As a young man growing up in the 1970s and 1980s in Brooklyn, Evan Seinfeld found heavy metal music culture at the legendary venue L\u2019Amours. \u201cThe first time I walked into L\u2019Amours\u2026 It was like I was home,\u201d Seinfeld told me. \u201cI walked in, and there were people there standing around who weren\u2019t the usual characters. They had long hair. There were people with tattoos. There were people \u2026 with different types of style. There was a different kind of music. There was a subculture. And it felt organic for me as part of it \u2026 I was home.\u201d<\/p>\n
As heavy metal was growing as a culture, New York City was also the home of the developing underground punk rock and hip hop scenes. Seinfeld recounted when the late Pete Steele of Carnivore, for whom Seinfeld was a roadie, took Seinfeld to the birthplace of punk rock, CBGBs<\/a>. \u201cI was a metalhead \u2026 I used to roadie for Pete Steele when I was 16,\u201d he recalled. \u201cAnd then one day, Pete says to me, \u2018Bring your car, pick up the equipment. We\u2019re gonna go play CBGBs.\u2019\u2026 I\u2019d never been to CBGBs \u2026 The only person with long hair was me and Pete \u2026 And I\u2019m like, \u2018Wow \u2026 Eyes open to a new thing.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Seinfeld\u2019s openness<\/a> to new music and culture may have been the initial signs of a developing life philosophy<\/a> centered around gratitude<\/a>\u2014particularly appreciating what he could experience in a given moment. \u201cGratitude \u2026 That\u2019s the cheat code for everything you want to get. You want to be successful. You want to be happy. You want to get in shape. Get grateful,\u201d Seinfeld explained. \u201cGet grateful for what you have right here right now.\u201d<\/p>\n Eventually, Seinfeld would manifest his gratitude for the rich musical and cultural experiences he had as a founding member of the band Biohazard, arguably the godfathers of the fusion of heavy metal, hardcore punk, and hip hop. And as time went on, Seinfeld developed additional career<\/a> paths, particularly as an actor, including his role on the television show Oz. Not only was he open to and grateful for new experiences, but he also actually began to crave change.<\/p>\n \u201cThe beauty of impermanence, and not to look at relationships and things ending \u2026 but rather an opportunity for a new beginning. If there\u2019s one thing that\u2019s constant in life that I\u2019ve learned is change, so you better learn to love f*cking change, because it\u2019s coming for me,\u201d he described. “I\u2019ve learned to take that scared fear<\/a> moment and go. I\u2019m breathing it in. I\u2019m taking this like a drug right now. I\u2019m powering up. This is the fuel for my next f*cking decision, my next move. And I need to step into it fearlessly, even though I\u2019m afraid right now.\u201d<\/p>\n Embracing impermanence and the opportunities that arise from new experiences is at the core of Seinfeld\u2019s approach to self-actualization. \u201cSo if we want the world to get better, we got to get better,\u201d Seinfeld said. \u201cAnd how does the world get better? It doesn\u2019t start with saying what those people should do. It starts with us. Starts with me. I got to be better every day. I\u2019m just going to do everything that\u2019s self-development. I\u2019m going to try to become a better version of myself.\u201d<\/p>\n In that spirit, Seinfeld has started a personalized fitness and nutrition<\/a> program. Seinfeld described the feeling he has when he works out, and how it helps him feel like the best version of himself. \u201cI go to the gym. I snap into this high vibrational character. I got 1000 gym bros. I\u2019m high-fiving people. My f*cking heart rate gets pumped up. I put on my music. I\u2019m fucking moshing around the gym. No one in my gym even knows what that is,\u201d he said, \u201cAnd I\u2019m in it. I get a great vibe, and I lift other people up. And it makes me feel it\u2019s where I want to be in life.\u201d<\/p>\n He believes fitness can improve both physical and mental health. \u201cIt took me quite a while to realize the interlinked connection between my physical fitness and my mental health and the hormones<\/a> involved. And the neuroplasticity that I experience when my heart is pounding out of my chest because I\u2019m doing sprints on the beach or I\u2019m lifting weights and I\u2019m f*cking hyperventilating,\u201d he explained. \u201cThe high that I feel from that … It connects to some neurotransmitter, some endorphin. Something happens here that I become a little more grounded, connected to my body. I become aware of my thoughts a bit more. That they are just thoughts … And I mean, that\u2019s what meditation<\/a> really is, right? It\u2019s like separating yourself from the hard drive and recognizing yourself as an energy, recognizing yourself as a soul, as a human being, not a human doing.\u201d<\/p>\n Seinfeld reflected on how he will continue to push his gratitude and openness as he learns more about himself and helps others to do the same. “I\u2019m a bit of a hard head, and I don\u2019t learn easily unless I am in an intention of \u2018I am here to learn.\u2019 Otherwise, I am fighting learning, hanging on to my ideas as if I need to breathe,” Seinfeld described. \u201cAnd that\u2019s a terrible place to be. It\u2019s a very lonely<\/a> place to be. And when you\u2019re not open to change, you\u2019re really stuck. And if you\u2019re not happy and you\u2019re not open to change, well that\u2019s a disaster, right? Because you\u2019re just saying I\u2019m going to stay here. I\u2019m on fire, but I\u2019m not going to do anything … I\u2019m not going to try to put out the fire. <\/p>\n Gratitude Essential Reads<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m just going to sit in it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a young man growing up in the 1970s and 1980s in Brooklyn, Evan Seinfeld found heavy metal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":764245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-764244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=764244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/764245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=764244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=764244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=764244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}