Carrying My Kettlebell From Tokyo To New York City

There’s nothing like adversity to make you appreciate the things you have.

I had just landed in New York after leaving Tokyo, Japan 24 + hours earlier with my kettlebell and backpack. I figured since I’d be traveling the world for the next five weeks—visiting Spartan events, offices, and talking to anyone who would listen—I might as well get some exercise. Why not carry a 44-pound kettlebell for the trip? It could definitely help me stay fit while on the move.

I arrived after delays and a layover, causing the trip to take double the amount of time it should have (it’s normally 13 hours direct from Tokyo to New York). I didn’t get upset while diverted to Hong Kong, stuck in customs, or in gridlocked traffic for hours. I thought along the way, “I’m human—I should get upset. No gluten-free meal? Sitting next to a baby? A 10-hour re-route?” 

When I arrived in New York, I thought, “Man, what is going on with this city? I haven’t been here in a while. Singapore is so much more organized. Tokyo is spotless and efficient compared to this. Is this where I grew up? How did I not notice the inefficiency, crowds, and insane traffic?”

Since traffic was so backed up, I decided to walk the last few miles to my hotel, kettlebell in hand, only to wait 25 minutes while the hotel tried to check me in. Why is it that it always takes 25 minutes to get checked into a hotel? They know who I am and they have my reservation. How has a company not figured out an efficient three-minute check in procedure? It’s midnight; no one else is being checked in! But I didn’t get upset; I was just in a thankful mood.

Once I got to my room I opened my computer to get organized for the morning. Spartan had a Fox & Friends obstacle course show being filmed at 6 a.m. and I wanted to make sure I had everything ready. I figured if I got up at 4:30 a.m. I could carry my kettlebell over the mile and a half and still have time to grab some food before we start filming. That’s when I saw the news that a bomb had gone off a few blocks from my hotel.

“Only a few blocks from me? Wow! Was anyone hurt? When did this happen? So, that’s why all the traffic existed.”

A MAN, A BELL, AND A CITY— 

What are the odds that I had just experienced two small earthquakes in Tokyo before jumping on a plane and arriving at my hotel—right next to the latest possible terrorist explosion? Thankfully, it looked like no one had been seriously hurt (although 29 people were injured, according to CNN). Then I thought, “How can I complain about anything?” I mean, just over 100 years ago the fastest means of transportation would have taken me 100-plus days of travel to reach New York. In fact, some statistics show I’d have had up to a 10 percent chance of dying on one of those sea voyages. Whereas today, there’s a one in 11 million chance of dying by flying that same distance in an airplane.

No surprise that due to the explosion, Fox & Friends cancelled our segment, but I was wide awake at 4:30 a.m. So, of course, I went on a run with that damn kettlebell. As I passed the New York Public Library and ran down 31st street on my way to the West Side of Manhattan, it amazed me that only 1 percent of the people I had seen the night before partying and enjoying Manhattan were awake. Just five hours earlier, I couldn’t walk down any street in Manhattan, yet now at the most ideal time to be awake—sun coming up—everyone was asleep.

As I sweated, suffered and ran through Manhattan with the damn kettlebell, my mind wandered to all kinds of economic and philosophical theories: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, happiness, adversity, and what truly drives success in life. I thought to myself that it’s never the absolute level someone achieves in life that makes them happy, appreciative and “on track.” Instead, it’s the “delta” or change from where they were vs. where they are now that drives satisfaction.

In other words, a millionaire, top athlete, or super mom would not necessarily be “happy” if they simply entered life without working up to their level in life. Your absolute status alone doesn’t drive happiness as evidenced by the fact that most billionaires are not happy. What makes a person happy is the perspective gained from the change of moving from one level to another. If you had just arrived on earth as an adult, rich, and great at anything and everything, would that be enough to be content? Enough to be satisfied, appreciative, and happy daily? I thought, no, the only thing that achieves these three states is the perspective of knowing where you came from.

THE LITTLE THINGS ARE COOL —

As I trekked through Manhattan, I delved deeper into this conclusion and realized that there’s more to it than perspective. It’s not just the change or delta that drives contentment, satisfaction or happiness; it’s the law of diminishing returns. The law of diminishing returns has its roots in agriculture and states that in all productive processes, adding more of one factor of production, while holding all others constant ("ceteris paribus"), will at some point yield lower incremental per-unit returns. My next conclusion was: The more you have, and the more you pile into your life, the less incremental satisfaction you’ll get from it.

Still running around carrying nearly 50 pounds in one hand, I thought about the Roman philosopher, Seneca, who enjoyed great wealth as the adviser of Emperor Nero. Seneca suggested that we ought to set aside a certain number of days each month to practice poverty. Take away a little food, wear your worst clothes, get away from the comfort of your home and bed. Put yourself face-to-face with want, he said, and you’ll ask yourself, “Is this what I used to dread?”

It’s important to remember that this is an exercise and not a rhetorical device. He doesn’t mean “think about” misfortune, he means live it. Comfort is the worst kind of slavery because you’re always afraid that something or someone will take it away. But if you can anticipate and practice misfortune, then chance loses its ability to disrupt your life. This is what I was doing with my kettlebell, but my belief in appreciating life for what it is has been crystallized for decades. 

Money and status are absolute great benefits of success and contribute to safety and physical well-being. But, if you’re trying to derive your self-esteem from money and status (which implies it’s derived from jealousy, envy, and greed) instead of the pursuit of self actualization (pursuit of enlightenment, self-realization, etc.) then you'll never find your true purpose in life.

Greek philosopher Epictetus, even more radical than Seneca, went so far as saying that “it is better to die of hunger with distress and fear gone than to live upset in the midst of plenty.” His teacher, Roman philosopher Musonius, actually thought that wealth has the power of making people miserable.

Modern philosophy author Professor William B. Irvine makes the general point that for the Stoics, the contrast is between living well and having a good life. The former may indeed require the deployment of wealth in order to achieve fame, but that project actually gets in the way of the second goal.

There is an interesting discussion here of the disadvantage in striving to experience the best things in life: we may develop such a refined taste for luxuries, including exotic or complexly prepared foods, that we may lose the ability to enjoy the simple (and much more reliably obtainable) things in life. Accordingly, Musonius advocated eating simple foods that require little preparation, like fruits, vegetables and cheese.

 WHY WE CAN’T KEEP WANTING MORE —

Happiness after all is relative not absolute: it’s a state of mind that sits somewhere between where you were just before and where you should be in the future. We can’t continue to “feed” happiness or contentment due to diminishing returns. Exponential growth is required to keep your state of mind up by just “getting more,” and you eventually reach a point of impossibility and totally diminished returns.

For example: Say you love meatballs, but it’s all you get for dinner every night. After awhile you’d demand, “Where’s my pasta?” But what if there were never any pasta and all you’d ever known were meatballs? Would you still want pasta?

The inability to be content wasn’t an issue 100 years ago but our technological development allowed us to reach happiness saturation so easily. If a person’s cell phone GPS goes down for a day, they lose their minds. Fifteen years ago, we carried around paper maps of every town just to get around. Now, we’re not even happy about our ability to have GPS anytime, anywhere. We get upset if we lose it for a day. Am I suggesting we all carry around paper maps? It wouldn’t hurt. But the point is that in a society where technology has become a means for satisfaction, let’s not forget about our attitude. A positive outlook on life yields great benefits. This is where Spartan comes in.

MAKING SPARTAN YOUR OWN —

At Spartan Race, we’ve been able to create 3- to 26+ mile courses where people learn new things about their physical strengths/weaknesses while developing mental grit. People help each other accomplish a common goal, which is crossing the finish line. If you so choose, you can spend the entire course aiding others that are in need of motivational/physical assistance. Or, you can eliminate all worries and material possessions, (except for water and race fuel for longer courses), and let your mind enter an entirely new state where the only “more” you get is water, and depending on the course, obstacles and/or mountains. The reason the Spartan community is so close-knit and welcoming is because we understand that everyone starts somewhere. Enduring discomfort resets your perspective for everything else in life

I wish Spartan had the chance to explain this concept on Fox & Friends. Spartan takes people out of their comfort zone for hours, and the result is that they tend to develop a more positive outlook on life, appreciating the little things, family and each other. This is exactly what we need to reach our happiness and purpose. More of Spartan Race in this society is good for our characters and will contribute to finding our happiness and purpose in life.

APPRECIATE THE NOW —

The most efficient, arguably the only, way to appreciate what you have is to take something away, physically, mentally or both. My kettlebell has become a perfect way to do that as not much else matters aside from continuing to move with it once I start moving. 

Once I started running with the bell in New York, it was probably best that I kept running to complete my “workout”—there was a manhunt underway for an armed man charged with attempted murder. It was quite an alarming time to have such deep philosophical thought but I think this heightened sense of urgency caused me to double down on what I already thought about society: We overlook important human qualities in favor of technological prowess. We favor SEO proficiency over the ability to inspire unmotivated people to achieve things they never thought possible. Spartans use what they learn on the course and apply it to their craft(s) resulting in the ideal combination of constantly improving skill, motivation, and leadership ability. And we live in the moment, thankful to be alive. 

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