Being Boundless vs. Being “Broken”

Hey, it's Ben Greenfield. Every week I release a quick podcast with some meaningful thoughts that hopefully make your life better. And this is it. If you would like these thoughts delivered straight into your email inbox, go to bengreenfieldlife.com/newsletter. And when you do that, you can also get access to leave comments, leave thoughts, leave your feedback because I love to hear what you think. All right, let's dive in. You know, growing up, I was the perfect kid-ish. I rarely got in trouble. I got really good grades. I was successful at all my jobs. I did well at sports. Everybody said I was really gonna amount to something. Uh, I even heard my little sister once describe me as having golden child syndrome. I don't know what that is, but by the sounds of it, it seems like it could be About right. And as you can imagine, I got pretty obsessed with perfection pretty quickly. After all, it was my identity. It was my destiny. Supposed to really be somebody. I didn't like owning anything with a noticeable blemish or shortcoming or deformity that could threaten to ruin my perfect image. I could spot a tiny grammar or spelling error on any essay or book or magazine article a mile away. By 14 years old, I got into bodybuilding to develop a flawless physique, and I would run straight up the side of the mountain behind my North Idaho childhood home like clockwork. 40 minutes straight up, then back down before dinner. Um, inconsistencies and imperfections around any rules, systems, or protocols would drive me nuts. Anything that remotely sniffed of falling short or laziness or lack of attention to excellence or unproductivity also drove me nuts. Why is this not perfect yet? Why is this not trying harder to be perfect? Heck, even though I've lightened up a bit, that imperfection still irks me if I don't catch myself. Every open loop needs to be a closed loop in any area of life, including zero email inbox, no red notification badges on the phone screen, no tasks that have not been completed or delegated. Or else I'll often lay awake at night anxious about anything flawed or broken or incomplete that I or someone else needs to fix, and also anxious that I might be judged as anything less than one darn put-together guy by the world. As you can imagine, this obsession with perfection fueled my early personal and professional pursuit of extreme fitness and biohacking and supplements and diets and workouts and tools and technologies and procedures to maintain health. And aesthetics and that image of perfection to the world. No imperfection. I must be unstoppable. I must be superhuman. I must be limitless, boundless. After all, the opposite of being boundless to me was being broken, and I certainly couldn't deal with that. And as I aged, the pursuit of perfection led to fewer and fewer efforts to become a well-rounded Renaissance man. After all, learning new things meant initially being bad at them and risking public failure, an obvious sign of imperfection. And as time progressed, I found myself gradually, as I aged, avoiding anything I perceived myself to risk failing at. For example, once I realized I wasn't good enough in college to be a top collegiate or pro tennis player, I just kind of quit the sport and moved on. Once I stopped getting on the podium in triathlons and feeling myself slow down just a little bit, I moved on. Once professional obstacle course running got saturated by guys who were way faster than me, I moved on. I couldn't stand the idea of anything but a top finish, a podium, and I wouldn't enjoy a sport unless that was a real possibility. Even honestly, the relationship with my dad bore the brunt of my demands for perfection. When I was young, I thought he would be this rich and successful entrepreneur with a coffee roasting empire. But he never went big with that despite my persistent nudging. And eventually he and my mom got divorced, and that ruined the prospects for me of showcasing a perfect family to the world. My dad wandered the world, and he grew a big beard, and he got really skinny and started wearing hippie clothes and became this version of a man that seemed far from perfect by my standards. So we strayed apart. We didn't talk much. I'm not saying this to dishonor him. This is just the reality. And after he got cancer and he died, I felt like I officially failed in my final attempts to perfect him by saving his life. He became just another, you know, blemish or shortcoming or deformity on my record. And that's still something I'm dealing with, you know, not even being able to save my father and having that really bug me.— But frankly, we're all broken. Maybe some of this resonates with you. Every one of us, our body breaks down, our brain breaks down, our families break down. We are not boundless. No matter how strict we are and fit we get, at the end of the day, we'll all be lying on our deathbed with stringy beef jerky for muscles and porous bones and clogged arteries and plaque brains. In the Bible, it says outwardly we're wasting away. The earthly tent we live in is eventually destroyed. Our lives are like grass. We flourish like the flower of the field, and then the wind blows us over and we're gone. We're fleeting shadows. We don't endure. Those are all quotes directly from the Bible, my handbook for life. Now, we must accept that and be grateful for it because it keeps us humble. It grants us empathy towards others. It gives us a glimpse of the eternal, perfect, heavenly afterlife we can one day have. An afterlife that we can step into, not because we are our own savior, but because we have cast all of that brokenness and the guilt and fear and shame that accompanies it at the feet of a true savior. Now, it's not until we admit and accept that we're broken and we become grateful for that brokenness and we understand that true and lasting boundlessness, if we want to call it that, will only come through focusing on what is truly eternal, which I would say is our love for God and our love for our fellow human beings. It's only after that that we can find contentedness in pumping the iron and running the hills and diving into icy water and taking the supplements and doing the biohacks and caring so much for the body. It's not until we stop trying to be perfect that we can savor the journey of becoming the best version of our broken self. It's not until then that we can run the marathon, not to win, but to savor the adventure and the thrill of competition. Not to play the instrument to step on stage in front of thousands of screaming fans, but to just appreciate the chords and the vibrations and the chaotic imperfections when we occasionally miss a note. Caring for our body, not to be a supermodel or forever young or ripped on social media, but to equip ourselves to live a life of courage and adventure. It's not until we accept that we are broken that we can find happiness in the pursuit of temporal boundlessness. So those are my thoughts on this pursuit of health. Those are my thoughts on being, quote, boundless, unquote. And I would love to hear your thoughts. Leave your questions, comments, feedback right here where you're watching this video or listening to this audio. I read them all. Thanks for being here.