I recall, after publishing In Pursuit of Weightlessness over a decade ago, receiving an email from somebody that amounted to “I appreciate the stories, but why don’t you write about the failures?”
And I remember thinking, “What a shitty book that would be.” For, on the one hand, I think people would rather learn how to succeed with the principles, tools, and real case studies to support, and on the other, when people adhere to principles of sound training, well, they don’t fail.
So those stories would wind up being about A) a lack of conviction or B) a failure to adhere to a meaningful process. I’m still not of the opinion this would make for an enjoyable read or useful book, but a newsletter? Well, that’s a different story.
We can learn a lot from the right practice and consequent success of others. We can also learn a lot from failure - from conscientious efforts that bear no fruit, and in patterns of surrender for those who tap out along the way. I discuss the patterns and strategies of poor performers in I break down the most important faults of poor performers in Portrait of a Poor Performer: 18 Faults Separating You From Personal Peak Performance. Below, we're going to look at how these faults and patterns show up in the body in real time, so that you can identify them early, and potentially keep the train of progress on the tracks!
Beware Justifications of Surrender
One of the least enjoyable aspects of my work is seeing those I’m invested in throwing in the towel. I’d like to say everyone makes it through The Weightlessness Process with bright shining colors, but it’s not easy, and fallout sometimes occurs.
The ways in which it isn’t easy, however, is often a surprise to participants. Everyone projects their strengths and weaknesses ahead of time, and anticipates certain aspects of training presenting greater challenges than others. What they don’t anticipate, is that no matter your strengths and weaknesses, YOU will be exposed and confronted.
You can't hide from objective metrics and comprehensive assessments...
The true process of Weightlessness only begins once your deeper patterns surface and you are forced to look at who you are without the practiced and well curated persona you present to the world.
It is then that one tucks tail and surrenders, or double downs and adopts new tools and principles that design success - both present and for years to come.
That shift generally occurs between weeks 5 and 7 (of a 12 week process), as the novelty of the program wears off, and a lifetime of conditioned responses honed in confrontation, fearful reluctance, or the unwanted testing of edges starts to boil to the surface.
After considerable time in the game, I don’t see anything that shocks or surprises anymore. Patterns are easily identifiable with but a short conversation and a few key mind-body metrics. But with right attitude, openness, and approach, those limiting patterns can be overcome.
What is somewhat surprising, however, is those individuals who face the pressures and challenges of teetering on retreat, aren’t aware of the stories and justifications being spun; the reasons their commitment isn’t actually a good fit; the reasons for not doing the work that promises the results; the reasons for cherry picking some insights, principles, or exercises over others. They're also unaware they don’t yet have the filters to effectively determine relevant and meaningful practices in a system / process they’re brand new to.
Now, this isn’t meant to terminally qualify some people as winners and others and quitters. All winners know there is no success without enough failure to simply stop doing stupid things that hinder success. And that can be a long process, and one that deserves a lot of “do overs.”
I’ve failed more times than I can count, and I will continue to fail. But my personal aim, and what I hope to highlight for you, is that quitting has somatic patterns too, and most people lack awareness of these patterns, as well the level of embodiment needed to transcend their baser fears and insecurities when things get tough.
Once aware, however, the opportunity to resource more cultivated versions of oneself - the self that may not have the answers yet, but which can find a way, begins to blossom.
The Somatics of Quitting
First, if you haven’t taken the W somatic personality quiz, and know your default, global stress response, it takes 2 minutes, and you can do that here: Take Somatic Personality Quiz
If you have, and know your type but would like a refresher, you can find the in-depth breakdowns here: My Personality Type
Your somatic patterns - the depth and quality of your breath, the tendency to direct attention to rumination or sensation, the degree of tension and aggression vs the physical shrinking away from problems - can be corrected, cultivated, and even transformed via mind-body training. That said, the specific traits of each somatic personality - Grit, Cerebral, Sensate, Fluid - become engrained when we’re young, typically in response to stress or trauma.
It’s important to note that these “personalities” aren’t fixed, but are stored patterns in your physical form, can exist in high or low levels of capacity, and can morph from one to another, though not without a good deal of deep work or significant mind-body regression.
Quitting (or trouble finishing things once deemed meaningful) is almost always accompanied by singular archetype dominance (one primary personality, rather than a combination or more balanced mind-body profile), and is almost always accompanied by a low level of development in that archetype (lacking the cultivated skills of that type).
Several times over the last few years Weightlessness trainees have taken the quiz above before entering the program, and again after some time, only to find their personality has shifted from single dominance to combination. This is nothing like standard personality quizzes that try to peg you for life, rather it’s a fluid dynamic that can be impacted as you increase capacity across four key training practices, and learn to actually embody them at will to improve power, presence, and performance.
The mind-body archetypes / somatic personalities have become so central to my way of experiencing the world, that with but a bare bones assessment that plots key metrics in strength, flexibility, and meditation, I can generally predict both how, and when, someone may throw in the towel within a challenging process like Weightlessness, if they aren’t truly open to growing beyond their current state of mind-body performance.
These archetypes have a tremendous amount of depth and insight, but for our purposes here, let’s look at how these typically play out just prior to quitting, for those who have a low level of development in their dominant archetype as well as how it looks for those with cultivated (consciously embodied) skill in their archetype.
Grit
Low Capacity: reactivity / aggressive confrontation, flailing, stubbornness
High Capacity: perseverance, ownership, patience
Somatic Signifiers of Low Capacity: chronic tension, physical tightness, tight solar plexus, furrowed brow, rounded shoulders, elevated adrenaline, energetic overcompensation
Cerebral
Low Capacity: hyper analysis (neurotic rumination), inability to filter for relevance, lack of focus, justifying retreat (blaming or projecting) based on externalities, sarcasm and disdain, arrogance
High Capacity: organizing attention (low noise), mastering the system that confronts them, creative options generation
Somatic Signifiers of Low Capacity: desensitized body (energy is above the neck), poor concentration, low appetite, physical avoidance / angling
Sensate
Low Capacity: emotional volatility and overwhelm, confusion, insecurity, self doubt
High Capacity: perceptive, self awareness with rapid emotional regulation, feels through edges and stuck points, builds connection, intuitive resourcing and tool selection
Somatic Signifiers of Low Capacity: butterflies in stomach, erratic eye movement, syncopated breathing, retreat to comfortable environments
Fluid
Low Capacity: resistance to change, retreating from pain, mental stuckness, attached yet disengaged, flees conflict
High Capacity: adaptable, curious, unattached yet fully engaged
Somatic Signifiers of Low Capacity: physical deflation, unstructured body, diverted attention (eyes down), numbness
Low capacity traits, and this is important, are the ways in which those personality types express just prior to making a final decision - quitting.
They won’t always be aware of these patterns, and even if they are, the tendency to spin stories that allay personal responsibility for poor performance, and that justify quitting based on externalities, dominate their thought process.
These stories become a record set on repeat, without any awareness that thoughts are fleeting, and exist only between two ears.
Growth lies in the pausing of those stories - the redirecting of attention to effort over reason, and ownership over analysis. And while upgrading one’s capacity across all training pillars - strength, flexibility, and meditation - will, as a general rule, generate new options and opportunities, in the heat of the moment, one most focus on negating the negative symptoms of their somatic defaults, and leveling up their capacity in their archetype... for the poison is the cure.
This is when the real training begins.
The Poison is the Cure
The up-leveling of these archetypes isn’t more complicated than consciously practicing their correlative exercises:
Grit: Strength Training
Cerebral: Concentration Practice
Sensate: Awareness Practice
Fluid: Flexibility Training
To survive the moment of surrender, Sensate is the mother vehicle.
One must find space from narrative and the incessant story spinning of the ego. This begins with sensitivity: feeling how your archetype is manifesting in your body, noticing the shapes your shoulders and back tack, the tension in your face and where its held in the body, the location and depth of your breath, and sensations stemming from your environment. Then, noticing once again, thoughts are merely thoughts and their associated emotions aren't permanent, but will die if they aren't continuously fed.
Therein lies the space to choose without bias.
If Sensate isn't your archetype, coaching may be necessary to get you beyond the downward spiral. It may be necessary even if it is your personality type.
But beyond those tenuous moments, you must begin to attune to a process that transforms your somatic personality from liability into supreme asset.
If one has low capacity, they need only improve a few key metrics in the pillar of training that cultivates that archetype. Now, if one doesn’t have experience across multiple modalities and approaches, or happen to have a method comprehensive enough to cover all four, than diagnosing and prescribing meaningful work in each category can be challenging, to say the least.
If you have that depth of experience, the links I provided above should resonate deeply, and perhaps even help organize things you know intuitively into actionable program design.
If you don’t have that depth, well, we’re lucky we found each other. Weightlessness not only covers the spectrum of mind-body tools to transform, heal, and perform at your peak, it also has the diagnostics needed to translate these somatic personalities into training protocols, and vice versa.
I’m a nerd. I love this shit. And in this particular aspect, Weightlessness has no peers.
If you love it too, and not only want a cerebral understanding of this stuff, but want to feel, practice, and with time, embody these skills with masterful precision, The Weightlessness Process will break this down from soup to nuts, and customize your training process, taking into account your somatic personality, your current mind-body performance, and your personal vision of self - the YOU you’ve yet to fully express.
Book a call today if you’re ready to embark on an awesome journey, one that may tempt you to quit, but will give you all the tools you need to succeed, now and forever.
A Final Note on Arrogance and Adherence
One must empty their cup if they wish to fill it.
Simple in principle, very difficult in practice.
Few have the depth of experience when delving into new domains to filter out only those specific tools and practices that may amplify performance and personally approach, and so wind up choosing to focus on things that make sense now within a comfortable range of personal understanding and effort - projections of the good based on partial (and possibly flawed) comprehension of the system or domain.
Competence and comprehension are byproducts of training in the aggregate - the sum total of integrated tools and principles within a system or approach. Cherry picking from a narrow point of view often leads to the faults listed beside Cerebral: Low Capacity above, and the delusion that they're just different, and the system doesn't work for them.
On occasion, embodied ignorance is the best growth strategy for true competence.
Be Weightless Tribe,
Tom Fazio