The simple formula to unlock the deep meaning of life

How athletics teaches how deep truth about ourselves

The scariest thing in the world: The Truth

What’s harder?

Looking yourself in the mirror and admitting that you’re responsible for the mistakes and errors in your life or blaming other people for your misfortunes?

What’s easier?

Taking responsibility for the weak parts of your character that make you act badly or assigning blame to the outside world that keeps holding you down?

Let’s make it specific to sports, afterall I’m the athletic philosopher afterall

What’s easier?

Admitting you lost to a superior opponent, realizing you didn’t train hard enough to meet your goals, facing up to the lessons you need to learn to do better next time or blaming the refs, the weather, the crowd, or anything else other than your own performance when you lose?

Taking the easy road let’s us off the hook for our responsibilites. That’s why it’s the easy road.

We’re told as kids to “Tell the truth” “Never lie” and “Give our honest effort” but the world of adults is filled with backwards rationalizations, intelligent illusions, and complex self-deception. Basically adults are terrified of the truth.

“But how can that be?”

Let me ask you a pointed question. When was the last time you admitted you were wrong on a big topic in the news? Imagine having to admit the other side of the political aisle was right and your side clearly wrong. Could you do it? Or instead do you double down and find justifications for not changing your mind or admitting you were wrong.

I thought so.

If the truth is SO SCARY why are we told to move towards it and live our lives by it?

This question has dominated my thinking after I began a weekly Torah study (5 books of the Old Testament) as part of my coaching duties on the Tribal Training team. I’ve taken some of the ideas from our little group inside the Tribe and taken the big ideas to the whole team. I’ve also established the practice with some of my 1 on 1 clients.

Below is the intellectual fodder I’ve been using to enhance my own philosophy of sport and its meaning to individuals and groups.

This is a real time look into my thinking process taking different ideas and experiences to create a cohesive understanding.

It’s the process that’s led me to hitting on a powerful truth, so scary that it weighs me down with it’s potential impact.

Leaning into faith

I knew that 2024 was a big year of faith for me. I’ve felt called to make my house and family more Jewish as my kids grow from newborn, to toddlers, into full fledge little kids. In 2023, yy daughter asked countless times to go to synagogue, attend Jewish school, and even mentioned she wanted to become a Rabbi when she grew up. These were massive signs that I needed to match her desire with my action.

This builds upon my coaching where I aim my clients towards a greater spiritual understanding of their exercise and sport competition. We talk about willpower, principle, living by values, and how to create a meaningful life through accepting sacrifice.

So when I cracked my Torah, gifted to me on my Bar Mitzvah 24 years ago, and started reading along it was a long time coming. The synchronicity of starting with the Book of Exodus made the practice easy to commit to. It’s a universal story of slavery, oppresssion, freedom, liberation, and faith. But when I dove into the text with intention a new world of meaning opened up to me.

If you’re unfamiliar with the story, use this link to get the basic outline. I’ll be referring to the narrative with a common understanding so stop and make sure you’re not lost on the story before continuing.

The first thing that struck me was the repeated phrase ‘hardening of the heart’ used to describe how G-d influeced Pharoah. I approached reading these ancient texts not literally, but figuratively. I want to see the story as a tale about ourselves and how we deal with life and the world around us instead of a historical retelling of actual events. I’m more interested in using the stories to live well than determinig their relative truth. Afterall, if fiction or a dream inspires me to act in the world, then it’s not just fiction but a building block in reality.

‘Hardening of the heart’ referred to refusing to see the truth of G-d’s actions. Pharoah sees the work of G-d in the plagues but refuses to let the Israelites go, he hardens his heart to the truth. The opposite is also true. When we open our hearts to the truth we gain the strength and courage to move into and through fear of the unknown.

It’s no accident that the ancients believed the heart to be the seat of wisdom in the human body, it wasn’t the brain. In Exodus, the Israelites who have faith and keep the commandments are referred to as ‘wisehearted.’ Without rational evidence, all we have is faith to guide our actions.

So the big lesson regarding faith is that you NEED some of it in order to access true wisdom.

Both Moses and the Israelites have extreme doubts about embarking on the Exodus from Egypt. When G-d appears to Moses in the burning bush, Moses can’t accept his role and questions why he was selected to lead his people. He cries “I’m not a good speaker, they won’t believe me, I don’t have the experience!” The Israelites don’t immediately follow Moses and even as he’s leading them out of bondage they remain skeptical and complain often.

But they have OPEN HEARTS to the truth and that allows them to act on FAITH. The only thing left to do is walk the difficult road through desert towards the promised land.

The importance of action

You need to keep moving forward even when the fear of the truth tempts you into turning around. Having faith is powerful but without action it doesn’t matter in the real world.

Imagine yourself as an Israelite, following Moses through the desert only to come to the Red Sea. Behind you see Pharoah and his army charging towards you, coming to bring you back into bondage. Moses takes his staff and parts the Red Sea, showing you the path you need to walk towards your freedom. This is what that looks like.

Inviting yes? Able to walk through without fear? NOT A CHANCE.

But walk through it THEY DO.

Despite doubt, hesitation, fear, and uncertainty they keep putting one foot forward. As they move they gain resolve that their faith is true and leading them towards freedom.

Action breeds belief and faith in and of itself. The more steps the Israelites take forwards where the walls of the Sea don’t come crashing down on them gives them more resolve to keep moving forward. Action inspires faith when faith can’t inspire action.

Whatever doubts and hesitations you have about a decision or path, doing the work is always the best way to allay those fears. When you start doing, you’re on your way to becoming.

For the Israelites and Moses, that ‘becoming’ is the deliverance to freedom and realized in reaching the promised land. For us as individuals that means living up to our true potential and determining to make the hard decisions, endure the adverse situations, and rest strong on our resolve that we are on the true path for ourselves.

But what should be clear is that one cannot become solely through action or faith. It’s the powerful combination of BOTH that gives us the simple formula we need to find meaning in this world.

The simple formula

After meditating and reflecting on my own experiences in sport and coaching andthe deep lessons of the Exodus story I believe this formula represents the truth about achiveing our personal potential.

Action + Faith = Becoming

When you combine faith in yourself with the willingness to endure the struggle that acting towards that faith entails you set yourself on the path to become that person.

If you don’t believe, then your actions won’t be moored towards the right aim. Eventually adversity will grow too big for you to believe you can overcome it, and you won’t have the resolve to know it’s worth battling through on the other side. Action without faith produces meaningless motions.

But if you never act, your faith remains dormant and illusory. Do you really believe if you’re not willing to make that belief real in the world? I don’t think so. You end up resentful. Why doesn’t the outer world match my inner world? Because you aren’t making the actions necessary to bring the two into harmony.

But if we desrire to BECOME then it’s necessary we have both faith and action. When our faith fails us from time to time we default back to action to help give us confidence and pick us up off the mat. When our actions start to give us second thoughts about our path, we fall back on the strong resolve that let’s us know our compass aims towards truth.

So it’s not just action, it’s not just faith, it’s the combination of BOTH that we need if we ever hope to become worthy of claiming our true potential.

How to use it in your fitness journey

Sports gives us the best activity to feel and experience this powerful formula.

This is how we take an abstact idea and turn it into practical action.

Lets imagine your fitness journey as the Exodus story.

Maybe you have a wild dream, lets say run a 100 mile trail race. I’m running one of these in a week so it’s at the top of my mind!

How are you going to become the person capable of completing that race in body, mind, and spirit.

First, you need to train. You need to put in the miles. You need to practice running in the dark. You need experience in long efforts over 4 hours. You need to tinker with your running pack, what types of fuel and hydration you’ll use, what kind of gear you’ll take, etc… There are countless actions you must take before you can become capable of running 100 miles.

But if you don’t believe you’ll be capable in your heart, no amount of training will matter. You will find whatever excuse you need to back out. This was happening to a teammate of mine, prepping for the same 100 mile race. He’s physically capable, heck he’s completed IronMan races and lived off the grid on a Mountain for years. He was doingthe training but a little voice inside him still didn’t believe. He mentioned waking up in the middle of the night searching for an excuse so he could back out of the race. Without belief, action doesn’t matter.

In order to believe I can do 100 miles I have to search my heart. Do I desire this. Am I willing to struggle towards this? How much adversity will I handle? What is the quitting point? Does a quitting point even exist? If I find the answer, I have peace knowing that the goal is worthy of the effort. Now when I don’t want to act, let’s say get up at 3am on a Saturday to run 3 hours in the dark on a trail, I know that refusing the action is giving up on my belief. That faith pulls me out of bed and gets me to the trail head.

So heres what YOU need to do:

You need to figure out your own specifics in this formula.

Start by working backwards.

Step 1: Define what you desire to become

This could simply be a fitness goal, but I suggest you turn it into a process goal.

Instead of “Run a 100 miles” think about “Becoming a person who doesn’t quit when it’s hard”

Step 2: Make your faith explicit

Take what’s inside of you and make it real.

Write down what’s driving you and put it in a place you can see.

Tell someone else (make sure they will support you) what you desire and why you believe it’s meaningful to you.

Make that inner world a part of your outerworld by forcing it into the open.

Step 3: Determine the course of action

Now that you have aim to become and faith you should be aiming there, the final step is the action.

Create a foundation to bounce back on when your faith wavers through small actions that become habitual.

If you’re goal is to become a healthy person but you don’t know how you’ll ever give up your temptation for sweets, create a habit of walking every morning that helps you forgive a lapse and gets you back into a positive feeling about your progress.

This the forumla I’m using to help my 1 on 1 clients find peace in their lives through fitness. It’s the forumale I’m using to help coach my Tribal Teammates to find meaning in their pursuits towards gigantic race efforts. And now it’s yours to use to help you become that person you’ve always known you could become on the inside, if only you had the courage of your convictions to act towards it.

If you have any questions on how to apply this formula or want to see how it could work powerfully in your life with my guidance as a coach DM me using the button below and let’s get to work!