Originally Posted November 4, 2018
Hi my name is Jason Brown, and I am incredibly reckless.
Though many have come to know me for my diet, sleep, and training patterns, I am highly impulsive and lack moderation.
I make decisions based on how I feel and often times lack proper limits on what it is I do.
I was 22 when I originally wrote this post but at 27, I still see myself as a bit reckless, and I bet if you were a tad bit more reckless you would enjoy life a lot more
At 22, when I said I was highly impulsive and lacked moderation, I meant I would eat three bags of the white chocolate, orange colored Halloween KitKat (about 60) in a day. I would spend $90 on a domain name with no knowledge on blogging or how to be successful in it. I would spend close to $100 on concert tickets in cities I do not live in hoping that I will be able to find a way to make it there. When I heard a podcast or watched a video that says “do these things to change your life” I drop everything and try these things out.
Not much has changed.
At 27, just last week, I ate a bag of Doritos, Funyuns, and a can of Pringles moments after opening a Halloween care package from my grandma: five years later and my grandma still delivers the goods. Revamping this site, I just spent over $200 to claim the domain and upgrade my account. Just last today, I bought a ticket over $250 to see Laufey on her sold out Bewitched tour. Be it Catechism in a Year, Huberman, or Diary of a CEO, I am still listening to other’s lives to better mine.
I have changed in only one area.
If I am at a restaurant in a new city, I no longer think “who knows when I am going to come back, I am going to get everything on the menu I want to try”. That lead to far too many stomach aches and soggy leftovers.
What this also means however, is that I still routinely get up between 4:00 am — 5:00 am, study Spanish, workout for 1.5–2 hours, work as a teacher for 7 hours, run a lacrosse program, cook every one of my meals, read a chapter of a book a night, and try to run a blog.
In my life, I know no sense of how to moderate my effort on anything I do.
When I decided to pursue an athletic career in CrossFit, for 8.5 years my sleep, diet, and lifestyle revolved around CrossFit.
As a teacher, my student’s success comes before any of my other work in school.
Deciding to reenter this blogging space, my entire focus is on how to give you, the reader, the best content I can.
What this means is that I give everything I have at every moment in order to succeed at what it is I want to do.
In 2015, I picked up a book called Eat Pray Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia.
I knew that I wanted to study abroad, and I wanted to have a life-changing experience. Life had become stale. Wake up, go to class, hang out with friends. Something was missing.
Between the covers of Eat Pray Love you will find an honest, heartfelt, and at times inspiring account of one woman's journey to find herself.
I wanted that. I wanted to know who I was. I wanted to know how to love myself.
I took notes and what Elizabeth Gilbert did, how she lived, her mindset and when I traveled to Madrid Spain a year later I set out on my own journey to discover myself.
Insert recklessness now.
Over the six months I lived in Madrid I never went to a club.
I only traveled outside the city two times.
I went out of the country once.
I spent time alone, walking the streets, wandering if you will, with my thoughts: something I later realized was deep prayer as I began what has now blossomed into a life altering relationship with God.
I did not speak the language fluently, but with the broken Spanish that brings about a look of pity followed by “Ingles” as to say “thanks for trying but we both know you do not know how to carry this conversation”.
I spent time in parks reading books, observing the people and surroundings, oh and avoiding the massive amounts of dog poop (Madrid has a lot of dogs).
I kept a journal.
I found a CrossFit gym a five-minute walk from my house.
I made a list of restaurants I wanted to try.
I did not care what other people were doing or where they were going, but only what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go.
I threw myself into my journey.
I had no idea if what I was doing was right, often times I questioned myself because no one else had done or was doing what I was doing.
People were telling me "why are you doing this to yourself", "you are missing out", "wow, why did you go over there".
I smiled and said, "you know this is my journey" but what I really meant was please stop telling me this, you are terrifying me".
Just like it sounds, being reckless in life is going to be scary.
You are going to be putting yourself in situations where the only guide you have is your instinct. People are not going to understand it, but you have to know that you know what is right for you. You have to make the choice to act in your best interest.
To live recklessly means to ignore almost, but not all, criticism and critiques as these will lead you to lose confidence in yourself.
I cannot tell you what to filter out, but I can tell you this: you know what feels right. You know what is best for you. I can be almost certain there have been times in your life where you have acted solely because “it felt right” or because you “wanted to”. If so, you have lived recklessly.
The beautiful part about life, however, is that if you have not lived recklessly, or have missed chances to live recklessly, you have a new moment in each second of the day to experiment with it.
You are given opportunities every day to learn from the past and act on the future so you can be your best self in any of your pursuits. If you are reckless and if you are impulsive, you will learn from these moments. You will find yourself in situations that honestly are going to suck. But you will grow. You will learn. You will become who you are meant to be.
Here is where I need to make a clarification.
I am not telling you to live some hedonist, overly pleasure-centric life.
What I am saying is that to be successful in any venture or produce your desired outcome, you have to throw yourself face first into whatever it is you are doing.
At 22 or at 27, I visualize the worst case scenario and make a choice.
Worst case scenarios of Madrid:
1.) I would miss out on making friend with a plethora of sophomores from SLU at clubs, drunk, who I would probably never see again.
2.) I would spend 6 months alone with my thoughts and questions.
3.) I would come back to Creighton with a totally different experience than any friend or person I know.
4.) I could have gotten lost (which I did when my phone died and had no access to google maps).
All of these worst case scenarios ended up being the best possible outcomes.
1.) I did not make friends with drunken Americans, but instead a Serbian from my Economics class who had a passionate love for the Michigan Wolverines. A talented basketball player who attended college in the US to play basketball and now was in Madrid doing the same. I made a friend who would break me out of my shell and share a beer before I departed.
2.) I did spend 6 months alone with my thoughts and questions, but it was a 6-month retreat in a foreign country with beauty surrounding me at every turn where the focus was me.
3.) I did come back to Creighton with an experience different from others, and, for those open-minded enough to listen, they understood why I did it and were quite happy for me.
4.) I did get lost many times, but I left Madrid knowing that if I can survive in a place with a totally different language, if I can still pursue my CrossFit dreams, if I can do what I want when everyone else was telling me I was wrong, I cannot only survive anywhere, but I can be myself anywhere.
Had I not thrown myself 100% into what I wanted, ignoring what the other American students were doing, I would not have a friend who taught me how to live a little, how to work hard and have a little fun while I was at it. A friend who I can visit, once I have enough money to go back: still do not have enough money.
Had I not been reckless in my pursuit, ignoring what other people thought, I would have returned to Creighton with the same stories as everyone else: I would have come back the same as I left.
Had I not loved myself with a recklessly inquisitive love, I would not have come to better know who I was and what I wanted from life.
Had I not opened the front door and started walking, I would have never truly experienced the culture, the sights, the sounds, and all that Madrid has to offer.
How does my story have anything to do with you?
"We suffer more often in imagination than in creativity" - Seneca The Younger
We create so many reasons to not dive into the water of experiences in front of us.
I told you that I visualize the worst case scenario, but while I do so, I do not dwell in these possibilities as I know so much more can come from taking the first step. So long as I can grow from the experience in a manner that will not do severe harm, I try it.
If you create a worst case scenario and let it scare you from acting, you will never live a fulfilled life.
You will be trapped in your mind.
You will sit in front of a window longing to go outside.
You will isolate yourself from people, when all you want is a friend.
You will want so much from your life, but YOU will limit its very existence.
"If I shoot for the stars and don't know how to land, am I lost or an astronaut?" - Jacob Banks
You do not need to go to school or work for NASA to be an astronaut. If you shoot for the stars without knowing how to land, you are fully the same as an astronaut, kind of. I am not saying that you can go fly a rocket into space, but I am saying, if becoming an astronaut is something you want to do, you better align every aspect of your life to fit what it takes to do so.
You have to be reckless in your pursuit of every aspect of your life.
To those waiting to shoot me down with, “but if we live without moderation, we will just do and do and do without regard for anything or anyone”. If you are worried about doing too much or taking on more than you can handle:
"Moderation in all things, especially moderation."
-Ralph Waldo Emmerson
People will tell you all good things come in moderation, but moderation is the exact thing stopping you and I from being astronauts.
Being reckless is the exact thing mom and dad told you not to do in life, but hey, life is funny like that.
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