We don’t always feel our best.
We can’t control sickness, injuries, or how motivated we are.

We will want to quit, call it in, not play.
It can be challenging to show up when we’re feeling bad.
We will make excuses and surrender to discomfort if we allow ourselves.

We must make the choice.
Is this just discomfort or will this truly hurt us.

We know our bodies and mind.
We know the difference between pain and injury.
We know how sick we are and if we’re able to perform through the discomfort.

When we’re not feeling our best, we set an internal precedent for when we quit and when we don’t.
There are times to call off when playing will only make us worse and benefit no one.
And there are times to lift ourselves up, gut it out, and get through it.

This weekend my son faced that choice during a soccer tournament.
Injured and sick, he had to decide whether to stay on the bench or lace up and return.
His decision was to lace up.
He showed up for himself and his teammates when the game was on the line.
These small decisions set the tone for what comes the rest of life when the next test comes.

We assume.

We assume tone, motives, intentions, emotions, and meaning without enough information to be certain. We build stories in our heads and react to those stories as if they are fact. This wastes time, drains energy, creates conflict, and strains relationships.

Mental fitness requires an assumptions test.

Pause before reacting. Explore what may be missing. Gather more information before taking action. Better understanding creates better decisions, stronger relationships, improved performance, and better focus and energy.

All we need is an assumptions test.

We want to control it all. Plays, outcome, movement, performance, advancement, winning, losing. We focus on controlling each player, swing, throw, movement, decision, victory, defeat, mistakes. We try to control and micromanage every little thing, losing sight of the overall picture that we control none of the outcome. What’s important is we coach, not command. Setting the pieces where they should be, developing where we can, instilling confidence, and letting the game play out with our support and leadership. A coach develops, allows each their own path, finds strengths, and puts players in situations to grow. Mental fitness helps us step back, stay strategically active without overmanaging, and allow players to learn within their own capacity while enjoying the game.

We judge constantly. Evaluating. Comparing. Scrutinizing. Correcting. Every person an opportunity to judge. The judgments will come whether invited or not. The practice is choosing what to do with them. We can allow them to create frustration, impatience, and disconnection, or recalibrate them into understanding, curiosity, creativity, and action. Mental fitness is noticing the judgment without allowing it to run us. Choosing connection instead of constant correction.

Autopilot runs and we go. Replaying reactions, frustrations, anxieties, and loops until it becomes “normal.” We live inside our heads, replaying and reliving the same scenarios day in and day out. Mental fitness is intentionally pausing, checking in with the body, and listening to what is unsettled. Tight neck, clenched jaw, restless leg, tight chest. The body knows. Finding, understanding, acknowledging, and feeling is part of recalibrating. A quick pause to check in shifts the mood, relieves frustration and anxiety, makes what is important clear, and gets us back in the race with fresh tires and more gas.

No two days are the same. Each day asks something of us. Some days require more. Some days are about other people. We can become rigid, wanting our routine, our schedule, our way. That anxiety and frustration can steal the moment from us and from others. Mental fitness allows us to recognize it before it spreads. To bend. To recalibrate. To intentionally direct our time, focus, attention and energy toward what’s important. Life is smoother when we stop resisting the moment and choose to be where we are with who we are with.

Stoic On The Weekends
Mother That Bare You

4.48

“Your way is therefore to manage this minute in harmony with nature, and part with it cheerfully; and like a ripe olive when you drop, be sure to speak well of the mother that bare you, and make your acknowledgements to the tree that produced you.” — Marcus Aurelius

We are part of the whole
Given and gifted
Granted by God and nature
Passed down through generations
From our mothers.

They bear us
Giving themselves
Blood, body, soul
To make us.

Every person on Earth
You are your mother’s child.

8.36

“Do not let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole. Do not try to picture everything bad that could possibly happen. Stick with the situation at hand, and ask, ‘Why is this so unbearable? Why can I not endure it?’ You will be embarrassed to answer. Then remind yourself that past and future have no power over you. Only the present, and even that can be minimized. Just mark off its limits. And if your mind tries to claim that it cannot hold out against that … well, then, heap shame upon it.” — Marcus Aurelius

We think we have it figured out Then crap gets in the way. Dogs get sick Things break Obligations pile up Plans derail. Hours disappear cleaning up problems we never planned for. Mental fitness is tested in the interruptions frustrations and pressure of everyday life. The real challenge is deciding who we become while handling it. We can be angry frustrated and short tempered Or stay calm collected present and refuse to allow the crap to make us crappy.

We think we’re terrible at it. And we are. We think we’re no good, not progressing, have no skill, will never be good. Only part of this is true, for now. We don’t see the slow progress being made. We only see the bad, that others are better. We feel the frustration of learning something new, failing, struggling, not being able to execute. It feels like there is no end in sight, like it’s taking longer than it should, that we should already be good. The desire to quit calls. But we’ve just started. We’re learning. Of course we’re bad. Everyone is in the beginning. Skills are earned with time, practice, tolerance for frustration, repetition. Lots of repetition. We have to be bad before we can be good. Others see our progress because they’re not as close to it. We are getting better if we’re working on it. We just don’t see it.

We had a plan, but no plan to fail. We did not think ahead to what happens when it comes apart. We did not plan our response, what we would do, who we would be, or how others would be impacted. We did not go more than one layer deep, no backup. Struggle, frustration, and irritation were inevitable. We knew emotions would lead us, distractions would pull our attention, and focus would break, yet we did not plan for it. The opportunity is to anticipate that it will come apart, plan our response to likely failures, decide who we will be, how we will show up, and how we lead others when failure comes. Plan many layers deep, expect friction, and be prepared to respond. Use mental fitness to plan for the moments when the plan does not go as planned.

Days speed by. Never enough time. The to do list is never ending. We scramble from one thing to the next. Something is always popping up to distract, pulling attention, fracturing focus, stalling progress. Mental fitness gives us a choice. Organize. Put things in buckets. Bundle tasks together. Categorize. Prioritize. Execute singularly. Set boundaries with technology, people, and ourselves. Turn off notifications and alerts. Task switch less. Focus singularly more. All attention focused and sustained into one task for a block time. Improving efficiency and performance. Organize days, schedules, tasks, and communications in bundles. Not derailed by seemingly urgent interruptions. Cut it out.

We have the now, yet we trade it for worries over the past, the future, and the imagined. The past and future do not exist, and they belong to no one, yet they still take control of the mind. Mental fitness is the practice of reclaiming that control by returning attention to the present moment, where life is actually happening. Through awareness of the body, breath, and surroundings, we interrupt distraction and step back into what is real. This is how we take the power back and live with intention.

We are not separate from each other or from nature. What injures another injures us. What benefits another benefits us. We were part of nature before our births and will be so after our deaths. We are all one, before, now, and forever. Mental fitness trains us to see this connection clearly, act with intention, and align our behavior with the whole.

We are not separate from each other or from nature. What injures another injures us. What benefits another benefits us. We were part of nature before our births and will be so after our deaths. We are all one, before, now, and forever. Mental fitness trains us to see this connection clearly, act with intention, and align our behavior with the whole.

Something goes wrong even though you did the work and expected it to hold. Frustration builds, anxiety rises, and attention shifts toward blame. This is where mental fitness is tested. Pause, recalibrate, and return to first principles. Start at the most obvious point of failure and work the problem directly in front of you, then move to the next one. On down the line. Focus is restored, energy is properly allocated, and performance is rebuilt without damaging relationships. The solution comes through disciplined attention, not reaction.

We will automatically get older, but we will NOT automatically get better. Days are full, obligations stack, and spare time goes to comfort. Change is happening to us, not because of us. Mental fitness is choosing how we grow. Everything is a sacrifice, time for time, life for life. We can choose our next upgrade, set intention, and act consistently. It is simple but not easy. There is not much time, but there is enough. Choose your upgrade.

We repeat patterns we already know don’t work. The same mistakes, arguments, frustrations, and conflicts show up again because mental fitness is not applied in the moment. Getting older does not guarantee getting better. Without intention, attention, and reflection, we continue operating from outdated patterns. The change happens when we pause and ask a better question, what would my wiser, future self do here? That question interrupts autopilot, redirects focus, and creates space to choose differently. Mental fitness is the ability to learn faster, apply lessons sooner, and act with intention before the pattern repeats.