Hold on loosely
The fallacy of control is everywhere you look – Botox makes you look younger, money makes you happier, and status validates who you are. We define ourselves by our wealth, titles, bodies or possessions...
Read MoreFitness Speaker, Author & Personality
Eric Stevens is a health and fitness coach, trainer and practitioner. Eric has broadened that body focused fitness with writing, presenting and acting in order to reach people, change lives, and create dialogue.
The fallacy of control is everywhere you look – Botox makes you look younger, money makes you happier, and status validates who you are. We define ourselves by our wealth, titles, bodies or possessions...
Read MoreWe need to talk. We need to talk about the role of rampant addiction in our culture and why seemingly this issue is out of bounds or an afterthought to many.
Read Morethe selfie is more than an innocent opportunistic portrait. The selfie tells us a lot more about our collective ailments than you might think. The underlying narrative of the selfie is about manufacturing a contrived, packaged, and marketed image of the self.
Read MoreTo many, the antidote to the real world is comfort. Like my childhood version of comfort, to some, relief is found in the seclusion of their ‘mcmansions,’ luxury sedans and fancy vacations...
Read MoreJohn Gottman can tell if you’re going to get a divorce. For decades Gottman has been observing couples and can predict with over 90% accuracy which couples will remain married and who will get divorced in the future...
Read MoreWe live in a tumultuous time filled with great change. A natural reaction to any unsettling transition is fear and a basic manifestation of fear is anger. But while anger understandable…i
Read MoreThe first step to becoming well begins with a productive dialogue...
Read MoreA true commitment to fitness and the battle for wellness over the long haul can be a grind. Fitness is not about hitting some quick fix goal, but about working through failure...
Read MoreThere are many ways to define the word resilience, but it isn’t an aesthetic quality. Ultimately your health, wellness, and fitness is not quantified by what you look like. But that’s not the message...
Read MoreIt’s been said that everything in life comes down to two opposing forces – fear and love. Literally every action we take is based in fear, or it’s based in love. But however dominant a role fear and love play, we are often unaware of their subtle...
Read MoreMany of us spend a lot of time ruminating and obsessing over the state of what we look like. As a result, the fitness business has built a juggernaut of an industry predicated primarily on helping you manipulate your body to look a certain way. Indeed, for many ‘working out’ is synonymous with the work of getting their body to ‘look’ fit.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing - there’s nothing wrong with striving for improvement including the desire to have a better looking body. After all, you only have one body and you might as well walk around in one that looks presentable. We all yearn to look our Sunday best – for some that means leaner, while for others it means more defined. But ultimately, how your body looks is of far less importance than how it feels or what it’s capable of doing functionally. A Ferrari may look great, but its longevity and performance is nothing without the proper engineering, motor, and maintenance - not to mention the mentality and skill of the driver.
Indeed, while much is made over aesthetics, where it comes to fitness and wellness, very little focus is spent on how our body moves or feels. To that end, there is an interesting study that came out in Brazil a few years ago that revealed a startling finding – how well you move is directly correlated with how long you will live. The study had people sit down on the ground and then stand up again with as few points of contact as possible. Those that sat down and stood up effortlessly using as few points of contact scored well and those that didn’t and needed lots of support scored poorly. The end result - those with a score of 8 (on a scale of 1-10) or above lived twice as long as those who scored below 8. At each point below 8 participants had a 21 percent greater chance of dying prematurely.
That’s mind blowing to think about…statistically speaking, how well you move equals how long you’ll live. Yet when it comes to fitness, people frequently work out for every reason except to move better. Moving better means finding a functional, graceful, and coordinated way to exercise. Some contend that they aren’t coordinated, but I reject that notion. Being coordinated and moving better is something you can work on just like getting your body to lose weight or tone up. There are many ways to get present and move better. For instance finding a skill based activity (sport, dance, martial arts) helps immensely. A good coach can also help you see and feel what perhaps you cant. It wasn’t until I found a great coach that I found my true rhythm in boxing. In the end, you can’t simply keep manipulating your body to look younger, leaner, and fitter. All material organisms will decay and atrophy. But true fitness and wellness is about the ability to move well - to improve and maintain your grace, health, and functionality.
Following my divorce, I felt like such a failure for throwing in the towel and quitting after making a commitment before God and family. I had never felt such shame and embarrassment, until someone who helped me through the process reminded me that quitting isn’t always cowardly, while fighting isn’t always courageous.
Read MoreThose questions have become an ongoing dialogue and what started as a question in 2001 has continued on as a quest in 2016. As I now hit 'contol-alt-delete' yet again and embark on a new chapter professionally...
Read MoreEvery time I have chosen the wrong path, my ego was at the center of it. I either had an over inflated sense of self worth, or not enough confidence. Ego...
Read MorePerhaps it was his raw vulnerability that made her answer ‘yes’ or perhaps my friend was just being nice and optimistic for the sake of humanity. Perhaps the exchange meant nothing in the end...
Read MoreWhen it comes to exercise, we must ask why we are doing it. In the end it is about enjoying the present moment of moving our bodies.
Read MoreIt’s tempting to think that The New York Times is right and we’re all doomed for the narcissistic tendencies that apparently hold sway nowadays. But even more than ego and self-importance, humans are hard wired for connection, love, and virtue. Ironically, it’s the perceived lack....
Read More“True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.”
— C.S. Lewis
Some years ago, I was oft injured from over training. One day a practitioner said to me “Eric you can either age gracefully, or you can age foolishly, the choice is yours.” It’s a statement that has stuck with me over the years. That episode is an occasion I know all to well in life - getting served up a nice big slice of humble pie. And while humble pie isn’t easy to swallow, humility is a key ingredient to finding your bliss.
Wherever you are on your journey of fitness and wellness, the one thing that keeps you from whatever it is that you’re seeking is you. The way to triumph past the ego is through the practice of letting go - Letting go of your fears, letting go of false expectations, and letting go of judgment. Like all of us, I have a lot of work to do in letting go and finding humility. This checklist serves me as a helpful reminder:
Humility is to define yourself by your interior. Humility is the Key Ingredient- EC Stevens
Hearing yourself is easier said than done. In addition to the constant noise that engulfs our busy lives, many of us also play other ‘tapes’ that don’t serve us - That of a parent who said you weren’t good enough, a teacher who said you weren’t smart enough, or a coach who said you weren’t talented enough. Sometimes those voices push us harder...
Read MoreThe reality is that in a race versus father time, you will lose…every time. But that’s not what you see every day when you turn on the television. That’s not what you see in glossy magazines. You are told you should be leaner, younger, and more fit with each passing every year. How exactly does that work?
Read More