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Monday, December 9, 2024

The “Yes And” Rule

  December 09, 2024    

A few years back, I attended my friend Nick’s blowout 40th birthday party.

As part of the celebration, he hired an improv comic, and we all had to participate in learning improv comedy.

(I just felt the collective shiver of all the introverts reading this newsletter).

We started tossing out fun scenarios and scenes to participate in, and we learned about the most important rule of Improv: “Yes and.”

Two simple words, and the foundation for all of improv comedy:

Whenever somebody comes up with a scene, sentence, or situation, the ONLY acceptable response is: “yes and”

  • Yes: Acceptance! I accept and acknowledge that whatever the situation is, no matter how absurd, to be true.
  • And: build! Like a tennis match, after your improv partner hits the ball to you, your job is to hit it back! Building on the situation or scene.

For example, if your improv partner says, “I’m a space pirate” your response could be:

  • “Yes, and I’m the space police, you’re under arrest!”
  • “Yes, and I’m a first mate looking for a new crew, this is perfect!”
  • “Yes, and my name is Captain Hook, welcome to Pirates Anonymous.”

The “yes and” rule is so crucial, because there’s nothing worse than a bad improv partner!

Kind of like Liam Neeson in ​this short sketch​ with Ricky Gervais, (I laugh every time):

The Yes And Rule for Life

As a former overachieving “gifted child” who has quite the negative inner critic, I’ve worked hard on incorporating “yes and” into my life.

The “yes” part is built around acceptance, which is something I’ve spent the past two years working to embrace.

Check out my past essays on ​Acceptance​ and ​Wabi Sabi​ for more.

It’s the “and” part I’ve focused on lately.

As Dr. Kristen Neff points out on in her book ​Self-compassion​, life is complex and so are humans:

“Judgment defines people as bad versus good and tries to capture their essential nature with simplistic labels.

Discriminating wisdom recognizes complexity and ambiguity.”

Nothing is ever as simple as it seems. Things are never as good or bad as our brains think they are either.

So despite the voice in our heads that wants to judge everything in black-or-white, yes-or-no, good-or-bad terms… We must remember that life is a beautifully complicated mess.

Author F. Scott Fitzgerald once said:

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

This is my task for you today.

Is there a part of your life that feels black-or-white, and instead could use a bit of complexity?

Nothing is as simple as it seems.

Life is hard, and change is hard. AND you’re a good person who’s trying.

Which means there’s hope. And ​hope is the warrior emotion​.

Also, please go watch that ​Liam Neeson skit​.

You’re welcome.

-Steve

PS: Need guidance and accountability to reach your fitness goals? Nerd Fitness has helped 10,000+ humans over the last 8 years with 1-on-1 online fitness coaching. ​Click here for more details​.

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Monday, November 11, 2024

The most important skill for getting (and staying) healthy

  November 11, 2024    

In 1933, an overwhelmed and frustrated woman named Frau sent a letter to psychologist Carl Jung, asking “how to live.”

(She didn’t have any Instagram influencers to yell motivational platitudes at her, I guess)

Jung replied:

“Your questions are unanswerable, because you want to know how one ought to live. One lives as one can.

…if you do with conviction the next and most necessary thing, you are always doing something meaningful and intended by fate.”

He was sharing the key to life.

It’s part of recovery communities like Alcoholics Anonymous.

It was even the title of a song in ​Disney’s Frozen 2​.

“The next right thing.”

Revisiting this story caused me to reflect on how much my thoughts on success and progress have changed over the years.

“Success” Redefined

I’ve been doing this Nerd Fitness stuff for 15+ years.

Millions of people visit the site every year, 50,000+ customers have bought stuff through NF, and our coaches have served 15,000+ 1-on-1 clients.

In that time, I’ve changed my perspective quite a bit on “success” and “living well.”

I used to think that the only path to success required militant discipline following a specific plan. I never missed a workout, and was unbelievably proud of this.

It didn’t occur to me just how much of a ​privileged and simple life​ I lived, where I was 100% in control of my time.

(Apologies to all the parents and caregivers who read my 25-year old perspective!).

Now that I’m 40, and I can see the types of people we actually help with Nerd Fitness, I’ve changed my perspective on success and “living well” fairly dramatically.

Success happens not when we learn how to do everything perfectly, but instead when we get better at staying afloat even when things go poorly.

In other words, success is learning to be inconsistently consistent. Learning to be good enough for long enough.

And that means, when life seems chaotic, narrowing our focus down to “the next right thing.”

Do the Next Right Thing

A ​recent newsletter​ from author Oliver Burkeman talked about how he’s chosen to retain a tiny bit of sanity in an overwhelming world.

It led me to these sentences from author Eckert Tolle:

“What you refer to as your “life” should more accurately be called your “life situation.” It is psychological time: past and future.

…Forget about your life situation for a while and pay attention to your life.

Find the “narrow gate that leads to life.” It is called the Now.

Narrow your life down to this moment. Your life situation may be full of problems — most life situations are — but find out if you have any problem at this moment. Not tomorrow or in ten minutes, but now.

Do you have a problem now?

When we ruminate on what already happened, and we freak out about all the things that could happen or need to happen in the future…

It’s easy to feel out of control and overwhelmed.

Which brings us back to that cliché solution: “the next right thing.”

It’s a cliché only because it’s true.

We can zoom wayyyyyy in, and narrow our focus to something that is still in our control. In some situations, yes, there is a problem right now. And we can just focus on that one thing.

But in many other situations, it’s often us worrying about all the problems that might be, or the problems outside of our control, that keeps us from taking action on the actual things we can control.

Burkeman continues:

As for telling myself I only needed to do the very next thing… you always only can do the very next thing, then the next, whether you like it or not.

It’s a little strange, actually, to refer to any of these techniques as “narrowing your horizons”, as if they involved somehow artificially limiting yourself.

Really, you’re just consciously recognizing how limited you always already were.

We all know how easy it is for us to ​overcomplicate things​.

And when the world feels like a dumpster fire, it can help to zoom way into that next decision, the tiniest goal, and just do the next right thing.

It might involve a workout or a walk, focusing on the next meal, calling up our therapist, or ​finally saying no​ to a commitment.

If “now” is the only time that exists, then “the next right thing” is the only thing that we can really do.

I’m gonna go do the next right thing for me: take a walk.

-Steve

PS: Maria Popova has ​a great writeup about “the next right thing”​ as it pertains to her life as a writer that inspired this piece.

PPS: Nerd Fitness is hiring a few remote, part-time humans (especially with flexible nights and weekends) to take inbound, scheduled calls from potential clients interested about our 1-on-1 coaching. ​Click here to learn more​.

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Monday, November 4, 2024

The Past Isn’t Set In Stone

  November 04, 2024    

I’m currently reading ​The Tainted Cup​, a fantasy detective novel.

Think “Sherlock Holmes set in Westeros.”

The main character has this augmentation that allows him to absorb every single detail of every interaction, crime scene, and then recite back these exact details at a later date.

I remember a horrifying Black Mirror episode about this very thing: being able to recall every fact of every interaction in the past.

Here’s the thing: in all of these scenarios, the facts might be true, but the analysis of these facts still leaves plenty of room for improvement.

I thought about this a lot recently when I stumbled across two stories I want to share:

“​The Past is Not True​” from Derek Sivers:

When I was 17, I was driving recklessly and crashed into an oncoming car. I found out that I broke the other driver’s spine, and she’ll never walk again.

I carried that burden with me everywhere, and felt so horrible about it for so many years that at age 35 I decided to find this woman to apologize. I found her name and address, went to her house, knocked on the door, and a middle-aged woman answered. As soon as I said, “I’m the teenager that hit your car eighteen years ago and broke your spine”, I started sobbing – a big ugly cry, surfacing years of regret.

She was so sweet, and hugged me saying, “Oh sweetie, sweetie! Don’t worry. I’m fine!” Then she walked me into her living room. Walked.

Turns out I had misunderstood.

Yes she fractured a couple vertebrae but it never stopped her from walking. She said “that little accident” helped her pay more attention to her fitness, and since then has been in better health than ever.

Then she apologized for causing the accident in the first place. Apologized.

And this ​story about “the good ole days”​ from author Morgan Housel:

A few months ago I reminisced to my wife about how awesome [life was in our early 20s]. We were 23, gainfully employed, living in our version of the Taj Mahal. This was before kids, so we slept in until 10am on the weekends, went for a walk, had brunch, took a nap, and went out for dinner. That was our life. For years.

“That was peak living, as good as it gets,” I told her.

“What are you talking about?” she said. “You were more anxious, scared, and probably depressed then than you’ve ever been.”

…In my head, today, I look back and think, “I must have been so happy then. Those were my best years.”

But in reality, at the time, I was thinking, “I can’t wait for these years to end.”

It has me thinking a lot about the past, and our future. It turns out, neither one is set in stone!

Which Past Story can you rewrite?

As the cliché goes, it’s easier to connect the dots looking backward than it is looking forward.

Is there a story from your past about a particular moment you’re still carrying with you?

Maybe it’s one full of shame about something that happened, but it led to something even better for you.

Maybe it’s longing for a past life that never actually existed.

The past already happened, but that doesn’t mean it’s set in stone!

Returning to Sivers:

“You can change your history.

The actual factual events are such a small part of it. Everything else is perspective, open for re-interpretation.

The past is never done.”

I’d love to know which story you’re telling yourself about the past, good or bad, that you’re deciding to rewrite?

-Steve

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Tuesday, October 15, 2024

Boundaries: the Cure for Burnout?

  October 15, 2024    

It’s been a while since I’ve felt this uncomfortable.

I had an empty afternoon last week and saw Speak No Evil (​trailer here​), a horror/suspense film about a family who goes to visit another couple they met on vacation.

And shockingly, things don’t go as expected.

If you saw the ​“Dinner Party” episode of The Office​ where Jim and Pam go to Michael and Jan’s house for the most uncomfortable house party ever, and thought to yourself…

“What if this was a 2-hour horror movie instead?”

…that’s essentially the plot of Speak No Evil.

This movie is based on a 2022 European film of the same name, so naturally I had to watch that too. And boy, that version was even bleaker and more shocking.

This movie has some really cutting commentary on relationships, masculinity, and even parenting…

But here’s why Speak No Evil made me so uncomfortable:

This movie asks, “How many of our own boundaries are we willing to cross to keep the peace and not hurt somebody’s feelings?”

I always joke about ​how much of a conflict-avoidant people pleaser​ I am, which means this movie shook me to my core:

Which brings me to the point of today’s newsletter!

Guilt and Overcommitting

My father was raised Episcopalian (a form of Christianity), while my mother was raised Catholic. My mom always joked that the Episcopalian faith was “like Catholicism, but without the guilt!”

So we went to Episcopalian church as kids.

And despite this, I managed to get all the Catholic guilt!

I will bend over backwards to keep the peace. I’ll do whatever I can to not offend. I’ll overcommit, I’ll put myself in really frustrating situations, simply because I don’t know how to set healthy boundaries.

Long story short, I would NOT have done well in Speak No Evil.

I used to think this was just me being nice, but I came to realize that it was something different.

I was being disrespectful to myself and my own wellbeing!

Over the years, I’ve learned to establish and enforce healthier boundaries. Not just to protect myself from others, but to protect myself…from myself.

I have a hunch there are quite a few people who are reading this newsletter who are also people-pleasers, struggling with burnout, and feeling overcommitted right now.

If that’s you, I have a truth that’s hard to hear.

The Solution to Burnout isn’t a Yoga Retreat

When we feel burned out, too busy, and overwhelmed, we think the solution resides in a very specific form of self-care:

  • Escape: We just need a massage or a “digital detox” or retreat.
  • Achievement: We just need to work harder in the gym!
  • Optimization: If only we had a more optimized schedule!

The problem is that all of these solutions treat the symptom, not the root cause.

As pointed out in Anne-Helen Peterson’s ​Can’t Even​:

“You don’t fix burnout by going on vacation. You don’t fix it through “life hacks,” like inbox zero, or by using a meditation app for five minutes in the morning, or doing Sunday meal prep for the entire family, or starting a bullet journal. You don’t fix it by reading a book on how to “unfu*k yourself.”

You don’t fix it with vacation, or an adult coloring book, or “anxiety baking,” or the Pomodoro Technique, or overnight f***ing oats.”

As I share in my essay on ​the problems with Self-Care​, the solution isn’t found in a Yoga studio or on a deserted beach, nor is it found in a journal or meditation app.

The solution requires us to have an uncomfortable conversation with ourselves.

We need to put on our own oxygen mask first before we can help others.

Boundaries Protect Against Burnout

Us people pleasers spend most of our time keeping the peace and catering to everybody else’s needs, very rarely considering our own.

This is usually how we find ourselves overcommitted, unable to do the things we want/need to do, and potentially feeling resentful of our generosity being taken for granted.

The problem?

It’s not somebody else’s responsibility to establish our boundaries.

It’s on us to establish them, explain them, and protect them.

This is where boundaries come in.

Boundaries are healthy because they allow us to actually consider our needs too. Something I never considered for a long time. I bet there are a lot of amazing moms and dads on this newsletter list who also haven’t considered their own needs in a long time.

This doesn’t mean we need to suddenly become “I AM THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS,” but rather, it means we need to address the fact that our feelings and needs are valid, and we need to take care of ourselves if we’re also going to take care of others.

As Dr. Lakshmin points out in ​Real Self-Care​:

“To practice real self-care, you must be willing to make yourself vulnerable – whether that means having uncomfortable conversations to set boundaries or making the clear and deliberate choice to prioritize one aspect of your life over another.”

Here is your challenge for the day:

Say NO to one thing you are currently saying YES to out of obligation or guilt.

Establish this boundary for your own wellbeing and mental health.

Yep, this will require you to rely on those around you, and maybe even *GASP* potentially disappoint somebody!

Especially if they’re used to you saying yes to everything all the time.

I promise you, their reaction isn’t your responsibility to manage.

One final reminder I had to internalize: “No” is a complete sentence.

We can’t time-travel, which means the only solution to burnout is to put fewer things on our plate.

This requires us to develop boundaries to protect ourselves…from ourselves.

I’d love to hear what boundary you establish, so hit reply and let me know!

-Steve

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The ONE thing that finally worked…

  October 15, 2024    

I stumbled across ​a reddit thread​ that really grabbed my attention.

Somebody asked “What was the ‘one thing’ that finally made weight loss work for you?”

And this question had 5,400 replies (and counting).

Some of the answers involved environmental changes or changing how they prepared their food:

“Pouring snacks into little ramekins to eat them. Suddenly I ate a normal amount of snacks.”

“I meal prepped my typical amount of food and instead of putting it in 2 containers, I spread it evenly in 4 containers. I forced myself to only eat 1 container per meal and tricked my brain into thinking it was my normal amount.”

Others changed what they ate:

“Found a salad I actually really like. Sounds dumb, but I’d never craved a salad before, and having one I actually really liked meant I strung together a solid few weeks of eating a lot of lettuce – it snowballed from there, because I actually felt good and then started craving feeling good.”

Some had a more holistic approach that involved reevaluating their relationship with food, hunger, and discomfort:

“Realizing it’s a lifestyle change NOT a diet.”

“Embrace the suffering. Expect that you’ll be breathing hard and uncomfortable when you’re doing cardio, expect that you’ll be sore after you lift, and expect that you’ll be hungry when you’re restricting your intake.”

Others used apps to track their calorie intake, which made them realize just how much they were eating:

“Using an app to track everything I ate. I realized a lot of “healthy” things I was eating, in the quantities I was eating them, were a lot more calories than I thought. Just cutting down on certain foods did the trick.”

And some succeeded thanks to an initial push with medication:

“Saw a doctor about my type 2 diabetes. I weighed over 300 lbs and also had coronary artery disease. I qualified for diabetes medication that also helps control appetite. Started tracking calories and exercising.”

“Semaglutide”

Some prioritized physical activity instead of focusing on food:

“Finding a hobby. I was binge eating because I was bored. Coming home from work to sit on the couch would make it way easier to eat like sh*t… now I just go and do something I like so I won’t find distraction in eating.”

“Walking. Validation that I’d lost 45 lb in 7 months by just walking every night around my neighborhood. It was free and low impact, I walked rain or shine even through snow storms. Now I have a treadmill and walk indoors but the feeling is still as great as it was in the beginning.”

As we look through this list, reading thousands of comments of people thinking back on the ‘one thing’ that changed their life, and just how different many of them are, we can draw some fascinating conclusions.

3 Short Lessons We Can Learn

LESSON 1: “Success is moving from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.” -Winston Churchill.

The toughest part of getting healthy is not losing hope when some strategy you try doesn’t work out. I bet for each person who shared their answer above, they tried dozens of different strategies to try and get fit. Hell, I bet they tried most of the things that worked for other people, until they found the one that worked for them.

What we can learn from this: “Hope is the ​warrior emotion that lays waste to cynicism​,” and it’s okay to have hope that each failed attempt means that’s one less strategy to need to try in the future.

For example, if you’ve tried Keto 5 times before and you can’t stick with it, congrats! You found the diet that doesn’t work for you.

If you can keep that ​‘beta test’ mentality​ of “I’m going to see if it works for me,” you might just find the first domino to fall for your journey!

LESSON 2: Beware the Charlatan.

Spend enough time on social media, and you’ll eventually encounter health and wellness charlatans. These are the folks who tell you they alone have the one solution to all your problems. They often have a villain for all of the world’s evil (“its sugar! It’s carbs! It’s X ingredient!”).

And sure enough, once they’ve fear mongered and scared the crap out of you, they provide hope to you with their expensive unregulated supplement or foolproof system.

As you see in the examples above, there’s no “one size fits all” solution to this stuff. Every human is a unique weirdo with different baggage and triggers and traumas and experiences that make certain solutions a homerun and other solutions will be a nonstarter.

You can read more about how to spot and avoid charlatans in my past essay here: “​How to not go crazy on the internet​.”

Which brings me to my third point!

LESSON THREE: All stories of getting fit have 3 boring commonalities!

Although all of these “one thing” solutions to getting in shape are different, they all do have a few similarities.

The good news? None of these things are revolutionary, proprietary, or fancy.

Getting fit down to literally 3 things:

  • Eating the correct number of calories for your goal weight
  • Getting some form of physical movement
  • Making these two things part of a lifelong lifestyle adjustment.

Weight loss isn’t magic. It’s math and behavior change.

As I cover in my ​weight loss guide​, science is settled on this.

Any diet can work, if it puts us into a caloric deficit. We have ​coaching clients​ who are vegan, others who go Keto, some who count calories and others who do intermittent fasting.

Our ability to turn dietary changes into a lifestyle we can live with is how we find success, and that looks different for everybody.

Speaking of lifestyle changes, most of the answers above also involve finding ways to make exercise a regular part of life.

Remember: it’s okay that you don’t LOVE to exercise. We’re not designed to love exercise! Especially if it’s an activity we don’t actually enjoy! We’re designed to survive in times of scarcity, NOT thrive in times of unlimited abundance.

So how do we make exercise part of our lifestyle?

We need to find ways to ​make exercise fun, beneficial, or necessary​:

  • Fun: join a walking/running club with friends, try ​temptation bundling​.
  • Beneficial: fall in love with ​getting stronger​ and more confident and how much better you feel after exercise.
  • Necessary: pre-pay for a trainer, park at the end of the parking lot, bike to work.

Remember that hope is the warrior emotion.

We humans are unbelievably adaptable creatures who are capable of change.

Keep trying different strategies, beware the charlatans, and don’t forget the basics!

And pretty soon one day, you too could be sharing the first domino to fall that changed things for you.

-Steve

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Monday, September 30, 2024

94 Years of Wisdom

  September 30, 2024    

Last week, I flew to Massachusetts to visit my 94-year grandmother in the hospital.

Let me tell you about this amazing woman.

Barbara, Auntie B, or Gramma to us grandkids, was born in 1930 to first-generation Newfoundlanders.

(No wonder I love the music of ​Alan Doyle​ (and ​Great Big Sea​), it’s in my DNA!)

Gramma was a preschool teacher for 22 years and has been an active member in her community for her entire life. She was a heck of a quilter and helped launch multiple quilting initiatives over the years. She volunteered at the Council on Aging. She often drove for Meals on Wheels too, “delivering meals to the old people” (as she called it), which she did well into her 80s!

During past visits to Massachusetts, I would swing by Gramma’s for an afternoon, habitually checking my phone, often distracted with some unimportant work thought that occupied my brain. I think having known her my entire life, I just had this thought “Gramma has always been here, and Gramma will always be here.”

Fortunately, I stumbled upon an ancient Japanese concept that helped me recognize and course correct this pattern. It allowed all of my recent visits with Gramma to be decidedly different.

Ichi-go Ichi-e 一期一会

There’s a concept dating back to Japanese tea ceremonies in the 1600s called ichi-go ichi-e:

This translates to: “one time, one meeting.”

It’s a reminder for us to treasure and embrace each unrepeatable moment in time. No matter how often we do something or see somebody, it is the only time that it will truly happen this way, in this moment.

This concept can remind us to be more present.

  • Instead of checking our phones, we can focus on the person or task in front of us.
  • Instead of worrying about tomorrow or zoning out, we can be here now.
  • Instead of going through the motions, we can be a bit more deliberate with our behavior.

I’ve reflected a lot on Japanese Zen philosophy over the past few years (​see my essay about Wabi-Sabi​), and this concept of ichi-go ichi-e has stuck with me too.

Which brings me to my trips to visit Gramma this summer.

I stopped worrying about the future or ruminating on the past, put my phone down, and just sat with her.

I treated each visit as if it was the only time that I would get to have that interaction.

I asked her questions about her childhood. I learned that she spent a few summers living in a tent with no running water or electricity, while her father built their home with his own two hands. And how much she loved it.

She told me about her teenage years, including the time she snuck out of the house and got caught, and had to sit at the foot of her parents bed until the sun came up.

I learned more about my grandfather. She even shared photos of her wedding that I had never seen before:

She also found some photos of me and her from way back in the day!

This one was my favorite:

I returned to Nashville last month, unsure when (or if) I’d get to see her again.

It still felt different. I had connected with Gramma more deeply in a few visits than I probably had in the past 10 years combined.

Which brings me to this past week at the hospital.

Gramma’s Community

Last week, my brother and I drove up to visit Gramma in the hospital each day.

And each day, a revolving door of guests would show up to check on her:

Her nieces and nephews. My uncle and father. My sister and mother (who just had surgery!). Her grandkids. The son of her best friend. Her friend Anne. Friends from the Council of Aging. Fellow quilters. People from her church.

At one point, there were 10 of us visiting at the same time, and it turned into an absolute party.

I was in awe of this woman and how many lives she has impacted.

If there’s a clear sign of a life well lived, it’s being surrounded by people who love you. Gramma has been selfless for so much of her life, and I was amazed and inspired at how many people dropped everything to come and spend time with her, swapping stories and keeping her company.

Despite the circumstances, she still has a great sense of humor too:

The first time she opened her eyes and saw me, she smiled and said, “I remembered another story!” She then told me about the time she “borrowed” a car, even though she didn’t have a license yet, to drive through the streets of Boston to track down her boyfriend.

While talking on the phone with her 94 year old brother in law, she asked “how are ya, you old geezer?”

When the doctor asked “are you feeling better today?” she replied “better than WHAT!”

Spending time with Gramma and all of the people from different parts of her life felt like the best possible use of my time. I am in love with the community she has around her, and I am constantly moved to tears by the love that so many people have for her.

This point was driven further home by my Gramma’s hospital “neighbor”…

Live Deliberately

The hospital in which my Gramma is staying is right next to Walden Pond, the very pond made famous by Henry David Thoreau in his book ​Walden​.

One day, after visiting Gramma, I took a quiet walk around its perimeter, watching the light of the setting sun dancing through the trees.

(The Japanese have a word for this too, it’s called “komorebi”.)

I then read the sign with Thoreau’s most famous reflection:

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Thoreau retreated to solitude to discover what was most important to him.

Gramma went the other direction, prioritizing what’s most important to her: family, friends, and community.

Two different scenarios, the same end result:

Choosing to live deliberately.

I don’t have plans on moving into the woods and living simply, but I do think I’ve done my best to live more deliberately these past few years.

Specifically, re-prioritizing what’s most important to me too: friends, family, and community.

All We have to Decide…

A few years ago, Gramma presented my brother, sister, and I with three of her favorite handmade quilts.

“I was going to have these given to you grandkids after I passed away, but I want to give them to you now so that we can enjoy this moment together.”

She took the time to explain the meaning behind each quilt and why they were selected for each of us. I’m so thankful she did this, rather than waiting to hear about these beautiful quilts after she passed.

When I visited Gramma this summer, I discovered that she had printed my essay ​about my grandfather, her husband, who had passed away​. I hoped I made Grampy proud, but I realized I never got to tell him just how much I learned from him before he died.

For that reason, I’m writing this essay now to make sure she knows just how much she taught me. I’m so proud of my Gramma and I’m appreciative for having the opportunity to learn from her for 40 years (and counting!).

(I got a text from my father yesterday letting me know that he read this draft to her in the hospital and she loved it. Mission accomplished!)

I certainly hope Gramma gets better and is able to get back home. After all, she told her friend Laurie “I’m not done yet!”

But I also know that this is not up to us to decide.

As Gandalf tells Frodo in The Fellowship of the Ring:

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

I hope my Gramma and Thoreau can inspire you to live more deliberately:

  • If you’re willing to put your phone down and be present with the people in front of you, life can feel so much more rich.
  • If you’re willing to prioritize what’s actually important instead of the stuff that tries to steal your attention, you’ll never go wrong with the choices you make.
  • If you can find a way to focus on the important people in your life, they’ll still be a part of it when you’re 94.

And finally remember, no matter what you do today, this is the only time this moment will happen.

Act accordingly.

-Steve

PS: If you want a thought-provoking film about being present and Ichi-Go Ichi-E, I highly recommend Wim Wenders’s ​Perfect Days​.

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Monday, September 23, 2024

You’re overcomplicating it.

  September 23, 2024    

I know you’re overcomplicating things, because everybody does.

Including me, the nerd who studies this stuff for a living.

I shared a quick story the other day on ​Threads​ (and ​Instagram​):

A few thousand people resonated, and I couldn’t help but chuckle ​at the replies​. Magdalena jokingly said it best:

When life asks me to juggle chainsaws and then sets those chainsaws on fire, I tend to get away from the things that keep me functioning as a fulfilled human.

Lately, I found myself feeling a bit discombobulated and sluggish in the morning and struggled to focus.

So I asked myself where I was overcomplicating things and could simplify.

I went back to basics.

I got some exercise. I ate a ​balanced dinner​ (protein, vegetables, mini potatoes). And even though I’m hooked on Playstation’s Astro-Bot (delightful), loving Slow Horses on AppleTV+ (Gary Oldman is the man), and I’m really enjoying my time on ​Threads​…

I put down the phone.

I turned off the TV.

I climbed into bed at a reasonable time.

Instead of scrolling social media, I read some of Matt Haig’s new book ​The Life Impossible​, and then went to bed.

Weirdly, I woke up feeling like a million bucks

I had no problem focusing on my work.

I felt better.

It works. Crap.

Simple, Not Easy.

Many companies manufacture complicated problems to sell us complicated solutions:

“Be afraid of THIS ingredient, balance your gut microbiome, take these expensive supplements, do this complicated workout, buy this expensive mattress and mask and glasses and machine, only eat between 12:17pm and 7:34pm!”

Here’s your friendly reminder to go hard in the direction of simplicity:

Eat the right number of calories for your goal weight. Eat protein, fruits, and vegetables. Strength train 2-3x per week. Go for walks. Put down the phone and go to sleep.

If the scale isn’t going down, reduce calories consumed. Full stop.

Once we accept that the solution is simple (but not easy), we can figure out WHY we can’t get ourselves to do it.

This is the far more important question. We have hormones and kids and jobs and messy fights with our spouses and we’re all overwhelmed with inputs and information 24-7. Of course doing these things isn’t easy!

We don’t need to make it harder by focusing on the complicated. Instead, we need to remember that the simple solution is the right one, and put our focus on making that behavior the default one:

Speaking of which, Coach Matt Myers from Team NF put together a new resource that dives into both aspects of the above:

It’s our Starter Guide: how to eat and how to train, AND how to get yourself to do those things.

You can download it free ​here at the top of our Free Guides page​.

What part of your journey are you currently overcomplicating, and how can you simplify it today?

-Steve

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Friday, September 13, 2024

I apologize for my sideburns and striped shirt

  September 13, 2024    

For the first time in 10+ years, I rewatched my 2012 TEDx talk:

“​Nerd Fitness and Resetting the Game of Life.​”

My first thought: “Whoa, Steve. Those are some EPIC sideburns.”

My next thought: “Bold choice with the striped shirt, jeans, and flip flops!”

Then I gave myself some grace.

I’m deeply uncomfortable with the spotlight. I hate public speaking. It makes me want to vomit every single time. I also don’t like being on camera.

And yet, I have ideas that I think can help people.

So I write and share my ideas. And sometimes, I force myself to get on stage. For this talk, I had to take two buses through the jungles of Ecuador (where I was living at the time), and then take two flights to get to Atlanta.

I stayed at my friend Kappy’s house, and the night before the talk, I decided to stay up and rewrite the whole damn thing. That morning, I practiced my talk to his two dogs, and then hurried over to Emory and just went full YOLO and shouted my talk into the universe.

12 years later, rewatching this talk, I have thoughts.

If you want to take a trip down memory lane, you can ​watch the talk on YouTube​, which surprisingly has over 100,000 views.

My Biggest Surprise Rewatching…

It wasn’t as embarrassing as I thought!

Baby Steve actually had some decent ideas and was an okay storyteller! Especially when you consider I had rewritten the entire talk 12 hours prior and was on zero hours of sleep. Oh, to be young and naive again.

This is the slide that cracked me up the most, and I think the one I want to spend the most amount of time on:

Throughout most of my early 20s, I spent an unhealthy amount of time playing video games. At the time, I had convinced myself that the video games were the problem. They had become too addicting, too enjoyable, and they were the reason I wasn’t making much progress in my real life.

The reality is one level deeper. It wasn’t just the video games. It was that I didn’t have much life to look forward to. I didn’t like my job (selling construction equipment), I didn’t have goals or things in my personal life to look forward to. So I escaped into video games.

Older and wiser and with shorter sideburns, I have a better understanding of human behavior and my own personal struggles with procrastination and escape.

As laid out in my friend Nir Eyal’s book ​Indistractable​, if we don’t address the root cause of distraction or escape, our brains will get very good at finding yet another thing to get hooked on!

In other words, if you can go one level deeper as to WHY you’re procrastinating or avoiding reality (possibly with the ​help of therapy​) it can help you get out of the rut.

Once I found something to look forward to (for me it was turning life into an adventure video game like Zelda and EverQuest), suddenly video games became a far less appealing use of my limited free time.

These days, I still play video games regularly (I just finished Fallout 4), but I now know more.

When video games take over too much of my life, it’s probably because I’m avoiding confronting the reality of a problem in life.

Maybe I’m scared to get back to work on my secret-book-shaped project, because I worry it’s not good enough. Or maybe I’m avoiding an uncomfortable conversation or addressing a real problem in my life.

So, the solution isn’t unplugging the Playstation. It’s addressing the problem I’m actually working hard to avoid.

It’s better to know why I’m procrastinating instead of just blaming it on video games.

How’s My Epic Quest Going?

In my talk, I talk about my Bucket List, which I renamed my Epic Quest of Awesome. For a good 8 years, this was a big focus of mine.

Literally earning experience points for accomplishing quests in real life.

I did this after ​exercising around the world​ and living ​14 months of adventure travel​.

I even got a book published about turning life into a game, Level Up Your Life, back in 2016. I recently reacquired the rights to this book, and I’m hoping to put out a Version 2 in the coming year.

(This is why you can’t buy it now, sorry about that!).

12 years later, life is a bit different.

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for the past year, you might have noticed a theme: ​acceptance and self-compassion​.

I’ve changed my perspective on goals.

I had run myself ragged for over a decade, building Nerd Fitness, giving as much as possible, chasing the next goal. Each goal led to the next goal. Each dragon slain required me to go find another dragon.

It became an endless loop of perpetual “more more more.”

And eventually I realized that I had gotten pretty far away from what actually made me happy.

These past few years, I’ve decided to live a bit differently.

Instead of big long term goals with dramatically organized plans, I’ve narrowed my focus to: “How can I have a good day today?”

I live as if ​I will NEVER “get there.”​

I still have goals, and I still have things I hope to accomplish in life.

I’m just playing a different game than I was at 28. I think this “life is a game” philosophy served me well at the time, and I think now I have added a few extra doses of reality to how this plays out.

For somebody stuck in a rut, and escaping too much into virtual worlds, I think thinking about life like a video game can be a pretty fun way to try and break out of that rut.

It might not work for everybody, but I think having things to look forward to, and goals to work on, and then finding ways to make tiny bits of progress can help.

I cover this in an article called “​A Nerd’s Guide to Success and Happiness​” which still holds up!

A little bit of nuance and perspective can go a long way when gamifying life!

Wading into the Comment Section…

I made the perilous choice to wade into the cesspool of the internet:

The comment section on my video.

I was shocked to see that 95% of the comments were super positive!

There was one comment though, that provided me a unique opportunity to do something I’ve always wanted to do.

Prove somebody wrong on the internet.

In my talk, I mentioned that I hoped to one day deadlift 400+ pounds. I grew up scrawny and weak, and I later learned that I have spondylolisthesis, which means two of my vertebrae don’t line up.

For the past 15 years, deadlifting has been my favorite exercise. It’s the movement that has made me feel the most strong and empowered.

I went and found a ​video of myself from 2018​, where after 6+ years of dedicated, slow growth and focus on getting stronger, I deadlifted 420 pounds at a bodyweight of 172 lbs. No belt, straps, and double overhand grip too!

And yes. 12 years later, I HAD to reply and let the guy know I did it.

Not gonna lie, it felt good proving a random internet commenter wrong! Hahahaha

Petty and unnecessary? Yep!

Satisfying? Very.

Two Buttons: Power and Reset

I finished my talk with something that was far more powerful than I had expected.

The original Nintendo Entertainment System has two buttons: POWER and RESET.

In the game of life, we get to hit the power button once. It turns on when we’re born, and it turns off when we die.

But we also have an opportunity to hit the RESET Button. If there’s a thought or identity you have that’s no longer serving you, or some aspect of life that just isn’t working…it’s okay to hit the reset button.

It’s okay to try again, even if you failed the last time.

Remember, ​our knowledge carries over​, and we never start back at square one.

Game on, my fellow nerd!

-Steve

###

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Thursday, August 29, 2024

The Warrior Emotion

  August 29, 2024    

Nick Cave has taken over my life for the past month.

Mr. Cave has been putting out music since the mid 1980s with his band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. He’s also a writer, screenwriter, poet, and all-around interesting dude.

His band’s most famous song, “​Red Right Hand​,” serves as the theme song for the show Peaky Blinders, which I have been watching this summer.

And last week, Nick Cave turned up again in my life, and I can’t stop thinking about his words.

In a recent interview with Stephen Colbert, Cave talked about a letter he received from a fan who struggled to find hope as a young father:

“Following the last few years, I’m feeling empty and more cynical than ever….do you still believe in us [human beings]?”

Whether we’re struggling to stay motivated on a project or goal, or we get overwhelmed as a ​”Receiver of Memories” for all the pain in the world​, I know what it’s like to get cynical and lose hope sometimes!

I bet you do too.

Which is why I was so damn moved by ​Nick’s reply​, which I promise you is worth the watch:

Because I’m a nice guy I took the liberty of writing out Cave’s reply here:

“My early life was spent holding the world and the people in it in contempt. It was a position both seductive and indulgent.

The truth is, I was young and had no idea what was coming down the line.

It took a devastation to teach me the preciousness of life and the essential goodness of people…

…It took a devastation to find hope.”

Here I paused the video, and learned that Cave’s 15-year old son had accidentally fallen to his death back in 2015.

Armed with this knowledge, I continued watching the video and was moved to tears:

“Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on Earth.

Hopefulness is not a neutral position.

It’s adversarial.

It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism.”

Hope Plus Acceptance

I’ve ​written about acceptance​ quite a bit in this newsletter, as it’s the skill I’ve had to work hardest at developing for myself over the past few years.

I’m now realizing that acceptance combined with hope is the most powerful path forward when we are trying to navigate life.

It’s not just having passive hope that “things will work out.” After all, things might not work out. At least, not the way we expect them to.

Rather, it’s actively cultivating hopefulness that we can endure whatever comes our way.

In a ​past newsletter I wrote about hope​, I pulled this quote from Dr. Lakshmin’s Real Self-Care:

“Hope needs to be “something you do,” not “something you feel.”

Hope can be practiced by locating a deep desire, value, or commitment and taking a step towards it.

…While optimism is the sense that everything will be okay, people who are hopeful have the understanding that things may not be okay, but that they have agency to make things a little better for themselves or for others.”

Hopefulness is the warrior emotion that lays waste to the resistance in our heads.

Hopefulness helps us realize “Even if life is a dumpster fire, I have the ability to endure and survive whatever ball of chaos is heading my way.”

I leave you with this today:

Whatever goal you are working towards, whatever struggle you find yourself stuck on, no matter where you find yourself in the game of life…

I hope this newsletter reminds you that you have agency.

I hope this newsletter reminds you that any progress you make today, no matter how small, is powerful.

As Nick concludes in the final moments of the video above:

“Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you’d like, such as reading to your little boy, or showing him a thing you love, or singing him a song, or putting on his shoes keeps the devil down in the hole.

It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending.

It says the world is worth believing in.

In time, we come to find that this is so.”

-Steve

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Monday, August 12, 2024

What if you NEVER get there?

  August 12, 2024    

About a year ago, I decided to make a big change to this very newsletter you’re reading.

You see, from 2020-2023 I was pretty unmotivated to do my job.

Which is kind of amazing, when you realize that I have complete autonomy, created Nerd Fitness, and essentially built my own job.

I had spent years trying to be the person that I thought Nerd Fitness and the community needed me to be, instead of doing what I’m actually good at (writing interesting things in fun ways and helping people level up).

How did I find myself in that unwanted place?

One small decision after another, slowly over many years.

I kept picking projects I didn’t like and forcing myself to do them, but justified it to myself by saying, “I just have to do this until [arbitrary goal or date], and then I can be done.”

The problem of course, was that I never reached my arbitrary goal. Or I changed what the goal was, or the world changed, or the business changed.

I ended up spending every day doing something I didn’t like, for a payoff that never came.

I did this for years, and burned myself out.

After ​lots of therapy​, long walks, soul searching and failing repeatedly, I finally asked the important question: If I NEVER “get there,” what would I do differently?

I realized I had to change how I spent my time and how I set goals.

Instead of doing stuff I didn’t like and hoping for an eventual payoff, I restructured my day around why I started Nerd Fitness in the first place:

Reading widely about random topics that pique my interest, and then sharing my excited thoughts on those topics with a bunch of nerds (hey, that’s you!).

Since then, I’ve written dozens of newsletters about weird topics, hobbies, life, philosophy, and everything in between:

130,000+ people now get this newsletter every week, and it’s only reinforced my decision to stop focusing on the destination and get back to finding ways to enjoy the journey.

I plan on writing this newsletter for decades to come, and I am excited about this opportunity to email you weird stuff weekly.

I now ask you the same question.

What if you never “get there”?

Years ago, I stumbled across somebody on Reddit asking what the worst part was about being overweight.

One answer broke my heart:

“The fact that you put your whole life on hold, telling yourself that you will resume living when you lose the weight. Then, not being consistent with said weight loss journey and basically…never getting to truly live.”

Every day, I see people doing exercise they hate, or trying to follow a diet they don’t enjoy, to reach an arbitrary number on the scale that they think will make them happy.

Most can’t stick with the diet or workout for more than a few weeks, get demoralized, and give up.

Others manage to lose the weight, only to realize seeing a smaller number on their scale didn’t magically solve all of their problems. They decide the daily misery isn’t worth it.

It’s time to flip the script and give up!

We’ll never “get there,” because “there” isn’t an actual place we can get. It’s a state of mind.

This should change how we think about the workout or diet we choose, the goal we design our life around, or the expectation we set for ourselves.

My goal with this newsletter, and for our coaching clients, is helping people reach the following realization:

Finding ​ways to enjoy exercise​, and making ​dietary changes that don’t feel overwhelming​, is the only path forward. Even better, this often results in reaching our goals faster than when we chased fads or strategies we hated!

I’m reminded of this quote from philosopher Sam Harris:

“Most of your life is the process of solving problems.

It is not, and never will be, a condition of basking in the absence of all problems. There will always be something to do.”

Author Mark Manson put it more succinctly:

“Don’t hope for a life with no problems. Hope for a life with better problems.”

What are you going to do differently?

As Albert Camus explains about ​Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill​, there’s a beautiful freedom that comes with acceptance of never “getting there”:

Sisyphus is “free” from the hope he would ever succeed. He accepts his fate he would never win, and thus can just get to work on finding meaning in pushing that rock, watching it roll back down, and starting over again.

None of us are getting out of here alive, and today is the only guarantee.

I want to hear about what you would do differently if you knew you would never “get there.”

What would you change?

Would you:

I want to hear what you’ll change on your daily journey.

Hit reply and let me know. I’ll be over here pushing this boulder up a hill.

-Steve

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Tuesday, August 6, 2024

Can you really be Diet Resistant?

  August 06, 2024    

In 1992, a study was conducted on weight loss resistant individuals.

In this study, the lab specifically studied people who reported eating less than 1200 calories daily and had bodies that were resistant to losing weight.

Researchers set out to explore this phenomenon:

  • Were their bodies kicking into starvation mode?
  • Did their bodies process calories differently?
  • Was something else going on?

They brought these people into a metabolic ward, and used an energy tracking system that involved “doubly-labeled water.”

Essentially, these techniques allowed them to track everything exactly: How much energy was expelled via waste, sweat, or breath, how many calories were consumed.

This is the gold standard for tracking calories “in” and tracking calories “out.”

Group 1 included the people above who were described as “diet resistant.”

Group 2 was the control group: people who had zero history of “dietary resistance.”

What did this study reveal?

What was different about how Group 1 processed calories compared to Group 2?

The result: ​not much​!

Total energy expenditure and resting metabolic rate in the subjects with diet resistance (group 1) were within 5 percent of the predicted values for body composition, and there was no significant difference between groups 1 and 2 in the thermic effects of food and exercise.

Here’s what the study DID reveal:

Subjects in Group 1 drastically underestimated how many calories they were eating by an average of 47%.

This meant they thought they were eating 1200 calories, but actually consumed 1800 calories or more.

Group 1 also overestimated how many calories they burned through exercise by 51%.

Which meant if they thought they had burned 300 calories exercising, they really only burned 200 calories.

Combine these two things and most of us have a massive discrepancy between how much we think we eat, and how much we actually eat.

We humans suck at all sorts of things!

Life is hard, and ​we humans aren’t cut out to thrive in a world of abundance​.

At the same time, we’re pretty bad at quite a few things:

I can tell you what we’re really good at though: crafting narratives.

Our brains will jump through hoops to craft a story that explains why our body doesn’t obey the same laws of thermodynamics as everybody else.

It’s similar to the story we tell ourselves about getting older: “Of course I gained weight, my metabolism slowed down when I hit 20/30/40 years old,” when ​science tells a different story​.

Our brains are convinced by these narratives far more easily than accepting the uncomfortable reality:

If we are ​trying to lose weight​ but the scale isn’t going down, we are eating more than we realize.

YES, hormones and stress and life and our environment and relationship with food can impact how much food we eat, or the types of food we crave. Some people have medical conditions that impact how their bodies respond to calories or exercise…

But when it comes to the number on the scale, our bodies still obey thermodynamics.

This is actually amazing news, if we can accept it.

So let’s start there.

Self-compassionate Acceptance

If we’re telling ourselves a narrative that we’re broken and progress is hopeless, we can start with self-compassionate acceptance:

Of course we suck at counting calories!

Of course we don’t know how much we actually eat!

We’re not cut out for this type of environment in which delicious, calorie-dense food is always available.

That doesn’t make us a bad person, nor does it mean we need to shame ourselves or beat ourselves up.

Instead, we can accept that we’re bad at this (because everybody is), and then adjust our behavior accordingly:

  • We can learn how to actually track calories, educate ourselves on actual serving sizes for our favorite foods or meals.
  • We can work on ​eating more nutrient rich, filling foods​ that have less calories. Lean protein, fruits and vegetables. It’s quite tough to “overeat” vegetables!
  • We can cut back on easily consumed liquid calories and switch to zero calorie beverages.
  • We can use ​Ulysses Pacts​ to protect ourselves from…ourselves.

And even then, despite our best efforts, we should accept that we’ll still eat more than we think each day.

Not because we’re broken, dumb, or stupid.

But because we’re human.

-Steve

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