Vir Heroicus Sublimis by Barnett Newman, MoMA, New York City
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost – J.R.R. Tolkien
Last month, I took a flight at the start of August from Singapore, found myself back in Loughborough, UK, travelled to Ireland, flew over to New York before finally deciding to buy a one way ticket back to Singapore.
What prompted the trip was the overwhelming feeling that I needed I get away for a while, get away from who I was and get away from the surroundings that started to define me.
You see the year back in Singapore has been, hard.
Everything was a reminder of my failures and everything reminded me of what I’ve failed to become.
Everything’s ‘halfway done’ in a sense. Did become a decathlete, but nowhere as good as I wanted. Did start my own business and investment portfolio, but nowhere near achieving the level of success I wanted.
So I packed my bags and hit the road with a one way ticket out to London.
No schedule, no plan, no expectations, no limits.
Track, Loughborough University, UK
A revisit of my past.
For the week I was back in Loughborough, I trained with a fellow decathlete who also dropped training for a season due to work.
I realized, damn I’ve gotten so unfit, and damn I still love this sport very much.
I had a great journey over the past few years and the friends I’ve made really added a lot of colour to my life.
Running again with them just made me realize how thankful I am for it. Without question they put my up in their houses as I’m travelling and helped me along the way like they’ve always had in the past.
So not going to be crazily ambitious and come up with a training program that I have no hope in hell completing without getting injured 4 weeks down the road. Know your real edge and don’t fake it, as perfectly described by David Deida in Chapter 4 of The Way of The Superior Man (Worth a read).
Just going to progressively build the base I need to and work toward improving just 1 thing at a time.
Fitness first, then sprinting later.
Run 12.20s for the 100m during a competition by the end of the year.
That’s my target.
No point trying to pretend I’m running 11s plus when my PB is 12.24s, so let’s just aim to get that little bit better for a start.
86th Floor, Empire State Building, New York City
A peak into the future.
Didn’t know anyone in NYC, perfect place to figure myself out.
And in a sense, I did.
Visited the museums with all the wonderful artwork and managed to hook up with a few startup founders. Attended a Tech Meet up event and seen all the wonderful and great work the people there are doing with their businesses to make an impact on people’s lives.
Compared to what we’re doing here, it’s like seeing first hand how the big boys play in this field.
So to sum things up, my dreams haven’t changed.
I just need to get better, I just have to become who I always wanted to be.
Feeling inspired and motivated, I came back in September after being a month away on the road, shuffling from friends’ homes and dodgy hotel rooms, ready to take on the world again.
And a week in, I’m starting to feel deflated already.
One’s current reality can be quite overwhelming at times, and the only way to break free is to literally free yourself from the reality that is the old you and just become ‘him’ or ‘her’, the person you wanted to be.
It’s not the place or space, it’s an empire state of mind.
This article on EliteDaily.com pretty much expresses it in a way better than I ever could. (Saint is the ‘alter ego’ of the write Dominic that he decided to become, which the person he always wanted to be.)
To become Saint, I’d have to forget. To forget, I’d have to suffer. To suffer, I’d have to commit. Saint would require sacrifice, and in order for Saint to survive, I’d have to suppress all my excuses about why I wasn’t who or what I wanted to be… and just be him – that burning desire inside myself to supersede all notions of success. To be Saint, meant to be great — the two go hand in hand.
And so I decided to become who I wanted to be.
The guy who wakes up at 6 to hit the gym or track, go to work and powers through a to-do list long enough to scare an uninspired worker. Plans out big projects and assembles great teams to achieve awesome stuff.
It’s time to live like how I should.
A Singaporean Decathlete 