Ever read a sentence that broke you?
I’m talking about a line that made you audibly say, “oooof” after you read it. And then you think about it for days and weeks after and maybe decide you need to change your life?
I’m revisiting a lot of my favorite books these days, and I was recently rereading Ryan Holiday’s Stillness is the Key.
Holiday talks about humanity’s inability to sit quietly with our own thoughts, and how easy it is to avoid doing the work to make real change. Instead, we book another plane ticket, we jump to the next workout, we go “all in” on the next diet, we buy just one more self-help book.
We’ve convinced ourselves that we’re always one tactic or one trick or one strategy away from effortless progress and success.
Of course, as Ryan points out, that’s not how this works:
“What you seek will come only if you sit and do the work, if you probe yourself with real self-awareness and patience.
You have to be still enough to discover what’s really going on. You have to let the muddy water settle.
Stand in front of the mirror. Get to know your front porch. You were given one body when you were born—don’t try to be someone else, somewhere else.
Get to know yourself.
Build a life that you don’t need to escape from.”
That last line broke my brain the first time I read it.
I realized I had structured most of my life in such a way that I needed to escape from it. Nothing I was doing was sustainable:
- The way I trained was unsustainable. I pushed myself too hard and would always get injured and have to take weeks off.
- The way I structured my diet was unsustainable. I changed too many things and couldn’t wait to be “done,” which would undo any progress I had made.
- The way I was building Nerd Fitness was unsustainable. I was forgoing a lot of life to just work work work work work, which is great for Rihanna but less good for your boy Steve.
I kept dreaming about my eventual escape to a future in which I could be done – I believed there was a promised land in which all my problems would be solved, I wouldn’t be busy, and life would be easy. And there were also unicorns and jetpacks and rainbows.
Of course, problems never stop, they just change.
Here’s the issue: if we’re always counting down the days until we’re done with something, we’ll lose all the progress we’ve made as soon as we stop.
As I reflected on “build a life you don’t need to escape from” for the 1000th time, I realized how much of society is designed to keep us focused on this “can’t wait to escape” mentality instead of realizing we never get to be done – and then act accordingly.
We’re sold 10-day detoxes, 30-day diet challenges, 90-day workout challenges. Sprints and projects at work that stretch us too thin. Dead-end careers and work that doesn’t align with what we really want.
This is how we end up living a life we have to constantly escape from:
❌ If we’re spending our free time escaping into video games and books and movies to forget the rest of our crappy day, it’s time to start doing the work and find out what we’re escaping from. Life is no guarantee, and who knows where we’ll be next year. Start making moves now. A single small move is a start.
❌ If we’re currently doing a diet we can’t wait to “be done with,” it’s not the diet for us! Temporary diets create temporary results. We need to pick dietary changes we can stick with for years and decades. Small changes done consistently.
❌ If we’re currently training for a marathon and are counting down the days until we don’t have to run anymore…maybe this isn’t the type of exercise we should be spending our time on! Life is short, and there are a gazillion ways to move. Pick one you like.
Life’s only guarantee is that we never arrive. We never get to be done. And we’ll never get to a place where we’re not busy.
So we might as well find a way to build a life we don’t need to escape from:
- A way of eating that we can stick with for years and years.
- A workout plan that we are excited to do and makes us healthier.
- A structure for our day that doesn’t leave us burned out and frustrated.
We’re in the trust tree: Which part of your life are you trying to escape from?
If this resonates with you (like it did me), hit reply and share the answer above. I love reading your responses to these weekly emails.
-Steve
