You Are Not Broken

If you pay attention to most marketing, the underlying theme is that “you’re broken” and it’s “some enemy’s fault” you are.

For weight loss it’s:  your metabolism is broken because of “the evil supplement companies” or “evil starvation diets”.

For muscle building, it’s:  you’re a hardgainer because the “evil gurus on steroids aren’t telling you they’re on steroids, and you’re trying to do the same thing”

Now, nothing wrong with galvanizing around a common enemy.  That’s basically how tribes and clans are built… (well, and cults too, but that’s a whole other conversation).

However, make no mistake:  YOU ARE NOT BROKEN!

The fact is, as humans, we are constantly in the search for “why”… and we even MSU (make shit up) just to satisfy that desire.  Just think about the person who always has to be right, as an example  🙂

But you’re not broken.

There seems to be a yin and yang at work in many scenarios where people feel broken.  I’ll give you an example:

The personality traits that make me a pretty good entrepreneur also make me a REALLY BAD drinker.  To the point where doing both is basically impossible for me.  If I want to win in business, I have to limit my drinking substantially (and this has been verified against income, so I know it’s true)

Does it suck?

It did at first.  Now, over 15-16 months in, I rarely even notice it… even in social situations.

So in this case, me being “broken”, or not being a good drinker, is really just a different side of the same coin.  A bad input for a system obviously built around controlled risk taking, bravado and audacity.  When viewed from that angle, it all makes sense.  “OF COURSE,” I think now.

And so the same thing exists for you.

You aren’t broken, you just have certain inputs that aggravate and/or cause your body to kick out an error.  The very same traits that make you awesome, are the same traits that can cause the most pain given different inputs.

Your challenge is to figure out which inputs are basically “igniters” (or those that make you dramatically better), and those that are “cancers” (or those that bring your productivity down and/or spread uncontrollably).

Drinking is a cancer for me… so are Reese’s Cups  🙂

Given a whole bag of Reese’s Cups, I’ll eat the whole thing… willpower be damned!   Eating just one is WORSE than eating none at all… for me.  Others can be and def ARE different.  Pilon and Barban eat muffins in the morning and can control for it.  Me, that type of thing makes me hungry and cranky the rest of the day.

Just like a computer program isn’t broken when given bad input data and/or unrealistic boundary conditions, YOU aren’t broken given bad inputs (for you) and/or bad solutions that ignore your lifestyle constraints (boundary conditions).

Give that some thought…