In this vlog, the creator reflects on day 70 of a 90‑day transformation, identifying self‑negotiation—second‑guessing yourself about whether to do a beneficial habit—as the single habit that stalls progress. He explains how a solid, pre‑decided routine eliminates the need for daily decisions, saves time, and prevents wasted mental energy. He emphasizes that action, not motivation, sparks motivation, sharing his own morning routine (early wake‑up, quick carbs, caffeine, creatine, and a gym session) as an example. He also discusses the importance of consistent physical fitness—strength training, nutrition, and flexibility work (splits)—for both performance and long‑term health, especially as we age. The video concludes with a challenge to viewers: identify areas where they negotiate with themselves, create non‑negotiable routines, and simply step into them, regardless of personal preferences for morning or evening schedules.
Chapters
Good morning, friends. Good morning. So it is a beautiful Friday morning. The sun's coming up behind me and the moon is up in front of me. It's quite interesting. I'm heading to the gym. Got a good 6 hours of sleep last night. Wait a minute, did I get 6? Yep, 6. Had to do some math in my head really quick there. So here I am again, falling behind on doing my video updates. So for all of the improvements that I've made over the past 60-something days, I think we're in day 70 now. I'm gonna have to check and update these videos. I've just been uploading them and not doing anything with them. My schedule is really packed right now. I am managing an awful lot with workload, uh, the things that I'm trying to accomplish in my own personal life— business life, I mean. Well, actually, it's both. So, um, in spite of all of the things that I've been doing to, you know, facilitate a change in this 90-day transformation, one place where I continue to fall down is doing a daily video. And it seems like it could be, should be such a simple thing, right? And I don't do it. So, but here's what I've thought about and discovered the last couple days. Um, talked about this before in previous videos, and so ultimately doing a video every day documenting what's going on is not the most important thing to me, right? The most important thing to me is doing things that will actually impact the way that I think and the way that I feel and the results that I get. So, two of the things that, that are really vital are making sure I take care of my physical fitness because how I eat, how I train, these things impact the way that I feel and perform physically, right? And I think to a great extent also impact how I think. Now, what I say to myself, the messages that I, you know, allow to go through my head, the self-talk, obviously impacts the way that I, you know, approach the day and my motivation, my energy, my joy, my gratitude. So, those things are very important. Now, what can get in the way of that? Negotiating with yourself. Negotiating with yourself is where you say, "Oh, you know, I really don't feel like going to the gym today. So, maybe I can do this instead." Sometimes, that can be an acceptable alternative. However, for me, what I found is the best thing, the thing that works the best, is to have a routine and stick to it. And so, when I've got a routine and I make a decision— I'm sorry, when I have a routine, I don't need to make a decision, right? I just get up and do the routine. So, I think For me, when I found myself negotiating with myself over certain things in the last few days, I wind up wasting time. And it can be significant. You know, sometimes it can be 30 minutes. And I'm not saying that every minute of the day needs to be utilized for something productive. However, Time is our most precious asset, right? And if I'm wasting it on, you know, just overthinking something or negotiating with myself, that's not a really effective use of my time. If I want to sit on my ass and watch TV for an hour or an hour and a half, you know, that could be an effective use of time. If I need to decompress, I want to be entertained, I want to learn something, Right? But negotiating with myself or, you know, getting stuck in overthinking is just useless in my judgment. So, you know, decide what you're going to do. Like, get a routine and just get up and do it. For me, what I found is that motivation does not precede action. Action is what triggers motivation. So, you know, this morning, 4 o'clock, 4:17, I wake up, I'm out of bed, you know, I went downstairs, I checked my breath with my machine, I'm burning fat, woo-hoo, thank God. So, I had to have some carbohydrates before I came to the gym. You know, so I had like 2.5 ounces of banana, 1 ounce of apple, I had some black coffee, and so I didn't delay my caffeine this morning, and creatine and water, and I'm out the door, you know. So, and I'm going to be on track this morning because I didn't think about, oh, you know, Should I do this? Should I do that? It's like the sun is coming up right now and, you know, I've got the morning sunlight from driving to the gym, but it's not the same as standing there looking at it. So I'm going to look at it before I go into the gym and then, like, I'm just going to stay on track. I'm starting to bumble here in this, in this video. My apologies. The point is this: setting a routine and eliminating the need to negotiate, or the possibility that you're going to negotiate with yourself over doing something, is, you know, super effective. I'll tell you, one of the areas where my brain really likes to negotiate is when it comes to doing the splits routine. Because for whatever reason, I don't like it. Like, I'm resisting that. And, you know, the amazing thing is that since I've started doing it again and been consistent with it, I've noticed a much greater degree of flexibility. And, you know, as I age, as we all age, flexibility as well as muscle mass are two of the things that really decrease, and they're vitally important to maintaining our health as we age, you know, getting into our 60s, into our 70s, and beyond. So the thing that is really important to me for my overall well-being and for me to be in optimal health is a thing that I don't want to do. So that's where not negotiating with myself really comes into play. So here, my, you know, my challenge to you is find the areas in your life where you negotiate with yourself over things that are really beneficial for you. Find the areas in your life where you're negotiating or second-guessing with yourself over things that, you know, are your goals, the direction that you want to move in, and you're being blocked because of your own getting in your own way. And create a routine for yourself and just get up and step into it. You know, and it's not necessarily just what you do first thing in the morning. I mean, I never used to be a morning person, and, you know, if you would have told me 20 years ago that I'd be getting up at 4 o'clock in the morning and going to the gym, I'd have been like, "You're out of your mind." But, you know, the truth of the matter is that that's what shifted in my life. Some people are not morning people. You know, I was listening to a popular YouTuber, you know, his name is Jeff and he has a channel called ATHLEAN-X, and he is not a morning person. He says he just struggles to get going in the morning, and he literally works out at 10 or 11 o'clock at night and then has dinner. Like, I couldn't do that, you know, that just seems fundamentally wrong for me. But my point is, you know, wherever your block is in the day, wherever your resistance comes, whether it's something in the morning, something in the afternoon. You know, take a look at that and set a routine so that you're not having to think about things. You're just stepping into it and getting it done. So let's go get the sun. Let's go lift the weights. Let's go get it done. I'll talk to you later. Laver. I'll talk to you laver. It's a new word.
