Having a great idea feels like having a secret: it wants to be shared. A pressure starts to well up inside me and it burst forth at the slightest indication that someone might listen. It's occurred to me more than once that my plans seem to go better if I keep them to myself, but I never thought to ask why. I'm sure there's some fluffy new-age explanation that ties in with The Secret™. Perhaps talking about an idea reduces the vibrational strength of my intention. I can't keep it all straight.

Learning When to Shut Up

It seems like talking shit about plans instead of talking shit about results undermines my efforts in two ways: it increases the perceived pressure to succeed and it undermines motivation. The first one's pretty obvious I think. The more people I tell about my awesome idea for a screenplay, the more pressure I feel to pump it out.

I hate being told what to do to a pathological degree. In fact, I'm so daft that I will actually infer demands and expectations that aren't necessarily even real. If I think people expect something from me, my initial gut reaction is often to spite them by not doing it. I've gotten a lot better at avoiding and overcoming that reaction, but it certainly can take a toll.

As I mentioned, I like talking about my ideas. If you know me well, you'd probably qualify that with "a lot" (emphasis in original). By not blabbering on about my next big thing until I've done it, I actually feel more motivated to work so that I can eventually get back to talking about how awesome all of my thoughts and opinions really are. Of course, if I'm collaborating with someone we need to talk about next steps, but my mom, dad, girlfriend, drinking buddies, roommate's dog, and blog reader (yep, you're the only one) don't need to know the gory details straight away.

On that note, I'm going to go work on this awesome project I just started. I'll tell you about it later, when it's done.

You see, I'm a coward.

The Garden Variety

I'm not talking about being a coward in battle or anything like that. When the shit hits the fan, I'm actually pretty excellent at keeping a level head. On the few occasions when I've called 9-1-1, I was cool as a cucumber. Though I don't remember it, when I blacked out snowboarding I nonchalantly discarded my board and radioed my friend.

Neither am I talking about nebulous, conspiracy theory style fears. I don't lie awake at night because I believe that a) someone, b) the bavarian illuminati, or c) lizard people are out to get me. The crab people might be though... Jezs Crise!

I refer to your everyday, boring kind of cowardice. I'm afraid of change, of doing my laundry, of starting my own business. Not quaking-in-my-boots afraid, but I resist doing simple things. I get a smaller version of the knot in your stomach that you feel as you slowly ascend the first hill of a roller-coaster (or before you skydive, bullfight, etc. depending on your personal degree of badassery.) I wrote about dealing with fears recently. I realize that post may have come off as if I at least thought I knew what I was talking about. I don't.

Giving In

It could be a neurological resistance to change like Godin talks about. Maybe I have a bit of learned helplessness; even a good school in America stamps out proactivity and independence well enough. I don't know exactly why I feel this way. In the end though, none of that matters.

Long ago, I gave into the flow of things. I stopped acting and just reacted. Still, my life has gone swimmingly by many standards. Even though I didn't quite finish, I got a good college education. As jobs go, mine's great: I fulfilled my middle school dream of working in a game studio. Oh, I also get to buy as many games, cards, and nerdy books as I like. None of that's really my doing, but instead the outcome of a stochastic process where I benefited from my early training and some natural predilections.

Made of These

Sometimes, in my dreams, men or beasts hunt and chase me. I say dreams, not nightmares because I like those dreams. Instead of being frightening, the chase and evasion is exciting and fun. When (if) they catch me, I never freeze up because I'm able to call upon a deep ferocity within myself and fight.

I always win.

I remember a great many powerful dreams from throughout my life, all the way back to when I was 3 or 4. While most fade away quickly in the morning, some of my earliest memories are dreams. So I can honestly say that I've only had one real nightmare, the kind where you wake up shaking, since I was a small child.

The horror I felt upon awakening escapes my meager ability with words. About a week passed before I could come to terms with the fact that my mind had created such a vision. Though it will sound a bit silly recounted, this truly became a clarion call to pursue my present goals.

My Greatest Fear

I stood in the bright sunlight on a masterfully laid cobblestone cul-de-sac, in front of an opulent alabaster mansion. Under the cloudless sky, the green grass glowed with life. It may have been one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. A figure, a presence but not a man, stood with me shrouded in darkness and possessing a terrible, brooding power. He was not evil or threatening, nor did he wish me malice. Merely, he acted as steward of my time in this place.

I had no sense of volition as the figure turned my attention to a dilapidated barn nearby. Inside, the bright sunlight cut through gaps in the boards of the walls, but did little to drive back the oppressive shadows. In the pens were men, of a sort. They wore bandages over their eyes, having been blinded, and their skin had a sickly, translucent hue. As they skittered about on all fours, these men let loose ravenous and unnatural sounds.

The doors of the barn opened and I found myself outside again. An obscenely fat man weighed down with chains around his body began to run. He shared the sickly, pale appearance of the feral men who, having been set upon their quarry like dogs, began to chase him. The fat man did not make it far before the first one leapt upon him and bit into his back. They did not eat his flesh, but only drank his blood until he became too weak to stand.

Before they could finish the fat man off, the feral men were called back to their pens. Though I did not see it, I knew that this cycle would be repeated forever. Once the fat man recovered his strength, he would be set upon again.

Here the dark figure sent my attention elsewhere. I remember bits and pieces, but largely lost the thread of the dream. If a gigantic worm with six large, protruding fangs jumping at you out of a well means anything to anyone, do let me know.

Paging Dr. Freud

I don't hold much stock in dream analysis. Feel free to inject every little bit of meaning you like, there are plenty of books at the library you can use to look up symbols, etc. As far as I'm concerned, most dreams are little more than frivolities unless you get into practical lucid dreaming, but that's a story for another time.

Without the slightest interest in pouring over the details of that terrible dream, it's purpose eventually became clear to me. This, my greatest fear, describes the sum total of my life: I am a coward. I live bound, broken, and blinded in the shadows of a majestic world. I react, without thought, without concern for why I do something or who it affects. I derive a weak subsistence from the vitality of my fellow men.

The dark figure embodied death. Ephemeral and inhuman, a perfect hunter without malice. His chase I cannot evade and his assault I cannot overcome. The question then:

Will I be an easy quarry, or will this hunt, this battle span the Earth? Will death put me down like an old dog, or will I stand, fight, and die under the glorious sun?

Picking Up Where I Left Off

I admit things didn't go quite as well as I'd planned. After my Becoming Leonidas 30-day trial, I intended to keep up a regular workout schedule. That didn't exactly happen.

I have my excuses, foremost among them a lack of reliable transportation. As you know excuses are worth their weight in gold: approximately $0.  As part of planning my goals for 2010, I realized that my reasons for letting my workouts slip were pretty lame. So, I made getting in shape an official goal and started hitting the gym again.

What makes it an "official goal" as opposed to "some bullshit I said"? Metrics. Specifically in this case, I want to get in "really good shape" which I've defined as gaining 10+ lbs. of muscle and getting to 6% body fat. I apologize for all of the "quotation marks".

The good news: getting back to the gym has felt very natural to me. I started by running a routine very similar to the one I used last August and feel like I've made some good progress in the last two weeks. Exercise has never really been the problem for me though, so I need to address my diet.

Who the Hell is this Grok Guy Anyway?

Grok is the avatar of primal man over at Mark's Daily Apple, a site built around the idea that modern life has become unsuitable for primitive man. Of specific interest to me is the notion that many modern health issues, from the prevalence of cancer to the overabundance of abdominal fat, can in meaningful ways be linked to an agricultural, grain-based diet and a sedentary lifestyle.

I've been reading and researching the ideas of the paleo diet for a few months and most of its major assertions seem highly plausible. More importantly though, I just think it's cool. As someone who doesn't like most vegetables, that's a huge benefit when it comes to radically re-engineering my diet. And I do mean radically; I love grains and dairy.

The Virtues of Gradualism

Since this will be such a big change for me, I don't intend to do things all at once. Instead I want to make a series of smaller but decisive shifts in both diet and exercise. While I still like my exercise routine, it has most certainly become routine. That's dangerous because it can cause over-training.

I also become dependent on having certain equipment available and, as I learned last fall, it's easy to make excuses when you have to go somewhere specific to work out. To that end, I want a more integrated and varied approach to exercise, mostly modeled on the paleo/primal and Crossfit frameworks.

For diet, I'm going to follow a 3-phase plan:

• Addition
  Add good foods to my diet that I currently lack. Most notably this includes things green and/or leafy but lacking in psychoactive compounds. While I might be able to pull this off in a week, I'm going to give it up to a month to really take hold.
• Transition
  Begin to get more calories from meat and vegetables and less from grains and other simple carbohydrates. Begin buying foods from local sources if possible to avoid issues with nutrient density in products from larger agricultural companies. This stage will last anywhere from 1 to 3 months.
• Elimination
  Cease all regular consumption of grain and dairy products. This will probably take another 1 to 2 months.

So if I start in earnest on 2/15, I should become a caveman sometime this summer.

A Final Caveat

The most important goals are fitness and overall health. While primal man may have evolved to eat a certain diet and perform certain types of physical activity, I am a modern man and will take advantage of the benefits that affords. Skepticism is healthy and I always support research instead of accepting things on faith. I'm not opposed to using supplements, modern medicine, or other synthetic compounds as long as I've done the work to understand how they might impact my health.

Like in anything, take the good and leave the bad behind. Looks like Mark agrees. That's another thing I like about this paleo-diet trend, the people don't seem like zealots.

What chance do you or I have against this foe?

The Body of the Beast

Obviously, there's not really an ancient dragon living inside your skull. Still, it's an apt metaphor for that part of your brain which evolved to keep you alive long enough to reproduce. In Linchpin, Seth Godin talks about this concept at length as your "lizard brain" or "the resistance". No matter what you choose to call it, this pre-human force plays a big part in your life, whether you like it or not.

The idea that someone could have a fear of success always confused me. Why would you be afraid of realizing your dreams? At the root, it's not really a fear of success, it's a fear of change. In the time before modern civilization, change was a very dangerous thing. New approaches could get you killed, exiled, or beaten. In order to fulfill the prime biological directive (make babies), the safe play was the smart play.

In the modern world, failure doesn't usually get you killed or injured (unless you're into flying wingsuits). Still, hitting on that girl, starting that business, and delivering that speech all can draw the wrath of the dragon. People aren't afraid of success, people are afraid of risk. This is not some pathology of the modern age, it's a primal reaction.

Becoming a Dragonslayer

Like the knights of legend, you have no chance of besting the beast in single combat, not in the long term anyway. Willpower is not enough. You need some powerful magic to win this fight. Assuming that you don't have any particularly powerful wizards in your LinkedIn network, your going to need some better weapons.

Face Your Fears

When you get that knot in the pit of your stomach that holds you back, the Wyrm thinks you're going to do something stupid that might get you killed. Thinking about quitting your job to travel the world and write? There's obviously risk of failure and ruin there, it seems sensible to be afraid. So, pick something you want to do that frightens you. Got it?

Without getting into the absurd, imagine your absolute worst case scenario. Write it down, in detail. Now go watch a movie or something and come back when you're done. I'll wait...

Read what you wrote. Not that bad right? Even if your worst case scenario would make your life shitty for a little while, would it really impact your life in the long run? Is it as bad as being confined to a wheelchair for the rest of your life? A year afterwards, paraplegics have the same general degree of happiness as lottery winners. If your worst case is not at least as bad as that, then you don't have a leg to stand on (sorry, I had to).

Once you've accepted the possible consequences of failure, trying won't seem so scary. Prove that your plan really isn't that dangerous.

Improve Your Systems

When willpower fails, you fall back on habits and instincts. If it's all that you've got going for you when you try to accomplish something big, your willpower will fail and the dragon will drag you back to your old, safe habits. To achieve major personal goals, you need to get ahead of the game. Steve Pavlina as a really great article that goes into more depth, but basically you can tackle this on two fronts: your environment and your habits.

Change your environment to make it more conducive to your goals. If you're trying to lose weight, take a day and get rid of all the bad foods in your house, replacing them with healthier alternatives. If you're trying to become more productive, turn off your phone and disable email notifications on your computer while you're working. You get the idea.

Changing your habits can be tougher, but committing to a 30 day trial is a great way to test out a change and see how it could work in your life. Common wisdom holds that it generally takes between 20 and 30 days to change a particular habit and your willpower probably won't hold out for that long, so it can be important to make environmental changes in support of changing a habit.

By making your environment more supportive of your goals, you reduce the amount of willpower you need to keep making progress. By changing your habits, you create a safety net that keeps you from undoing your work when things get tough.

Take Heart

Overcoming a part of yourself that seems to hold you back is a tremendous challenge, one that will probably last as long as you live. If you want a life of your own choosing instead of taking the easy path, it's a battle you must fight. I am not yet a dragonslayer, but I will work tirelessly towards that end.

If you have any thoughts, suggestions, or war stories, leave a comment. I'd love to hear them.

I'm reviewing Crush It! by wine and social media guru Gary Vaynerchuk and giving away 3 copies. The video has details. This should become a regular occurrence here. Don't worry, the book will change each time.

I should warn you, in case you don't watch my most excellent debut on YouTube but still come across a copy of "Crush It!", do not read it before bed. It is like coffee but stronger, perhaps more akin to the refined leaves of a coca plant. Under no circumstances should you grind up and insufflate the contents of this book!