Conspirituality - Bonus Sample: A Theory of Motivation
Aired: 2023-09-25
Duration: 04:43


=== Climbing Mt. St. Helens (03:36) ===

[00:00:00]  Spirituality Patreon bonus sample.
[00:00:03]  I've never stared two miles straight up into the sky and said, yeah, I'm gonna rush up that before.
[00:00:09]  Not at that grade.
[00:00:11]  Not bouldering and scrambling up volcanic rock and ash.
[00:00:16]  But on Friday, I climbed the side of Mt.
[00:00:18]  St.
[00:00:18]  Helens and witnessed a view that I've seen in photos but could never quite comprehend the scale of.
[00:00:25]  110 people climb Mt.
[00:00:27]  St.
[00:00:27]  Helens every day.
[00:00:28]  That's how many daily passes the government sells.
[00:00:32]  Some much braver mountaineers ascend its 4,600 feet in the winter with ice picks and a much heartier constitution than I'll ever muster.
[00:00:42]  So, I know it's not an outlandish activity and a lot of people do it.
[00:00:47]  And I met a range of people along the way.
[00:00:49]  Some were in their 20s and others were in their 70s and they all moved at a pace that suited them.
[00:00:57]  But it was a goal of mine, and it's one I've been training for since I finished an 80-mile, 5,800-foot ascending bike ride up Mount Hood in early August.
[00:01:09]  And for this goal, I had to motivate myself to crawl out of bed before 5am and drive an hour and 40 minutes to tackle.
[00:01:17]  And it's one that I was supposed to do with a good friend who unfortunately got hit with COVID for the first time this week.
[00:01:25]  So I had to keep myself motivated to climb by myself.
[00:01:31]  I'm Derek Barris, and this is a Conspiratuality Bonus episode.
[00:01:36]  And we've spent the last three and a half years on this podcast criticizing a range of wellness ideas and conspiracy theories.
[00:01:44]  We've also discussed our own beliefs and highlighted many people and ideas that we believe are getting it right.
[00:01:51]  But, oddly, I rarely engage with the sort of motivational talking and thinking that, for decades, defined a substantial part of my life and career.
[00:02:01]  Now don't worry, this isn't going to be a motivational speech.
[00:02:06]  But I do know that you need motivation to climb a mountain, to even set a goal to climb a mountain, and then follow through and do it.
[00:02:15]  And so for this week, I want to briefly peel back my own process and thought patterns for doing so.
[00:02:22]  Not with the hopes of convincing you to motivate yourself or tell you how to do it.
[00:02:27]  We all have our own ways of getting things done.
[00:02:30]  But I am interested in what health and wellness influencers get right and where they go astray.
[00:02:36]  And it's often to do with a certain way of thinking and language.
[00:02:42]  So I want to consider some of those ideas.
[00:02:45]  I taught group fitness at Equinox for 17 years, about half that time in New York City, about half that time in Los Angeles.
[00:02:53]  I mostly taught yoga, but as I became acclimated to the gym culture, I became certified in studio cycling, kettlebells, I taught weight training and high-intensity interval training.
[00:03:04]  I got certified in this oversized piece of plastic called a Viper, which I really loved and I actually really miss playing with.
[00:03:14]  As I grew in my career, I relied on that sort of expectable, metaphysical language of yoga less and less, though I never really got into it too much anyway, but it was probably there earlier on.

=== Online Anecdotes vs. Reality (01:21) ===

[00:03:27]  And I thought more about finding that precarious balance of helping students push through their boundaries, but also knowing that whatever effort they could muster was good enough.
[00:03:37]  Showing up in the room is really tough sometimes, and they had already accomplished something by being there.
[00:03:45]  So, for example, if I'm holding 49 people in Warrior 3 for what feels like an eternity, and someone is in an early Shavasana, both sticking it out and lying down are the right responses for that person at that time.
[00:04:01]  And that is actually easier to accomplish, this sort of understanding that that is okay, in actual studios compared to the social media spaces that many of us occupy.
[00:04:15]  In online spaces, we sometimes have a habit of treating our anecdote as reality for others, and that's really just not right.
[00:04:24]  There's less friction in brick-and-mortar spaces in this regard.
[00:04:29]  Now the pandemic created a lot of the friction, this anecdote as a reality that I just discussed, especially as our physical environments collapsed.
[00:04:39]  And so the boundaries of our mental space shrunk along with our built environments.