“Re-create yourself by forging a new identity …”

Law 25 of The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene is about the concept of recreation, of not allowing a definition to be imposed on oneself by others but of defining, determining oneself.

“Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience…Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define if for you.”

Whether one is conscious of this or not we are all in this process, thrust into it at birth.

There are a lot of different ways to envision this philosophically, as a fall from “Das Man” in Heidegger.

As a structuring of language in the mirror stage of Lacan.

The othering in Sartre.

However one seeks to come to terms with it, self-determining is something we all must grapple with.

Maybe it is my algorithm on social media right now, or the fact that I just left an industry where I recruited and sold my sales rep on this idea, but my daily thought life feels inundated with this idea. 

And maybe I am just in the perfect place right now for a little reflection on self-determination, but I feel very unhappy with my body at present.

A little over a month ago, I had a bodybuilding trainer who had gotten me back on track making progress in the gym after about a year layoff.

I walked into that first training session with him and he put me through the wringer.

I mean a leg day from hell.

With absolutely no weight on the bar.

I threw up in the bathroom in the middle of the workout.

Laying on the floor of the public restroom in Golds Gym.

Couldn’t walk for a week.

But from that point he built me day by day into something hardly recognizable. 

And then I stopped.

Business fell apart and I now find myself back at this place of being unhappy with my body.

If you’ve been there, and I think we all have to a certain extent, saying that one is unhappy with ones body misses so much of what it feels like.

The confidence of moving in the world, the experience of being in ones body while in shape, the discipline it breeds, let alone the feelings, the actual physiological changes in brain chemistry.

It’s a truly different way of being. 

I always do this though, I go through a period of lifting and getting in shape and then the floor drops out from under me and I revert back to doing nothing.

This last time it was happening I saw how this self-sabotaging shadow self I carry inside me was slowly dismantling the mechanisms or barricades I’d put in place to feel good.

Certainly movement is one, but so is the food we are consuming, the amount of sunlight and our experience of nature, our use of stimulants and our various addictions.

I saw how I’d skip a workout and then binge eat Taco Bell or I’d let something small get blown out of proportion so that I could justify it as an excuse to start smoking cigarettes again.

And slowly but surely I am now at this point where I have undone all the progress I had made.

Replaced all the confidence I’d built with self-pity. 

A few weeks ago I was with an old business associate and friend who I know has struggled with the exact same body dysmorphia and eating problems I have over the years.

We were sitting at a nice breakfast spot outside of Salt Lake City, and over a shared plate of the most heavenly churro waffles he told me how he’d been taking semaglutide.

He stopped eating the waffles after a few bites.

I was obsessed with them but of course couldn’t just let myself go and eat all of them.

He was telling me about the weight he’d lost and so on but one off hand remark he made was that the use of the medication had made his obession with eating subside.

This really interested me so I did some research on the medication and what that obsession has been termed in the literature is “food noise.”

For instance I thought of those waffles almost all day and when I was finally alone at the airport later, I stuffed myself with Burger King.

That thinking about food all day is the “food noise.”

It seems like some people have it while others do not but one of the benefits of the medication as a treatment for obesity is in lessening or dampening this thought process.

I decided to get on the medication after talking with him.

But that isn’t self-determination.

A body built through the discipline of lifting and exercising feels different moving through the world than a body simply skinny.

At least to me.

And I have been all over the map with my body and the feeling associated with it, from super skinny with veins over my abs to having to shop at the big and tall store because my waistband is so large I can’t find sizes in normal stores.

I’ve also been shredded in the Brad Pitt in Fight Club way as well as very muscled like Alan Ritchson in Reacher.

And the experience of being in the world is different with all of them.

I think with body sizes the one the person feels most confident in is what one should aim for in their self-determination. 

Personally, for me, with where I am at in my life, getting back into the weight room is what is needed at this point.

Lifting has been something I have always enjoyed.

It has been something that has given structure to my life.

It has been a touchstone in times of stress and a northstar in the times of darkness.

Self-determination is not just where one wants to go in life, but it is also how one wants to feel inside as one walks along path to get there. 

• Stopping 75 Hard: Strength, Surrender, and the Shape of Progress
• Unlock the P90X Secret: How ‘Muscle Confusion’ Rewrote Fitness
• What Was Read This Week: Jan 26-Feb 1
• Lacan on the Self: Identity, Desire, Lack
• The Call to Thought: When Life Forces Us to Truly Think

If this strikes a chord in you—the hunger to sharpen, to evolve—explore Poetics of Self-Mastery. It’s for those done with distraction, ready to confront the quiet disciplines that forge identity. No hacks. No hype. Just the art of becoming who you were meant to be. Read Poetics of Self-Mastery (Why You’re Still Stuck)

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