Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Self-Care Tips for People Who Hate Self-Care Tips

Episode Date: December 16, 2019

This episode is part of a monthly series that I have dubbed “Motivation Monday.” (Yes, I know, very creative of me. What can I say, I’m a genius…) Seriously though, the idea here is simple: One Monday every month, I’m going to post a short and punchy episode that I hope gets you fired up to tackle the workouts, work, and everything else that you have planned for the week ahead. As we all know, it’s one thing to know what you want to do, but it’s something else altogether to actually make yourself do it, and I hope that this series gives you a jolt of inspiration, energy, and encouragement to get at it. So, if you like what you hear, then make sure to check back for the latest and greatest installment.   Mentioned on The Show: Books by Mike Matthews: https://legionathletics.com/products/books/ --- Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.legionathletics.com/signup/

Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider picking up one of my bestselling health and fitness books, including Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for Men, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for Women, my flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef, and my 100% practical and hands-on blueprint for personal transformation inside and outside of the gym, The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Now, these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best bodies ever. And you can find them on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes & Noble stores. Again, that's Bigger Leaner Stronger for Men, Thinner Leaner Stronger for Women, The Shredded Chef, and The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Oh, and I should also mention that you can get any of the audiobooks 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account, which is the perfect way to make those pockets of downtime,

like commuting, meal prepping, and cleaning, more interesting, entertaining, and productive. meal prepping, and cleaning more interesting, entertaining, and productive. So if you want to take Audible up on that offer, and if you want to get one of my audio books for free, go to www.legionathletics.com slash Audible. That's L-E-G-I-O-N athletics slash A-U-D-I-B-L-E, and sign up for your account. We all know the difficulties of working out. We know what it's like to climb the peaks and suffer the valleys. We know that progress never gets easier and returns diminish. Some people respond to this with pure piss and vinegar. No holds barred, no days off, no excuses, no explanations, no regrets. Buckle up, butterball. They say if you want to level up, you got to train insane, earn every inch, fuck sleep,

drink pre-workout, release the kraken, shriek, flail, gyrate. flail, gyrate. And then there are those who coo in ASMR tones about the need for kindness and care, for embracing your wholeness and radiance, for dropping into your heart space and feeling into your sensations. And oh, don't forget to exfoliate. And it's okay if you didn't work out today. Here's a baby Yoda. Too many people lean too heavily toward one of these extremes and neglect the other. They have long weaned themselves on either a diet of nothing but oppressively tough love or cloying self-care. And in the fitness racket, there's a lot more of the former than the latter. Everywhere you turn, there's another hard-faced, hard-bodied growling about embracing the suck and doing it anyway so you can earn the aftermath one brick at a time. The ball ache is both of these approaches ultimately hold you back.

Both are unkind. Stir the agita too much and it reaches critical mass and then you spiral into burnout. Caudle yourself too much and your spirit cools and congeals, and you slide into blackout. The key, then, is balance, in knowing when to flow and when to float, when to brace up and bear down, and when to back off and breathe. Go, go, go versus slow, slow, slow. But how do you find that balance? Well, that is one of life's great mysteries. I wish I had a pat answer. My guess though is there isn't one. I think it's a matter of learning about ourselves and our capabilities and our limits. And the only way to do that is to spend a lot of time at the coalface and then reflect on our experiences. How hard can we push before the wheels start to fall off? How much rest do we need to recover?

This will be heavily informed by what we value most in life. Do we want purpose, intensity, and achievement? Or do we want latitude, intensity, and achievement? Or do we want latitude, relaxation, and enjoyment? Neither path is inherently better than the other, but we do have to choose one. We can either strive or we can savor, but not both. A simple illustration of this is the four burners theory of life. So imagine your life as a stove with four burners that symbolize the most immediate compartments of your life, your health, your family, your friends, and your work. So the theory states that to be a high achiever, you need to virtually cut off one of your burners. And to be truly exceptional, you need to virtually cut off one of your burners. And to be truly exceptional,

you need to snuff out two. So in other words, if you want to have a great career, you must sacrifice much of either your health, your social life, or your family. And if you want to join the ranks of the elite, you must knock out another as well. Now, this analogy highlights an important axiom of life, and that is it's a game of trade-offs. If you want to have a vibrant and fulfilling career in marriage, you are not going to have much time or energy to give to your health or your social life. And if you want to be a model parent with exceptional health, it's going to be hard, if not impossible, to excel in your work. And if you want to divide your efforts equally among the four elements, you can achieve much in the way of balance, but little self-actualization. So the key here isn't what trade-offs you accept, but simply that you consciously accept and embrace them.

Otherwise, you're not going to find very much satisfaction in living because you'll always be painfully aware of whatever is missing without the counterbalancing consolation of what's not. the counterbalancing consolation of what's not. up one of my best-selling health and fitness books. My most popular ones are Bigger Leaner Stronger for Men, Thinner Leaner Stronger for Women, my flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef, and my 100% practical hands-on blueprint for personal transformation, The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Now, these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best body ever. And you can find them anywhere online where you can buy books like Amazon, Audible, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes and Noble stores. So again, that is Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for Men, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for Women, The Shredded Chef, and The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation.

Oh, and one other thing is you can get any one of those audiobooks 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account. And that's a great way to make those pockets of downtime like commuting, meal prepping, and cleaning more interesting, entertaining, and productive. Now, if you want to take Audible up on that offer and get one of my audio books for free, just go to legionathletics.com slash Audible and sign up for your account. I've chosen to more or less extinguish the friends burner and to dial back the family one as well, so I can maximize my work and health, which are intertwined for me, of course. Now, practically

speaking, what that means is I spend about 80% of my waking hours studying, working, and working out. And then most of the remaining 20% of my time goes to my family. Now, at some point in a later season in my life, I probably will want to trim work and turn up family and friends. And maybe I'll even want to add a fifth burner, civic or social responsibilities. But as for now, this is the life that makes the most sense for me, given my goals and temperament and circumstances. That said, such an imbalanced lifestyle that revolves mostly around work may not suit you at all. And there's really nothing wrong with that. have as much of an impact in the world and you won't make as much money as you could, you will have the opportunity to enjoy something that frustratingly eludes so many overachievers. And that is simply enough. No matter how much money, prestige, victories, trinkets, beauty, or sex some people have, they seem to be hardwired to simply want more. What

for? They couldn't tell you. All they know is they don't have enough. If you could sum up their life in a bumper sticker, it would read, whoever dies with the most toys wins. So regardless of where you fall on the strive to savor spectrum, know this, self-care is meant to be a sojourn, not hearth and home. It's a pit stop in the race. If you linger there for too long, it is procrastination. If you leave it out for too long, it is punishment. So the trick is knowing how to thread this needle, how to get the work done without ravaging the worker and knowing when to screw up your courage and gut it out and when to strike your flag and regroup. Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider picking up one of my bestselling health and fitness books, including bigger, leaner, stronger for men,

thinner, leaner, stronger for women, my flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef, and my 100% practical and hands-on blueprint for personal transformation inside and outside of the gym, The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Now, these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best bodies ever. And you can find them on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes & Noble stores. Again, that's Bigger Leaner Stronger for Men, Thinner Leaner Stronger for Women, The Shredded Chef, and The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Oh, and I should also mention that you can get any of the audiobooks 100% free when

you sign up for an Audible account, which is the perfect way to make those pockets of downtime, like commuting, meal prepping, and cleaning, more interesting, entertaining, and productive. prepping and cleaning more interesting, entertaining, and productive. So if you want to take Audible up on that offer, and if you want to get one of my audio books for free, go to www.legionathletics.com slash Audible. That's L-E-G-I-O-N athletics slash A-U-D-I-B-L-E and sign up for your account. U-D-I-B-L-E and sign up for your account. All right. Well, that's it for today's episode. I hope you found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and you don't mind doing me a favor, could you please leave a quick review for the podcast on iTunes or wherever you are listening from? Because those reviews not only convince people that they should check out the show, they also increase the search visibility and help more people find their way to me and to

the podcast and learn how to build their best body ever as well. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then simply subscribe to the podcast and whatever app you're using to listen and you will not miss out on any of the new stuff that I have coming. And last, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscle for life.com and share your thoughts. Let me know how you think I could do this better. I read every email myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback. All right. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.