I thought long and hard. I didn’t want to become a bodybuilder and get “huge” as I knew that comparing looks with others would frustrate me. I just wanted an acceptable level of fitness and most of all … I wanted to enjoy it.

A technique I’ve learned is to ask your mind the right questions. If you ask “Why can’t I find a way to get fit?” it will give you an answer to suit the question like “Because you’re an idiot” or “You will find a way”. Both pretty useless answers. I asked “What would allow me to achieve my goal of fitness and enjoy the process?”.



Non-Action

Have you ever had an experience where you are totally immersed in this moment? Hours fly by in what seems like minutes and you have no worries or stress because you are so focused? You feel like you don’t so much “do” an action, it all just flows through you and it’s a beautiful thing to experience. You are taken over by something larger and there is no thought.

People get this when being creative, doing something they love or even when they’re in a fight. I wanted to experience this through exercise and was willing to accept nothing less.

Can you imagine how it would feel to jump out of bed passionate about the exercise you are about to do because you genuinely enjoy doing it? It’s not even work to you, it’s just you being naturally fun and doing what you love – all the rest falls into place. I think that’s something we’d all enjoy.

The idea comes out of the principle of “non-doing” from the spiritual classic the Tao Te Ching. Going running for 2 hours becomes experiencing nature. We regularly go to play football for 3 or 4 hours straight. We have an amazing time … every time. It’s not exercise, it’s socializing.

This idea was inspired by the principle of Love from Steve Pavlinas excellent book – Personal Development for Smart People. It says you should connect with what you love and disconnect with what you don’t love. Obviously I love getting fit, who doesn’t? But I hated the mechanical unalive objects that I had to interact with on a daily basis to get fit.



Taking Up A Sport

Ask yourself the question “What could I do that is really fun that I can also get great exercise from?”. The first answer that pop up is usually the right one. I have always had a passion for freestyle football (soccer) which is a mixture of dance and football. It allows me to be creative and totally present in this moment. At no time during this am I thinking about getting exercise. I’m too immersed in the fun.



Do It With Friends

This takes your attention away from the idea of “exercise” and towards “fun”. Be with others having fun and you share a great experience together. People don’t want to get fit. There’s nothing amazing about having huge muscles and running far. They want the personal growth that will come as a result of it. Fitness is a vehicle for something bigger. Enjoying time with your friends is a great way to experience this.



Frame It

A frame, in this way is a way of looking at a set of events. Exercise can be framed as “gruelling”, “challenging”, “a growth experience” etc and it’s totally up to you which frame you use. At the start I wanted to get super fit for my own benefit so I could do more for me. Now I’ve re-framed it as being a huge never ending personal growth challenge and allowing me to serve others better. Imagine what that kind of mind shift could do for your exercise.

I used to listen to self development tapes whilst exercising too. I framed the exercise and the workout as 2 sides of the same coin. I was challenging my mind and body at the same time and this was a really motivating frame. These are two great mindsets to adopt.



For You And Me

Some of you might say that you need to go gym to get precise workouts but I’m targetting this at the average non-athlete who just wants to get and stay fit. People just like me. People who want to enjoy physical movement as much as they can and get fit as a side effect, not a main focus.

Make it as fun as possible. 10 years from now you won’t care about how big your muscles were or what number plate you lifted on the weights machine. You will remember the fun you had and how the experience felt, good or bad.



Running Is Beautiful

I run too and love it. This is hard for a lot of people to understand as they see running as a gruelling experience of plodding alone one foot in front of the other until you give up. You see, it’s all about your focus. If you are focused on the difficulty of it then you will experience the difficulty. I run at dawn as the sun is rising and the birds are singing in beautiful chorus. I’m totally in the moment and it’s beautiful and this is my focus.



Being Present

When you see people starting out aiming to get fit they usually start getting anal about it. They’re not in the moment feeling the way, they’re too much in their mind where there are constant questions like

“How many kilograms have I lifted compared to last week?”

“What circumference are my biceps?

I laugh now but it’s only because I’ve been there myself.

I actually have things around my house like a football placed in a certain room, a detatchable pullup bar in another, a set of weights rested on the side, a football outside my front door etc. When you decide to do something you don’t want to do, it is boring. When you are being natural then the action of “doing” something just happens. The actions happen through you but you are not there to consciously direct them. It’s a great experience.



Kaizen

This is the principle of “Continuous incremental improvement of an activity to eliminate waste”. There wont be a point that you will get too where you will think “This is too hard” because it progresses slowly and naturally at a pace to suit you. If you’ve got energy – burn it, if you haven’t just have a normal day – but move forwards over time.

Making tiny improvements each day won’t seem that noticeable at first. Just improving 1% in each workout by running a little further, lifting a little heavier will get you into the habit of softly pushing the boundaries of your limits. Your limits will gradually start to stretch. If you look back in a year you won’t see a certain point where you “got fit” but you’ll be able to see noticeable changes in your health. It’s progress without the hassle.

In the end of the day, your physical body is all about self expression. Be present, be yourself and what naturally follows is a beautiful outflow of creativeness. You are a natural creator, you just learned to become otherwise. Unlearn and be.

When people see things as beautiful,
ugliness is created.
When people see things as good,
evil is created.

Being and non-being produce each other.
Difficult and easy complement each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low oppose each other.
Fore and aft follow each other.

Therefore the Master
can act without doing anything
and teach without saying a word.
Things come her way and she does not stop them;
things leave and she lets them go.
She has without possessing,
and acts without any expectations.
When her work is done, she take no credit.
That is why it will last forever.

-Chapter 2

—————————————————-

When people see things as beautiful,
ugliness is created.
When people see things as good,
evil is created.

Being and non-being produce each other.
Difficult and easy complement each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low oppose each other.
Fore and aft follow each other.

BY judging something, you create duality (yin/yang). Everything simply is. If you say something is something, then you also give rise to its opposite where something is either good or bad. Your definition of tall maybe short to somebody else. It is your perception of an event, rather than the actual event that counts. This reminds me of the famous Double Split Experiment

Therefore the Master
can act without doing anything
and teach without saying a word.

The master is devoted to letting the natural higher order live through him. He uses nature as his rules to live by. The sage is made to sound like nature in the text, “teaches without saying a word”.

Things come her way and she does not stop them;
things leave and she lets them go.
She has without possessing,
and acts without any expectations.

The concept of non-action (wu wei) is bought up, a common theme throguhout the book and a state I have experienced. It can only be described as when you feel as if some higher power is living through you and you willingly do its work. It can not even be called work because it feels so effortless and far away from what we recognize as normal life. This verse also tries to get you to go beyond your mind with the use of paradoxes that make no sense logically, so you have to look deeper.
This whole section is exactly what the Buddha said when he described non-attachment. If you are attached to events, thoughts, beliefs then you will eventually suffer because all events and beliefs are temporary by nature.

When her work is done, she take no credit.
That is why it will last forever.

This paragraph also hints at the refusal of desire/ego. “she takes no credit”. Taking credit is the ego wanting to be noticed and recognised. By taking no credit the ego is rid of and the Tao is working through the individual for greater good, leading to accomplishment that is pure and lasts forever.

The tao that can be described
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be spoken
is not the eternal Name.

The nameless is the boundary of Heaven and Earth.
The named is the mother of creation.

Freed from desire, you can see the hidden mystery.
By having desire, you can only see what is visibly real.

Yet mystery and reality
emerge from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness born from darkness.
The beginning of all understanding.

-Chapter 1

————————————————–

The tao that can be described
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be spoken
is not the eternal Name.

Tao is something that you cannot put a name upon, it is the birth of everything and the formless dimension which opposes the dimension of form. Even by calling it Tao, we are limiting it. But for the sake of communicating and language, we must give it a name.  After all, all names are human creations Is a tree really a tree more than it is just a dance of vibrating molecules which move all the time, hardly any of them continuing for much time within what we would call the tree?

The nameless is the boundary of Heaven and Earth.

By giving something a name, we limit it. A “criminal” or a “table” is our minds attempts to box and understand reality but they are not those actual things. We need our minds to do this for communicating with reality.  This also links in with the first line “The Tao that can be described is not the eternal Tao”. It shows that by calling Tao by the name Tao, you are putting yourself back inside your pre conceived thoughts and feelings about it. You might think “Oh Tao, it is just one of those stupid spiritual things etc.”.

Heaven is a formless area where there are no physical things, a spiritual dimension. Earth is a physical dimension where our physical bodies live. So how is is that the nameless is the boundary of these?

Maybe the nameless is what we are. We can enter heaven, which is a formless dimension within ourselves and we appear physically on Earth also. So we could be the boundary? If heaven is an inner realm and earth is an outer realm then it follows that we are the middle part experiencing both.

The named is the mother of creation.

When you name something, it has been created as a mental concept for you. Or, this phrase could mean that “naming” is the actual process of going from formlessness to form, or if you prefer, coming into manifestation. You could interpret it as you have “created a concept which is separate from the oneness.

Freed from desire, you can see the hidden mystery.

When you are free from desire, you have stepped out of your conditioned mind patterns and can see what truly is rather than your ‘I’ centred view of the world. You can perceive the mystery unfolding that we are in. You realize that is is our reaction to situations that makes them seem good or bad, all situations are actually neutral and are made good or bad based on our desires of  wanting to take control.

By having desire, you can only see what is visibly real.

When you are desiring, you have stepped back into, and identified with your mind patterns again. A box is just a box and the mystery isnt available to you. Insanity is being identified with your mind, being indeitified with anything infact.

Yet mystery and reality
emerge from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness born from darkness.
The beginning of all understanding.

All things come from the same source, the one, infinite source. I feel like the last phrase refers to the attachment to mind and how you lose your sense of perspective.  It says that the beginning of all understanding comes from knowing of attachment to mind within yourself.

They are split into the main themes from the book:

* Non-action
* Acting in accordance with nature
* The Tao
* Principles to live by

Non-Action (aka Wu-Wei)

Therefore the Master
can act without doing anything
and teach without saying a word.
Things come her way and she does not stop them;
things leave and she lets them go

-Chapter 2

That which offers no resistance,
overcomes the hardest substances.
That which offers no resistance
can enter where there is no space.

Few in the world can comprehend
the teaching without words,
or understand the value of non-action

-Chapter 43

One who seeks knowledge learns something new every day.
One who seeks the Tao unlearns something new every day.
Less and less remains until you arrive at non-action.
When you arrive at non-action,
nothing will be left undone

-Chapter 48

Acting in accordance with nature

The supreme good is like water,
which benefits all of creation
without trying to compete with it.
It gathers in unpopular places.
Thus it is like the Tao.

Acting In Accordance With Nature

-Chapter 8

Nature uses few words:
when the gale blows, it will not last long;
when it rains hard, it lasts but a little while;
What causes these to happen? Heaven and Earth.

-Chapter 23

Water is the softest and most yielding substance.
Yet nothing is better than water,
for overcoming the hard and rigid,
because nothing can compete with it.

-Chapter 78

The Tao

The Tao is like an empty container:
it can never be emptied and can never be filled.
Infinitely deep, it is the source of all things.
It dulls the sharp, unties the knotted,
shades the lighted, and unites all of creation with dust.

-Chapter 3

The Tao of the universe
does not compete, yet wins;
does not speak, yet responds;
does not command, yet is obeyed;
and does act, but is good at directing.

-Chapter 73

The Tao of Heaven works in the world
like the drawing of a bow.
The top is bent downward;
the bottom is bent up.
The excess is taken from,
and the deficient is given to.

-Chapter 77

Principles To Live By

Alert as if surrounded on all sides by the enemy.
Courteous as a guest.
Fluid as melting ice.
Whole as an uncarved block of wood.
Receptive as a valley.
Turbid as muddied water.

-Chapter 15

Embrace simplicity.
Put others first.
Desire little.

-Chapter 19

If you want to become new,
first let yourself become old.
Those whose desires are few get them,
those whose desires are great go astray.

-Chapter 22

Who is able to give to the needy from their excess?
Only someone who is following the way of the Tao.

-Chapter 77