We’ve become an increasingly dependent nation of people, and that’s not how we got this far. We’ve gotten this far (the most prosperous and free nation in world history) by going against the grain and believing in the power and freedom of the individual, along with some good ‘ol fashioned “nose to the grindstone” hard work and dedication. There’s a rare occasion where someone gets lucky and results come easy, but that is an outlier and not to be expected. Think lottery tickets, they can reward something for essentially doing nothing, but even those people likely end up broke because they didn’t get to harness the lessons that hard work teaches someone. In other words, easy come, easy go. 

When it comes to your fitness, nothing is easy. It takes consistency, commitment, discipline, and doing hard physical work. In doing so, you get to reap the benefits of having a strong, able body, energy that trumps everyone else’s, and confidence that is as pure as it gets. Why do you think so many people get duped into thinking they can just take ketones, get their “steps” in, and avoid carbs and get the results they truly want? It’s because easy work is a lie. Don’t fall for easy.

Sure you can take 5g of creatine daily and likely see a small increase in strength and less frailty; however, you’ll never get what you’re truly after, and that’s knowing that you can physically handle yourself in a situation where your life depends on your physical capacity to do something. Or, more likely, you’ll just have to swallow your pride and recite the words “back in the day” or “if you were my age” or better yet “I used to be able to bench 350.” But here’s the problem with those scenarios, we aren’t living back in the day, your age really doesn’t matter, and while you could never bench 350, you can’t even muster up 10 pushups now. So, what’s your point?

Whether your past is accurate or not, you know these moments in your life when you physically can’t do something eats at you. It’s a gut-check moment where you get to make a choice. You get to choose to continue to take the handout of weakness, or pass on the handout to sit on your can and get your ass moving.

Hint: Get your ass moving.

If you’ve never done anything really hard, then you’ve never experienced the lessons and blessings from the process. In the book Chop Wood Carry Water, there’s a sentence that summarizes this perfect. “Everyone wants to be great until it’s time to do what greatness requires.” To do something great requires tedious, inconvenient, and consistent effort. It requires you to evaluate what everyone else is doing, and choose to do the opposite. It requires you to have personal leadership and to give peer pressure the middle finger. In other words, it teaches you to respect the process. You cannot become strong and fit without embracing the process of this life-long journey. Even though someone will call this “judging others,” simply do a couple polls today as you interact with people. For every 10 people you come in contact with, how many would you say are strong, healthy, and fit?

Swim upstream fellow reader.