Bonus Episode: Brief Words Of Wisdom, Introspection & Insight From Ben Greenfield.

Ben Greenfield (0:00)

Hey folks, the audio you are about to hear is a bonus, very atypical show. But I wanted to pour my heart out to you for about 15 minutes. So take it for what it's worth. No commercials, no interruptions. Here we go. Lately, I've been thinking quite a bit about life. I've been engaged in some deep introspection and self-inspection, which I think is healthy for everyone to do on a regular basis. In my case, I was forced into it and into a state of extreme humbleness and ego disillusion when I failed to complete one of my recent competitions, the Trained to Hunt National Championships in Colorado. I came down with an extremely high heart rate, dizziness, extreme fatigue, and an inability to simply put one foot in front of the other during that event, likely a combination of just pushing myself too hard lately, and jet lag, and an altitude, and a cluster of factors that basically left me lying in my bed for about 12 hours, barely able to sleep, staring at the ceiling, and thinking about life.

Now, one thing that you need to understand is that I'm a fan of personality tests. It's something that we of course are very big on at Keon. Everyone takes an Enneagram, and my Enneagram puts me in a very, very high category of what's called a one, and a three. A perfectionist, and also an achiever. That is a pretty dang dangerous combination, because as you can imagine, this causes me to expect a lot of myself in every task that I attempt to perform, while simultaneously taking on a lot of tasks all at once. That's an exhausting combination that in many people can lead to burnout, into spinning too many plates at once, into trying to do everything that you're doing, which is often too many things perfectly, which means that you do them perfectly, but have zero time left over for relaxation, for hobbies, for family, or for self-care, or B, projects begin to decline in quality, and those plates crash to the ground, and eventually you crash to the ground as well.

In addition to that, the achiever personality type on the Enneagram dictates that one tends to try to be who others expect them to be, or at least who they think that others expect them to be. As a matter of fact, the direct quote from the Enneagram is that, in the headlong rush to achieve whatever they believe will make them more valuable, achievers can become so alienated from themselves that they no longer know what they truly want, or what their real feelings or interests are. Thus, the deeper problem is that their search for a way to be of value increasingly takes them further away from their own essential self, with its core of real value. Step by step, their own inner core, their heart's desire is left behind until they no longer recognize it.

Now, that combined with the perfectionist mentality creates a person who tries very, very hard to seek the approval of others, to be perfect, to try to be someone they're not, and to neglect what makes them truly happy. And I feel like I have begun to slip into that myself. That's not to say it's wrong to want to achieve excellence in things. It's not to say it's wrong to want to achieve great things in life. When steered in the right direction, in a state of true authenticity, and also a state that enables one to accept the fact that they cannot be perfect. One can go on to achieve great things as an achiever and as a perfectionist. But in my case, what I've done to myself is I've built constant 24-7 pressure to do many things, for example, to be fit as a fiddle for the next event.

I have told others, I think, an error, that in order to drive you to be motivated to be fit, you must always be signed up for something that slightly scares you, something that challenges you. And while this can be healthy, in some cases it can backfire. Meaning that I'm finding myself no longer able to travel, to spend time with my family, to sit in a movie, to enjoy life, without simply thinking about whether or not I'll be ready to represent and be that perfect person who inspires others to greatness or whatever excuse I want to give myself at the next event that I'm signed up for, whether it's a triathlon or an obstacle course race or any other form of physical competition. I've always been in competitions since I was a teenager. There's never been a time in the past nearly two and a half decades that I haven't had some type of event, that I haven't worn the mask of an athlete and a competitor. In addition to constantly feeling the pressure to be fit for the next event, I often feel that I need to project the perfect person to the world, the perfect skin, no crow's eyes, the perfect six-pack, rippling muscles, extreme fitness, everything that I've grown to define myself as because I'm under the impression that that's who the world expects me to be. And to dig myself even deeper into that hole, all my bios and all the information about me you can find on the Internet and when I'm getting up on stage to speak, my differentiating characteristic is not necessarily that I'm smart or intelligent or witty or studious or any of those things that I try to maintain and pride myself on. But no, instead, he's the Iron Man Triathlete, the masochistic globetrotter, the man who's able to handle anything, the extreme edge of fitness. And I feel like that has dug me into this hole of needing to be that person, and that's exhausting to constantly be that person. And then finally, I often feel like I'm a failure if I'm not achieving. I feel like I'm a failure if I'm just laying around reading a work of fiction or watching a movie with my children. I'm somehow shorting myself and not being that person who I'm called to be and sure, there's some wisdom to that. There's some wisdom to the idea that you don't want to laze around and spend your time unwisely, but at the same time, that can be taken to the extreme. And it can very much affect those around you because they sense that what you'd rather be doing is figuring out a way to make yourself even more perfect and go out and achieve even more.