reality that, at the end, our bodies will loose some of their capacity to sustain life. This is the way of life itself, of which death is an integral part. Let us do our very best to live as healthy as long as we can, but let us not kid ourselves that we will not go down somehow in some way at some point.
Curve or straight line, there will be an end. I would like my end to go peacefully and with good health. No amount of strength for life training can garantee this. I don’t care about one myth or another. I care about living well. In the end, statisticians could do their work and tell the universe if I went up or down.
In the meantime, a few push-ups are always welcome.
Cheers,
Pierre
19. May 2009 at 11:39 am
Pierre,
I welcome the dialogue and appreciate your thoughtfulness in comment although it strikes me that you’re over thinking it a bit. Believe me, I get easy it is to get one’s head into things and am often challenged by the need to make “things” a little more accessible, a little simpler.
In this case that is precisely what I’m doing… having a cocktail conversation about something sort of like. I am in no way attempting to make an undependable statement but rather tell a story.
And while it’s been a while since I’ve watched this video, I know the conversation of “The Shape of Your Life” well, from my book and the hundred times I’ve given it to audiences. Congratulations on being the first to ever see it as a reference to cultures. I’m not discussing the myth of eternal youth but the unconscious, conditioned acceptance of a declining life as a given. Do we age? Hell yes… does the body get more vibrant? Hell no… but do we allow ourselves to be less vibrant, less energized, less of damn near everything than we have to?
That’s an easy answer. Hell yes…
I call upon the research from the book, Biomarkers: The 10 Keys to Prolonging Vitalaity which makes a very strong science backed case for the premature loss of vitality and the fact that strength training and the subsequent side-effect of increased lean muscle it is prone to create is the #1 marker of youth and a the most potent enhancer of all 10 markers.
In simple terms, muscle is the most profound marker of youth.
Now, that fact that I contend that you should/could be aware enough to choose a stronger, more vibrant life at any age does not mean you should or are required to live your life in some sort of polyannic, Britney Spears induced childlike coma. I’m not suggesting that physical vitality is either independent of nor inversely proportional to one’s mental and emotional evolution. In fact I see them–as you would know from reading my book–strongly correlated and interdependent.
So, with that, back to my point: As simple and perhaps flawed under a high-power microscope, I’m simply pointing up to the top of the nearest mountain and saying, “Why not climb higher? Why not live better? Why not embrace your full potential from the inside out? and ultimately, why not wake up to all that you and this amazing life are?”
Why not Live at Full Strength!
However you choose to engage your life, may you enjoy a full life of challenges, achievement and contribution: A Life at Full Strength.
In Strength,
Shawn
19. May 2009 at 10:36 pm
Hi Shawn,
Thanks for your lengthy answer. I appreciate this dialogue too.
I hear my acupuncturist when you say I think too much. I do think a lot. I want systems to fit. When they are jarred, I do not go along. I also know the consequences of a small variation at the source; it leads to monumental errors at the end.
I am going to be 59 next month, I look very young for my age, and I am in better shape than people in their early 20’s. Most people over 35 are too old for me. I go in one day through what most people cannot do in a lifetime. And I do this day after day. I look well after myself and I teach this to others as a living.
I understand your need to simplify your message. But this message reaches outside your country. You may not address yourself to other cultures or want to do so. But you do nonetheless. To get them on side, were you to want this, you also need to take their cultural codes into account. Americans are a culture of dreaming teenagers. You put a dream across to them and you get them. The Chinese would health-wise want to align with Heaven and Earth, the French would find you so unsophisticated as to discard you, like former President Bush, the Canadians want to preserve energy and not spend it, so their banking system. I like to be challenged by you. Yet I respond from a different perspective. People from every culture tend to project their group’s views onto the world. I send back to you what doesn’t get me on board. This is fundamental. One has to be on code to get others to buy their stuff. When I read you, I chuckled as though my 15 year old grandson is trying to teach me how to live my life as a senior. But he is not in a position of authority. You are. To me you sound a bit like Bush on Irak. Yes, Irak was an issue and a possible threath, but a war might not have been the best long-term solution. You also sound like Obama with “Yes, we can!” It is a better attitude from my perspective, but it is also very simple.
I enjoy popular tunes, but I am more like a complex classical symphony. This is a composer and conductor saying to Perry Como, “Let’s do real music now!” I may sound like a real fart. In ways I am one. But if we are going to dream, I like to dream complex constellations and intricate brains and rich minds. Not slogans.
I hope you don’t mind my stance too much. I enjoy good animated discussions. I learn from them.
In good faith, and may we keep dreaming,
Pierre
27. May 2009 at 4:38 pm
Shawn as always a good message. I am believing you carry a universal voice that is crossing the walls of the earth. I have traveled and livedamong many nations and now I am in the Nation of fitness looking to learning,communicating and living The way of life that we were created to live: in wholeness in every area.
I celebrate the divine inspiration and the pure motives of your heart to help many who are climbing the mountain of freedom from systems that entangles many among us.
I am an woman of great faith that in unity we can change and be a blessing to others.
Be strong!,
Catherine