People always want to go somewhere to feel paradise, but it’s all right here! It’s always been here. It’s the biggest endorphin rush on the planet, making even a grocery store build-your-own sandwich taste like five-star gourmet eating. And anyone can do it. It’s called exercise. The greatest secret is that the more we exercise, the more of a rush we get from it. And we can build up from it, where it starts painful, like when I walked the hallway for ten minutes with chronic fatigue, but gradually ends in high-performance bliss.
Recently, I increased my weekend swimming time to three hours, although I’m doing 4.5 hours of swimming this weekend. And it’s blissful. The food afterward tastes heavenly, and I like to drink a beetroot kombucha for a blissful rush of probiotics. And then, I have the sweetest nap when I get home, which sends me straight to cloud nine, and I have no worries for the next seven hours.
Let’s face it: exercise is fun. When I went to Hawaii, the luau was fun with its roasted pig and the Hawaiian dancers, but the real fun was in the 24-hour gym. It had no windows, so the fresh, humid ocean air filled the room. And I’d go several times a day to lift weights. I even went at 2 or 3 in the morning, much to my companion’s dismay. Fitness is bliss.
We can do any fitness and gain benefits, but the real endorphins happen the more we gradually increase our intensity to the point of “rush.” With that said, for us dreamers who want to end up in the rush zone, here are some upcoming 2024 Olympic sports we can train for, maybe one day with the world’s elite (as anything is possible!):
Archery, athletics, badminton, basketball , basketball 3×3, boxing, canoe slalom, canoe sprint, road cycling, cycling track, mountain bike, BMX freestyle, BMX racing, equestrian, fencing, football, golf, artistic gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics, trampoline, handball, hockey, judo, modern pentathlon, rowing, rugby, sailing, shooting, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis, triathlon, volleyball, beach volleyball, diving, marathon swimming, artistic swimming, swimming, water polo, weightlifting and wrestling.
Additional sports include climbing, skateboarding, and surfing.
Of those, I’d like to learn BMX racing (you’ve got to see it in action to understand why it’s a rush), wrestling, swimming, boxing, and shooting. There is just nothing I want to shoot at.
My desire to learn combative arts and stunts first arose from playing many superhero-roleplaying games as a teen. That’s partly why I developed martial arts and weightlifting skills later in life and pursued wrestling. I had always striven to acquire combative skills as a superhero in the game. If we fathom ourselves as imaginary superheroes, we become more inclined to develop combative skills in real life.
The Marvel superhero roleplaying games also made me more inclined to increase my strength, endurance, speed, intelligence, wisdom, and other measures that made a superhero stand out, which is why I’m so skills oriented. I delight in learning skills at work, during fitness, or through studies. Skills float my boat, and Marvel Superheroes as a teen was likely a catalyst for this mindset. I prefer physically playing sports rather than roleplaying them, however. We should all learn physical skills to feel that endorphin rush. And it doesn’t matter how old we are, what disabilities we have, or any other limitation, such as finance or obesity. We can all access fitness on an incredible level.
Also, physical skills are more fun to master than watch. Just like football, physical activity is more fun to play than watch. Just ask any superstar being introduced with white rays of light beaming on him, displayed on cross-national media, within a stadium of thousands of cheering fans on game night as he engages in focused play. Why watch it when we can play it?
Sports and fitness are not just endorphin rushes; they are rollercoasters to heaven. Fitness makes us look better, gives us a thousand times more energy, fuels us for immeasurable success, yields greater happiness, directs us to make healthier choices, and so on. And it’s a blast, significantly once momentum shifts into high gear!
So, dream up a sport or physical activity that could take us from novice to world-class. It doesn’t need to be remotely possible, not at first. It just needs to start as a goal. And if we become world-class, even if we start off extremely overweight with five autoimmune conditions, we read it here: anything is possible!
