What Are You Willing to Suffer For?

December 4, 2016 Leave a Comment

This question was asked in an interesting book I’m almost done reading and it got me thinking about all my past “efforts” that didn’t quite pan out the way I initially thought they would.

And the simple truth was that they weren’t significant enough to my life for me to suffer for them.

If you think about your past relationships, there were probably ones that you seemingly fought hard for, and others you walked away from. There were probably those that you felt absolutely tortured by but you couldn’t bring yourself to leave. Perhaps it was the quantity of time that you had already put in, or perhaps (like I have often done), you held on to the memories of good times that were long gone.

It’s interesting what we are willing to suffer for. If you think about the torture you probably endured in college, and then maybe in grad school, you’d be shocked to know how many people still stick around at jobs they hate after-the-fact. We suffer through decades of schooling to suffer through even more decades of awful work-life. And somehow, this isn’t considering insanity.

When it comes to our self-care we often neglect ourselves and then complain about the consequences of that neglect. Often, we’re simply stunned and amazed by the people who put hours upon hours of effort into their bodies at the gym – the truth is that they are willing to suffer for it, and we are not.

I’ve coached hundreds of people over the last few years and most have tried several different ‘diet’ programs, but most went back to their old habits. Why? Because they were only willing to suffer for a short time. Lifestyle changes take a prolonged amount of suffering before they become enjoyable and let’s be honest – eating cupcakes is easier and more enjoyable than doing burpees and eating kale.

Not that this is accurate or representative of anything large-scale study in particular but I polled some Facebook friends and some ladies in a group and asked what they did for themselves in the last year that made them the happiest. Most answers were like “finished college” “got a new job” “had a baby” “got certified in ____”. All of these things include suffering. In some way or form. But here’s the thing, it’s often the things we suffer for most that become the highlights of our lives. They become the shining stars and benchmarks against which all future efforts are measured. They often bring us into growth and change our lives in ways we could have hardly imagine when we started.

So next time, when someone asks “what do you want…”.. the real question should be “What are you willing to suffer for?”

Good question to ask while you ponder your New Year’s Resolutions for 2017!

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Happiness is…

December 16, 2014 1 Comment

I spend a lot of time thinking about happiness. Mostly because life is pretty damn short and if you aren’t enjoying yourself with whatever it is you’re doing then what’s the point?

Happiness is so many things. You can define it as the little things that make you happy on a daily/ongoing basis or the big picture things that make you chase your dreams. You can define it with the positive emotions you feel towards people or situations. However one choose to define it, it’s a display of who you are on an authentic and deep level. So, in an effort to be more vulnerable in general as a person… here are my ways of defining it:

Happiness is doggy cuddles.

Happiness is waking up with someone’s arms wrapped around you.

Happiness is incredibly delicious food.

Happiness is cooking & watching someone enjoy the food I make.

Happiness is anything related to Friends, the TV show.

Happiness is shoulder kisses.

Happiness is a walk when it’s the absolute perfect temperature outside.

Happiness is skiing.

Happiness is gratitude from a client after you’ve put a lot of work into helping them.

Happiness is being in the same room as family, friends & loved ones.

Happiness is crawling into a warm comfortable bed at night.

Happiness is the smell of fresh pine.

I welcome all of you to share what makes you extra happy!

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Our “Comfort”-able Lives

September 4, 2012 4 Comments

We all like to think that the USA is this amazing country where absolutely everything is available at our fingertips and made for us to live comfortably… and therefore everyone is happy all the time. I beg to differ. In fact I’m pretty sure the opposite is true.

I saw an ad this morning on the train for Jet Blue that said “The Best Snacks Free – fly Jet Blue”. This is how we choose our flights? Fuck getting there without crashing, why does that matter? OHHH free pretzels? I’m there!

How many people do you know that are happy with their jobs? Or even their fields of study in college? I know about 3 in total. And the longer people stay in their fields, the more unhappy they seem to be. People go to work like drones, doing whatever mediocre and pathetic thing they can in order to feed their families.

Let’s talk about food for a moment. Since when did we as a people start “craving” nasty shit. Like burgers, and taco bell, and all this disgusting crap. And since when does everything revolve around calories. You REALLY can’t tell that a quadruple pounder is unhealthy without looking at the fact that it has 16,000 calories? And WTF do you need to put into a cupcake that it has like 1,100 calories. That’s a whole day’s worth of food for me. As a kid, I was never allowed to eat any of that. The most unhealthy thing I ate was pizza. And not that dominos crap – but really pizza with REAL tomato sauce. When did we stop eating REAL food? You know like carrots and raspberries? Maybe your 4 year old kid wouldn’t be the size of a God damn WHALE if you didn’t feed him 10 whopper meals a day. Maybe you also wouldn’t be so miserable if you didn’t wake up every morning with clogged arteries. Maybe that set of 30 stairs wouldn’t be so hard to climb if your diet didn’t revolve around fried chicken and fries. Might I add how all this crap has become our comfort food. We take a lunch break from our shitty jobs to go get our shitty  fried food and go back to our shitty jobs just to finish work and get more shitty fried food to feed our shitty obese families.

Let’s talk about family. How many people are actually happy in their marriages? How many people do you know that actually want to come home and spend QUALITY time with their families? Who even remembers what quality time is? What happened to good ol’ fashioned game nights? You know what family time is now? You have a pathetic and lonely emo teenager listening to some Slipknot locked in his room, an annoying and equally pathetic whale sized 4 year old demanding more fries or ice cream in the kitchen. The wife is probably ready to drown herself while taking a bath because she gained 19 pounds on Weight Watchers and the Dad, if there is one, sitting watching some football with fried chicken in one hand and his 20th beer in the other. That’s your modern family.

So how comfortable are we really? We wake up every morning feeling like shit because our diet of “comfort” food is weighing us down more and more. We then avoid movement as much as possible and find whatever means necessary to get to work without really moving – even if that involves driving in bumper to bumper traffic for 4 hours instead of walking to the train station. We sit for 8 hours staring at computers, pretending we’re important and making a “difference” some how – the only real difference being the amount of money lining your boss’s pocket. We take breaks from our pathetic jobs to eat “comfort” food to add more weight to our already fat bodies. Then we go home and do everything possible to avoid spending time with our shitty equally fat families. We eat too much, drink too much, smoke too much, and care too little. Then we elect “representatives” to make “changes” in our lives…. and their lives are equally as pathetic as ours.. except their burgers cost $10 instead of $2.

Now we can’t change everything at once. But here’s an idea, change the things you can. Stop ordering sesame chicken every chance you get. Stop treating your wife like she’s obligated to stay with you. Stop letting your kids destroy their bodies. Just stop. Add a carrot a day to your diet.. because you have to start somewhere. Change something, do something. You have an awesome ability to analyze yourself and stop being a douche-bag.

 

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Babushka’s Demands

August 30, 2012 2 Comments

If you come from a Russian family you may already know that the TRUE head of the family is your grandmother. Who always has the most absurd demands possible as well as the most un-eloquent way of expressing them possible. The following is an example of such demands.

Dating: I’m currently 22 years old. By soviet standards this would make me an old maid within the next 10 months. My grandmother has no hesitations about expressing her displeasure with my lack of a boyfriend/fiance/husband. During every single phone conversation she tells me that I MUST find a “nice Russian boy – better if he’s Jewish” from a “good family”. Now what this means is “You must find someone I approve of, which means he has to have a lot of money, and someone in his immediate family must be a doctor. If he’s not Russian then he’s sub-human, oh and he must be willing to have babies with you right away.”

School: I’m the first person in my family for like a gazillion generations that hasn’t gone into medicine. I chose the business world where your grades matter very little and your experience/who you know matters very much. My grandmother doesn’t understand this what-so-ever so therefore my GPA of 3.84 is just BEYOND low by her standards. You see, in Soviet times the students were split up into 2 categories: “Dvoyishneetsi” and “Atleechniki” which basically translates into people who get grades of around 2.0 and the exceptional students. Being that I didn’t earn a 4.0… CLEARLY I’m a “Dvoyishneetsa”. This implies that someone should be beating my hand with a ruler.

Career: Doctors generally start earning large sums of money pretty quickly once they’re done with schooling. It doesn’t work this way in business. My grandmother doesn’t understand this concept of “working your way up” – because frankly it’s not like a nurse can work her way to becoming a doctor… so it’s a completely different game. So she CONSTANTLY yells at me about how I chose a terrible field because I didn’t graduate school and start earning $250K per year. Yea.. try getting around this one.

Comparisons: Russian grandmothers are the EXPERTS in the field of finding people to compare EVERY single life situation to. I was a Marketing major. My grandmother immediately hunted out everyone in Brighton Beach that has a son/daughter/friend/19th cousin/housekeeper that was/is a marketing major. Every single visit starts with something along the lines of “So Ira, the one who lives on Brighton 3rd, her son went to Garvaaaard for Maaaaarkiiiting, he doesn’t do anything, he sits and works hard and he only makes $70,000 a year, CAN YOU IMAGINE, Garvaaard, and you? You went to ciiiityyy schooool, some Baruuuuchhh college!” Apparently I’m destined to fail. Somehow every time I see her there’s a new russian marketing professional that she’s heard of who went to an ivy league and isn’t making a sufficient amount of money by her standards.

Food: I am trying to be vegan. This transition started with being a vegetarian and this was BEYOND my grandmother’s perception and is called “Stupid American”. When I told her I’m not eating meat she went “So what, I don’t understand, no kielbasa? how about chicken?” Family dinners were especially lovely since even in most russian salads there’s either meat or fish, and it went something like: “Nika, have some Russian Salad! It’s salad, there’s only bologna in here, no meat!” Yea… Futhermore… My not eating meat clearly means I’m going to fall over and die tomorrow since there’s apparently NOTHING else in the world to eat except meat… So I always just walk around hungry. Things my grandmothers considers to be ‘vegetarian’ include: turkey, chicken (“white meat is good, is like for vegetarian”), caviar, and if it’s a salad it’s automatically for vegetarians regardless of whats in it.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my grandmother and possibly love her even more because of all this. I’m also pretty sure that she’s not the only Russian grandma that never left Soviet Russia circa 1972.

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