Because You’re Supposed To

“I know I should.”

That's not a reason.

That's a sentence people say right before they don't.

I asked a guy why he wanted to get to the gym.

He said he supposed it would help him perform.

Said it's what you're told to do.

Said it the way you'd read something off a wall.

Then he told me he hadn't gone.

Of course he hadn't.

Nobody has ever done a hard thing because it was recommended.

Look at what you're actually asking of yourself.

You work twelve hours.

You're on the phone all day, burning through the emotional fuel it takes to sell. You get home.

And now something in you is supposed to say: good, let's do the harder thing?

On what fuel?

Should isn't fuel.

Should is a word your parents used.

So you don't go.

And then you decide the problem is discipline, that you're lazy, that you lack something other people have.

That's the wrong diagnosis and it's why you keep failing at the same thing.

There's nothing wrong with you.

There's just nothing pulling you.

The ones who go every day aren't more disciplined than you.

They've got a reason that means something, and the reason does most of the lifting.

Mine's simple and I have to say it to myself.

I run because it's the half hour where I think, the one place I do something hard on purpose.

And when that's not enough, I picture the other end of it.

Old, sick, unable to move around, unable to play with my kids.

That picture gets me out the door on the mornings the first reason doesn't.

Both of those matter.

It isn't just what you're running toward.

It's what you're running from.

You need the vision and the nightmare, because on the bad days only one of them will reach you.

Neither one can be handed to you.

A borrowed reason is just a should with better branding, it works for a week, maybe two, then the novelty burns off and you're back on the couch wondering what's wrong with you.

So the work isn't the habit.

It's earlier than that.

It's sitting still long enough to find out what you actually want, and why, and what it costs you if you never get it.

That's uncomfortable.

Which is why almost nobody does it, and why almost everybody stays stuck at the trying-harder stage forever.

So take the thing you've been meaning to start.

Why do you want it, the real reason, the one that would hold at nine at night when you're wrecked?

And if you can't answer that, what exactly were you expecting to run on?