The Path I Tried and Failed to Tread
(Until Now...)
I'm going to get a bit personal in this post.
I'll be talking a bit about my history and why I am doing things the way I am doing them.
Long story short:
I’ve tried to follow this path before. The first time I didn’t know what I was really doing so I failed. The second time, I went backwards and burned out. But now I'm treading the path with clarity and purpose.
You know what they say about hindsight… The events of 2020 pushed me to reflect on the path I had been taking up until that point. During this time I was also introduced to a new way of thinking about my path.
With the benefit of hindsight I came up with this framework I’m calling “THE Path”. It’s a way of abstracting out the steps I’m taking, from start to finish, in a way that is widely applicable, assuming you are a smart, hardworking person who really cares about doing things properly.
“The Path”
There are three main phases to the path and they must be done in this order…
Cover the bases
Share your life
Build the future
Each phase breaks down into its own series of steps and to illustrate those intermediary steps, I’ll tell you how I am applying this framework to my own life.
Here’s how I should have followed the path:
As a teenager I found school kind of pointless. Don’t get me wrong, I went to a really good school but at the time it felt to me like a lot of learning for its own sake and a lot of people telling me what to do without giving any good reason why.
As far as I could tell, this was the deal:
You turn up every day, memorise a bunch of arbitrary information in an unnecessarily specific way, and at the end of the year you will be tested and judged and celebrated based on your ability to carry out this empty rigmarole.
I had a good home life, great school friends, interests of my own, and very little to be responsible for. So when it came to completing homework and stressing about good grades I just couldn’t find it in me to care. School just seemed to get in the way of my otherwise enjoyable life.
So I always underachieved. Teachers would talk about my “obvious ability” and my “great potential” but I couldn’t find anything in it to get enthusiastic about.
Then It came to further education. I didn’t get the grades I needed to get into a top university. I ended up studying for a degree in a very different environment, far away from home, far away from my peers, too preoccupied to pursue my real interests, and really feeling the incredible weight of responsibility I now had for the trajectory of my life.
This is a big regret for me. I wish I’d tried harder, realised the long-term implications of my apathy, got good grades, and fought to put myself into an environment that both allowed me to pursue my genuine interests and enjoy a peer group that didn’t leave me feeling alienated and aimless.
(By the way, I also became a Christian at this time, met my wife, and experienced countless other amazingly positive one-in-a-million events that more than balance out the regret and wouldn’t have happened if I did anything different. But the regret still stands.)
I didn’t cover the bases. I didn’t figure out what I really wanted. I just did the next thing in front of me and followed the advice of others. I wasn’t clear about what I really cared about, partly because I had never experienced life where the bases weren’t already covered by someone else.
I didn’t share my life. I didn’t have people around me that were very much like me so I became very isolated, believing I was a particularly weird type of person who couldn’t relate to others.
I didn’t build the future. I kept my concerns to the next immediate thing and assumed this was going to be the scope of my existence from here on in. I didn’t have the experience, the network, or the credentials to do the kind of work I would find meaningful, enjoyable, and beneficial in a transcendent way. I merely attempted to find a career that would fit what was expected of me.
Here’s how I tried to fix that:
After working in offices and schools for a short time, I struggled to find a place where I felt comfortable, motivated, and actually useful.
I continued to underperform but this time I wasn’t just missing out on good grades, I was missing out on gainful employment. It took a few years but eventually, I found success and appreciation in the fitness industry.
I love to teach and always enjoyed coaching people through problems, encouraging them by walking them through the experience of physical transformation. I became a personal trainer and found this to be a great outlet for my genuine interests.
As a trainer I had a good reason to explore the mechanisms of human embodiment and experience: philosophy, sociology, psychology, literature, history, theology, technology, systems, science, and - of course - the workings of the human body and how to make them as healthy and fit as possible.
Through the lens of fitness training I applied a certain kind of general rigorous curiosity to all these fields and found myself driven to synthesise and overlap them, recognising the patterns and reconciling the contradictions.
I find this type of thinking easy. In fact, it’s hard for me to stop!
I took all of my study and started to build, write, and create frameworks and tools I could use in my work.
I came up with “The Triangle” which describes how human beings work.
I taught myself to code software that builds workouts according to evidence based principles.
I created video courses that lay out the fundamentals of physical transformation in a methodical way.
But all of this was in the wrong order.
I tried to build the future first.
Working in isolation, I was creating the end product before I established the groundwork for it to grow. I didn’t allow things to develop organically in a way that has lasting impact into the future. I built it for myself and by myself.
I tried to share my work.
I can only hope the work I have done so far gets the chance to help others as it has helped me. I spent 10 years working with many clients one-to-one and found some success. But the success has been locally constrained and requires an unsustainable level of effort and input from me. I am just one man!
The worst of it was at the beginning of 2020. I was going as hard as I could to support my household and deliver the necessary work to make what I felt was a meaningful impact. But it wasn’t working.
I tried and failed to cover the bases.
I was doing way too much, working 60 hours a week and burning out, struggling to keep up the effort and make ends meet. I was unhealthy, mentally drained, and far from my best self.
But then it all stopped.
In 2020, a global lockdown was declared and every gym in the country was closed. The fitness industry had to shut up shop for a year and a half, and I was forced to reflect and reassess what was possible.
Fortunately, during this time, through the internet I found a way to connect with people that showed me I wasn’t, in fact, a particularly weird type of person who couldn’t relate to others. I saw a new path and met people who had found real success in a way that was sustainable and impactful.
In reality there are lots and lots of people out there who also love to learn, are curious about the world, and want to build the future in a way that transcends their own immediate experience.
I’m hoping you are one of these people because this newsletter/blog is written specifically for those who think like this. If any of this resonates with you I want to hear from you. Please feel free to comment below or send me a message so we can connect and find a way to build a better future for everyone forever together.
So here’s how I am following the path now:
Covering the Bases…
First I had to figure out what I actually want. I have given myself something to aim for that truly reflects the things I personally value instead of what I expect other people want for me. GymnasiOn.net is a distillation of all these things and the groundwork for the positive future I want to make manifest.
In the beginning I thought I was supposed to desire good grades and a good job. But they’re just ways of getting what I actually want. Understanding this makes it much easier to motivate myself to go after those more immediate things.
So to support my household and afford a life where I can pursue my genuine interests sustainably I have decided to get a job. Not because I especially want the job exactly but because the job allows me to properly pursue things I DO especially want.
Sharing My Life …
With a job that covers the bases, I am now free to learn as I go and give away everything for free. No longer do I have to gatekeep the frameworks, tools, and products that have helped me. I can freely give you what I have learned so far and also what I have yet to learn in the future.
From here I will be looking to live in a way that is truly interesting to me, following my curiosity and sharing what I learn with as many new people as I can. I’ll talk to strangers about what I am doing through published posts like this as well as finding ways to network with those that have the same interests as me so we can learn from each other.
Building the Future …
By connecting with others that are on the same journey as me, I can be clear about what will actually help other people. I will make things people ask for instead of just building for myself, by myself.
I will trust the process and allow things to grow organically in the time it takes to gradually build. I don’t need to force things to make immediate money to support me, I don’t need to require things to be perfect first time, and I don’t need to change things to meet the expectations of others.
By doing this I also hope to be an example of what it looks like to tread this path in a way that is transparent and inspiring to others.
Maybe you can find your own success by treading a similar path.
“The Path”
1. Cover the Bases
Figure Out What You Want
Get a Job
Learn By Doing
2. Share Your Life
Give Everything Away For Free
Live an Interesting Life
Talk to Strangers
3. Build the Future
Make Things People Ask For
Trust The Process
Be an Example
Where on the path do you think you are right now?
Comment below or send me a message.
My handle is @GymnasiOnUK on Youtube, Twitter, Substack, and Instagram.
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See ya!