Butt Jokes
For those who prefer the author has read out the article.
“Man lives in three dimensions: the somatic, the mental, and the spiritual. The spiritual dimension cannot be ignored, for it is what makes us human” - Viktor Frankly, The Doctor and the Soul
In a world increasingly prone to inhuman and dehumanizing movements in politics and pop culture, those of us who demand to live as individuals must come to a painful realization about the type of conflict we are truly engaged in.
I don’t care if you are a ‘believer’ or subscribe to any particular religion or faith, but if you don’t properly recognize that we are deep in a spiritual battle, there is simply NO WAY you are going to win for the individual and their dignity.
Here’s my proposal and argument, in order to win the larger spiritual battle OUT THERE you first need to turn inward and take on the spiritual battle INSIDE. You must fight to realize a sense of personal sovereignty in yourself, and that can ONLY happen if you commit to developing your physical health as a key component of the spiritual strength you will need to win that outside battle so many of us realize is necessary.
First, I’m going to dive deep into the personal story of my spiritual based fitness coaching when the creator of this fine publication reached out to me in 2024 to help with precisely this type of spiritual fortitude generated through consistent physical activity.
I’ll detail my approach, what we did together, how our coaching evolves over time, the importance of the physical in providing courage, grace, and perspective and how that is setting us up to continue to win even harder in the future.
Then I’ll take aim at you and give you the tools necessary to start your own path along this spiritual aimed fitness journey.
Finally, I’ll end with a way we can all take the best of ourselves to the general battle out there, to empower the lovers of liberty, freedom, independent thinking, and a zest for truth seeking and telling in the oncoming spiritual battle.
‘Butt Jokes’
When an avatar of a human butt, wearing a hat of another human butt wearing a hat of a human butt (hello fractals!) sends you a DM like this you pay attention. I was just a year into my foray as an online life and fitness coach after ditching life as a university professor in the fall of 2022.
I did not want to just coach fitness, because as a professor of sport history and philosophy I knew that fitness coaching could go deep, affecting a person’s spirit. I knew that the genesis of athletic training came from the Ancient Greek ideal of character development through the training. In essence, they believed that individual potential was BEST recognized, developed, and displayed through rigorous athletic training and competition.
“In order for man to succeed in life, God provided him with two means, education and physical activity. Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body, but for the two together.” Plato
In order for Correspondence Theory to be brought to life, the first thing that needed to happen was for the founder to come to grips with inconsistency in day-to-day life.
Rather than jump directly into the mind, my process had us first establishing consistency in the body as a kind of trap door into the spirit. Then with these two parts on board, it’s time to take on the mind.
Let’s quickly go through our fitness timeline working together and then we can mine the spiritual and mental breakthroughs that accompanied them.
I see this too many times in coaching, you have an ‘eager to start’ client matched with a ‘not quite getting the real challenge’ fitness trainer. For most, it’s not about the body at all, but more about the DISCIPLINE needed to keep showing up when excuses, adversity, and the desire to quit emerge. Just like that initial message indicated.
So we started small, like almost so small you’d think ‘why even bother.’ It was to get into a habit of moving his body consistently and to start thinking about the ways he loved moving your body and how we could figure out how he can do that MORE.
The answer was daily walks, either before leaving for work or first thing upon getting home afterwards. That was an easy enough ask. In the first month I remember my guy getting SO PISSED he missed one day of walking in the entire month.
Once walks became non-negotiable, we began to dream bigger. We started crafting custom lifting programs based on enjoyment and desire to get stronger while finding space to vision cast about longboarding, crazy endurance adventures in nature, and even some winter activities like skating. These are things related to the spirit, enjoyment, fun, adventure, creativity, passion, imagination, and curiosity.
When the body moves, the spirit has the chance to follow, and the mind is shut out of the equation. No more excuses that seem justified to take, instead it’s to figure out a way to get the work in or else feel guilty for quitting on yourself. That’s the powerful formula physical activity forces into your being when you stick with it consistently. It’s really SPIRITUAL training.
From this small platform, we then created small iterations and modifications over months and months. This led us to establishing a 4 month winter lifting protocol and a desire to train in running to conquer a half marathon. Slow and steady, done by his own style, and without tremendous pressure on the results saw us hit the target time and time again.
Now here’s where things get really interesting.
At the exact same time we were establishing physical consistency as the basis of personal development, we engaged in the creation of Correspondence Theory. Remember, creativity, passion, and the truth and all connected directly to the SPIRIT.
This is why the Ancient Greeks believed that rigorous and consistent physical training oriented the mind and spirit towards self-actualization. One of the key concepts from that time, Askesis, gives us a clue as to why this works. Askesis is the rigorous self-discipline that leads to spiritual growth and fulfillment. By disciplining the body through training, one learns how to properly apply discipline to the mind and spirit as well. And then you can begin to apply that discipline in those other areas.
Thinking about the half marathon our founder took down, even though it didn’t result from a disciplined block of training, the discipline learned from creating consistency in walking helped orient him to achieve what he needed to be successful and complete the race. It works exactly the same for creative work and taking on big risks in life.
Early discipline in creating Correspondence Theory looked like getting the proper backend items in order before diving into the creation of articles. A website, a list of contributors, a sense of the types of articles, the intended audience, how to distribute, and a whole host of other questions needed to be sorted.
It’s often during these organizing phases that initial dreams go to die. The enthusiasm of starting something new and big turns into seeing ALL THE OBSTACLES in the way and then momentum stalls. I remember battling together in the first six months after going live to stay consistent with articles, staying on top of editing projects, reaching out to new contributors, and most importantly managing the roller coaster of emotions that comes with creating a project like this.
But we simply doubled down on the same types of processes that worked in the gym to stay consistent.
• Ease into it and let enjoyment guide towards the next step
• Give grace to yourself when mistakes happen but do not let them build
• Embrace difficulty and work through messiness with an open heart
• Remember the ‘WHY’ and don’t let negative noise drown out the true signal
So instead of another ambitious project going down the drain because things got too hard too quickly, this one was able to emerge out of that early chaos.
Our guy learned to trust others, to delegate, to focus on his own strengths and let others pick up the slack.
He learned how to coach other contributors through their fears of sharing all while holding them accountable to due dates required in the publishing business
And by opening up space for others he quickly found that his little dream began to grow and grow. More subscribers, bigger name contributors, larger audience reach, more impact on the conversation at large, and with that comes bigger and better opportunities.
Now I’m certainly biased as the coach, I’m willing to admit that, but I also don’t tell lies and respect the truth above all. I believe that without physical consistency, and an aim to learn how to solve discipline and motivation issues in life through establishing that elusive physical consistency, the success of Correspondence Theory would be more precarious, and the publication might have died out in the first year.
It’s a testament not to me, but to our butt-faced hero, the one who puts in the work on himself. The one who dared to see the truth of his internal world and resolved himself to fix it on the way to helping others search for, find, and share the truth as they see it in the world. Because without that internal repair, the courage and fortitude to stick with it through adversity may never have materialized to affect the external world.
Now it’s YOUR TURN
What’s incredible about this story is that I’ve seen similar breakthroughs occur in so many other domains that all started with the same aim at the physical. In three years of coaching I’ve seen people quit jobs with golden handcuffs to start their own business, move out of terrible living situations to create new space for themselves and their families, move cross country to start new adventures, repair old relationships that they believed were ‘too far gone,’ refused to continue giving all of themselves to work and reclaim control in the home, and countless other types of life breakthroughs.
So it’s not so much about what you’re currently doing but more about where you dream you can be, if only you started to let the better parts of yourself consistently beat out the lesser parts.
And that’s the place to start.
I want you to pause, take a minute, close your eyes, and dream-cast.
What would you be doing if you could do what you wanted, to make a contribution to the world and in serving others, that would be a direct outcome of the passion in your heart and the truth you feel obligated to share?
Now open your eyes, the dream shouldn’t be something you can achieve tomorrow, but big enough to DEMAND a change inside of yourself. Remember, if you want to affect change in the external world, you must first resolve yourself to change your inner world.
So that big dream will alert you to the areas you need to step up your game. Now there’s an aim and an emerging road map. You have character growth to engage in, and you can tailor physical training to help you embody and learn those lessons.
The example of our CT founder needing discipline and finding it through showing up with a day-to-day habit is a great example.
I can’t possibly give all the examples possible for all the virtues sports and physical training can help you gain, but I’ll give one more common one that all of us truth seekers need. Especially if we are to engage in the spiritual battles we hope to win.
That virtue is courage. And this is how we’ll end today, with a tying of your heart through courage to how we can all, as truth-seekers, endeavor to keep fighting with our hearts open while the hearts and minds of those around us close up for good.
He is courageous who endures and fears the right thing, for the right motive, in the right way and at the right times.” Aristotle
“Some kinds of courage are learned. But there is surely also an instinct of courage, a wish to be brave, to overcome fear.” - John Holt, “How Children Learn”
These two quotes should help you become a courage respecter. That you have it inside of you already, but need the right qualities, conditions, and situations to bring it out of yourself.
Here’s where the role of the physical shines through. In almost all elements, physical training requires courage.
You need courage to take on the physical pain and exertion needed to complete the work.
You need courage to face the truth of the results; there is no lying to the iron or the track.
You need courage to remain committed when others try to weaken your resolve.
You need courage to fight through internal doubt and to show up for yourself when you feel like you can’t anymore.
You need courage to open yourself up to public scrutiny in a competition or big challenge
Now the best part, you can start small and stack courage. Just like establishing a walking habit before getting into weightlifting and running, the path our founder took.
Get into the Act
Let’s end with some practical action and advice you can start living out right now. Philosophy is cool, but if you can’t live it to better ends, then it’s not a philosophy worthy of your time.
You have that big dream in your mind still? The one I asked you to imagine a little earlier in the article. Good.
Here’s how we can start aiming towards it by using the physical to grow courage and character.
Step 1: Select a physical activity you love
Step 2: Find the as many 20–30-minute open time block in your schedule
Step 3: Start filling them in with the activity (walking, running, lifting, etc…)
Step 4: Make showing up and completing the work the only result that matters
Step 5: Repeat for six weeks MINIMUM
Why will this work?
First, by showing up consistently you will become a believer in yourself.
Second, by engaging in an activity you love you will be activating your spirit through enjoyment.
Third, you will recognize that even for things you enjoy there are many moments of discomfort, doubt, and a wanting to quit and you’ll gain experience overcoming them
Fourth, you will have an objective record of accomplishment your mind can’t steal away from you (you showed up and did the work right!)
Fifth, you have momentum on your side that you can harness and aim towards other places you are stalled and blocked
Finally, you find the deep resolve to bring your spirit to bear against yourself, because over the six weeks, you’ll have many internal battles faced and bested
In these ways, a simple action showing up consistently for yourself in the physical world will have outsized positive impact on your spiritual and mental worlds.
If you desire to win the battle outside, recognize that it will always change, shift, and appear different, but at the core it’s the same battle; truth against lies.
The magic of the physical is that you become comfortable fighting the seemingly same battle over and over again. The internal doubts, excuses, and limits do not go away, they simply change form, gather strength, and come back with a vengeance.
When you consistently win the battle against yourself, you realize that all the external opponents require that same internal resolve.
That why you CANNOT skip out on physical training.
Plus, you’ll have more energy, be more positive, have better mental health, and a willingness to fight that will aid your battles and wars against the external enemies.
There are no downsides.
So, start training from your heart. It’s our secret weapon.
Let’s fight together!
Jordan B. Goldstein | The Athletic Philosopher
On X @JB_Goldstein
Former Prof | Fitness and Life Coach | Tribal Training Endurance and Mindset Coach | Family Man | Trail Runner | Podcaster | Teach Sport’s Beauty | Dream BIG
Good article. Reminds me of JBP's "clean your room" catchphrase.