The Art of Manliness - How to Try Again

00:00:00.000 One of the things I've learned after running AOM for nearly two decades is that the fun part is

00:00:03.920 creating, writing articles, recording podcasts, designing products, things like that. The less

00:00:08.320 fun part is all the operational stuff that comes with selling those products online.

00:00:12.120 And that's one reason we've used Shopify for the AOM store. Shopify is the commerce platform behind

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00:00:21.540 stuff you don't want to spend your day worrying about, inventory, payments, analytics, shipping,

00:00:25.740 returns all in one place. What I like is that it scales with you. Whether you're selling your first

00:00:30.720 product or managing an established store, Shopify gives you the tools to keep things running

00:00:34.520 smoothly. They've even built in AI tools that can help with product descriptions, page headlines,

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00:00:43.080 There's a reason why it's everywhere. It makes checkout incredibly easy, which means fewer

00:00:46.960 abandoned carts and more completed sales. It's time to turn those what ifs into reality with

00:00:51.720 Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com slash manliness.

00:00:57.500 That's shopify.com slash manliness. That's shopify.com slash manliness. If you've been

00:01:02.960 following AOM for a while, you know that I love the book Lonesome Dove by Larry McBertry. It's

00:01:07.740 one of my favorite novels of all time. It's sprawling, funny, and heartbreaking. Basically,

00:01:12.140 it's the American Odyssey set in the Old West. And by the end of it, the characters feel less

00:01:16.380 like fictional people and more like old friends you've lived alongside with for a few weeks.

00:01:20.900 So this summer, over at our Substack newsletter, Dying Breed,

00:01:23.940 we're doing an eight-week Lonesome Dove book club for paid subscribers.

00:01:27.380 When you sign up, you'll get a reading schedule.

00:01:29.160 It's just about 20 to 30 minutes a day,

00:01:31.300 plus weekly reflections and discussion prompts from me and Jeremy Anderberg.

00:01:34.740 We'll have some Lonesome Dove-themed giveaways

00:01:36.600 and a Q&A with Larry McMurtry scholar Stephen Fry about Lonesome Dove.

00:01:41.140 If you always meant to read Lonesome Dove, this is your excuse.

00:01:43.760 And if you've already read it,

00:01:45.040 this is a great reason to saddle up and experience it again.

00:01:48.080 The first reading assignment drops Saturday, May 30th.

00:01:50.540 You can sign up at DyingBreed.net.

00:01:53.360 Again, that's DyingBreed.net.

00:01:56.100 Hope to see you on the trail with us.

00:01:58.820 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the AOM Podcast,

00:02:02.180 which since 2008 has featured conversations with the world's best authors, thinkers, and leaders

00:02:06.820 that glean their edifying, life-improving insights without the fluff and filler.

00:02:10.840 The AOM Podcast is just one part of the McKay mission to help individuals practice timeless virtues through thought, word, and deed.

00:02:17.520 Also, be sure to explore our articles in ArtOfManliness.com, read the deeper dives we do in our sub-stack newsletter at DyingBreed.net, and turn our content into real-world action by joining the Strenuous Life program at StrenuousLife.com.

00:02:29.160 Now on to the show.

00:02:38.420 Life rarely unfolds according to plan.

00:02:40.920 A relationship implodes, a move or job change doesn't work out, or you simply fail in a goal you've set for yourself.

00:02:46.960 My guest has spent almost two decades researching and field testing how to get back on track

00:02:50.940 when smaller slip-ups and larger upheavals knock you off course.

00:02:54.740 His name is Steve Kam, and he's the founder of Nerd Fitness and the author of How to Try Again,

00:02:59.500 an approachable guide to navigating chaos and making change that sticks.

00:03:03.580 Today in the show, Steve shares practical principles for dealing with life's frustrating

00:03:07.100 and demoralizing setbacks.

00:03:08.620 We discuss why sometimes the best move is to pause rather than push harder,

00:03:12.240 how to accept reality without resigning yourself to it,

00:03:14.740 why treating change as an experiment can help you beat paralysis and take action,

00:03:19.020 why you should treat consistency with your goals the way you do showering, and more.

00:03:22.800 After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash tryagain.

00:03:38.000 All right, Steve Kam, welcome back to the show.

00:03:41.280 Gosh, Brett, it's so good to be here.

00:03:42.920 you gave me an opportunity back in I think it was 2010 to write a guest post for art of manliness

00:03:49.200 yes and I like I spent months writing that guest post and that was like the biggest opportunity

00:03:55.600 that had ever come my way when I started nerd fitness so thank you for that opportunity

00:03:59.440 16 years later and I'm just honored to be back on the podcast well no you're you're very welcome

00:04:05.060 and thank you for writing that article so yeah Steve you're the founder of nerd fitness it

00:04:08.480 started off as a blog. Started about at the same time we started AOM back in 2008. Nerd Fitness has

00:04:13.880 since turned into a coaching company. You do fitness coaching and nutrition coaching for

00:04:17.720 people. But yeah, that article, Don't Be That Guy, The Taxotomy of Lousy Male Friends,

00:04:23.520 published in 2010. We still reshare that. We reshare articles from our archives on our X feed

00:04:30.780 and on Facebook. And every time we reshare that, it still gets a ton of traffic. It's timeless.

00:04:36.260 it's evergreen. That makes me so, that makes me so happy. And also like, you don't want to be

00:04:39.960 that guy. You don't want to be that guy. Yeah. So thank you for, uh, for sharing that, allowing

00:04:45.140 us to publish that article. And then we've had you on the podcast before you're one of my early

00:04:49.400 podcasts. 2013 was the last time we had you on episode number 42. So it's been a long time,

00:04:57.620 13 years. You were on the show to talk about your book, level up your life, and you got a new book

00:05:03.240 out and since that time we both have gotten old we're in our 40s now and your new book how to try

00:05:10.180 again an approachable guide to navigating chaos and making change that sticks is all about how

00:05:15.760 to get back in the saddle when life derails the goals you have for yourself and this book was

00:05:21.700 born out of your own experience having to get back in the saddle big time because in 2023

00:05:27.520 you got bucked the heck out of life saddle what happened in 2023 yeah well so interestingly i

00:05:34.920 said i started nerd fitness at this point 17 years ago and i had an idea in 2023 like hey

00:05:42.220 we're really good at helping people not succeed with more discipline but like fail or struggle

00:05:48.460 through with more compassion and we help people kind of get back on track we help them respawn

00:05:54.720 or restart on their fitness journey after a failure.

00:05:58.200 And that was the premise and the idea

00:06:00.080 that I thought I was going to be writing a book around.

00:06:02.880 I said, I have all this experience.

00:06:04.300 I have an amazing team at Nerd Fitness.

00:06:06.660 I have almost two decades of experience

00:06:09.260 helping busy people navigate a chaotic life.

00:06:14.040 And that was the book I started to write.

00:06:16.360 And then about a year later,

00:06:18.220 my life took a few left turns.

00:06:19.980 It started with a skin cancer diagnosis

00:06:22.500 that kind of shook me and made me realize

00:06:24.700 like, Oh, I am in fact mortal. And you, you got, you got the good kind of skin cancer. I mean,

00:06:30.800 no cancer is good, but it's the one that you can just cut off at the dermatologist's office.

00:06:35.120 Yeah. That was, that was what the dermat, don't worry. It's the good one, which was interesting.

00:06:39.140 And I did have, it was, it was in my scalp. So they did have to, you know, they like scooped

00:06:43.340 it out and then they had to sew my head shut and keep an eye on that wound for a few months,

00:06:48.280 I think. So, so that was step one, step two, like you, Brett, we can both relate to this.

00:06:53.220 thanks to things like ChatGPT and the way that Google changes, us content creators and writers

00:06:59.180 kind of ran into, you know, I guess, steered a ship into an iceberg unbeknownst to us, which was

00:07:05.000 people don't click through to websites anymore. And I watched as Nerd Fitness, my company,

00:07:11.960 over a handful of months and years, you know, we lost a good 80% of our traffic, not because we did

00:07:18.880 anything differently, but because of just the way that society interacts with websites and

00:07:23.720 large language models, hoovering up all of our content and spitting out answers.

00:07:28.920 So that was super fun to try to navigate. Yeah. We had that same thing happen to us.

00:07:34.580 So yeah, we can commiserate. Yeah. And then I went through an amicable,

00:07:39.180 but heartbreaking and life-changing divorce. And all of a sudden, I'm writing this book about

00:07:45.360 how to navigate a chaotic life and how to pick yourself up and how to try again differently,

00:07:51.460 how to try with compassion, how to try with different strategies that will actually help.

00:07:57.700 And then I went through the most tumultuous years of my life and the book evolved. I had to go back

00:08:05.500 to my publisher and say, hey, kind of going through something, going to need a little bit

00:08:10.040 more time, but I think it's going to make for a better book that's going to help more people in

00:08:15.220 different ways. And fortunately, they were very supportive of this. And the book ended up becoming

00:08:19.940 the book that I needed to read myself. So it started as a, hey, we're really good at this.

00:08:25.420 We have a team, we have a system and strategies that help real, regular, busy people navigate

00:08:31.360 chaotic lives. And then it became a much bigger idea and a lot more kind of philosophical about,

00:08:38.200 hey, life is not going to go the way that you expect. Here's how we can navigate that together.

00:08:42.520 Okay. So let's talk about how to deal with failure. When you don't reach a goal or when

00:08:47.700 your life just goes off kilter, it feels bad because it's a failure. We feel like a failure.

00:08:53.280 But you highlight that this idea of thinking of ourselves as being a failure is relatively new.

00:09:00.740 Walk us through how the meaning of failure has changed over time and how that history

00:09:05.200 can change the way we look at failure. Yeah. So very early on in the book,

00:09:09.740 i have a whole chapter dedicated to failure you know i thought hey like most people are going to

00:09:15.540 pick up a book called how to try again after something has gone wrong or they're not succeeding

00:09:20.660 in the way they want to and like you said we feel bad failure hurts and you know i'm not going to

00:09:28.040 say like oh failure is always a blessing in disguise like sometimes failure just sucks and

00:09:34.200 when we feel and when we have these experiences where we have failed, we decide that we and our

00:09:40.860 identity, like we are now failures. The good news is like, that's not actually true. We are humans

00:09:46.340 who failed at something. And I did some research into failure. I spoke to a professor of failure

00:09:54.200 from Stevens University. Her name is Dr. Teresa McPhail, which is just the perfect, perfect last

00:09:59.980 name. She literally teaches a class on failure. And then I took a trip to the Museum of Failure 0.98

00:10:05.740 and I studied the origins of the definition of the word failure. And something that really jumped

00:10:12.700 out at me through my research way back in the 1820s, I think, Noah Webster, Webster's Dictionary,

00:10:20.780 Noah defined failure as like a breaking or becoming insolvent. It was something that

00:10:27.040 happened. 30 years later, after Webster had passed away, but his dictionary endured,

00:10:32.740 the new definition of failure became something like, you know, it's a weakness in a man's

00:10:37.480 character. And all of a sudden, failure went from something that happened to us to something that

00:10:42.460 we were. And I posit and think we would be much better off if we returned to that original

00:10:48.560 definition or that definition that Webster had in his, you know, 1820s dictionary, that failure

00:10:54.420 is something that happens it's not the end of the world yeah it sucks especially when you're going

00:11:00.100 through it and in those moments and i'm not going to say like i said oh the you know something great

00:11:06.360 will come from this maybe but at the same time it's something that happened there is a lesson

00:11:12.600 that we can learn from it and we are not failures we are humans who failed at something once we can

00:11:18.260 get wrap our heads around that then we can start to kind of pick through the rubble and say like

00:11:22.460 all right, that happened. Give yourself a hug and be like, I'm part of the most common club

00:11:28.860 on the planet, humanity. What do we do next? Yeah. Because when you identify yourself as a

00:11:34.400 failure, it just makes you feel incapacitated. You feel like, why even try? But if you think,

00:11:39.520 well, okay, this thing happened to me, but it's not the entirety of who I am, then you feel like,

00:11:45.380 okay, there's something I can do to fix it. You mentioned you visited the Museum of Failure.

00:11:50.720 What did you learn about failure from that visit?

00:11:54.020 Well, two things.

00:11:54.920 One, so this is a traveling museum by Dr. Samuel West.

00:11:58.380 And I flew up to New York City and then was supposed to go to the museum with a friend,

00:12:02.760 but he bailed.

00:12:03.600 So we actually failed to make it to the museum of failure on time.

00:12:06.820 We had to go the next day.

00:12:08.280 So I walked into this museum and it's full of the best and the most interesting failures

00:12:13.840 and frauds and flops in history.

00:12:16.120 And what surprised me was how many of like the world's most successful companies were

00:12:20.600 well represented there.

00:12:22.060 I mean, you know, Microsoft, Apple, Nintendo, those were all there in addition to some failures

00:12:28.540 that maybe were, you know, understandable, like Hooters Airline or other inventions

00:12:33.960 that were like, you know, the hula chair, like, okay, maybe this idea wasn't fully baked.

00:12:38.880 But the thing that really jumped out at me is the final exhibit.

00:12:41.700 as you're walking out of the museum of failure, there is this kaleidoscope of post-it notes on

00:12:47.620 the wall. And they encourage you to write down your failures and place it up on the wall alongside

00:12:52.960 everybody else's. And for somebody that is struggling with something, we often, you know,

00:12:58.100 maybe you're the head of a household and you keep your failure down because you want to come across

00:13:02.360 as the strong, you know, you're the strong foundation of your family or your business

00:13:06.980 or whatever, there's a lot of shame and guilt that we feel when we're failures and we cram it down.

00:13:13.460 And I think we'd be much better off like this wall here when you write down your failures and

00:13:17.940 add it to the wall and you see, oh, failed businesses or failed marriages or something

00:13:23.920 deeply personal to somebody that they wrote in that wall. It makes you realize that you're not

00:13:28.300 actually that unique. And I mean that in the best way possible. Like somebody has failed in the way

00:13:33.760 that you have failed that before, like, welcome, you're not it's not that unique. And also failure

00:13:40.240 makes you part of, you know, this never ending list of people who have failed, which has gone

00:13:45.420 back since the beginning of time, since humans have had the opportunity to fail, we have failed.

00:13:50.560 So when we add our failure to that wall, or we talk about it with others, it kind of removes

00:13:55.640 some of the power it has over us. It took me months, maybe over a year, I think it was at

00:14:01.460 least maybe 18 months before I finally shared my personal struggles with my audience. And the

00:14:07.480 support I got in return was mind blowing. And that's what gave me the confidence to tell my

00:14:13.740 story. You know, on page two of my book, it took me 14 drafts, I think, before I finally added my

00:14:20.040 story to my book, because I wanted other people to feel okay sharing their failures and not beating

00:14:26.360 themselves up because something didn't go the way they expected it to. Right. Okay. So everyone

00:14:31.720 fails. Even the big dogs fail with billions of dollars of funding. They can have big, giant

00:14:37.880 flops, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon. Was it Pepsi clear? Big flop. That didn't work out. So if they

00:14:45.160 can fail. Yeah. New Coke. Pepsi Crystal, right? Crystal Pepsi? Yeah. Crystal Pepsi. Yeah. Or the

00:14:50.780 Arch Deluxe. I think that was in there too. Yep. Yeah. And then the other thing too,

00:14:56.020 It teaches you that with anything you decide to do, failure could be an option.

00:15:00.360 And just like accept that.

00:15:01.260 And as soon as you do, things get a little more copacetic.

00:15:03.940 And then the other thing you talk about in reframing failure, I think another reason

00:15:07.300 why people don't like to fail, and you talk about this in the book, is when you fail,

00:15:11.700 you think, well, now I'm going back to square one.

00:15:15.440 And you argue, no, that's not the case.

00:15:17.160 If you fail at something, you don't automatically have to start from scratch.

00:15:20.900 Yeah.

00:15:21.060 So the good news is square one doesn't actually exist.

00:15:24.860 So, you know, here's an example. Let's say you a year ago, you signed up to go to the gym and you went to the gym for two weeks and then life happened and you fell off the wagon. And every month you've been paying your your monthly gym membership and you feel like a failure. Like, oh, gosh, I have to go all the way back to square one. The next time I walk into this gym, that feels really daunting.

00:15:46.540 The good news is that you've already accomplished so many of the steps between you and exercise.

00:15:52.500 It's not just I'm at the gym, but rather you already had to find the gym.

00:15:57.740 You had to sign up for the gym.

00:15:59.140 You had to figure out where to park.

00:16:00.520 You had to figure out how the equipment worked.

00:16:02.420 You had to figure out how to navigate the locker room.

00:16:05.060 You had to figure out which workout you were going to do.

00:16:08.700 So although you might be starting over with regards to how much weight you can lift or

00:16:13.960 how fast you can run. You've already taken care of the first 90% of those steps. So when you start

00:16:20.220 over, you get to bring the knowledge of every one of those past failures with you. You get to stand

00:16:26.180 on those shoulders. And we actually get to be thankful for the fact that we failed in certain

00:16:31.180 ways in the past. We can learn from all of that and bring it with us for our next attempt. It

00:16:37.060 might allow us to succeed a little bit further or maybe have a dramatic success because we've

00:16:43.100 already done so much of the hard work and learned some really tough lessons on what doesn't work for

00:16:47.860 us in the past. Yeah. Reminds me of a line from a song from my favorite band. And everyone knows

00:16:53.580 what I'm about to say because everyone knows what my favorite band is. It's the Killers. So they got

00:16:58.460 this song called Lightning Fields from their 2020 album, Imploding the Mirage. It's their best album,

00:17:03.720 my favorite album. And there's this line that goes, don't beat yourself up. You've laid good

00:17:09.260 ground. I think that captures that idea perfectly. I love that. I love the killers too. Yeah. Killers

00:17:14.480 are great. All right. So let's talk about this framework you developed that you've used with 1.00

00:17:19.660 nerd fitness clients to handle setbacks and that you used in dealing with your own setbacks.

00:17:24.980 It's an acronym. It's PACT, P-A-C-T, and it stands for PAWS, Accept, Change, Try. So let's talk about

00:17:32.700 pause first. Whenever we're facing a hurdle or a setback, our first inclination is often to do

00:17:39.780 more. Like, okay, I got to do something to get over this thing. But how can doing more actually

00:17:45.640 make things worse for us? Y'all know the saying, if at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

00:17:52.800 Maybe. But if you're trying to succeed at something, that's the wrong thing.

00:17:56.720 and how are you defining success?

00:18:00.460 If you try, try again in the same way,

00:18:02.600 you'll probably just fail again in the same way.

00:18:05.940 So the first step, I think so many of us

00:18:08.380 kind of get on this loop or just keep running around

00:18:11.360 this wheel of, all right, I failed at couch to 5K

00:18:16.040 or going to the gym or journaling each morning.

00:18:20.900 All right, I failed, I'll try again next month.

00:18:23.500 And then you just do the same thing again,

00:18:25.500 except now you are beating yourself up even more

00:18:27.740 because you couldn't follow through with it,

00:18:29.660 you're gonna end up in the same spot.

00:18:31.540 So the first step I want people to take on this journey

00:18:34.180 is pause.

00:18:35.720 We think when we're not making progress,

00:18:37.920 we're falling further behind and that's bad.

00:18:41.040 We humans, we love progress.

00:18:43.500 The problem is like the opposite of progress

00:18:45.000 is not stagnation, it's not staying where we are.

00:18:48.400 The opposite of progress is regress.

00:18:51.040 It's making things worse.

00:18:52.940 So when we think about things from this perspective,

00:18:55.500 having a pause and saying, wait a second, am I actually doing the right thing? Am I heading down

00:19:01.820 the right path? Am I progressing or am I trying to progress in the way that I'm actually interested

00:19:06.920 in progressing? The good news is there are so many different ways to change. And if you keep trying

00:19:11.940 to do the one that you don't like, you're just kind of spinning your wheels, you're swimming in

00:19:16.600 the wrong direction, you're using so much energy to do something along the wrong path, when the

00:19:22.780 next step is actually like, instead of just putting your head down and going further or faster in the

00:19:27.980 same direction, it's pausing, taking a breath, looking at your surroundings and saying like,

00:19:32.880 is this working for me? I think a lot of us kind of skip that step.

00:19:37.420 Yeah. Speaking of being a swimming in the wrong direction, you actually use a story of this guy

00:19:42.120 named Brett Archibald, who literally swam in the wrong direction. And it made things worse for him.

00:19:49.420 Tell us about this guy.

00:19:50.780 Yeah, this is one of the craziest stories I've ever stumbled across.

00:19:54.500 So I fell in love with this idea of treading water being actually heroic.

00:19:59.740 And, you know, again, when the alternatives are drowning or swimming in the wrong direction,

00:20:06.600 treading water is actually like a pretty darn good option, you know, second only to swimming

00:20:12.200 in the right direction.

00:20:13.800 So this story is about this guy.

00:20:15.420 his name's Brett, on a 50th birthday celebration with all of his friends. And they are on a boat

00:20:21.760 sailing through the Mentawai Straits, I think, in the Philippines. And he got some food poisoning

00:20:29.440 from eating a bad calzone the day before. So it's two in the morning. He's on this boat where

00:20:33.740 they're getting ready to head out to a specific island. And he's got so much food poisoning that

00:20:37.320 he runs up to the deck to throw up over the side of the boat. And the boat was so rough that he

00:20:42.400 literally falls over the side of of the boat falls i think it's 15 maybe 20 feet into the water

00:20:48.700 and it's two in the morning so nobody sees him and he pops his head up and he tries to yell but

00:20:55.440 there's nobody awake there's the captain who's busy driving the boat and everybody else is asleep

00:20:59.880 so brett does what anybody thinks they should do in this moment he's like all right well

00:21:03.880 i guess i'm going to start swimming so he starts swimming you know pull kick breathe pull kick

00:21:09.860 breathe and he does this for a handful of hours until the sun comes up and he can finally take

00:21:15.980 a look at his surroundings and he realizes that there's still nothing in any direction and he

00:21:21.260 takes stock of what's on him and he reaches in his pocket and he pulls out the little key card

00:21:25.920 you know the cardboard key card holder from his hotel stay the night before he rips off a tiny

00:21:30.280 corner and he drops it on the top of the water and notices as the current sends it in the exact

00:21:36.060 opposite direction, he was swimming. Unbeknownst to Brett, he had been swimming against the current

00:21:40.840 for hours, wasting energy, trying to make things better when the reality was he was actually making

00:21:46.640 things worse. So as soon as he does this, he realizes like, okay, this is not what I need to

00:21:52.100 be doing. I don't know when I'm going to be rescued, if at all. My only plan I have right now

00:21:58.560 is to do the bare minimum and tread water long enough, not because I believe I will be rescued,

00:22:04.860 but rather I'm going to tread long enough to keep going. And every hour of treading water

00:22:09.920 reminds me that, Hey, I've already done it for this long. I can probably do it for another one.

00:22:14.640 And I don't want to spoil the story. The good news is he does eventually get rescued,

00:22:17.920 but that story of him trying so hard to do one thing and realizing that he was actually making

00:22:23.300 a lot of things worse has stuck with me ever since. Yeah. I mean, even in wilderness survival,

00:22:28.560 if you get lost in the woods, the thing they tell you is like, just stop and stay where you're at.

00:22:32.560 because our natural inclination is like, I got to get out of here. I got to find my,

00:22:36.040 you're just going to get more lost that way. Yeah. And I think it's applicable to like when

00:22:40.140 our goals go sideways, because let's say it's a fitness goal and it doesn't shake out what we

00:22:46.780 think. Well, I'm just going to try harder on this thing that I was doing. Instead, what would be

00:22:50.920 helpful is just like pause, stop. Like, is this the thing I should actually be doing? Is there

00:22:55.480 something else I could be doing? Maybe I hire a coach to get their input, but that pause is what

00:23:00.300 allows you to make those decisions yeah not only that but i think if we don't pause there is some

00:23:07.420 part of us that there is comfort in just continuing to do the thing that we have been doing even though

00:23:12.580 we know it's not working for us oh we sign up for a dating app and we swiped right a hundred times

00:23:17.100 and it didn't work you know it's like trying to date with your same same you know cheesy pickup

00:23:21.980 lines if it's not working that's probably not a good strategy maybe having a friend like look at

00:23:27.300 your profile and work through like, hey, what is working and not working here? Same thing with

00:23:32.420 maybe you're applying for a new job, just firing 100 more resumes into the void of LinkedIn or

00:23:37.920 whatever. If it's not working before, it's probably not going to work this time. You need to pause

00:23:43.020 and take a look at the picture and say like, I need to do something different, which is so hard

00:23:49.300 because then we have to admit to ourselves that what we've been doing isn't working. And we spent

00:23:54.360 all of that time on that when we could have been doing something else. But there's this great quote

00:23:58.660 from C.S. Lewis who says something like, you know, once you realize you're on the wrong road,

00:24:03.320 progress means doing an about face and walking back towards where you came so that you can get

00:24:08.120 on the right road. You know, he says the next correct step is backwards. I think there's a

00:24:12.080 step in between there, which is like pausing, stop moving forward and turning around and

00:24:17.260 assessing your situation so that you can have the bandwidth and the clarity to say, oh, what I'm

00:24:22.580 doing isn't working. I know I don't go back to square one because I get to carry all of these

00:24:26.960 past experiences with me. Cool. I can now adjust my path and try something different. And I might

00:24:33.360 be able to get there slightly faster because of all the changes and challenges I went through in

00:24:37.600 the past. And you also talk about the pause can come in handy if life just throws you a curveball,

00:24:44.220 like let's say a loved one gets sick or there's a death in the family. And it just requires you

00:24:49.520 to spend time in that area of your life our natural inclination is like well i'm going to

00:24:54.980 take care of my family my sick loved one and i'm going to keep doing all this stuff and more and

00:24:59.840 more stuff when the better approach because that's just going to burn you out the better approach

00:25:03.860 would just be pause and just tell yourself i'm just going to tread water here for the next couple

00:25:08.440 months maybe year and i'm going to take the foot off the gas so i can focus on this one thing and

00:25:15.040 then you tell yourself like, okay, I'm not going to be making progress like I want, but I've got

00:25:20.240 all this experience in the past and I can take that with me when I can pick things back up again.

00:25:25.340 But I, for now I just got to tread water. Yeah. Like I said, treading water can be heroic. I mean,

00:25:30.380 I'm a guy that owns a health and fitness company and I spent the last six years treading water with

00:25:35.200 my own fitness and it was so needed. You know, I'm trying to write this book. I'm navigating

00:25:40.120 a business that is reinventing itself. My personal life has irrevocably changed. All of these things

00:25:45.560 are happening at the same time. I didn't also need to add on to this, hey, you're not doing

00:25:50.700 your prescribed workout. You're not doing all of the things. I think we have a tendency to beat

00:25:56.240 ourselves up when we can't juggle all of the chainsaws that we're trying to juggle. And we

00:26:00.680 just keep thinking like, God, if I just had it together a little more, or if I was just more

00:26:04.700 disciplined. And the reality is, it's not a motivation problem. It's a resources problem.

00:26:09.460 we're asking so much of ourselves and sometimes strategically half-assing your goals or

00:26:16.540 strategically half-assing your workout is like an amazing place to be when the alternative is to

00:26:22.880 give up and drown or again bring out energy swimming in the wrong direction like for me it

00:26:28.200 was i can do i'm gonna go to the gym and do one exercise and while i'm traveling i'm gonna have

00:26:33.560 one healthy meal a day. I wasn't trying to win. I was just trying to not lose. And I knew if I

00:26:40.060 could do that today, it gave me a chance to get to tomorrow. And if I can get to tomorrow,

00:26:45.220 I don't know how long I'm going to need to tread water, but I can do it for a really,

00:26:49.240 really long time. And for me, only recently, after finishing this book, and finally having

00:26:54.640 a little bit of a gap in my schedule, did I rejoin a commercial gym, actually working now with Matt

00:27:02.920 from Nerd Fitness, who is now coaching me to work on my fitness. And the great news is I'm not going,

00:27:08.900 I don't have to go all the way back to a start. I'm not having to start from zero, even though we

00:27:13.620 know there's no square one. I have been doing a bare minimum for long enough that I can get right

00:27:19.260 into that gym and get on track moving forward with some progress pretty quickly. And that's

00:27:25.040 due to the fact that I was able to tread water for a long time. We're going to take a quick break

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00:32:22.700 And now back to the show. All right, let's pause. Let's talk about A for accept. Instead of accepting problems, you argue that we typically avoid them. What does avoidance often look like?

00:32:34.340 I think when I see and deal with avoidance personally, and when we see it with coaching

00:32:39.840 clients and community members at Nerd Fitness, we do one of two things. One is we kick the can down

00:32:45.700 the road, and we love the word until, or we kind of drown it out. And let's talk about that first

00:32:52.320 one. So I'll share an example. There is this amazing podcast called Chasing Scratch. And it's

00:32:57.540 about these two guys named Mike and Eli, who are college buddies trying to get to scratch golf,

00:33:01.980 which is, you know, shooting even par or better on average, which is a really challenging goal.

00:33:07.640 And I've known them for years. They've been working with Matt from Nerd Fitness. And Mike

00:33:12.320 kept coming to Matt and saying, oh, I'm so sorry. I couldn't get to my workout today. You know,

00:33:17.780 my kid got sick or I couldn't make it because this work meeting went long. But next week,

00:33:22.600 things should get back to normal. And the next week, something else would happen. And he kept

00:33:27.280 saying, but then I'll get back to normal. And Matt finally had a conversation with Mike and said,

00:33:33.080 Mike, I'm worried. There is this normal that you think is just around the corner.

00:33:37.620 That normal is not coming back. In Mike's mind, normal was predictable. Normal was routine.

00:33:43.700 And Mike's normal was anything but the podcast had become an unexpected success. His co-host Eli

00:33:50.660 ended up having to have a hip surgery. His kid was growing up. He was taking on extra work so

00:33:57.060 that he could focus on the podcast and leave his corporate job. So there was nothing normal

00:34:01.500 about his life. Normal had left the building. And once he accepted this of like, hey, I keep trying

00:34:08.040 to expect something is going to be different in the future. Like I'm avoiding my actual reality

00:34:14.380 today in all of its messiness. And the sooner I accept the fact that I can't do it all, that my

00:34:20.480 life is messy, only then could they finally start to do something about it. You know, instead of a

00:34:25.840 structured workout plan three days per week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. It was, Mike, what do

00:34:31.240 we have time for today? Great. Let's do that first thing in the morning before your kid wakes up.

00:34:36.560 It might be 15 minutes. Cool. Those 15 minutes are better than the perfect workout routine that

00:34:42.840 Mike was hoping to be able to do next week. So I think a lot of us avoid the reality of our

00:34:49.980 current situation because this reality is kind of scary, right? Like the fact that we can't do it all

00:34:55.100 or that there is some aspect of our life

00:34:57.160 that isn't going the way that we want it to,

00:34:59.580 it's really easy to just kind of cram that down

00:35:02.080 and not deal with it.

00:35:04.020 And the sooner we can accept

00:35:05.680 that this is actually what's happening,

00:35:07.780 this is the situation I find myself in,

00:35:09.800 these are the struggles and pain points,

00:35:11.820 the sooner I can have that uncomfortable conversation

00:35:14.080 with my spouse or my boss about how I'm struggling,

00:35:17.760 the sooner we can have those things,

00:35:19.780 like then we can finally start to make smarter decisions

00:35:23.300 about what we're actually going to prioritize

00:35:24.980 where we need boundaries, how to navigate whatever that next step might look like for us.

00:35:30.640 Yeah. And I think the way you described acceptance there, it's not resignation. So I think a lot of

00:35:35.360 guys when they hear acceptance, it means, well, I just got to resign myself to this situation.

00:35:40.020 There's nothing I can do. It's like, no, what acceptance is just like looking at the bare

00:35:44.300 bones reality facts. And once you see how crappy things are, then you can start doing something

00:35:49.920 about it. It's like Apollo 13, right? They had to accept the fact like we're in this little tin can

00:35:54.300 thousands of miles from earth with these limited supplies we got to make a filter out of it

00:36:00.840 and they had to accept that fact and then work with those constraints yeah we're not doing

00:36:06.280 ourselves any favor when we think or feel badly that life is anything other than what it is right

00:36:13.160 now warts and all you know dog eating too much grass and throwing up on the carpet kid getting

00:36:18.760 sick, navigating fertility issues, like whatever it may be, like, these are things that are so

00:36:25.780 real and honest. And the sooner we can look at those with clear eyes, the more likely we can

00:36:30.600 then say like, Hey, we're trying, but also this is our reality. What can we do about it?

00:36:36.120 Yeah. And even when people accept there are problems in their life,

00:36:38.820 they sometimes just kind of do it passively instead of as a step toward action. Like they're

00:36:43.020 just thinking, I'm just going to got to hope for the best, you know, things will just turn out

00:36:47.020 better just magically. Well, maybe that might happen, but probably not.

00:36:52.960 Yeah. There's some research, or your name is Dr. Keta Weingarten, who refers to this as like

00:36:57.960 unreasonable hope. And it's just this concept that like, oh, things should get better because

00:37:04.080 I want them to get better. And they should, and I'll just wait for them to get better. And like,

00:37:09.200 that's not how this works. They might not get better or they might require very specific action

00:37:14.480 for things to get better. So the sooner we can accept and look at the absurdity of our life and

00:37:21.380 say like, yep, this is happening and it's not cool. And I'm really unhappy about this. And

00:37:28.260 here's what I can do about it. Yeah. All right. So that's accept. Let's move to change. So we've

00:37:33.620 paused, taken a break from what we're doing to kind of assess things. We've accepted our situation.

00:37:38.380 Now we got to figure out, okay, what can we change to prevent the failure in the future to overcome

00:37:43.700 it. How do you figure out what you need to change when trying to overcome a setback?

00:37:49.200 I mean, I think that the step one is to picture your favorite literary detective.

00:37:53.280 It could be Sherlock Holmes, Nancy Drew. For me growing up, it was Encyclopedia Brown.

00:37:58.700 Oh man, Encyclopedia Brown. Yeah.

00:38:00.380 Yeah. He would solve, you know, mysteries in his neighborhood for, I think it was like 25 cents,

00:38:05.060 25 cents a case. And then he would come home from school or, or, you know, on summer break and sit

00:38:10.240 down at the dinner table and his dad who was the chief police of idaville would then spill his guts

00:38:15.920 about whatever case he couldn't solve and by the end of dinner or later on you know encyclopedia

00:38:20.580 brown this young kid would have solved it so i don't know what that says about the dad that he

00:38:24.800 couldn't handle this and was just you know telling all the details to his son but i think there's

00:38:29.880 something interesting and fun about looking at life and looking at our past attempts like a

00:38:35.360 curious detective. And you can picture the board game Clue as well. Like, oh, that's really

00:38:41.140 interesting. You know, oh, I'm you think you're a failure because you couldn't stick with your

00:38:46.100 workout. It's like, oh, that's really interesting. I missed my workout this morning, not because I'm

00:38:50.600 a failure, but because I was up super late last night scrolling on my phone because I just felt

00:38:56.920 like I had to disassociate from a really stressful day. OK, why was the day stressful? Oh, because

00:39:03.160 I actually don't like my job. And I, you know, I had to go pick up my kid from school because

00:39:08.360 there was behavioral issues. And then I had to, oh, forgot to take the food out of the freezer

00:39:13.100 in time to defrost it. So then I couldn't cook dinner, like whatever it may be. So many times,

00:39:17.440 as I said earlier, what we think is a motivation problem is often a resources problem. So if we

00:39:23.140 can look with curiosity and not judgment, like imagine we are detectives and we see

00:39:28.040 the chalk outline of our past attempts to try to make a specific change.

00:39:33.160 We can look at that and say like, oh, OK, turns out it was, you know, for these these specific reasons, actually two steps removed from I'm not motivated.

00:39:42.800 It's actually so much deeper than that. Once we can finally start to kind of put those pieces in place and and solve that crime, we can then decide, OK, now that we've paused and accepted our reality and we know why we failed in the past, we can change something this time and do something differently.

00:40:01.520 And when you do make a change, it doesn't have to be a wholesale change of the whole

00:40:05.360 entire thing.

00:40:06.280 It could just be one small variable.

00:40:08.620 Yeah, there's that great quote from Charlie Munger.

00:40:10.300 It's, you know, show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome.

00:40:12.520 I think when we're deciding what to change, we can think about this like scientists.

00:40:19.380 You know, we've been running experiments with our clients for, I'd say, we've been doing

00:40:24.160 this program for eight years now, nine years.

00:40:26.280 and it's been really liberating for our clients to be able to say hey i know this is not how you've

00:40:33.900 done things in the past but you came to us because you want things to be different and if you want

00:40:38.460 different outcomes you need we need to try something differently let's try this as an

00:40:43.020 experiment and when you when you look at things this way it adds some lightness to it it removes

00:40:49.940 this pressure of gosh i have to do this for the rest of my life what if it doesn't work whatever

00:40:55.380 we can look at it like curious scientists. We take all of the data that we learned from our

00:40:59.560 detective work and say, interesting, okay, I have a hypothesis that if I were to follow this new

00:41:05.980 workout program or try join this hiking club, I will be more interested in exercise by the end

00:41:13.020 of it. Or, hmm, I've been trying toxic, you know, dieting. I've been trying to cut out carbs for the

00:41:19.520 past decade off and on. And it turns out I love carbs. Maybe there is a different experiment I

00:41:24.660 can conduct where I still get to eat carbs, you know, and try to have success in a different way.

00:41:31.620 So in NerdFitness, we call it the zoom in, zoom out method. So you zoom out and set the experiment,

00:41:36.860 and then you zoom in and just focus on conducting the experiment. You don't worry about the end

00:41:44.240 goal. You don't worry about whether or not it's giving you the results you want. We are simply

00:41:50.100 conducting the experiment. And at the end of those 30 days or six weeks, we can then zoom out and

00:41:56.400 say, one, did we get the result that we expected? It might be what we expected or not, but neither

00:42:01.760 one is good or bad. It's an experiment. And then we can decide, did we enjoy the experiment? Would

00:42:07.840 we like to keep doing it? Or do we need to make a change or adjust a variable and create a different

00:42:13.520 experiment and make that change and kind of rerun that process? But when we think about things in

00:42:19.000 this experimental mindset, it removes so much of the judgment that we put on the plate and the

00:42:23.980 expectations we kind of put in our shoulders to suddenly have it all figured out. Yeah. I've done

00:42:28.280 that in my own life with my own training. I mean, one experiment I ran, I still continue today.

00:42:32.880 I wanted to get more steps in because I sit down a lot for my work. And so I decided, you know,

00:42:39.140 when I wake up early, I started waking up early in my forties, like five o'clock, just not,

00:42:44.600 not on purpose. It just happened. So I decided, you know what, I'm just going to take a walk

00:42:48.020 around the block during that time i think what you and i we've actually had a phone call on one

00:42:53.040 of my early morning walks i just started it started out as an experiment and i was like i'll just do

00:42:57.960 this for a month and see how it goes and turns out i really like it and i've been doing it now for

00:43:01.800 years every morning go for a walk at 5 30 6 o'clock in the morning and it worked but there's other

00:43:07.200 things i've tried i'm like i'm not going to do that anymore it didn't work out for me so yeah

00:43:10.360 i like that idea just with any change you make you don't have to make a full-hearted commitment

00:43:14.460 just approach it like an experiment and see how it goes for a few weeks and if it works great if

00:43:19.360 it doesn't no harm no foul and getting rid of it let's talk about the the t for try so you've come

00:43:25.480 up with something that you want to change in your life that you want to make an improvement on but a

00:43:31.740 lot of people still don't actually try the thing they came up with what's holding people back from

00:43:37.740 trying things? I think, first of all, you're in good company. If you're like, I need the perfect

00:43:45.100 plan, I should do some more research. You know, I got to do more research to make sure I have the

00:43:49.440 perfect plan or the most optimized diet that I have to follow. And I just need to keep working

00:43:55.640 on this. I tell a few fun stories in the book. One is about George Lucas and him trying to write

00:44:00.760 the screenplay for Star Wars and just how terrible early drafts of it were. And, you know, I think

00:44:07.460 it was Francis Ford Coppola got a chance to read an early draft and said, like, I think the term

00:44:12.300 he used was this is gobbledygook. Like, I don't know what this is. And it's a disaster. But he

00:44:18.020 was just he needed to get something down on the page. And then I also tell the story of Winston

00:44:23.040 Churchill. You know, we know him as the prime minister and as a war correspondent back in

00:44:29.160 the earlier days, and then as a soldier in World War One, I believe. And in between World War One

00:44:35.280 in World War II, he decides he wants to become a painter. And he tells this funny story about how

00:44:40.500 he was terrified of where to put his first brushstroke on his canvas. He called it like the

00:44:46.180 towering canvas. And he was afraid, arrested with a silent veto, because what if he put it in the

00:44:51.840 wrong spot? Fortunately, his wife invited over a neighbor who was a painter. And she just walked

00:44:57.240 up to him and said, give me the big brush. And she just grabbed it and just started throwing 1.00

00:45:00.820 paint up on the canvas. And this is when Churchill realized like, oh, the canvas couldn't

00:45:05.100 hit back. It couldn't fight back. And suddenly the spell had been broken. Oh, I can just do this

00:45:11.040 imperfectly. And that's okay. You know, the term that I thought of was start ugly. You know, I'm

00:45:15.940 like, oh, this idea of starting ugly gives you permission to get out of your own way and just

00:45:19.840 get started. And then I stumbled across a book called Start Ugly by David Duchemin, I believe

00:45:24.500 that's his name. But we're so afraid often that we're going to do it incorrectly, that we never

00:45:30.440 start at all. And I think we need to instead give ourselves permission or rather challenge ourselves

00:45:34.860 to start incorrectly and to do things imperfectly and to start ugly because only then can we finally

00:45:41.720 get good at it yeah so that idea that things have to be perfect that holds back a lot of people but 0.76

00:45:48.660 just kind of like you know what the first one's gonna suck richard grenier he's one of the ceos

00:45:53.680 at huckberry he's got this saying you always throw out the first pancake whenever you're making

00:45:58.760 pancakes it's like the first one's always the worst you always throw it out so yeah just just

00:46:02.740 do something and accept that it's probably going to be bad. And then with time, as you do it more

00:46:08.300 and more, you're going to get better and better and better at it. Yeah. Well, not just that,

00:46:12.900 but there is a specific way that you can get better. And I think about this from like a ready

00:46:17.040 fire aim sequence of things. And in the book, I talk about standup comedians specifically and how

00:46:24.400 what we see on stage or what we see on Netflix, what we see at a comedy special, we see the

00:46:31.060 finished product and we think like oh that was really funny what we don't realize is the hundreds

00:46:36.080 of sets that that comedian has performed slowly tinkering with that specific joke that pause

00:46:43.120 that funny aside that they just quote unquote thought up you know like all of that has been

00:46:47.380 tested like scientists in a laboratory on tuesday nights and small clubs around the world the way

00:46:53.280 i think of this is like comedians don't tell jokes because they're funny they tell a joke

00:46:58.060 until it becomes funny and writers don't write when they have an idea you know professional

00:47:04.540 writers write until they find a good idea so much of this is i'm going to try this thing and start

00:47:11.860 ugly and then based on the feedback that the world is giving me or the audience is giving me

00:47:18.780 or my readers are giving me and how i'm feeling about this i can make this project slightly better

00:47:26.120 over time and create this pretty amazing thing at the end, but it's going to come with a bunch

00:47:31.620 of tiny adjustments along the way based on feedback that we're getting throughout the

00:47:35.360 process. And another thing you talk about holds people back from trying the thing that they've

00:47:39.220 decided they're going to do to initiate some change in their life. They might think, well,

00:47:43.260 this isn't how you're supposed to do it, or this isn't the most optimized way to do it.

00:47:48.240 It's not what the guru says I should be doing. And you say like, that doesn't matter. Just do

00:47:54.120 it works for you. And if it seems kind of silly or non-optimal, like that's okay. And then also,

00:48:00.980 you know, it's okay to not try things that everyone's saying you should do because you're

00:48:05.340 just like, you know what? I don't like doing that. I'm not going to do that. So like when it comes to

00:48:09.180 fitness, if someone says, man, bro, you got to do CrossFit, that's like the best thing. Well,

00:48:13.220 if you don't like that, don't do CrossFit. It's better for you to be physically active

00:48:16.560 doing something you enjoy because you're more likely to stick with doing that thing.

00:48:20.900 yeah and nothing makes my heart hurt more than seeing somebody that is like okay i'm finally

00:48:26.960 working up the courage to exercise and they go to like a boot camp class with their super fit

00:48:32.580 friends and this class is full of really fit people and the instructor is yelling motivational

00:48:38.360 platitudes and and this person finishes that class and thinks gosh like if that's what it takes to

00:48:44.820 get healthy like man i'm out i do not want to do that this is not for me the reality is like there

00:48:50.440 are so many different ways to get healthy. There are so many different paths to success. The best

00:48:56.300 workout is the one that you actually do. The best diet is the one that you can actually follow most

00:49:01.780 of the time. In the book, I talk about Neil Stevenson is the author of Snow Crash and a bunch

00:49:07.180 of other unbelievable science fiction books. And he talks about how he is a terrible correspondent

00:49:12.000 because he needs four hours of uninterrupted time to write his books. And if he had two two-hour

00:49:19.780 blocks, it is not nearly the same as one four-hour uninterrupted block. Somebody might read that and

00:49:25.500 think, gosh, I don't have, there's no way. I have a young kid. I work from home. I'm in calls. There's

00:49:31.260 no way I could ever write or succeed the way that he is. Therefore, I'm just never going to be a

00:49:36.460 writer. But then you hear about Agatha Christie, who wrote 60 plus detective novels and has sold

00:49:43.060 billions of, like literally over a billion copies of her books and short stories. And she tells a

00:49:48.500 story in her autobiography about how her friends never knew when she wrote because she would just

00:49:53.400 you know steal away for bits and spurts like a dog with a bone I think she said and she would

00:49:58.660 write for 20 minutes here or there she didn't have a dedicated writing room and that's how she wrote

00:50:04.180 her books so both of those paths worked but they worked for the right person because they found

00:50:09.800 what worked for them and I think that's the step that a lot of us miss we see the celebrity we see

00:50:15.620 the Instagram influencer telling us about the perfect morning protocol. And we forget to ask

00:50:21.520 the question, like, one, do I want that? Two, does this fit into my reality? And what am I not

00:50:28.280 accepting about my current situation? And once I do those things, then you can finally decide like,

00:50:32.860 hey, this is the path that I want to try and the things I want to do for myself.

00:50:36.780 Yeah. I think those influencers can be helpful if you just approach them as like a buffet.

00:50:41.320 okay it's like well you know that thing looks interesting i'm gonna try that and you don't

00:50:45.820 have to do it exactly the way they do it but like you try it out and see if it works for you

00:50:49.660 but yeah if you just decide i gotta do exactly what this person does like it's not gonna work

00:50:53.520 out all right so that's packed so pause accept change try let's talk about some of the things

00:50:59.760 that get in the way so if we do experience failure some of the mental roadblocks that

00:51:05.200 prevent us from getting back in the saddle and makes things harder for yourself and one of these

00:51:09.400 things is the doom loop. What's the doom loop? And how does that get in the way of us trying

00:51:13.460 again? The doom loop is the most common pitfall I see people falling into when they're trying to

00:51:19.120 make some sort of behavior change. It generally starts with step one is feeling less than. Step

00:51:25.560 two is identifying, you know, we see something on Instagram, we see, we read an inspiring biography,

00:51:32.280 we watch a documentary or whatever and we then get irrationally excited and think like this is

00:51:39.960 the thing that is going to solve all of my problems and then I will finally feel enough

00:51:44.440 and then we go all in on that thing everybody does it on January 1st new year new me I'm all

00:51:51.500 in on changing everything about myself like let alone set aside the fact that we've never been

00:51:56.660 able to, as the Twitter quote, it was something like, all of my future plans require me to display

00:52:04.060 a level of discipline I've never once exhibited in my entire life. The challenge here is when we

00:52:09.120 go all in on something, the reality is like all or nothing generally is all then nothing. You go

00:52:16.960 all in, life happens. And then you say, oh, that didn't work. Okay, I have to stop because life is

00:52:23.140 too busy right now. I will try again a year from now. So we go back around the loop, back to the

00:52:28.420 beginning where we are again, not enough, except we now heap on some more failure and struggle

00:52:33.240 and guilt because we couldn't follow through with it until we find that next thing again,

00:52:37.700 that gets us irrationally excited. Maybe this will be the thing. And we either go around that loop

00:52:42.320 or we just kind of give up and say like, oh, change is not for me.

00:52:46.700 So how do you escape that doom loop?

00:52:48.460 Yeah, there's a few tactics. I think one, step one is when it comes to feeling not enough.

00:52:54.600 We've all tried tough love repeatedly. I think we have enough of that in our lives.

00:52:59.780 And I spent a lot of this book and a lot of the years writing this book,

00:53:03.720 diving really deeply into self-compassion, specifically Kristen Neff's work on self-compassion

00:53:09.820 and realizing like, hey, tough love you think is what kind of got you here. That's probably not

00:53:15.900 the case and beating yourself up is not a great strategy for getting yourself out of this loop,

00:53:21.260 let's try self-compassion instead. And that means allowing ourselves to have the thoughts that we

00:53:27.240 have and not beating ourselves because we have them. Our thoughts are thinking themselves. It's

00:53:32.080 generally not under our control which thoughts pop in, but we can start to put some distance

00:53:37.600 between us and those thoughts. We can notice and name those thoughts or those patterns as

00:53:43.220 they're starting to happen, we can give a name to that voice in our heads for those of us like

00:53:49.140 myself that feel like they have that inner monologue. When you add some distance, maybe

00:53:53.640 some humor to that voice and realize that you are not your thoughts, it kind of gives you some

00:53:59.560 of that ability to move back through that packed loop again, which is pause. Maybe,

00:54:04.720 is this thought helping me? Is it true? What am I not accepting about the situation?

00:54:09.280 change would be, hey, do I want to turn up the volume on this thought or turn the volume down

00:54:13.780 on the thought? And then T, try, based on what is happening in these loops and these thoughts,

00:54:19.300 what would I like to try to do differently moving forward? So there is, like I said,

00:54:23.880 you're going to put some distance between you and those thoughts. We're going to practice

00:54:27.500 self-compassion. And then before we even get on the loop again, I like to think of that scene from

00:54:33.420 the Fellowship of the Ring where they're at the Prancing Pony and Aragorn is talking to Frodo

00:54:39.260 and Aragorn says, are you frightened?

00:54:42.160 And he's asking Frodo about the ringwraiths

00:54:44.120 that are chasing after them.

00:54:45.940 And Frodo says like, yeah, I'm frightened.

00:54:48.760 And Aragorn says, not nearly enough.

00:54:52.200 I know what hunts you.

00:54:53.740 And I think about that line a lot.

00:54:56.180 When people join our coaching program,

00:54:58.640 we ask them right up front, like, what are you worried about?

00:55:02.780 And more often than not, they're saying,

00:55:04.260 hey, I have a hunch that a few weeks from now,

00:55:06.980 when the motivation wears off,

00:55:08.500 i'm going to fall back into this doom loop i'm going to fall back into all or nothing thinking

00:55:14.380 i'm going to retreat to old patterns and when we can identify those things up front it might make

00:55:22.400 us change the expectation we have it might change the type of exercise we're interested in trying

00:55:28.440 it might change how many changes we're willing to make and we can start to accept and you know

00:55:35.080 predict, hey, we're at that moment. We're three weeks in. I know that voice in your head is

00:55:40.100 telling you to stick your head in the sand and ghost. What if we tried something differently?

00:55:44.140 What if we did the bare minimum today and we counted that as a win? What if we shifted into

00:55:49.960 tread water? Whatever it may be, we are just essentially looking for tiny tactics to have

00:55:56.200 a better relationship and conversation with that voice in our heads or that little person that

00:56:01.220 sits on our shoulder that tells us to give up or to quit or to stop doing what we're doing.

00:56:06.480 I want to talk about, and just talking about my favorite chapter in the book, and it was

00:56:10.200 how to keep doing the thing. And what you do is you provide all these tried and true tactics to

00:56:15.580 successfully keep plodding along with whatever thing you're doing. So you decide to make this

00:56:20.660 change in your life. How do you keep with it so you don't fall off the saddle as frequently?

00:56:26.480 What are some of your favorite ones? There's like eight of them. What are some of your favorite

00:56:30.280 ones from those how to keep doing the thing tactics yeah so this chapter is built around

00:56:35.160 albert bandura's research into self-efficacy which is essentially just like belief in yourself that

00:56:40.500 you're able to make change and do things differently yeah i think it's a might be 10

00:56:45.960 tactics in there yeah there are a few that i love more than others i think the one that honestly

00:56:52.260 like has changed my life more than anything is being willing to half-ass the thing i don't know

00:56:58.500 what the thing is that you've picked. It might be training or, you know, trying to write your

00:57:03.760 first novel or read a large novel, whatever it may be. And I think being willing to strategically

00:57:11.420 half-ass that thing is one of the greatest, most important life skills you can develop.

00:57:17.920 And it can be done with a simple question change. Instead of asking, do I have time for my workout

00:57:22.980 today, it's reframing it as what workout do I have time for? And that might be five minutes

00:57:29.820 in the morning before you pick up your newborn from his or her crib. It might be going for a walk

00:57:35.760 after work with your spouse and saying, that was my workout for today. I checked the box,

00:57:41.940 that was good enough. And accepting that, yeah, it might not be the full blown, I did the full

00:57:48.560 workout i went to the gym for an hour and a half but man it is so much better to strategically be

00:57:53.640 able to say like hey i did what i was capable of doing today and like that's a huge win the other

00:57:59.360 one this one is going to sound so simple and yet it's like one of the best predictors we've seen

00:58:04.080 or i've seen over 17 years of writing for nerd fitness and i think i call it like the shower

00:58:09.320 theory or the shower principle let's say you wake up in the morning and normally every day after

00:58:14.180 your morning walk, you take a shower and you get ready to go to work. But this morning you woke up

00:58:20.960 late because the alarm didn't go off and your kid threw up in the middle of the night. So you have

00:58:26.060 to navigate that. Now the dog's eating the throw up. And all of a sudden, like your morning is

00:58:30.180 just completely blown out. And you splash some water on your face and you drag that you bring

00:58:35.880 the kid to the doctor. And based on that, like you quote unquote failed at taking your morning

00:58:41.500 shower? Do you have to start downloading shower podcasts? Do you need to start studying the

00:58:47.120 shower habits of celebrities? Do you need to write in your shower journal about how you failed?

00:58:53.020 Are you going to try again showering next month? No, like you just missed your shower this morning

00:58:58.360 because of life. Cool. Like just take your shower the next day and move on. When we find that people

00:59:06.240 are willing to allow themselves to miss a day and then just do it the next day, like

00:59:11.020 that is one of the best predictors we've seen for success compared to people who miss that

00:59:15.840 day of their workout or diet.

00:59:17.500 And then they feel so badly that they stick their head in the sand or they go off the

00:59:22.180 rails and then they don't want to talk to their coach or they beat themselves up so

00:59:26.540 much that they then crave eating more of the thing that they're beating themselves up for

00:59:31.000 having eaten.

00:59:31.660 Like so much of this is essentially just negotiating with our own brains and saying, how do we do this thing slightly more often than not for a long enough time that we can see change and stick with it for a long enough period of time?

00:59:46.800 Those two are my favorites too. I use those all the time with my fitness in particular. If I'm having my days busy, I don't have time for a full 45 minute workout. It's like, what can I do to half-ass this thing and get in a 15 minute workout? And that usually means just like, I'm not going to do this accessory work and I'm just going to do one set, one hard set of each of the main lifts.

01:00:07.520 And then if I miss a day, say I can't even get a workout in, I remember early on in my fitness

01:00:12.980 journey, if I miss a day, I was like, oh, geez, I'm a failure. Why am I even going to try? It's

01:00:17.420 like, ah, whatever. It's okay. I'll just get it in the next time. Not much change is going to

01:00:22.600 happen in a workout. Or even if you mess up on your nutrition, you just pig out on the weekend,

01:00:28.120 you're not going to gain any fat from a single day of bad eating. You'll look heavier because

01:00:33.200 you have a lot of water and glycogen it's not fat so just like the next day it's like all right

01:00:38.280 i'll just get back on the saddle it's going to be fine yeah it's never the one missed day it's

01:00:42.700 always that missed day that turns into a week or a month of you know self-loathing and and making

01:00:48.180 more unhealthy choices that send you down the wrong path because you beat yourself up from

01:00:52.980 missing that one day yeah but yeah like you said there's a lot more in there some of them are just

01:00:56.780 get a quick win is a good one make things fun like actually enjoy the thing you're doing make

01:01:01.480 it necessary. And you go into detail on how to do that. My favorite chapter. I really love that a

01:01:04.860 lot because I use a lot of those tactics in my own life. Well, Steve, this has been a great

01:01:08.660 conversation. There's a lot more we could talk about. Where can people go to learn more about

01:01:12.220 the book and your work? Yeah, it's super simple. The book is called How to Try Again. So you can

01:01:17.200 go to howtotryagain.com. And then I'm on every platform, SteveKam, S-T-E-V-E-K-A-M-B,

01:01:25.140 SteveKam.com for my newsletter. I'm on the various social platforms at SteveKam. So

01:01:30.320 pretty easy to find. I'm so proud of this book. It took a lot out of me and I lived a lifetime

01:01:36.020 while writing it. So I hope you consider checking it out. It's probably the thing I'm most proud of.

01:01:40.840 It took a lot to get it across the finish line, but I'm really glad I did.

01:01:43.700 All right. Well, Steve Cam, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

01:01:46.080 Thanks for the opportunity.

01:01:48.060 My guest today was Steve Cam. He's the author of the book, How to Try Again. It's available

01:01:51.380 on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about his work at

01:01:54.880 his website, stevecam.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash try again.

01:01:59.740 where you find links to resources

01:02:00.980 and we delve deeper into this topic.

01:02:10.120 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast.

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01:02:25.420 Until next time, it's Brett McKay.

01:02:26.820 Remind us not to listen to AOM Podcast,

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The Art of Manliness - June 09, 2026

How to Try Again

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