The Gym Isn't About Your Body

going to the gym isn't about your body. I want to talk about the six seconds between I don't want to go and I'm doing it anyways and why in those six seconds is where everything in your life is built. This morning woke up around 6 a.m. I didn't want to go to the gym. My body was sore from Tuesday. I slept like shit. I have back-to-back calls starting this morning at nine. I could skip today. I could go tomorrow. Nobody's gonna know, right? But I'm sitting on the edge of my bed having this entire negotiation with myself. I'm finding all these reasons why I don't have to go. I'm justifying. I'm bargaining with myself and then I just put my shoes on and it's not because I suddenly felt motivated because I know what happens if I don't go to the gym. It isn't about the workout. It's never been about the workout. It's about the six seconds between I don't want to and I'm doing it anyway and that gap is where everything in my life is built. See, when you take action in that gap in those six seconds, this is the part that nobody talks about. This is the part before you even get to the gym. This is the part where your brain is running every possible excuse where your body is telling you and needs to rest where the couch is right there and the bed is so comfortable and you could just go tomorrow instead. That moment is the entire point because that exact moment shows up everywhere in your life when you need to send that difficult email. When you need to work on the project that requires three hours of deep thinking. When you need to have the conversation you've been avoiding. When you need to do literally anything hard that doesn't have someone standing over you making you do it. Same moment, same negotiation, same voice saying not today, tomorrow, next week. When I feel ready, see, most people lose that negotiation and then they cave and then they do the easier thing and then they wonder why they can't build anything that takes sustained effort over time. See, the gym shows you this pattern three times a week. It shows you whether you're the kind of person who folds when things are hard or the kind who does it anyways. And here's the thing. You can lie to yourself about everything else, about why your business isn't growing, about why the relationship isn't working, about why you're not making progress. But the beautiful thing about the gym is that it doesn't let you lie. Either you went or you didn't. You can't, you can't cloud it in ambiguity, right? You know, a relationship, maybe you can say, well, what didn't work out over the past three, four, five, six, 10, 20 years, right? Gym, you go or you don't. It's very binary. But the decision that you make shows how you approach all hard things in life. I love the gym. It's a binary option. But it's also a binary result that compounds and life is made up of binary options, which you pretend are not binary, which also compound either for or against the end result, your relationship, your business, et cetera, et cetera. Let me tell you another story. I know somebody personally is a good friend who built a company to $50 million in revenue. He raised money from tier one VCs. He built a team of about 200 people. He closes deals that would make most people's hands shake because there's so much pressure riding on what he's doing. There's so much at stake. But he can't work out for more than two weeks straight. Starts every few months, goes hard for a week, then life gets busy, then he misses one day, then three, then he's not going at all. And he says, I'll get back to it once this quarter is done. Next quarter, same patterns. He thinks it's about time. He thinks it about the priorities, about the business needing him. But you can start to see his attitude towards the gym shows up in other parts of his life. So I've noticed that he can't have difficult conversations with his co-founder. He avoids them until they blow up and then he's forced to deal with them. He also has a hard time working on long-term strategy. Very successful guy, but he's very reactive. He puts out fires. He responds to urgent things. He never carves out time for what truly matters. He also has a hard time making decisions that might upset people. So he delays, he waits. He hopes the decision will make itself. And if you take a look, there's a pattern here, right? He can do hard things when someone's watching, when there's external pressure, when the circumstances force him. But when it's optional, when it depends entirely on him showing up for himself, he can't. See, the gym reveals this immediately because there's no one checking. No one cares if you skip. It's just you and the commitment you made. And if you can't hold that commitment when it's just you, you're not holding it anywhere else either. See, I've been working out pretty consistently for about 15 years. Most days, I don't want to go. I'm not some freak who loves the gym. I'd rather be doing almost anything else. But I go anyways. And over time, something changes. And it's not just my body. Yes, that does change over time when you go to the gym. But it's really my tolerance for discomfort. See, the first year, every workout was a fight. I had to force myself every time it was exhausting. Now, by year three, the fight got easier. Not because I wanted to go more, but because I stopped negotiating with myself. The answer was already decided. And by year five, I started to notice it everywhere else. See, when I had to publish something that I was scared to publish, there was no negotiation. I just did it. Same muscle. When I had to fire someone, there was no delay. I just had the conversation, same muscle. When I had to work on something boring, but important, just sat down and did it. Exact same muscle. And again, it is not because I am naturally disciplined. It's because I spent five years will now fast forward 15 years, training the exact skill that those moments require, doing the hard things when you don't want to. David Goggins calls this callous thing your mind. The more you do hard things when you don't want to, the thicker the callous gets. The less discomfort bothers you. That's not a gym thing. That's a life thing. The gym just gives you a low stakes environment to build it. See, the reason why most people quit the gym is because they don't see physical results fast enough. They go for six weeks. Scaled doesn't move much. The mirror looks the same. They get discouraged, but they were measuring the wrong thing. See, the results aren't physical, especially in the short term. They're psychological. See, after six weeks of going when you don't want to go, you've proven to yourself 18 times you can do hard things. That's the result. That's what you've built. But you can't see it in a mirror. So you think nothing happened. But then three months later, you need to do something hard in your business or your relationship or your creative work. And you fold because you never continued and you never really built the capacity not to fold. See, the gym would have built that, but you quit before it did. Now, what this actually costs you is if you can't make yourself go to the gym for 45 minutes three times a week, you have to ask yourself, what are you actually capable of sustaining? Because building a business takes years of doing hard things when progress is slow and nobody's watching. Mastering a craft takes thousands of hours of practice when you're not getting better just yet. Writing a book takes six to 12 months of showing up to a blank page when you don't know what to write. Building a meaningful relationship takes years of having hard conversations when it would be easier to avoid them. All of these require the exact same skill, doing the thing when you don't feel like it. See, if you can't do that for 45 minutes in your gym, you're not doing it for three years in your business. Listen, if you only do hard things when circumstances force you when people are watching, when you have no choice, yes, you can progress your life a little bit, but you will never make it all the way. You will never build a true business. You will never have a strong relationship only doing the hard things or the right things when people are watching to build a good life. You have to do things that actually matter. You have to take the actions that will actually move the needle and those actions, those things are the things that you choose to do when you could easily not do them. And if you can't choose to do the gym, you are not choosing to do the hard thing anywhere else either. So what I want you to do to build the muscle to develop the skill of doing hard things to develop your mental calluses, go to the gym three times a week, same days, same time, not because you need to lose weight, not because you want abs, not because someone told you it's healthy, go because you need to build the capacity to do hard things when you don't want to. The workout doesn't matter. Lift weights, run, swim, whatever. The specific activity is irrelevant. What matters is that the moment before you go, the moment when you don't want to, but you do it anyway, that moment is the entire point. That's what you're training. And if you do it enough times, you become the kind of person who doesn't fold when things get hard. If you skip it enough times, you become the kind of person who only does things when they're easy or when someone's making you. The gym shows you which one you are and it gives you the chance to change it. Everything else in your life is dependent on what you choose in that moment.