“Is Baldwin’s character a jerk or a savior? […] The secret is at the beginning, at 0:15, where it is revealed that Alec Baldwin doesn’t feel any of this, the whole speech is a work. If you were in that room, some of you would understand this as a work, but feed off the energy of the message anyway, welcome the coach’s cursing at you, “this guy is awesome!”; while some of you would take it personally, this guy is a jerk, you have no right to talk to me like that, or — the standard maneuver when narcissism is confronted with a greater power — quietly seethe and fantasize about finding information that will out him as a hypocrite. So satisfying.”

The Last Psychiatrist

Very interesting article. Polarizing. More than it appears to be. Regardless of how I feel about the thing as a whole, I’m firing myself. I have a week to win my job back.

“We go to gyms in large part to maintain a little goddamned self-respect, and to blow off steam, and to insist, against all odds, that we do remain fiercely vital physical beings.

… but if you just stick to a basic strength-training program, you can expect a certain wonderment about what the hell you were doing all those years, why nobody told you it was this simple before, and why nobody else in the gym appears to have heard the good news.

…You’ll be on a journey, at long last, learning how to own the gym, how to make your thrice-weekly health-club sessions into a confident, focused process invulnerable to bullshit. You’ll begin walking right past all the muscle-isolation weight machines, feeling a little sorry for all the guys who still think those are a good use of their time. You’ll start heading right back to the barbells instead, back in the gym’s darkest distant corner, and seeing them only as tools for your own ends, your own sports and goals.”

Daniel Duane

If you’re a human in a body I really really recommend reading this. I wasn’t expecting to read through this thing. Yet, here I am quoting from the very end of it.

The article perfectly sums up my experience with the gym over the past year. I can’t over-emphasize how much this stuff has meant to me as a man, how much feeling competent, earnest and strong changes things.

“The question is, ‘What’s the main difference between a pro and an amateur?’ My answer: depth of commitment.”

Stephen Pressfield

“You cannot fight the zeitgeist and you cannot fight corporations. The genius of corporations is that they force you to make decisions about how you will live your life and then beguile you into thinking that it was all your choice. Compact discs are not superior to vinyl. E-readers are not superior to books. Lite beer is not the great leap forward. A society that replaces seven-tier wedding cakes with lo-fat cupcakes is a society that deserves to be put to the sword.”

Joe Queenan

“Failing fast and endless iterations are wonderful little bullets with which to shoot the fucking crow.”

Jerry Colonna

Check out the article to get a better idea of what he means. Great thoughts on the “what the hell am i doing” feeling from a seasoned entrepreneur

“Passion comes as much from the merit of our fight as it does from what is within us.”

Donald Miller

“That’s life, pal. Deal.”

Bub