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When we’re so focused on the shoulds and should-nots of lifestyle change, it’s easy to forget how crucial the environment is for building new habits.

Setting a kettlebell next to your work desk.

Not storing biscuits in the house every single day of the week. Especially Anzac biscuits.

Putting your runners near the front door.

Keeping veg in the fridge/cupboard/freezer.

Having a water bottle on your desk.

Hiding your phone to stay present with the kids and not scroll in bed.

It’s as cliche as they come, but out of sight, out of mind is a legit rule for life.

We just need to know which things to hide and what deserves all the possible visibility.

-J

Your track record of starts and stops trying to improve your health and fitness isn’t a sign of failure.

But a representation of your determination.

The more tries you rack up, the closer you’ll get to it finally clicking.

-J

When I first started going to the gym, it felt more like necessarily evil than love at first sight. My friends and I spent most of our workouts between finding excuses not to do something and counting the minutes until we could bolt the fuck out of the bright-lighted, ammonia-scented basement of misery.

It wasn’t so much that I didn’t know what to do because, as a 16-year-old, I thought I already knew everything (I didn’t. Shocking.) No, I didn’t like training because I found the repetitive nature about as enjoyable as the idea of opening a tin of tomatoes with my eyelids. That, and I was dealt with pretty average genetics for training, which meant that results came in sloooooooooooooooow.

When I’d finish a workout, I was uncomfortably relieved I didn’t have to do it again for another day or two. I think we all were.

But for reasons I lack the imagination to understand, I kept at it somewhat regularly for the next seven years. If not entirely hating it, tolerating it just enough to keep showing up.

It wasn’t until my early 20s that I started to enjoy training. Maybe it just wore me out, and I gave in. (And then I went too deep the other way, but that’s a different story.)

To this day, along with learning to read and not being an asshole (most of the time), training is one of the most important skills I’ve ever learned.

Today, twenty-something years later, training is integral to my life. One of the few things that keeps me sane. Even if my current training ambitions and the time I can commit to them are a shadow of what they used to be.

Maybe those are the very reasons I enjoy it so much. Or perhaps it’s because my goals are more internal vs external. Or because I am able to train at home.

Anyway. Just because you don’t like strength training now doesn’t mean that you won’t in the future. I can think of many current and past clients who stuck with it and now enjoy the process and its benefits. Which now makes me realise how I should’ve written this post about one of them instead of myself. But there is zero chance of me starting this again, so we’re all stuck with what I’ve already written.

Here’s where it’s at.

Eventually, we can learn to tolerate, even gasp! horror! blasphemy! love the things we loathe.

I mean, none of us always loved cauliflower, either.

-J

Successful lifestyle change is rooted in kindness. Kindness towards yourself.

To have the empathy and understanding to not beat yourself up about missing a workout, having too many pinots or eating Ben & Jerry’s for dinner because you got carried away by the intricacies of quantum mechanics.

After all, progress is about learning to co-exist with healthy and unhealthy choices.

At the same time, it’s possible to be too kind towards yourself. When that happens, frequent excuses start to slip in—deterring you from following through with the things that matter to you.

Unlike with most things, the answer to the right amount of kindness isn’t somewhere in the middle.

Instead, lean into kindness as heavily as you can. Tune into your inner dialogue to notice when it becomes a hindrance instead of an ally.

-J

 

The small habits feel insignificant as they don’t seem to add up to much. Which can leave you constantly questioning whether your actions are going to make any difference.

As with investing, the downstream of compounding only becomes a reality as you repeat a habit, day after day, month after month.

The hardest part isn’t doing the actual habit.

The hardest part is not getting distracted by the temptations of “better” along the way.

-J

It’s common for alternative health solutions and remedies to lean heavily into the spiritual or religious language and symbols in selling their stuff. Often delivered with highly sexualised marketing.

After all, most of them got nothing going science-wise. The dogmatic scaffolding is the only thing keeping the circus together.

And it’s not only the alternative health industry that uses this strategy. Plenty of diets, supplements and other health trends also have some of this cultish aura around them.

The stronger the cult vibes, the faster we should sprint right past them.

-J

 

When you feel like you’ve tried everything, it’s easy to get caught up in the latest health and fitness craze. Or to allow friends and family to pursue you with their well-intended but often utter bullshit health recommendations. Whether that’s about potatoes, exercise or vaccines.

With the sea of misinformation getting deeper by the day, it kind of makes sense to improve your critical thinking life raft right about now.

I’ve been digging into the free Cranky Uncle app lately and found it helpful to better understand logical fallacies and improve my critical thinking. From their website:

Cranky Uncle is the creation of scientist and cartoonist John Cook, who uses cartoons, humor, and critical thinking to expose the misleading techniques of science denial and build public resilience against misinformation.

Give it a geez. The app’s free.

Here’s the link.

-J

 

If we’re not exercising, we’re practicing being inactive.

If we stay up late and get up early, we’re practicing being tired.

If we’re not managing our stress, we’re practicing being stressed.

Shifting the language can help us move towards doing the things that benefit us in the long run.

-J

How does 1% better look tomorrow compared to today?

How about next week? And next month?

Exercise 1% more. Eat 1% healthier. Sleep an extra 1%.

Give your kids an additional 1% of your time, attention, and patience.

It doesn’t seem like much. But each increase will shift you closer to the person you want to be.

-J

Running, strength training, dancing, skiing, horse riding, shotgun wrestling, whatever.

Pick the skills you want to get good at.

Put effort into learning them.

Show up with consistency.

And your goals will follow.

-J