In this edition, Joe shares:
- Why desire can be the cause of suffering
- How Spartan strips life to its essentials
- The freedom that comes from mastering need
I read a piece by David Brooks in the New York Times that put this into focus. His warning “Be careful what you want” could have been written by the Stoics, the Buddhists, or any number of ancient thinkers. They all understood that desire lef unchecked is the root of suffering. The problem isn’t wanting; it’s wanting the wrong stuff. Comfort, status, and endless accumulation are all examples of the “wrong stuff”. Brooks calls it being “trained by culture” to chase the wrong goals.
Spartan, and the whole ecosystem we’ve built around it, exists as an antidote to this disease. The events, the gear, the lifestyle, training and our ethos are about stripping your life down to what matters: discipline, sacrifice, resilience, and clarity. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the process is the prize. Rewards fade. Who you become in the fire stays.
Brooks breaks ambition down into struggles between craft and reward, gift love and need love, excellence and superiority, high and low desires, ambition and aspiration. Each of those is a battle you fight inside yourself, whether you know it or not. I see these battles every day: the guy who’s there for the medal versus the one who’s there to see if they can finish. The leader who needs to beat others versus the one who just wants to be great at her craft. The person chasing a Porsche versus the one chasing presence and peace of mind.
At Spartan, we flip the script on what the world tells you to want. The world says: more stuff, more options, more pleasure, more EASY. We say fuxx that! Take it away. Strip it down. Less comfort. Less luxury. Less distraction. Less excuses. Because when you master what you need, you’re free from being a slave to what you want.
“Discipline is choosing what you want MOST over what you want NOW.”
– Craig Groeschel
Brooks ends by talking about aspiration – not the desire to rise higher above others in the world, but the desire to become a better person in it. That’s a fight worth having, and its the same fight our events are designed to mirror. Not to make you richer or more comfortable, but to make you harder to kill by being more awake.
So be careful what you want. If you chase the wrong things, you’ll find yourself in a cage you built yourself. But if you aim at the right things – purpose, pain, peace – you’ll find the freedom that ambition alone can never buy.
Hurry up, Joe
You Ask, Joe Answers
Q: “If you could only keep one piece of gear for training, what would it be?” — Mike D.
A: “A weighted vest. You can run in it, hike in it, do pull-ups, push-ups, squats, and it makes everything harder. When you take it off, you feel like you’re flying.” — Joe
