Never get bored of exercise again

So I was talking to a guy on a consult the other day and he's like, Noah, I used to be so fit. I used to be so in love with training. It was so easy to me. But for the last year or so, I just have not been motivated at all to go to the gym. It's like pulling teeth for me to even just get my shoes on and go to the gym. I can't do it anymore. And I try to have willpower, but it's just not doing it. I'm miserable. And he's like, what do I do? Like, do I just push harder? How can I have more willpower? And I asked him, I'm like, well, what are you doing? And he's like, well, I'm just doing the same training that I've always done, push, pull, legs. I've been doing it for the last 6 years and it served me well. And I'm like, have you ever considered not doing that? Have you ever considered switching it up, going to a new gym, or even just doing like a new training split? He's like, nah, I didn't really think of that. You know, I just thought that like consistency meant me doing the same thing every single day. And I was like, no, consistency is just you enacting some form of fitness every day. And I notice so many guys fall into that same trap where they're like, man, I'm trying to stay consistent, but I just can't 'cause I hate it. And I try to use willpower and all it does is it makes me resent this activity in and of itself. It makes me resent training. It makes me resent exercise. It makes me resent using my body. And I have to be real with them. And I have to say, why aren't you switching it up? Like, what are you doing here? Because this is the key. I am not a consistent guy at all. I'm very inconsistent. I love novelty. I love switching things up. And I used to hate that about myself, right? Because I thought that you had to choose one thing and one thing only and just do it for the rest of your life. 'Cause that's what they want you to think. People or society wants specialized individuals 'cause then you're a cog in a machine, right? And you're dependable and you're reliable and you're predictable. But that's not how humans are meant to operate, right? We never really did one thing for an extended period of time. We were always switching it up. We were always adapting. And this applies really well to fitness. And you have to think about it too from the concept of what is fitness, right? Unless you are training to become an Olympic swimmer, unless you are training to get up on a bodybuilding stage, you should not be specializing. Your only objective should be to be as fit as possible for as long as possible. So it doesn't matter how dialed your training is. If it's not consistent, it's bullshit. What you should focus on is what type of training you need to do to make yourself in love with training, to make it where it's harder for you to not train than it is for you to train. Don't use willpower. Get rid of this David Goggins idea that you have to embrace the grind, that you have to, it has to be masochistic, right? It's punishment. It's not. It is a gift and it is a joy to use your body. You need to be grateful for the fact that you can use your body. And you also have to understand all the benefits that come from maintaining this level of like physical attunement. You see, a lot of us look at exercise as just exercise. We do it to build the muscle and we do it to burn the fat. But in reality, that is like the tip of the iceberg for what the benefits are to training. I mean, that's just a byproduct. Like, you be a fit person, you just train consistently. That's gonna happen regardless of how you train. The real benefits come from the kinesthetic intelligence component of it, right? We don't think of physicality of having an intelligence, like, concept. Like, we don't think of it as being a form of intelligence, but it is. Your ability to acquire new movement patterns and to acquire new physical skills is just as important and also contributes itself to the more typical intelligence quota of being able to learn new cognitive skills like writing or reading or topics or memory or anything like that. So that's factor number one. Factor number two is if you're bored of something, just switch it up, right? There's nothing stopping you from going and training typical weightlifting to focusing on running marathons or 5Ks or whatever it is, or even just going and training gymnastics. Like right now, a majority of my training is gymnastics training. Like, I'm doing handstands, I'm doing muscle-ups, I'm doing all these pull-up things. I'm just watching gymnastics and I'm copying it. I'm doing a lot of aerial and like acrobatic shit as well. I've just really enjoyed that. And this has opened up a new obsession and a new love with training that I've been not missing, but I didn't even know that I could get to this level. And I was thinking about it, it's like, well, Noah, if you know this, why were you still so stuck on your old training ways of the just like typical martial arts, and then weightlifting. Like, why were you stuck on that? It's because I was scared of giving up what I had. And this is really common. We're afraid to let go of what we already have, even if what we already have isn't serving us. So I had this idea in my head that if I started running a bunch, I would shrivel away. I would become super small. I would just look like a skeleton. And that worried me. And I was afraid of losing what I had. I had an ego attached to my lifting. But in reality, one, it's like, you think that you are way better than you actually are, right? You— we all know it's some chud at the weightlifting gym that thinks he looks like a Mr. Olympia, but in reality he looks like a fat ass and he can't even walk up a flight of stairs. So I had to readapt my concept of what fitness is, and I also had to embrace the fact of the unknown. I don't know what's gonna happen if I start running a lot. Well, anyway, I started running. I got really good at running. My cardio is absurd now. I have the best cardio I've ever had, and and my lifting got better. I got stronger. I got much better body composition, right? I, it's just like, I love this new version of me. And the beauty of it is I may love it now because it's novel, but if I get bored of it, that's fine. I stop running. I stop doing whatever I'm doing and I can go back to what I was doing before. So there is no sunk cost. You gotta get, gotta get rid of this sunk cost fallacy and also understand that your body's so adaptive. So your body has memory. You have muscle memory. It is so much easier to gain back muscle when you've already built it. So go through a period of meathead lifting, but if you're over it, that's fine. Switch something up. What's going to happen is distance makes the heart grow fonder. You're going to spend some time away from that weightlifting. You're going to come back with that newfound obsession that you had from the beginning because it's new again, it's novel. And that's how you train. That's why I recommend training cycles. That's why I recommend you train everything, because it keeps things consistent, right? So you've got to look at consistency at a larger scale. When we think of consistency, we think it means doing the same thing every single day.. But when there's an umbrella goal where you can do things that spark novelty and still contribute to that one goal, like that is the sweet spot to be, especially if you are someone like me who's ADHD and who needs that, that new stimuli and that new experience. So I do that with my training. I do that with my lifestyle. I do that with my work, right? I have multiple projects at all times. So if I get bored of a project, I put it on maintenance mode and then I go and I focus on another project. When I get bored of a training style, I put it on maintenance mode. And then I focus on another training style and I do that ad infinitum. And that is the reason why I haven't missed a day of training in 14 years. That's the reason that I'm able to post on the internet literally every single day for the last 3 years. And I am so inconsistent. Like, it is so unlike me to do something every day until I hack a way to make novelty consistent, right? Because when it comes to writing, I write about whatever I'm interested in. So what I'm interested in changes every day. Not like the writing is just a way for me to express that. Right? I can make videos every day because I'm not getting bored of the video process. It's not that I'm making videos, I'm thinking about things and talking about things, but that can change. So do the same thing with fitness. Whatever you're doing right now, switch it up. It's going to serve you so much better. You're going to unlock this new athletic version of yourself. You're going to have better self-esteem. You're going to have a better awareness and understanding of your body. You are going to feel better. You are going to look better, and you're going to have such a unique strength profile you're gonna be able to have more access to new experiences and new opportunities. Like, you are cucking yourself if you're only training in a weightlifting gym, if you're only training at a bodybuilding gym. You go to an MMA gym, you're gonna get pieced up. You go to run club, you're gonna get absolutely dusted. Think about how lame you'll feel if you lose in a race to your prospective girlfriend, right? You go and you wanna train new style, you go on a hike, you wanna do some new athletic activity, and you can't 'cause you cucked yourself 'cause you were scared. So it comes out of fear. You need to get rid of the fear. You need to let go of what if. Right? And you need to be more creative. And that's how you remain consistent. Apply this in fitness, apply this in other areas of your life. Get rid of this idea that you have to do the same thing every single day for yourself to be consistent, right? Umbrella goals, guys. That's what this is about. Anyway, have a good one. Hope this was helpful.