The biggest trap to avoid has to do with the frame in which we are pursuing our fitness. I call it “destination thinking.”
“Destination thinking,” to simplify it to the utmost, has a line of thought akin to something like this: “If I achieve this ideal body image (or get close), it will solve my problems or finally make me happy.” There’s a strong sense that something is missing and, if I achieve this goal, body state, destination, etc., then I will be complete, at least in this part of my life.
This, to a certain degree, is a natural step in achieving something. Why would we start any endeavor if we didn’t think it would lead us to a better life?
However, there’s a well-known maxim that gives light to a contradiction we arrive at: “Goals get you started, but the process keeps you going.” James Clear’s insanely popular book could be boiled down to this central contradiction, where the central tenet is to “fall in love with systems.” He expands on this in the first chapter, where he says, “None of this is to say that goals are useless. However, I’ve found that goals are good for planning your progress and systems are good for actually making progress.”
On one level, it’s really as simple as that. Yet, after training hundreds of clients over these last 15 years, as well as getting my Master’s in Philosophy in a side quest most recently, following platitudes like “process over goals” is not enough.
To cut to the point, one has to get rid of Destination Thinking altogether, as that framework can still fit within an exchange-relationship formula: If I do this, then I will be happy, etc.
To put it another way, the way exercise is functioning for you must change. The reality is that transformation requires the death of an existing form, and form determines, to some degree, how something functions for us.
But before we move forward with a different form, let’s take a quick moment to talk about the main problem with “destination thinking,” which is the destination part.
No matter how consciously appealing a destination seems, humans just aren’t ultimately interested in it. We aren’t libidinally driven by a final achievement. There’s something inherent to humanity that prevents us from pursuing something like it’s an Uber, solely for the purpose of bringing us to a final destination—and there’s a reason “final destination” is a phrase associated with death.
So, if “destination thinking” doesn’t work for humans on the deepest levels, how can we approach fitness in a way that aligns with the structure of human desire?
My proposition is to pursue a Craft.
How do I define Craft?
To simplify it to the utmost, Craft is a Practice.
Rather than using exercise as a tool to reach an external destination, the “practitioner” enters into a repeated encounter with an ongoing practice that contains limits, defines the contours of their training, and continually confronts them with its never-ending facets.
Progress still matters, but each “achievement” gives rise to new problems rather than resolving them once and for all.
Craft is the repeated practice that gives form to a resistance rather than trying to overcome it. Craft does not promise a final state of completion. Instead, it gives our incompleteness somewhere productive to go.