The Best Way Is Always Your Way
I've been listening to a fitness podcast called Mind Pump for years. It's a bunch of dudes talking about growing muscle, and it's the best podcast I've found on the topic. A while ago one of them said something offhand about how he approaches the gym, and I've been applying it to everything since.
The "Every Day" Attitude
His attitude is “I workout out every day.”
When you first hear it, it sounds like overkill. Unrealistic. Unsustainable. You can't even grow muscle properly training that much, because you need your rest.
But that's not what he means. He's a fitness person — he knows the value of rest days. He also knows his own psychology.
He Lets Life Plan His Rest Days
The reason he holds the every-day attitude is that he knows life is inevitably going to throw a curveball and he won't make it to the gym. So instead of planning his rest days, he just lets life plan them for him.
Because here's what happens otherwise. You plan your rest day for Sunday. Then life throws a curveball on Wednesday. Now you've taken off more days than you meant to, and when you stack up the planned days and the unplanned ones, it adds up to more than you would have liked.
The every-day baseline removes all of it. No more when did I take my rest day, when should I plan it this week, oops I had a day off Monday so now I've got to move things around. It just removes all of that. And now you can show up.
Your Perfect Plan Ignores Your Actual Life
It's good to be someone who makes a plan. Someone who lives with intention, who has things she wants to do and knows when she wants to do them. But we need a healthy dose of reality in there, because the perfect plan usually ignores fluctuating energy, fluctuating hormones, family emergencies, children, life.
This is a very simple way to still be someone who shows up for herself and keeps her promises to herself — while being realistic that yes, life is going to happen.
Design Around Your Psychology, Not the Guru's
Maybe you have a podcast and you think you need to post at the same time every week. Then life doesn't make that easy, so you start thinking maybe I should batch, maybe I should pre-schedule — and that doesn't work with your brain or your energy either. You're following a rigid plan instead of looking at how you actually work and going all in on that.
My baseline for this podcast is simple: if I have something I want to say, I press record, say it, and publish it. I don't care what day it is. I don't care what time it is. That's the thing that makes me psychologically free to show up.
If I had to do it the other way, this podcast would almost never go out. Because I have awareness of how my brain works and how my energy works, and I go all in on that, I'm popping out podcasts left and right.
The Best Way Is Always Your Way
Even on Mind Pump they talk about this. The fitness world is full of studies, and studies are great — but what matters is what happens in reality, how people actually act and show up and think and feel. If a study says this is the best way to build muscle, it doesn't matter when the person can't sustain the so-called best way.
That's why they say the best workout is the one you'll actually do. That applies to everything. The best way for you to blog is the way you actually like to blog. The best way to podcast is the way you actually like to podcast.
We've exhausted ourselves looking for the expert-proven, bulletproof way to do everything, and turned off the intuition that would let us tune into ourselves — our brains, how we like to do things, what we enjoy — and create our own way.
Your way is the best way.
