There I sat the other night plopped on the couch next to my girlfriend with two surprisingly tired mutts sprawled out on the floor flipping through channels looking for something to grab our attention.
I’ll admit – I’m a sucker for comedies. Who doesn’t like a little humor in their life?
After scanning through dozens of channels, we ended up settling on Superbad. Now, let me preface this post by saying that Superbad happens to be one of my favorite movies. Everyone can relate to the plot line. A bunch of high school teenagers chasing after that girl with a fake idea looking to get stupid drunk at a party in a perilous quest to look cool (okay, I guess the proper term is bad ass).
Amidst all of the booze drinking and high school partying, the adventures of Seth, Evan, and McLovin actually play out many scenarios that we encounter on a daily basis – besides the whole getting arrested and blowing up cop cars bit – unless of course your life imitates James Bond which we would all be jealous.
Learning time!
Stuff May Not Pan Out Exactly As Planned
How hard can it be? Get a fake idea, put on some adult looking clothes, and buy some booze. Turns out, really complicated. First, a random robber slugs Fogel. A car hits Seth. Evan has his girl puke all over him. Seth punches the girl of his dream.
A perfect night of epic debauchery gets ultimately ruined and that’s perfectly okay. In the end, they both still get the girl and become better friends for it.
Many of us are planners. We like to have everything set in stone before moving forward. Everyone knows someone that plans excessively – the people that have everything penciled out on their calendar and put things on their to-do list solely to cross them off.
It’s safer that way – less risk for something crazy to happen.
Something will come by one day that will call for an “eff the plan” type of moment. Those moments when you throw your hands up in the air and ditch the preconceived ideas of what the moment would look like.
That’s called living on the edge.
It’ll take you to places you’d never dreamed of and leave you with the stories that you remember. How often do you remember that perfectly planned trip you took compared to the one that sidetracked you and led your night to the best bar in Nashville with 25 cent pitchers right next to Taylor Swifts apartment (yes, that actually happened)?
Don’t Assume Anything About Anyone – Ever
Remember when Seth got to the party and tried to impress Jewel’s by getting wicked drunk (In retrospect, that never works.)? It turned out that she didn’t even drink. Talk about a backfire.
We assume quite a bit, especially any details that further support our preconceived notions of how someone will act. We generalize and it turns out that it’s often in our best interest. Creating assumptions based on appearance and prior knowledge saves us the trouble of getting to know every detail about every person that walks into our life.
For instance, you walk into a coffee shop and order your favorite drink – a venti-half-caff-vanilla-chai-tea-with-two-packets-of-splenda-non-fat-milk-and-whip. You sit down next to a guy dressed in a suit with his eyes glued to a laptop in front of him, pouring over pie charts and cascading numbers like Neo from the Matrix. You just happen to eavesdrop onto his conversation. He’s barking into a Blackberry and shouting something about a client backing out of a business deal.
Before you know it, you’ve already made assumptions about his life and personality. Based on his appearance, you’re going to assume that he makes a decent salary. His tone indicates that he’s either pissed off or he’s a serious type of guy – not one that jokes around on the phone. He seems serious about money – so you infer that he’s probably competitive, likely played some sports…and the list goes on.
Realize that all of your inferences and conjectures based upon years of past experience may all be completely wrong.
Through years of personal training, I’ve time and time again been smacked in the face by reality when I generalized a member.
Realize that not every overweight individual is lazy (quite the contrary – all of my weight loss clients bust ass in the weight room).
Not every ripped individual is a model for perfect health (some are just genetically blessed and we call them freaks).
Girls don’t always lift pink dumbbells and do cardio, and not every guy wants a six-pack and big gunz (Alright that last one might be true.).
Do Something Crazy (and potentially stupid)
Get a fake ID – even if it has you listed as a 23 year old from Hawaii (bonus points for one name – who are you, Seal?). Quit your job, sell your car, and travel around the world like this guy.
During my senior year of college, I basically quit my job (as a PT manager) to work as an intern with the Strength and Conditioning department at the University of Florida for 30-40 hours of free labor a week while still taking a full class load. Did I mention that I had to start at 4:45AM every morning?
It sucked. I hated it.
So, I quit, took out a school loan, got a dog, crawled back to my old job to work a few hours a week, and started writing off and on. My mother was thrilled.
The silver lining – I thought I wanted to go into strength and conditioning with athletic teams. That internship was a blessing in disguise because I learned what I didn’t want to do.
Sometimes what you need is a leap into the abyss in order to shake things up. It doesn’t have to be drastic – take the day off of work and go on a day drive to your favorite location. Eat some greasy food. Most importantly, enjoy every last slimy french fry.
So, what did we learn? You can learn from almost anything. Hell, this post is based on a movie about kids looking to get wasted. Looking past all of the debauchery, you’ll find that you aren’t too far often from McLovin. You’re just trying to go with the flow and fit in when things happen that you don’t expect. Often times it takes you down a rabbit hole and spits you out somewhere you’d never imagine.
Closing thoughts: Never, ever attempt the upward spiraling pigtail.
Alright, I just wrote over a 1,000 words off of a comedy movie and you (re)learned something so post it in the comments below and share like crazy. Also, if you’d like to see more of this stuff, subscribe in the box on the top right. Don’t worry, you’re e-mail is safe with me.