Existential, Identity, Relationship and Meaning

Now, identity relationships and meaning these are topics that really speak about motivation. Existentialists see identity tied into our relationships to other people, proposition 3. This ultimately leads to a search for meaning in our life’s, proposition 4. From a health and fitness perspective, it is quite worthwhile spending some time thinking about these things, as it can allow us to make realistic decisions about how we will change.

Although existentialists spend a lot of time talking about identity, this blog will reduce the argument a little. Image I was sitting in a bare room by myself, no windows, no furniture and one cold electric light, I am totally alone with no interaction with anybody or anything; do I have an identity in this situation? The existentialist would say no, the existentialist would say my identity flows from others. To an extent our identity is simply the sum of our past experiences and the expectations placed upon us by other. Few of us recognise how much of our identity is a reflection of others. Hence we condemn ourselves to stay as we are and completely rule out any possibility of growth. We become trapped in our habits and the expectations we feel others impose on us. For health and fitness the implications are obvious. This leads to a search for meaning

The final proposition, proposition4, in existentialism is the search for meaning. This might sound very abstract however it is very applicable to people who find themselves stuck in a rut, for people who want to change but keep returning to their old habits. If people cannot understand what gives their lives meaning they have nothing but old imposed values and habits to rely on. People cling to old habits and values because these are the only things giving meaning to people’s lives. This is the crunch, rather than having an understanding of ourselves and our values and using this to formulate our actions we work the other round. As an example you may have hear someone who has lost their job or been divorced. However often these people have successfully moved, they have a new job or a new partner and yet they keep banging on about how they were shafted in the past. It is this feeling of injustice that gives meaning to their lives. And at the end of the day this is the easiest thing to do, finding true meaning in our lives is extremely difficult.  I would encourage everybody to read my next blog on work done by a researcher named Milgram.

So how do we put all this together to improve our health and fitness? An obvious answer would be to surround ourselves with fit people. This is not a bad strategy and probably almost unavoidable if we join a gym or a boot camp. However the issue might be that we reflect what is suitable level of fitness from the very fit. It is quite common to see teenage boys in the gym trying to lift too much weight because they see other people doing a 200 lb bench press. The answer as proposed by existentialists is to explore ourselves and what we are capable of. Now after banging on about existentialism for a couple of blogs, in the next blog I will put forward a goal setting system that takes into account what meaning we put into our lives.