“You don’t get stronger by adding weight. You add weight when you get stronger.”
—Alec Blenis, Instagram

I love this quote. It feels a little counterintuitive at first, yet speaks to the fundamentally important understanding of skill building that keeps us safe, strong, and motivated in the gym: Keep showing up. Do the work. Get help if needed. It’s hard until it’s not, and then you level up. It also resonates in two domains outside of strength training:

Health Habit Change
“I know what I need to do, I just don’t do it.” I have written about this phrase I hear often from patients. For two years I met with one of the dieticians in our practice, feeling both hopeful and a little hopeless at the same time. Every week or two I both dreaded and anticipated the calls, knowing I had both attempted and failed to implement our action plan from the prior session. I muttered this statement myself how many times? We stopped meeting eventually; likely multifactorial but I think we both felt that further gains were unlikely. That may have been a year ago.

I felt a bit defeated at first, thinking my behaviors had not changed much, and I had not lost any weight. But looking back, those sessions served the same purpose as the years I spent with my personal trainer. Julianne was my nutrition coach. She made me better at executing the knowledge I already had, reflecting, investigating, trouble shooting, and brainstorming how to apply both basic and advanced nutrition principles in the various contexts of my life. I now eat more colorful plants, and I get substantially more fiber on a daily basis. I am much better attuned to hunger and satiety, I always fuel before workouts and make sure I bring a snack for after. I keep healthy snacks at the office and hydrate consistently. I eat a lot less dessert, and volumes are about half of what they used to be. I walk the talk of “enjoy every bite” much better now than before. My portions of everything are generally smaller. I estimate that I have shaved a few hundred calories per week from my diet, which should lead to very slow weight loss, about a pound every three months. That actually feels about right, and I can handle this. As I continue to train, both strength and cardio, I see my shape changing more than my mass, which I am happy about.

I keep showing up to apply, adjust, and adapt, and results emerge proportionally. Persistence pays off, and it’s infinitely easier with support from knowledgeable and supportive people like Julianne the registered dietician, my Ethos coaches, and my friends.

Civil Political Discourse
For some years now I have actively sought conversation and connection with my Red Voting Friends. Since 2017 I have supported Braver Angels, and now multiple organizations offer myriad approaches, strategies, and even education and venues to practice connecting meaningfully with people who disagree with us. Some even impact policy in a bipartisan way in local governments. We have come so far, and have very far yet to go.

How hopeless and/or hopeful do you feel about the state of political discourse, nationally, locally, at the level of your policy makers, in your social circles, in your family?

How do you impact those places and groups with your presence, your words, your attitude, demeanor, expressions? Bluntly: are you part of the civil discourse problem or solution?

It’s hard, I know. Uncomfortable, sometimes viscerally and distressingly so. And not everyone is a suitable counterpart for such conversations. Still, it is a learnable skill and more and more amazing people like Mónica Guzman and the folks at Braver Angels, Builders, and the Dignity Index provide support and education to help us do it better. We just have to keep showing up.

This weekend I will gather with one of my Blue voting friends for my first ever “Builders BBQ“. We won’t barbeque and I will not be actively bridging with any Red voters. But Blue Friend and I will talk about how we can do it better. We will practice curiosity, openness, self-regulation, and holding connection in front. We may even role play a little, who knows? It’s not exactly what the Builders BBQ is meant to be, but I have taken the liberty to show up how it works for me, and to keep iterating from here. I fully expect that there will be a Red-Blue gathering in my foreseeable future. If not, no matter.

I continue to invite and facilitate connection, unafraid and well-equipped to wade confidently into disagreement of all kinds with respect and good humor. I have trained for years and it has paid–is paying–off in spades. I keep practicing because while I am proficient, I still have a long way to go. Bridging work is a labor of love. It takes time to build trust, testing, building, and proving the strength of ties that start slim and tenuous, but have the potential to hold us together through the harshest storms.

Each and every one of us has the capacity–and I would argue a civic duty–to engage in building and bridging work, or at least to not contribute to derision and division. The nature of a democracy is that the power should lie with the people. We are the system. We get stronger as a collective when we exercise our power to connect.

Consistency beats intensity. Keep showing up, my friends, to all that challenges us in life.
We’ got this.

Listen to “Keep Showing Up” by Doctor Jose de la Rosa Mambo Town for some extra inspiration!