Would Ya Give It Up With Optimizing Already?
Would Ya Give It Up With Optimizing Already?
What if the preoccupation with goal-setting is actually your problem?
“Rule one is no hoochie mama clothes. It’s not only distracting, it’s unbecoming. So you’ll have to go home for today and come back properly and respectfully dressed. If we gave a shit about fashion we’d have mirrors in this place.”
I stood, stunned. My cheeks grew flush, prickling my skin with their heat while my heartbeat rose steadily to that of a Ronda Rousey-level walloping. These blunt directives were spoken by an underground Olympic weightlifting coach in the basement of a Salvation Army, much to the dismay of my ego and my cropped tank top. While the gym wasn’t nearly as official or high-stakes of a gym like Westside Barbell, where athletes are accepted and trained via invite-only, this “gym” had its own set of principles. Such principles were developed by middle-aged men keen on building reputable college kids.
The basement of the Salvation Army, otherwise known as “Piper’s Place,” functioned unlike anywhere else on campus. It somewhat reminded me of my middle school’s attempt to tame the budding-female impulse to wear Ugg boots with booty shorts to impress some distorted sexuality among the boys: they banned Ugg boots and booty shorts. We all wore the same, school-provided gym uniform to keep the maturing tween girls from causing an outbreak of tween hard-ons in the mesh-short-wielding boys. Suddenly irked, abased, but also enlightened by the news that I was no more than a wannabe skank, I walked out of the gym with tears welled in my eyes. Strangely, I felt naked. This must have meant I took his words seriously: I felt just vulnerable and exposed in a crop top and booty shorts as I did in the nude. The remainder of my walk back to my apartment consisted of picking wedgies from my too-short-shorts while cussing Piper’s name.
Days later, I was haunted by the unsolicited advice I’d received. I’d clearly grown accustomed to people not commenting on a person’s body or appearance after my stint in treatment for anorexia; his criticism thrashed through me like a hot iron rod. Coach Piper’s words stung and stayed: they were what I imagine a safety pin feels like being dragged across prickly, red sunburn. The hours following the initial blow to my perception of self were more calamitous than the blow itself: was I not respectable? But I thought my booty shorts accentuated my most-complimented body part! (the fact that this was even a thought is a true testament to my young-and-dumb, egomaniacal stupidity). Does this guy seriously want me to wear sweatpants and a frumpy t-shirt to train with the guys? Without a forceful remark or reminder, I was sold. My abilities were more important to me than the stares I’d get for them.
I’d grown up believing that, while men and women were obviously inequal in terms of their physical strength, there were few reasons why I couldn’t hang with the best of the strongest males. Female sprint records in my 5th grade class were less interesting to me than edging out the fastest males--- which, most of the time, included my brother. Our backyard play often consisted of my brother encouraging me to run faster by means of screeching, “What got stuck up your ass?”or “Grandma is a paraplegic and is faster than that!” Whether I’ve had a lifelong fetish for abrasive feedback or it’s simply an acquired taste, I’m certain my current composure and capacities wouldn’t be where they were if not for people like Coach Piper, my brother, and the boys who treated me like one of the boys. When I was introduced to powerlifting in high school, I seemed to have a natural knack for it. My gym class was the last period of the day, which allowed me to stay in the school’s gorgeous gym longer than the 60 minutes of PE. I practiced, I grew frustrated, I threw fits, and practiced some more. I by no means was emotionally composed but was coming into myself and how much pain I could tolerate. Weightlifting, to me, was gritty in the way I’d always required things to be. Maybe it’s a deep-seated personality flaw further mutated by a whiff of sadism, but I became fixated on doing only things that were grueling and difficult.
When Coach further explained to me that I was one of 3 young women, amongst over 20 men, who wanted to improve my strength across all of the powerlifts and the Olympic lifts, I began to get the gist of his put-some-goddamn-clothes-on-message. Booty shorts and aesthetics have nothing to do with strength, and will only mask what you’re capable of in the eyes of others. Contrary to popular belief that one should be selfish and borderline narcissistic for any true progress to occur, Coach cultivated a chummy community of young athletes who treated one another as true equals. Women weren’t spared critical feedback by virtue of their gender. Their feelings weren’t dismissed but were also unallowed to steer the method. This, in retrospect, was likely possible because of Coach’s demand that us ladies present ourselves as respectable and worthy of proper feedback. Sitting pretty simply wasn’t interesting enough for much beyond a glance and a wink. A woman with fake eyelashes and half her ass hanging out, shlepping a tripod onto the dusty, wooden platform for the perfectly-angled instructional video, was not confident or even self-assured. She was only yearning to be recognized as spectacular while behaving in a manner painfully typical. This is perhaps best described by use of Kurt Vonnegut’s most famous quote: “We are what we pretend to be… so be careful what you pretend to be.”
My entire personality, by my first year in undergrad, was a haphazard concoction of childhood lessons, disproportionately weighted social influences, and traces of my truest self. I’ll spare the play-by-play of how I became the woman I am at nearly 33, but Coach’s insights continued to reveal themselves throughout the decade from young-and-dumb undergraduate to slightly-less-dumb-and-more-self-assured woman in her 30’s. The first and perhaps most important was along the lines of Kurt Vonnegut’s quote. Should we pretend to be fiercely goal-oriented and David Goggins-esque in our self-talk, we best be prepared to be treated like David Goggins. Because to operate so skillfully in the art of mental toughness requires more than barking at people to grow a pair of balls, or gently remind our digital sisterhood that they’re not working hard enough and likely do not require another extensive “grace” period but just need to suck it up and be vulnerable. It requires you, the mentor, the coach, the educator, the leader, to be relentlessly driven without an audience, to dismiss your psyche’s cries for respite only to prove to yourself that you could, and to demonstrate enthusiasm when someone verbally decks you between the eyes. I have yet to meet any online coach who portrays themselves as an unflinching Spartan behave identically when the ring light isn’t on and IG live isn’t rolling. Coach Piper treated me as the person he assumed I wanted to be. And there’s something about that which swiftly calls your bullshit. Coach Piper had my number.
“Alright. Grab a platform and get warmed up.”
I made it!!! I was accepted as one of the guys and had staked my claim as stupid but at least willing to learn. There was no mention of my attire. I received exactly zero reinforcement for rendering myself invisible by wearing my boyfriend’s favorite hoodie and sweatpants. In retrospect, I wasn’t invisible at all. By drawing as little attention as possible to my looks, I was obligated to prove my worthiness of respect only through my work ethic. Being hot and adorable and touting the bounciest pair of cheeks on the platform meant nothing if I wasn’t taken seriously for characteristics and behaviors that mattered. And what mattered? It had nothing to do with what I looked like. My parents didn’t raise me that way.
I worry about today’s young women. They’re heavily influenced by the growing trend of dressing provocatively and calling it confidence, all while approaching the needs of others with a pigheaded protest only representative of a woman spellbound by her own reflection. Is part of this due to our obsession with everything being hyper-individualized to ourselves? It’s quite plausible. Once again reflecting upon the precision of retrospect, I never paid someone to tailor an improvement program to my specific challenges and insecurities. I never saw them as that special to the degree that they warranted such attention. That only occurred in inpatient treatment for anorexia, and it left me constantly poring over my problems.
Much of today’s coaching, educating, therapy, or human service of any kind rests on a rickety, fragile optimism. The focus is that of how we carefully reframe very real setbacks and failures to function instead as motivating affirmations; “It’s not a failure or even a setback! It’s a reset for your values!”; “I don’t HAVE to do the thing I hate, I GET to do the thing I hate!” While I do recognize we need to start somewhere, and that wisdom isn’t only afforded to those above the age of 50, we do need to respect the insights that develop with maturity. And claiming that I don’t have to do my taxes, but I GET to do my taxes? I’m sorry, that’s delusional. I don’t have to work out, I get to! That doesn’t make most normal people feel better about hurting their back or pining for the intensity of exercise in their 20’s. Life isn’t as simple as quick swaps and fixes, especially as we age and are faced with concerns more delicate than “vibes” or “toxic traits”. Some children are smarter than others. There are woman more beautiful than a Kardashian’s salary of plastic surgery could ever make me. Most professional athletes are genetically gifted in ways that make their skill nearly untouchable to those who just work extra super hard. These are hard facts of life that come to carry less emotional authority only after we’ve accepted them.
It takes more than pretending to be someone with a rosy perspective and a dictatorial theory of optimism to be taken seriously. Our time on earth is more than telling ourselves we’re “set up” instead of “stuck” or we “get to” instead of “have to”; there are “seasons” which can last years in which we have to remain stuck if it means we’re securing the basic necessities. For many of us who cannot afford week-long golf retreats in Scottsdale every quarter to “find” ourselves, or simply cannot take our built-in PTO because we need the bonus-cash for a new refrigerator, our reality is little more than a pervasive sense of unselfishness. We don’t have time to find ourselves or reimagine our values because we’re tending to 6 little humans or hospice-ridden parents or faulty plumbing. We cannot “just be selfish with our goals”. This doesn’t mean we sit helplessly and wallow woe is me. It just takes a degree of maturity to accept what is and make peace with your own needs being secondary to the more pertinent shit of real life.
Other people matter. And for mothers of young women, in particular, who read this: please do not allow your daughter to believe that a preoccupation with her own desires makes for an honorable woman. That is politically and digitally acceptable rhetoric only passable on social media by women without children, who have minimal to no financial worries, and treat lifestyle “coaching” as a time-killing hobby. A little video-snippet was shared recently in which a woman claimed that the only way she succeeded was by being “relentlessly selfish”. Certainly this isn’t true, considering she’s a mother, a wife, and a physician. I can’t imagine you can be ruthless while also tending to your family and your patients. But this message is what’s trendy for social media. Is this a great message to send? To place your own needs higher than others? I’m not sure people who obsessively talk of boundaries are people capable of setting boundaries at all. They’re usually using these trending tropes as ways to convince themselves they’re succeeding. But hey, by all means, if isolating yourself alone with your own goals and nobody to share them with is your thing… be selfish, queen.
If I were to give advice to any person of any age, but specifically to young people, it’s to expose yourself to real-world circumstances rife with messy, persistent problems experienced by ordinarily dysfunctional human beings. Your problems and even your strengths do not warrant a coach who will charge you $500 a month to “optimize or unlock your full potential”. You can do that on your own by simply talking to people who exist, day-to-day, in the real world--- and likely gain more insight without the gimmicks. Sure, we all have our own definitions of honor, integrity, and potential. But on a basic level, for people humble enough to recognize themselves as just another fleck on this giant rock called Earth, we’re entirely content sharing life’s embarrassments and failures and successes with the people we love. I don’t need to feel hot and sexy for my husband. I can have an oozing sore trickling its contents onto my flat chest and my husband would contest that I am the most beautiful thing his eyes have ever seen while proceeding to wipe crusted boogers from my nose. And the feeling is mutual: I legitimately do not care if my husband even had a face. Or existed only as an oozing lump. I adore him because of his character and his choices. Not because of the digital persona he’s desperate to convince people is real.
Saying “fuck” as many times as you can, and intermixing it a few times with words like “boundaries”, “goals”, or “potential”, do not make for an honorable woman--- at least not to me. They certainly don’t act to merge the pretend-version of ourselves with the real-version of ourselves. It may be worth it to ask ourselves what we believe the difference is between ourselves and those we look down on. Are we that different from them? Did it occur to us that maybe they’re looking down on our behavior, too? Are our choices that far outside of the lazy peasant’s complacency we’ve decided is a problem only for the idle, for the pathetic? My husband told me something when we first met and it’s stuck with me ever since: “people who get to the center of the world will be disappointed to find they’re not at the center.” It highlights our tendency to want to feel like we’re important and valuable, or we’re at the center of everyone’s minds. We’re not. It’s geographically and socially impossible.