Just Commit To Putting In Your Time

I've never been much of a physical guy, even though I have a physical body-in the sense that I have the kind of body where people have asked me, "Do you play football?" Of course, they don't ask that anymore, not at my age. But they'll still ask sometimes, "Did you play football?"

And my standard response back in those days when they used to ask "do you" was "No, I play guitar."

I mean, I did my calisthenics during high school, and I did my obligatory four hours worth of physical education in college, but beyond that I never really cared about it. But then, about my mid-30s, I began to think, "Hold on!" I was beginning to feel aches and pains.

I was beginning to think, "Oh, my back's hurting; oh, maybe I should get a cane." And then I'd snap myself out of it by whopping myself over the head and saying, "Hold on! You're a young man!" And so I decided I was going to become someone who exercised-not an exercise fanatic, but someone who exercised.

And at that point, I decided I was going to become someone who was a runner, and I was going to get up-because my schedule permitted it-every day at 6:30, or almost every day at 6:30, and I was going to go running for about four to five miles.

And it did change my life around. Here I am nearly 60 years old, and I feel better than the majority of 40-year-olds.

Listen, to think about running is easy. Now, you know if you've ever tried to do it that it isn't that easy. But what I discovered was that the hardest mile-in fact, the only hard mile-was the first mile. So all that I found necessary was to commit, no matter what it took, to run the first mile. After that, I found it easy.

And so we go on a few years there, and I kind of drift away from doing that. The career really takes on prominence, and here I am in my early 50s, and I was in Singapore, in a luxury hotel. We were doing the World Internet Summit.

And again, I had committed to the gym, but my commitments were not to be anything exceptional-they were just to stay fit.

At this particular time, I discovered that I'd done over 30 minutes worth of exercise. Now, that was a world record for me...well, maybe not in my high school days and college days, but outside of school that was definitely a world record.

So after doing that I came back down to the swimming pool, where my friends and companions had been while I'd been in the gym doing the treadmill. They looked at my body and said, "Wow, you're really fit." Again, it was the high school thing-"Do you play football?"

I said, "Well, thanks, I appreciate that, but what you may not know is that I'm celebrating. Today is the first time I ever went over 30 minutes for an exercise routine."

And then guess what happened? I bought a dance routine-Latin dancing, by the way-and I just couldn't get myself to finish it. Then I bought the program Abs of Steel, and I couldn't get myself to finish it. It was too much work.

Finally I decided, "Hold on, you don't have to commit to finishing the program. All you've got to commit to is that you're going to be there for the duration." In other words, with this 48-minute exercise program, I told myself, "Easy thing, Ted. You know, you haven't done more than 12 or 15 minutes, where it started to hurt your belly.

"That's okay. If that's all you can do, that's all you can do, but you're gonna stay there for the whole 48 minutes." You know what? The next time, since I had to be there anyway, I finished the entire thing!

It was really amazing. And then I did it the next time and the next time, and that became a pattern, and then it became easy. And then the next thing comes along-I decided I needed more strength training. And I saw some advertising that told me, "Well, you can do what you need to do in 22 minutes a day with the BowFlex."

And I said, "Well, that's great, that's great." I didn't have to find any extra time. All I had to do was say, "I'm gonna dedicate the last 22 minutes to the BowFlex. I'm gonna dance the first 30-32 minutes."

And so I was able to incorporate another regimen, a whole other effort, in the time that I'd already allotted, without making any substantive change.

Again, the message here is if you find it hard to commit to all the work, just commit to the beginning, just commit to the duration, just commit to showing up. It is like Woody Allen said-showing up is 95% of success.
If you can get started, and if you're going to hang around for the full time frame required to do it right... You'll find it easy to do it right.