If you are like most people, you are probably also a failure, many times over. You have screwed up so many times from birth to this present moment that your cumulative idiocies could pile up to the moon – before themselves breaking away, clumping together, and forming a satellite of their own.

But don’t be discouraged! Let me explain.

We cannot learn, it seems, without some error. Trying, falling short, and subsequent correction are the essential components of progress. You would assume that failure is always a negative event. Sure, it often feels like crap at the time. Winning is generally more fun than losing. An A++ on a test is generally more immediately gratifying than an F-minus circled in red and ground into the page with a teacher’s pen hand heavy with punitive intent, as if to say, “I wish I could stab you with this crimson stylus for your offenses against grammar and good taste, such that the red of my Marker of Justice would mingle with your intellectual infidel’s blood!”

You’d assume, naturally, that successful and happy people have strung life’s victories and accolades together like a string of celebratory cranberries on a Christmas tree. They must be lucky, or blessed, or some other adjective that indicates that such successes are just born that way. The secret to happiness is only accessible to a fortuned few. The rest of us supposedly trundle along in lumpen, troll-like fashion, stumbling from one screwup to the next, like an inebriated hippo that has recently discovered bipedalism.

You would be wrong.

In April, not long after quitting my job, I made three funny little discoveries on separate occasions. Two were in the form of discarded books. In my urban neighbourhood, the street fairies provide a cleanup crew of impeccable speed and precision. For instance, one day at 7:00 am, I put out two old screen doors for garbage pickup. I walked back into the house, turned to close the door, and noticed an old man retrieving the doors by balancing them precariously on a bicycle, one door teetering on each pedal. Yes, by 7:05 an octogenarian was violating the laws of physics – but on the plus side, at least the doors found a good home (assuming, that is, that other laws of physics did not come back to bite him a few blocks down).

Anyway, so, because of the active ministrations of the street fairies, goods for disposal are often placed curbside, and offer a rich trove of archaological interest concerning the hobbies and activities of the residents. There may be old furniture, pots and pans, bric-a-brac and tchotchkes of all varieties, and then of course there are always books. Indeed, I cleared an entire bookshelf – easily over 200 volumes of dry academic tomes – in a few hours. Such is the joy of living in a neighbourhood composed largely of older, thrifty hoarders and younger intelligentsia. Whether it’s books or old copper pipes, beheaded Barbie dolls or ancient paint cans, one can be assured that one’s discarded items will not be wasted in landfill.

As ye give, so shall ye receive, and it was thus that I stumbled across two serendipitous publications on the sidewalk. The first was Gail Sheehy’s classic post-Passages followup, Pathfinders. This chubby little paperback picked up where Sheehy’s first book left off, surveying thousands of people to figure out what our social role models could and should have in common. Helpfully, the first few chapters provided a nicely bulleted list of the secrets to happiness: find meaning, love people, blah blah, and here’s the kicker: seek and learn from failure.

Yes, that’s right – the most successful, the happiest, the most satisfied people were fuckups!! In fact, many had gone off the rails with astounding speed and explosiveness, splattering their lives all over the tracks and taking out several innocent bystanders along the way. Counterintuitively, their failures and difficulties were necessary in order for them to find success.

As Sheehy writes:

People of high well-being are not isolated from difficult passages. On the contrary, they are the most likely to report having confronted at least one important passage or transition and having made a major change in their outlook, values, personal affiliations or career. This contradicts the widespread assumption that a consistent life with no great changes or surprises is the most rewarding. Far from it.

Let me make this clear: failure was a fundamental part of success and happiness. Success needs failure. According to Sheehy, what differentiated successful, happy, fulfilled role models (SHFRM) from deadbeats, self-identified losers and bringdowns (DLB) were several things:

1. SHFRM responded to failure positively: as an opportunity for learning and growth. DLB, in comparison, could not seem to get out of the rut and would fail the exact same way multiple times. Sure, SHFRM got pissed and sad like normal humans, but then they got even or got smarter.
2. SHFRM eventually found in their failures a meaning of some kind, and would, after a suitable period of time, interpret negative life events as valuable in some way. DLB would forever dwell on the meaninglessness of bad things, and get stuck on how horrible and cruel the world was. (An example of this is the old guy that sits at the end of the bar complaining about how the world has gone to shit since he was in high school.) As Sheehy writes, DLB “usually describe their failures as destructive experiences. Obstacles in general are seen as evidence of their own inadequacies or of the selective injustice with which they are treated by life.” Conversely, SHFRMs “recast the experience in their minds, erased the outcome from the error column, and come to see it as a plus.”
3. SHFRM used their errors and life’s vagaries as opportunities for self-reflection and growth. They would often take responsibility (in a productive way) for improving the situation. They would try to find their mistakes and fix them for next time. If the bad situation had been out of their control (e.g. a sudden illness, getting hit by a bus), they eventually decided that shit happened and try to get on with things in their new, altered universe. DLB, in contrast, would blame others and lapse into a stasis of sulking. They would make no gestures towards rectifying their own screwups.
4. For many SHFRM, failure was a result of trying new things. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained” was the motto for many of them.
5. SHFRM aren’t afraid of many things. It isn’t that they’re adrenaline junkies who like skydiving in the dark while sticking their face into a bucket of rattlesnakes, but rather that they’re settled into a state of security and openness with themselves. The majority of our significant fears are existential: fear of failure (or fear of success); fear of disappointing others; fear of shame; fear of wasting one’s life; fear of being unloved/unlovable; fear of “is this all there is?” etc. In contrast, SHFRM, write Sheehy, “are more likely to say ‘I feel secure enough to stop running and struggling, to relax and open myself to new feelings.’” Such a level of security usually only comes from confronting and overcoming things that one fears, or discovering that the existential consequences of error are quite manageable.

Success, then, is the tip of the iceberg, with failure its fat, bloaded undercarriage. Success rides on failure. Recent data from the US General Social Survey suggests that older people are generally happier than younger people, despite (no doubt) having experienced more of the word’s suckitude.

Here is where this all becomes relevant.

In June, I competed in a local grappling tournament, against 2 women from another school whom I had come to know. Let’s call them 1 and 2. Both of them are lovely people and skilled fighters, but common rumour had it that I would be able to manage a victory against them both. Indeed, sparring against 2 a few weeks prior to the competition had resulted in me taking her back and putting a choke on within 30 seconds. Observing this, my teammates assured me that an easy victory was imminent.

And here’s exactly where the problem lay. You see, as one sports psychologist has put it, “wanting to win” is good. But “having to win” is bad – it puts a “parking brake” on performance. No matter how hard you try, if that parking brake is on, your performance is going nowhere. Suddenly, I was paralyzed by the threat of my own competence. What if I didn’t win? What if I couldn’t?

Being an underdog is a great position: nobody expects anything from you, so even if you succeed only moderately, it’s gravy. But being a defending champion suddenly feels like intense pressure. Some exceptional people thrive on it. Many elite athletes suck up pressure like a Super Big Gulp through a straw on a hot day. In general, though, the average person starts to crumble eventually.

I fretted and worried till my brain was one big hangnail. At night, I tossed and turned, rehearsing my game plan but getting stuck over and over, unable to visualize how I would proceed after a takedown, never mind win conclusively.

You can imagine where this all ended up. Unlike the movies, I did not end up pulling the wins out of my butt in a big finale. No, dear reader, I got pwn3d. In fact, although I whipped out a bitchin’ hip throw thanks to a few months of judo (which resulted in 2 hitting the mat with a teeth-grinding smack – and major high fives to her for even recovering from that assault to her verticality), you can pretty much see the moment on video in both matches when I simply decide, “Aw, fuck this.”

Afterward, my coach said reassuringly, “You fought great.”

“No,” I responded honestly, “I did not.” It was true. I had given up. I had not lost because of being outskilled, outmaneuvered, or out-lucked. I had defeated myself even before getting on the mat.

“I needed to fail,” I said to Coach.

“I know,” he said.

*gong*

I explained the story a couple months later to the head of my judo club. His response was not so Zen.

“That was a very selfish thing,” he said. “Regardless of whether you could win, those women expected you to bring them a good fight, and you chose for your own egocentric reasons not to give it to them.”

*double gong*

Woah, man.

It’s now three months later and I’ve learned a great deal from my failure. The most important thing I’ve learned is simply that failure can be an amazing learning experience – if you allow it to be. And it’s OK to fail. The worst that happens is that some cute little girl grinds your face into the mat a bit, and you feel like a schmuck in front of a disapproving black belt, but in the long run, it’s rarely disastrous. Indeed, it’s necessary.

Sometimes our worst fears are those that will not and cannot actually occur. We fear the fear around them. We run away from the anxiety because to experience it is intolerable to us. But what if we went towards the anxiety, towards the fear? We have all experienced the sense of wanting to quit in a hard workout. We instinctively avoid bad feelings – quite sensible most of the time. Occasionally, however, we should go towards bad feelings, in order to push through them and come out on the other side less afraid. What if the bad thing happens? It may not. Or it may. In both cases, the outcome is very likely better than what one imagines.

I’m not arguing, of course, that we should seek out some nihilist state of despair, or wallow in our own whinerbabitude. Nor am I suggesting staying in a bad situation when our gut tells us to run. What I am saying is that under the right circumstances, we should, perhaps, turn and face the thing that inspires instinctive avoidance in us. In other words, seek purposeful discomfort. Or, if discomfort has sought us, meet it head-on. Allow yourself to experience it. Often, what we fear more is the discomfort itself, not what it signifies. We fear the sense of being out of control, of having sweaty palms or burning lungs or really having to pee.

The second book I picked up on the street was even more of a classic: Dale Carnegie’s twin works How to Win Friends and Influence People and How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. Written during an age when people had very good reason to worry about the world, the second book described in charmingly archaic but nevertheless pointedly clear language how foolish it is to worry.

Instead, Carnegie proposes, translate worry into productive energy: identify the problem clearly (instead of hiding from it or pretending it’s someone else’s problem); consider your options (generally with reasoning and research one can find a solution to most problems); decide on a course of action and then do it (as action is antithetical to impotent self-flagellation); and if all else fails (so to speak), lie back and think of England. He also explains how he would take a weekly account of his mistakes, writing down all his errors and considering how to rectify them. Over time, he notes, he made fewer mistakes overall, and the ones he did make were new. He learned and improved by observing without judgement and confronting the project of self-improvement in an honest, systematic, action-oriented way.

One of the most wonderful little gems in the book is this: live in day-tight compartments. Just as ships have water-tight compartments that close off to prevent flooding throughout the vessel, we should live in “day-tight” compartments that seal off the past and future.

Forget fretting about yesterday, or wondering what the future will bring. Of course, do consider past errors and how to correct them; and plan ahead. When the day ends, review it and think about what went wrong or right, and how to do better. Then put it to rest. But avoid constant rumination about “what if” and “what was”. Ask yourself: what can I do, right now? Today? This moment? Seal off the boundaries between “what was”, “what if” and “what might be” and focus on “what is.“ When the day is over, let it end. File away your tally of mistakes and plans, and begin anew.

So often I hear of dieters who have one indiscretion with a bag of chips and spend the next several days face-down in subsequent truckloads of fried foods, or excoriating themselves like medieval penitents. Or perhaps someone falls off the wagon a bit with the workouts, then figures “Oh what the hell” and cultivates sloth for the next month because sod it, it’s ruined anyway.

We all screw up. Learn how and why you screwed up, and seek to fix it. Write down your mistake so it’s there in wiggly lines in front of you. Name it. Face it. Observe it calmly. Reason through a solution for next time. And then most importantly, TAKE ACTION. If you are not meeting your fitness and nutrition goals, what can you DO, RIGHT NOW, to fix that?

The third thing I found by accident wasn’t a book, but a blog. Failblog.org reminds me daily that to err is human, and to fail: hilarious.

BTW here are Sheehy’s Ten Hallmarks of Wellbeing.

1. My life has meaning and direction.
2. I have experienced one or more important transitions in my adult years, and I have handled these transitions in an unusual, personal or creative way.
3. I rarely feel cheated or disappointed by life. .
4. I have already attained several of the long-term goals that are important to me. .
5. I am pleased with my personal growth and development.
6. I am in love; my partner and I love mutually.
7. I have many friends.
8. I am a cheerful person.
9. I am not thin-skinned nor sensitive to criticism.
10. I have no major fears.
    

Before	After
Here’s a shot of me at my chiropractor’s office. Eek.	And the new me with my coach Elliott and my sponsor Riccardo!

I have been trying to diet off and on for, god, nine years. I would lose weight after working hard at dieting (at one point I got as low as 165 lbs), but then I would put it back on. Then somebody would ask me about fitness and I would think, “but I’m doing everything right! I don’t know why I’m not losing weight!”

You know the story. You’re skipping meals, so how could you be losing weight? You had a small breakfast, right? Just an omelette? There’s no WAY you ate more than 1500 calories yesterday! Your three weight training sessions every week are plenty exercise, aren’t they? You don’t need to weigh yourself – you have been doing pretty well recently.

A little over one year ago I got on the scale and the doctor told me I was 208 lbs, seconds after I told him I thought I was 170. When that 50 lb weight slid across the scale one more spot, I was like, ah NUTS.

That was my epiphany. The moment I realized I needed to smarten up. Crossing the 200 lb barrier at the speed of lard was enough to kick my brain into action.

The thing I had to admit to myself is that… I am a great liar. (Actually, I am usually a terrible liar, but I am an exceptional liar when I am lying to myself.) I’m sure that nutritionists and coaches who are less understanding than Krista roll their eyes when they hear people like me. For example, she would ask me what my diet was like:

My delusion: “I am eating very well. Mostly vegetables and chicken, occasionally some beef, and I have one cheat day a week.”

The reality: Except for the chocolate bar and bag of chips I bought on the way home on Wednesday. And I had to eat the leftover ground beef by making spaghetti sauce, which of course requires spaghetti to be truly enjoyed. Then the cheat day, that’s only one day: the super-indulgent Friday night with pizza and chips. Oh, plus dinner with friends on Saturday night because “a day” is a 24-hour period. And I had dinner with friends, so certainly brunch at the cafe on Sunday is fine. And the big dinner Sunday night to get ready for the week because, you know, I’m dieting, so I might as well stock up on calories for the week. And then there’s the Monday business lunch and Tuesday’s visit to the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet on the way in to work. But next week, I’m going to eat right again, so it will be fine.

Before	After
With Krista during our home renovation phase	Being “attacked” by Stumptuous #2 after we did the finals of an absolute division :)

Here’s the truth:

You’re lying to yourself.

I lied to myself. If today’s me were to talk to 2006 me, she would say these things:

1. You do not have a biochemical malfunction that makes you put on weight when everybody else can eat anything they want.
2. You are unable to “eyeball” portions.
3. Your natural set point is not 180 lbs. You are 5’6″, not 6’2″.
4. You’re not going to be “skinny”. There is a big difference between the 135 lbs of an athletic, ripped person who can swing a kettlebell for 150 reps and do a 20-minute jiu-jitsu match and the 135 lbs of a fashion-model-can’t-lift-a-soup-can person.
5. Non-athletic, out-of-shape people are not qualified to lecture you on what is reasonable or healthy, and they’re probably doing it because they feel that your success is their failure. Don’t listen to them.
6. Do, however, listen to your doctor. She’s an athlete herself.
7. You CAN give up bread and pasta.
8. You are not muscular. You are fat, and you have to acknowledge that you are not one of those people who are naturally lean.
9. You are not capitulating to the patriarchy if you take care of yourself.
10. While I admire your enthusiasm and commitment to living “outside the box”, your body is unable to violate the laws of physics, and must either use the energy your food provides or store up for winter in fat cells.
11. You are not exercising enough.
12. You are eating too much.
13. You’re full of shit when you say “I’ll do better next week”.

Over the last few months I have been talking to more and more people who see that I have transformed my body. They ask me how I did it, so I tell them I am on the “eat less and exercise more” diet. There’s nothing magic about it: I eat good food and I exercise regularly. Period. To lose fat, you need to eat fewer calories than you are burning every day. Simple.

Almost inevitably, these people come up with all of the reasons they can’t get leaner themselves, or how they’re just fine now. “I’m not fat! I’m fluffy!” (Which is cute until “fluffy” becomes “diabetic and enjoys visits from the Cardiac Arrest Fairy”, you know?) Some of them say the same things that I said to myself. Like me, they are able to accomplish the impressive feat of mental gymnastics required to ignore the fact that they have pastries with their Starbucks cappuccino every morning. Or to pretend that late night snacks don’t count. Or to think that two
weeks of consistency in the gym this past April is enough to say, “I train regularly” even though the people at the gym have forgotten what you look like. You swear you will get back there next week, and that treadmill is gonna be your bitch! Well, maybe the week after next, because next week is really busy at work.

Do any of these hit home? If so, don’t get freaked out.

The reason I tell you this is not to pass judgment on your behaviour. There is no judgment. I swear. I’ve been there. I tell you these things because I feel that we need to know it’s normal to have these denial mechanisms. But the thing is, folks, you don’t need them. They are not useful at all. In fact, they are actively damaging your health and your quality of life. Don’t feel down on yourself. You are not a bad person for getting to where you are now. Plus, you can fix it.

The ability to be honest with yourself is a great starting point – for me, it was the most critical step on the path to health. Think about how much better your life can be with some changes in your diet and activity. Think about what it would be like to climb stairs without getting winded, or to have feet that don’t hurt constantly, or to not have to fall back on food for emotional support. It’s liberating. Trust me.

I can tell you that, with where I am now (which isn’t even where I want to end up), I have never felt better. People who have done their own body recomposition used to say that to me all of the time, but now I really understand it. I am so much more tuned in to my body than I used to be. Why? Because I am committed to feeling good. I know how it feels to be in great shape, and I know how it feels to be in bad shape. I don’t want to go back to bad shape. Before I started taking care of myself, I thought I was fine, but I wasn’t – and it took fixing the problem to understand exactly how big the problem was.

Now, when I go to the athletic therapist and say, “my hips are a bit tight”, I mean that they are 3.85% tighter than normal and the therapist says, “yes, they are, but how did you even notice that?” I feel sluggish and out of sorts the day after I have eaten a high-starch meal, and that bothers me because I know how much better I feel when I don’t eat that crap. Every little thing makes me sit up and pay attention – I see my body as a part of me and a source of joy, rather than a burden to bear, and I want to take care of it.

Before	After
Probably the bagpiping was at least as unappealing as the squishiness	Bustin’ out some pullups with the gals at a women’s open mat at Fightworks in Sterling, VA!

The mental battle required to tell denial to mind its own business is a tough one. I don’t think you ever win it. A little over a month ago I fought at a tournament at 140 lbs, after cutting from 145. After the tournament I thought, “my next competition isn’t until October, so I’ll just eat whatever I want for a week and then get back to healthy eating.” Which is what I did. I ate whatever I wanted. A lot of it, probably.

I wasn’t feeling great, but I chalked it up to stress and my new training program. I knew I was eating some high-calorie meals but I thought I was doing so well otherwise that they wouldn’t matter. Krista added one heavy workout, two conditioning workouts and two interval workouts to my training schedule. I should have been burning more calories than ever before.

Then, a week and a half ago, my resume for a pro division was accepted. AND I decided to do the world championships, which were two and three weeks away, respectively. It took me another week to work up the courage to get on the scale. This past Monday I weighed myself at 155, and I had the same “ah NUTS” feeling I had when the doctor told me I was 208 lbs.

(By the way, I had sworn to myself that I would never get above 150 again, and had originally planned to cut down to 135 lbs so I could be as lean as Liz. I saw her at Grapplers Quest in May and I thought “I GOTTA get me some of those abs!”)

Now it’s three days later and I’m under 150 again. A lot of it was fluid retention from eating higher-carb and higher-sodium foods, but the reality is that I have put on a good three to five pounds of chunky stuff in just about a month. After only four weeks on the new program, I doubt it’s any appreciable amount of muscle. This change in my workout schedule has made me famished, which has made me eat too much and gain weight. No, I am not capable of remembering what I have eaten and estimating how many more calories I can consume. And yes, that after-class bag of peanut M&Ms DOES count as part of my daily caloric total, even though I have just worked out.

A year ago I acknowledged to myself that I was in terrible shape, and showed myself that I could do something about it. What this most recent experience has illustrated is that I can’t trust my appetite to make good decisions for me. This time I didn’t have to go through the angst of feeling badly about how I had stopped taking care of myself – I recognized the problem, knew that all I needed was willpower, and jumped right in with both feet (as I always do) to fix it.

Yep, three days later and I already feel oodles better. Three days. Seriously, the difference is huge in only three days. I don’t feel bloated and slow, and I’m not emotionally wigged out. I am on my protein-fat-and-veggies diet with intermittent fasting (which seems to work great, by the way – my doctor told me that my blood lipid profile was so good that it couldn’t get any better without drugs).

Tonight, before writing this rant, I was talking about to Krista about my experience. She told me that she goes through the same thing. Fitness and health progress is never a linear progression: it happens in fits and starts. You get better and then you backslide a bit. It’s normal.

Here’s the cool thing, though: my experience has taught me that I can make a change if I want to. All I needed to do was understand that I was lying to myself, and then do something about it.

I will be blogging regularly on Krista’s site, talking about my experience of going from lazy slob to competitive semi-professional athlete. I’m going to be honest: when I screw up, I will acknowledge it, and share my experience with you. How can I ask you to be honest with yourself if I am not being honest with myself?

You can do it.

Before	After
At my biggest but still in a boxing ring. Look at that blubber fly!	With Ainslie on the winner’s podium at the Salvosa BJJ tournament

OMGBFF A and I used to watch episodes of The Ultimate Fighter and talk about how jealous we were that the guys got to spend six weeks just eating, sleeping and training. We sighed with envy watching Christian Bale get the snot kicked out of him at Bad Guy Mountaintop Training Academy and Finishing School in Batman Begins. And then it dawned on us: how hard would it be to do it? It would be the price of a plane ticket, a mediocre motel, a gym membership for a week, and a regular nosh at Whole Foods. As Tim Ferriss notes in his bestseller The 4-Hour Workweek, fabulous vacations are often rather reasonable.

Sod it! We’re going to Ninja Camp!

In April, OMGBFF A cobbled together a bunch of frequent flier miles and we spent a week in California training with one of the best female fighters in the world, Felicia Oh, at Big John McCarthy’s Ultimate Training Academy. (I got to meet Big John! He is big. But not super big. So I guess “big” is an appropriate adjective, rather than, say, “ginormous”.) We also made a quick stop at Legends in North Hollywood for a training stint with Eddie Bravo, and Results Fitness to have my butt kicked by Alwyn Cosgrove. I’ve posted some training porn to Facebook. Look at all those hot sexy kettlebells! Hooyeah!

(By the way, I googled “Ninja Camp” and apparently they really exist. Good times.)

Anyway, for an academic accustomed to the glamorous lifestyle of being hunched over a computer eating egg whites from a plastic container, the experience of living like an athlete was glorious. For that one week, my universe shrank to 16,000 square feet of padded ground, to sweat and stiff muscles and the smell of Tiger Balm. My time was not fifteen-minute increments of panicked preparation for the next meeting or pointless task, marched along by the fascist drum of Outlook Express. Rather, my time expanded and contracted to life’s organic rhythms. It was Exhausted Sleep Time and the repetitive, hypnotic drills of Armbar Time and the long, slow, shuffling, creaking minutes of Crossfit Time.

Since then I have noticed a different relationship with time. I know now that time is often a more precious commodity than money. I am punctual but not panicked. I arrive at engagements relaxed and prepared, rather than anxious and already thinking about the next obligation. I plan meetings in three hour increments, not because some workaholic has stuffed the agenda full of interminable discussion about administrivia, but just because the conversation among friends and colleagues might be good, and the lattes warm and inviting. Instead of watching the clock I watch the sun slide through the garden. I don’t have hours much any more; I have mornings, as in “I spent the morning doing X”. If you asked me right now what time it was, the best I could tell you without checking is that it’s getting dark.

Most interestingly, I’m present now in a way that I have not been since I was a child. I’m not worrying about next week’s project or last week’s screwup, or my five-year plan. I’m here, now, mindfully, aware.

And yet, oddly, I’m more careful with my time now than I have ever been. Time with family and friends is pushed to the top of the list, right behind time for myself. I have probably never been this productive.

Within literally minutes of posting my April rant, I had offers. HOW SOON CAN YOU START?!!! read the breathless email from my friend Phil, of our shared Healthy Food Bank project. I could almost hear him squealing like a preteen girl at a sleepover just about to crank call the cute boy in class. (Update February 2009: We’ve managed to publish three, almost four issues of a magazine that helps the HFB — check it out!)

Are you taking on clients? read another from a young woman. And then another. And another. Not one but two incredibly generous readers donated money as a thanks for all the free information they’d enjoyed over the years. Readers shared their own stories of breaking free and never looking back. (Apparently lots of gym owners out there used to be slaves to The Man.) Opportunities and excitement and shared joy poured out of my computer.

The best part is that the things I’m pursuing involve the whole me, not just a part of me while I shamefully tuck the other parts into the proverbial closet. It’s no longer important that I’m not a good enough sociologist, or my field of expertise isn’t exactly what someone’s looking for, or I’m too much/not enough of a this that or the other. The people I’m working with love that I have 1000 weird hobbies and skills and interests, and can somehow combine them into a bizarre yet functional Rube Goldberg-esque contraption of existence. They don’t sniff with disdain because I’m a smart grrl with lots of pairs of running shoes, or because I’m a gym rat who loves the smell of libraries. And I’ve just now realized that THIS is a dimension of living well as much as anything else.

Health and wellness are about living as whole people, flesh, blood, hearts, thoughts, ideas, and spirits. There is no mind-body duality, folks. There’s a brain in your guts and it’s using a lot of neurotransmitters. (Don’t believe me? Look up “enteric nervous system”. Pretty cool huh?)

Dear clients, web site readers, people who engage and inspire me: You’re awesome. I am humbled by you.

Dear soul-crushing ex-jobs, ego-shredding experiences, and energy vampires of all sorts: Thank you. You gave me the ovaries to take the leap, because you sucked so bad. You are not a blessing in disguise. You are Rodney Dangerfield in a fugly Hawaiian shirt, drunk and screaming and falling into the pool, wearing a name tag that reads HELLO MY NAME IS A BLESSING.

So, what’s next for me and Stumptuous.com?

First up is a website redesign. The old girl is functional but she’s got lots of holes and could use a fresh coat of paint. There are a lot of holes to patch.

I’ve started to see a few training clients. Anyone in the Toronto area who’s interested in the Stumptuous style approach, drop me a line and we’ll see if we can do bidness. Anyone not in the Toronto area, I’m exploring some ideas for virtual training, so if you’re interested, we can also have a conversation.

Things will probably be quiet for the summer as I incubate and tinker. But the protein shake is brewing, folks.

I live in a neighbourhood with lots of older people who came from Southern Europe in the 1940s-60s. Most of these folks are working people: labourers, tradespeople, seamstresses, factory workers, etc. They busted ass their entire working lives, and when they weren’t working for pay they were busily raising families and growing vegetables in gardens constructed from bizarre Rube Goldberg-esque structures of old containers, pipes, fences made from discarded stair railings, pieces of random stuff tied together with what appear to be shoelaces, etc. (My next door neighbour’s specialty is found-object scarecrows. Some of them are downright Blair Witch Project. There was one teddy bear homunculus situation that will surely give me a lifetime of nightmares.)

Now that they’re retired, the work ethic remains. The problem is, few of them have much education, and few of them have hobbies as such. Their kids have all moved out to the suburbs to raise families of their own. So they’re bored and trying to stay busy. As the day unfolds the neighbourhood begins to chatter with their activities: sweeping the sidewalk, poking at ice bits in the sewer grates, floofing out carpets and blankets over the porch railing, and strolling up and down the street yelling at each other about the weather.

Two weeks ago, I looked out the window and saw a particularly poignant sight. My next door neighbour was outside shoveling the latest dumping of white crap. So far, so normal. Except he was shoveling his backyard garden. He wasn’t shoveling anything in particular. He wasn’t clearing a path or the steps, or freeing up a frozen door. He wasn’t even really shoveling with any apparent intent to uncover anything, because underneath was simply frozen dirt. He was just shoveling, moving snow from one side of the garden to the other. He would transfer the shovelfuls from one side to the other, occasionally pausing to admire his handiwork. He was shoveling to nowhere.

As I observed this peculiar objectiveless ritual, shoveling to nowhere suddenly seemed like a metaphor for many of my activities recently. I’d been staying busy – very busy, in fact – but wasn’t feeling like I’d really accomplished anything in particular. In response to the question “How was your day?” I’d often reply, “I’ve already forgotten.” The weeks flipped past in a haze of rushing from one meeting to the next, one commitment to the next. I was busy. I had a good stable job. But was I really doing anything?

For years, I fantasized on and off about doing something with Stumptuous full time. I spent my spare hours surfing training blogs, answering emails about training, talking about training with other people, thinking about articles for my website. But because of my other commitments, Stumptuous often languished, out of date, slightly tattered, still serviceable but getting a little intellectually dowdy from time to time. I always came up with reasons why it wouldn’t be sensible to do it.

You have to understand – I am an eminently sensible woman. I am a belt-and-suspenders person, the kind of grrl who always saves for a rainy day. I am the Boy Scout Be Prepared. Before I leave the house I check the stove and coffee maker at least twice. I have obsessive compulsive rituals of patting my pockets for my keys. I am the kind of friend you want to organize birthday parties and colour code files. I would be voted “Least Likely To Have A Psychedelic Episode While Driving a Stolen Maserati Through A Plate Glass Window”.

Last week, suddenly, the universe pinched me. Hard. For reasons I won’t divulge publicly, last week I decided to quit my job. RIGHT NOW. Not “Oh, when I have something else lined up.” Not, “Oh, maybe in a year.” No, RIGHT NOW, with the kind of urgency generally reserved for the intestinal distress of having consumed a bran-and-Guinness curry the night before.

Friday morning, April 4th, I walked into my workplace and handed in my resignation, effective immediately. Friday afternoon, I boarded a plane to the North American Grappling Association World Championships. Saturday afternoon I stood grinning like a moron with a silver medal around my neck. (Saturday night I ate my bodyweight in New York barbecue, and washed it down with a bag of peanut M&Ms. We need not speak of that indiscretion again.) Sunday evening, my brain raced with all the projects I wanted to do: A Stumptuous book! DVDs! Training clients! Hell, I might even answer my email!

I write this on Monday, slightly shell shocked but excited by the possibilities. I’m free, to do what I want, any old time.

To paraphrase Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, big things are afoot at the Dr. K. Here I am, folks. Let’s get to work.

Anyway, perhaps irked that Bravo was adding to the carbon load of the earth by flying across North America, the old man in the sky decided to excrete a big messy load of white flaky inconvenience just before The THC Twister was due to arrive. Panicked phone calls and emails flew like the quintillion unique snowflakes threatening Revelations-style weather whupass, and Bravo’s rescheduled plane touched down in the middle of the night just as the hellflurries were beginning to unleash their icy rage.

The day was saved. Ten hours later the baby jitzers were practicing their leg locks and spine cranks under Bravo’s uncompromising tutelage, and the world unfolded as it should. That evening, tummies rumbling after long hours of yanking each other’s joints out of their respective sockets, a small but hearty party set out into the frigid and dark wilderness to procure nourishment, trying to keep their sneaker-wearing and culture shocked Californian idol from being lost in the snowbanks. As it happened, the group stumbled (literally) upon the doorstep of a Mexican restaurant, and after a brief mumbled consultation through frozen lips, the goodness of gorditas was agreed-upon.

It was thus that I ended up seated across from a legend, munching rock salt and lime, and laughing my ass off at speculations on whether it was technically murder if you could just guillotine choke people into a vegetative state rather than killing them outright — and then, if you were a grappling legend, how would the cops take you down?

I say all this not to name drop, because if I know one thing about famous people it’s that they have to hog out, get wasted, and go pee just like everyone else, so one often finds oneself rubbing elbows with greatness simply by virtue of securing sustenance, having a little drinkydrinky, or popping into the loo. Once, entirely unintentionally, I literally ran face first into the late John Candy’s protuberant belly. (To be clear, dear reader, Candy was alive if not entirely well at the time.) Also, I got yelled at by Quentin Tarantino (with Mira Sorvino on that occasion, before she chucked his creepy arrogant ass like last week’s takeout) in a Bollywood porno theatre, but that’s another story.

No, I mention this because of HOW the whole thing came about. It’s this. OMGBFF A, who is missing the part of her brain that tells her that she shouldn’t be able to do certain things, is a big Bravo fan. So, she emailed Bravo and said, “Hey, how would you like to come to Toronto?” And Bravo said sure. The end.

In other words, OMGBFF A came up with a crazy idea. Then she tried to do it. When challenges came up she busted her butt a little harder. And it worked. It wasn’t perfect. It involved a few late nights and some snow shoveling. But with lots of effort, organizational skill and enthusiasm, she ended up with an amazing experience that she’d never have had if that missing buzzkill part of her brain had been working. Because most of us have that buzzkill part, and it says things like “No” and “Too hard” and “You could never do that” and “That’s a silly idea” and “You’ll look stupid”. If the buzzkill part is off duty then the laziness and lack of follow-through parts kick in as a backup. So we have a great idea then we never do it because it’s too much work, or would require taking a risk, or we’re afraid of a variety of imaginary Bad Stuff.

But here’s what occurs when you tell Buzzkill to shut the hell up, and La-Z-Boy to get off its ass. THINGS HAPPEN.

Before you know it, you’re giggling over a big plate of spicy meat with a celebrity, and your BJJ game is working towards being “sick”. (After discussion, OMGBFF A and I decided that while “sick” was clearly equivalent to “good”, “off the hook” was the best. So, we’re working on “sick” and then will take a shot at “off the hook” eventually. We haven’t yet established where “mad skillz” fits into that theoretical model.)

This brings me to the events of February. There were two big firsts, neither of which happened to me, but which are worth mentioning all the same.

Number one was that I got an email from my regular correspondent Neil, whom many of you know as Shaky Man Down Under. It read, in part, as follows:

I entered my gym’s Iron Man Challenge on Wednesday. Competitors are timed across:

500 metres row in rowing machine (I’m new to this)
20 unweighted squats (have never done these before…amounts to dropping one’s bum close to the floor, then bobbing up again while holding arms stretched out in front)
20 pushups
2 kilometre bike ride
20 unweighted squats
20 pushups
500 metres run on treadmill
20 unweighted squats
20 pushups

My run was more like a long stumble. I survived to the end, which is the best I can say… On Wednesday no-one else’s time mattered. I’d feared failure but had at least finished. Tonight I’m despondant about how long it took me…

P.S. It was gleefully satisfying to sign a declaration prior to the challenge, stating no knowledge of having any medical condition that could cause me harm when taking part. I also had to acknowledge that if I dropped dead then it would be all my fault.

Now think about all the 60-plus people you know. Then think about all the 60-plus people you know who have Parkinson’s. And tell me, if you can, how many of those folks would finish in Neil’s sub-15 minute time, or at all? I assured Neil that the average sexagenarian would have upchucked by the second set of squats.

When I got Neil’s email I nearly cried with fierce momma bear pride. This man had been told by countless Experts that strength and conditioning training was a waste of time and that he should just shuffle off to some nice easy chair in the cosmic waiting room of mortality and leaf through old copies of Reader’s Digest for the next couple of decades until his appointment with infinity. He didn’t listen, and says defiantly, “This shaky man will keep on training hard despite exhortations to the contrary”. His blood work is stellar, his Parkinson’s medication dose hasn’t increased in five years, and he’s thinking about how he’s going to improve his time in the next Iron Man. I bet he looks pretty decent in a Speedo as well.

However, I did for-sure cry about the second big first of February, which was my teammate T’s first BJJ match in competition. I don’t normally bawl at tournaments, but this one was kind of special. T was my very first training partner when I dipped my toe into BJJ last year, and by virtue of our Keebler Elf proportions, she and I had been paired up almost every class.

At first I worried our training partnership was a mismatch. The women I’d gotten used to training with at the boxing gym before I started BJJ were hardened, lean and agile like otters or solid and immovable like inevitably advancing glaciers (indeed, one was nicknamed Iceberg, for her icy demeanour and big hard punch lurking just below the surface). One of them, nicknamed Tank, liked to smile when things got really shitty, like some kind of X-(wo)men mutant that sucked up negative energy and gathered strength from it. In any case, a punch in the face was child’s play to the boxing grrls. They were used to getting into a confined space with someone who terrified them, and slamming their adrenaline production into overdrive. Later, when I trained at the morning co-ed BJJ classes, I became accustomed to riding the razor edge of sphincter-clenching fear when working with the guys, conscious that at any moment their testosterone-fuelled strength and diminishment of executive function would result in my rotator cuff or kneecap being splattered all over the room like a fleshy water balloon dropped from a tenth floor window.

Not so with T. T is a sweet and gentle soul, a yielding water element to my sprightly fire. Where I was hard she was soft; where I was aggressive and (stupidly) confident she was patient and occasionally fearful; where I was prickly sinew and gristle she was a warm marshmallow. In the movie of our lives, if I was played by Clint Eastwood she was played by a Care Bear. I fretted about snapping her wrist, or bonking her in the nose, or crushing her ribcage, or scaring her, or any number of psychically and physically damaging outcomes. As the months went on, and I learned to control my limbs, I started to look forward to my time with T. Working technique with T was like staring into a lava lamp: my world distilled itself to a pliant, gently bubbling point of focus. My game became more about precision, care, and awareness. My breathing became deeper and intuitive and I focused on the finer elements of my movements. It was like going to some kind of spa where instead of giving you a nourishing seaweed mask, they slowly arrange your limbs into a mildly dislocating configuration. I emerged relaxed and invigorated.

When four of our women’s BJJ team decided to compete for the first time in September 2007, and then more in November, T was there on the sidelines sending rays of nurturant energy. It seemed that by virtue of her calm and kind nature she would always be a BJJ bridesmaid, never a beatdown bride. After all, those of us who competed seemed suited for it. One woman was an ex-wrestler whom I nicknamed The Goon in my head for her determined take-no-prisoners style. The second I nicknamed Anaconda, because she would lie in wait, carefully circling around her victim, before suddenly striking. The third, OMGBFF A, already had a nickname, Machine, and she’d earned it. There was a woman I nicknamed Steamroller. And there was me, a wee spastic simian whose style was described, generously, as “angry little monkey”.

Then the universe lurched a little bit and hiccuped. T decided to compete this February.

In the weeks leading up to it, she seemed increasingly worried about this decision, and sought my advice. “I need to talk to you about how to be aggressive”, she said one day. (I’m not sure if I’m pleased about this, but it beats people saying “I want to talk to you about how to be a spineless wuss.”) T feared she would not be able to summon the requisite energy to make headway in a grappling match. We talked about where aggression comes from, and the difference between aggression as unfocused manic rage and aggression as willfullness. The former is often observed at powerlifting matches, with guys yelling and punching themselves in the face before a lift — in my experience, this generally leads to a lack of focus, a deficit of oxygen, and consequently a barbell on the face. But the latter, if channeled, can move mountains.

I began to detect something new about T. When I grasped her neck practicing clinches there was a new hardness there from daily practice. She began to be what I can only describe as intentional. She began to express desires and wants, and to execute her wishes kinetically. It started getting a whole lot more difficult to make T do what I wanted.

Half an hour before her first match, T and I warmed up with some takedown practice. I started to believe that this shit was really going to go down.

T’s division got called and things were on. The rest of the team plus the coach were at the opposite end of the gym coaching another match. It was up to me and Anaconda to see T through this. The clock started running down the five minutes. We yelled instructions. T didn’t bother waiting around for an opportunity to come to her. She chased opportunity down the street, followed it into a dark alley, and rattled it upside down for loose change.

With the energy of a lioness, T grabbed her opponent’s leg and yanked it out from under her, flattening the hapless opponent on the mat. Anaconda and I looked at each other in astonishment and said, in stereo: “Ho. Lee. Shit.”

Halfway through, coach came running and took over. (Thank heaven, cause I still don’t have much of a clue.) After the spectacular single-leg takedown, T carefully worked her practised moves. In the end, she lost. But really, and pardon the cheesiness, she won something a lot more important: the knowledge that she could do something scary and survive — and not only that, find a little bit of healthy aggression inside her gentle soul.

When it was all over, I cried. (Cue Tom Hanks bellowing, “Are you crying?! There’s no crying in baseball!”) I was so proud of T I could plotz!

(By the way, in case you’re wondering how I did, I became the team den mom this time round, complete with big Tupperware container of healthy muffins, as a result of an ankle sprain two weeks prior to the tournament. Note to all of you out there: if someone puts a foot lock on you, assume it’s for realz and don’t ignore it just because it’s not allowed in the beginner divisions. Otherwise the soundtrack of your life will suddenly include the wet squicky snap of your ligaments declaring mechanical failure.)

If you never start anything you will never know what you can become. If you never try something a little crazy, or a little scary, or a little new, you will never change your life. You may end up a little worse for wear — T is sporting a yellowing bruise. But very likely, you’ll end up more determined to improve and grow. T is working on her guillotines now. Yesterday her clinch felt even stronger. “I’m afraid of having to fight you one day,” she said. The feeling, my dear, is mutual.