Struggling against the invisible hand of collapse
Is a losing battle till you figure out the rules of the game.
Last week I was traveling with my family through Northern Thailand in the Chiang Rai region.
And we were at this one hotel near the end of our trip, which had a very nice restaurant where we ate.
Our waitress was a Thai lady in about her thirties and I noticed right away that she had braces on. Also i could tell she was a bit neurologically impaired.
Despite that… I could also tell from the expression on her face and the way she did her job that she took her job/career very seriously.
Anyway that night I didn’t think anything more of it.
But then the next morning I walked by the restaurant and noticed she was sitting there with a bit of an exhausted look about her.
I got the feeling that she’d arrived before the rest of her colleagues and had done so because she is trying to do well on her job.
I continued to watch her for another minute or so (she didn’t notice I was watching) and there was this clear sort of sadness about her.
Now there are probably tons of things about her life that I do not know and do not assume to know… but it did give me the impetus to write today’s article.
Which is that many people that are in a more evolved state of collapse will struggle to do things that healthier people will find easy.
Struggle becomes a way of life for them. When in fact it doesn’t have to be that way.
Today I want to talk more about this.
Struggling against collapse
Many millions of people are collapsing earlier than they should in life. Or faster than they should.
Some did orthodontics or had teeth extracted and that was the impetus.
Others were simply born that way (most likely compressed while still in their mother’s womb) and thus struggled more than others from a very young age.
They look around them at people who seem to be going thru life easier. And for awhile they think that the gap is closeable through hard work and effort.
So that is what they do.
That is what I did for many years.
You come up with tricks to try to compete against people that have structural advantages to you.
And occasionally you might even come out on top.
But it’s not sustainable.
The gap seems to widen despite some of your best efforts.
And you start losing.
At some point most people will just accept it
I hit this point in my mid-thirties. The phase of acceptance.
It’s during this phase that you start to accept that you’re not built as strong or as competitive as some other people (with better structure than you).
You start to justify it in your head. They must have better genetics. They must have had more advantages than you growing up.
And it is at this point that you start recalibrating your expectations in life. For example:
“Ok I don’t have what it takes to become a CEO, but perhaps I can at least be a senior manager.”
”Ok, i’m not great at relationships… so I need to find a manager/leader who accepts me for who I am.”
“Ok my body just isn’t going to ever have the right shape..but let me at least try not to get fat.”
“Ok my brain feels fried after about 8 hours of work so let me develop habits that keep me as focused as possible for those 8 hours.”
etc.
These are all examples of the series of adjustments that a person will have to make in their life as they come to accept the way their body and mind works at their level of collapse.
I know it all too well. Because I was that person in my twenties and thirties.
Started out with massive expectations for myself coming out of college… and then just kept readjusting downwards.
It wasn’t meant to be this way
I used to think that that was just part of life.
Some people were just born better looking, better communicators, and more inclined to be successful.
And that I needed to just accept my station in life and be happy with what I had. Because it could have been a lot worse.
It was with this mindset that my health disaster of 2014 happened. When a Vietnamese TMJ dentist filed down my back teeth and I spiraled down quickly after.
Within a few months I couldn’t retain information, I felt like a hermit that couldn’t communicate, my face and body started ‘aging’ very quickly, etc.
What was the lowest point in my life at that time later became the strength that would change my mindset on everything.
It took me about 7 years (from 2014-2021) to figure out how this stuff worked and my life bobbed up and down during those years with zero stability.
But I came out the other end of the tunnel with a completely different mindset.
We were designed to not have to struggle
That is what I concluded after over ten years of dabbling with these biomechanics and seeing their power.
My mindset now is that there is nothing that I cannot close the gap on with someone.
It’ll take time and work… and i’m not saying I’m going to be perfect on everything.
But I just know from what i’ve experienced that there are pretty much zero true structural hurdles that cannot be overcome with the help of biomechanics. Even at my ripe age of 48.
When I work with people half my age I go in thinking… “i’m gonna think and operate circles around you.”
When I meet old friends or people that I know who are more “successful”… I just think to myself… “I’m coming baby…”
It’s a completely different mindset.
Not a brainwashed one that some ‘guru’ instilled in me during some course.
Rather a realistic one that comes from stringing together lots of small successes while your body and brain feel healthier and more capable by the day.
You start to see a very direct correlation between inputs (your effort) and outputs (your achievements). A correlation that had been fuzzy for many years before that.
Closing thoughts
I hope today’s article serves as some inspiration for folks that are still early in their journey. And had gotten used to the ‘struggle.’
Years of struggling can take the confidence and self esteem right out of a person.
It can leave them lonely and feeling despair.
It can leave them thinking that this is their station in life.
But my experience is that that is not how it has to be. And getting out of it is easier than you probably thought.
This is still a long and sometimes hard process… but one in which your wins start to stack and give you more confidence over time.
That is what I wanted to say to this Thai waitress the other day… who looked so sad. But I knew it would get lost in translation and she’d probably just think i was a weirdo.
So I didn’t say anything.
But hopefully this message will one day reach her and the many many others who are struggling out there.
I could feel what you’re saying while reading. I felt like this collapse especially after having 4 children. But after two months ish on reviv and Doing stretches etc I feel the things your saying. Each day I am feeling not down but up!
Wow I have felt that, so true and I've seen it in my family for sure, especially my dad and he's had major dental done plus struggled as a kid. Mine came to the forefront after a my skull cracked from a head on collision. I had NCR which helped tremendously but then I did braces, and permanent retainer which back pedaled some of that. I'd leave the NCR sessions with such a clear head. But I see now I couldn't retain the results, that I now believe I could with reviv. And even without the NCR sessions (cause of cost), I feel more clear headed using the reviv at only 2.5mths.