349: The Power of Binary Actions in Achieving Fitness Goals

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This is the real life runners podcast, episode number 349. Binary action.

Angie: 0:29

What's up runners? Welcome to the podcast This week we are excited to be here and talking to you all about binary action because what's more exciting than binary things? Ones and zeros. Ones and zeros for the win ones, and I mean like our whole life. Runs on ones and zeros now with the amount of technology and computers that we use inside the matrix Well, that's a whole that's a conversation for another day. Maybe that'll be a another podcast episode later this year. Excellent. Welcome to the matrix but today we want to talk about binary action because a lot of runners struggle with inconsistency and you know us we like to Compare our running to real life. And so maybe in your running you're good You know, maybe you're, you're feeling pretty confident, you're out there, you're consistent, you're running, you're strength training, you're doing the things. Maybe you're not. This will apply to you either way, okay? Because what we're talking about today can be applied to the rest of your life also. And there's a, an interesting way of kind of looking at this because I think that a lot of times if you guys are anything like me, you tend to overcomplicate things. And you also might not Always give yourself credit for actually doing things because you didn't do them as, you didn't do as much as you wanted to, or you didn't do it as well as you had hoped, or you didn't get the results that you wanted, and so you just kind of say, well, it's all, it was all, I didn't, I didn't do it. I didn't get it done. Right. And, and we don't give ourselves the credit that we sometimes deserve. I

Kevin: 2:01

think that may be lingering over from when you, you were taking tests back in like younger grades of schools. And I'm, I'm assuming that you were one of those people. I teach several of them that they will finish a test and they will tell me, Oh man, I failed that. And then if you ask them, what grade do you think you got on it? They'll say 90 because to them, if it wasn't a hundred, they failed it. And it's this. Idea of if it wasn't perfect, then it was completely worthless, and there is clearly a wide difference between not perfection and not doing

Angie: 2:34

anything. I may have fallen into that camp when I was in high school. That's true. Okay, so let's talk about how to simplify things a little bit by making it binary, because again, we don't wanna overcomplicate things because oftentimes when we overcomplicate things, it often leads to overwhelm and overwhelm. Overwhelm leads to not taking action. And if we're not taking action, then we're obviously not going to get the results that we want. So if we look at binary actions, yes or no types of questions, did you do it or did you not do it? Binary actions help us get started. So this is a great thing to use if you are trying to start a new habit. or be more consistent with something. It makes it very simple. Did you do the thing, yes, or did you not do the thing?

Kevin: 3:22

Yeah, I mean, this is, I just was at the dentist a couple weeks ago, and you know, everybody knows this one. You roll into the dentist and they ask you, so have you been flossing? And it seems like a real good yes or no answer, but I don't think I've ever answered yes or no to that. Unless I just actually did look them right in the face and say no. Um, but usually I have like, you know, I've been doing okay recently. You know, and by recently, I mean in the last two weeks when I got that message that I was going to have a dentist appointment and I started flossing again, that's what I mean by recently. But I think a lot of people try to make that very simple binary. Have you been flossing? And they make it a whole extra thing of, well, sometimes they're days, they're weeks that I'm better. And, but. Really, it's a yes or no.

Angie: 4:06

Well, kind of. That's an interesting question, and like, I, I totally see where you're going, but have you been flossing? Like, what does that mean? Right? Like, this is what our brains like to say. And look, look at me overcomplicating Look at you immediately going down this direction. Immediately overcomplicating things. Have you been? Like, what does that mean? But that's, that's kind of the point, right? It's like, it's not specific. And that question itself is not

Kevin: 4:27

specific enough. Right. So the question is, we saw you six months ago. Have you actually flossed every day for the last six months?

Angie: 4:34

That is the question, right? There's a binary. Because that is a binary question. If you're, if you said, have you flossed every day over the last six months? The answer is no. Right? And I mean, some people, if you are someone that has consistently flossed every single day for six months or more, I want to give you a shout out right now because mad props to you. I had a period of time that I was being very, very good about, about it and then my floss ran out and then it took me a while to actually like replace the floss in our bathroom. So like just that simple thing, like these little things can throw us off, which is so crazy, right? So, but you know, clarifying the question and making it a simple yes or no question based around one action and like a very specific, specific action. So taking this to running, did you run today? Right? That is the, it's either a yes or it's a no. And some people want to take it as, Well, you know, I was supposed to do five miles, but I only did

Kevin: 5:28

four. But that's not the question. The question isn't what was on your schedule and what did you do? The question is,

Angie: 5:33

did you run? Right, but that's what a lot of us want to, to say. It's like, in our minds, we want to say, Well, it wasn't good enough. Mm hmm. Right? And so we, we add more details when, especially in the beginning. Making it binary and keeping it super simple is a way for you to check the box and put that star on your calendar to say, yes, I did the thing today.

Kevin: 5:54

Yes, because four miles out of five miles is not an 80%. It is a check the box. Yes, I did the thing. And that is much more successful. And that leads to that feeling of success. And the feeling of success starts the momentum of success that leads to the consistency that's going to lead to far greater success. Rather than be like, mm, I got 4 out of 5. Now, instead of being like, yes, I did the run today, now you're like, well, I did most of the run. I did some of the, it was like a B effort because that's, that's what we're going to grade ourselves. Now you don't have that same motivation and carry over momentum to the next day. Right. And

Angie: 6:31

so this can apply to anything. And maybe you're good with running, but maybe it's strength training that you want to be more consistent with. Maybe it's mobility that you want to be more consistent with. Maybe you want to be able to drink a certain amount of water. So the question is, did you drink more water today? That's not the question. The question is. Did you drink 75 ounces of water today? If that's your goal, right? How specific can you make the question so that it is a very easy yes or no. Like, you know, very clearly, did you do the thing or did you not do the thing? And so when you get to this point where you make it super binary and super easy to answer, like any, anyone can answer this, right? Any bystander on the street could see whether or not you did the thing. If they actually saw, you know what you did. So. When you make it binary. You make it very easy to say yes or to say no to a certain thing. And so then you can start to realize, well, okay, am I getting more yeses or am I getting more no's to this thing that I want to be more consistent with? Right.

Kevin: 7:34

You, you make it super objective so that you. You literally are just putting tallies in the yes or no. There's no kind of sort of box in the middle. You're not like, well, I've got an awful lot of checks in that sort of box. No, no, no. You have yeses and you have nos, and then you can make some, some observations based off of clear yeses and clear nos. And if you're looking at it and you're like, man, day after day after day, that answer is no over and over and over again, it's possible that you need to lower the bar. Okay. If you're like, If you didn't say, did I go run today? Okay, let's go to the running example. Let's say, did I run three miles today? And some days you're out there and you're doing two miles and some days you're out there and you're, you're hitting your three. But if you make it binary, yes or no, you can start seeing very clearly if you're doing it or not. And if. If you're out there consistently hitting two, but that's still putting a, a bar, a check in the know side, then maybe you need to lower the bar to are you getting out there and doing two miles Now suddenly you're consistently having, having success and seeing the consistent success. Mm-hmm. that's going to then inspire you to then actually start boosting that bar up a little bit higher. Maybe the first thing you need to do is lower the bar so you can start hitting consistent yeses.

Angie: 8:51

Yeah, and I think that a lot of people, when they hear that, Oh no, now you have to lower the bar, they're going to see that as a failure. But you are already showing up and failing at the thing that you said you wanted to do, right? And that's what I'm trying, that's what we're kind of trying to see here. It's like, lowering the bar in this case is not A failure. It is not saying that you're not good enough. It's saying your expectations and your intentions are not meeting your actions. So maybe you have an intention of going out and running three miles every single day or five days a week or whatever it might be for you. And if the answer, did I do, did I run three miles today? Did I run three miles three days this week or five days this week? If that answer is consistently no, then Kevin's right. Maybe we need to lower the bar. And that is so that you can start getting wins. Because wins, when you start actually being able to say, Yes, I did that. Yes, I did that. That is very positive feedback. Feedback loop for your

Kevin: 9:52

brain. Okay, I have a question for you, because you just went to, did I go out and run three miles, or did I run three miles three times this week? Does it matter the time window of our binary question? Like, are we, are we, is it a better habit to kind of ask that question day upon day? Because if the goal really is to go out and knock out three miles four days out of the week, that means three out of the seven days your answer is gonna be no. Does that throw you off? Like how, how's the best way to have it to handle this? Is it really then week over week you're answering yes or no with a very

Angie: 10:29

binary? Yeah. I mean, you can really look at this any way you want to write. So if your goal, so maybe even take it to be a little bit more broad, which is, did I work out today? Did I move my body today? Right? If that, if that is more of the yes or no question that you want to start with, then you can say, did I get my workout in today? Then that would be, cause I know for me, I run four days a week and I strength train twice a week. And then I either take a rest day or do some active recovery work like yoga. So I like to move, but on my, even on my rest days, I go for a walk, right? Because I really enjoy walking it. It's not a power walk and I'm not out there walking for time or walking for distance. I just like to go out for a walk and move my body. What? It's

Kevin: 11:16

just, you said out there for a power walk. I just imagined you in like the full like swishy, like. Purple and teal like tracksuit from the 80s just trucking through the neighborhood. I don't know why that was the vision That just shot in my head there. I like it. I just thought I'd share

Angie: 11:30

that with our audience. It's wonderful And by the way, I do own that tracksuit. It's sitting in the back of the closet. No, I'm just kidding. Um, but But yeah, I think that depending on what the goal is, then you can change the timeline. You know, maybe it is a daily question that you ask yourself, maybe it is a weekly question that you ask yourself, but I think that the timeline can vary based on what it is you're trying to accomplish. I think

Kevin: 11:52

maybe it's both. Like you can have the, did I work out every day? And knowing that some of those are going to have no's because you have planned rest days, but then at the end, at the end of the week, you have your weekly check. Did I, did I run four days out of the week? Check yes or no.

Angie: 12:07

Well, you could also argue that if you have planned rest days, then Saying no is actually a win correct right like checking the no box on the arrest day is you? Doing exactly what you what you were intending on and that's really the goal here is is your action aligning with your intention So your intention was to take a rest day that day. So yes your action did align with it Now if you're someone that thinks oh, well, you know what even though today is a rest day Maybe I should just go get in a couple miles, you know Like maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I Just when it went ahead and did another workout, then then your intentions not aligning with your action.

Kevin: 12:45

Yeah. And so either way you ask the question to bring the awareness because you can't ask the question and not answer it. Your brain will immediately give you the answer to it. Sometimes it'll try and throw some excuses on top of it. But that's that's what we're trying to get at here is Ask the question in a way that there's just yeses and noes, and then your brain has to give you an answer, and it highlights whether or not we're actually doing this action that we said that we wanted, and you could say, okay, well, if I get these noes day after day after day, I might just quit trying to do the thing. Maybe, maybe you should Maybe. Stop trying to do the thing because it's possible that you're not doing the thing because it's not a priority for you anymore Maybe that's the reason why you keep hitting no after no after no It's possible that you should be lowering the bar and you know This whole idea of are you checking the box applies in so many areas of your life? And that's why I say it's possible The answer is you should stop pursuing that thing if that's been your action and you're just not hitting it Day after day and week after week check your priorities and see is that something that is still a high priority for you because it might not be

Angie: 13:55

Yeah, and that's okay. Right it this is just helping to bring that awareness to it and kind of Uh, along those lines a little bit too is realizing that no does not always mean bad, right? Like yes is not good and no is not bad It's just a simple I did it or I did not do it and like we mentioned before with the rest day Sometimes no is the answer that you want and so the same thing goes here when you're talking about your priorities if you're consistently getting no's and You actually take a step back and reevaluate and you say, okay, well, why am I, why is it no, why is it, why am I constantly getting the nose and like Kevin said, well, maybe that thing's just not a priority for you right now and that's okay again, bringing that awareness and then allowing you to make that choice intentionally and actually set that intention and then do the actions that are aligned with that intention. That's the most important thing. And that really leads us. Yes. Into part two, which is does your action align with your intention? So when we think about our actions and trying to make them more binary. Oftentimes, that requires us to zoom out and to make things more general. So in the example that we used before, it's, did you run, did you run today? Right? And then we even zoomed out even further to, did you work out today? Right? Because it's like, you want to make it the yes or the no.

Kevin: 15:20

Right. So it's, the key here is just having that very clear, objective answer without your whole emotions coming into it and trying to throw excuses at it. Sometimes. saying no repeatedly can bring some awareness and then you're not making excuses. You're actually figuring out, is this a priority? And that that leads to possible change. But now we're moving past that. Does the action actually align with your intention? And there's a couple of things that can show up that throw people off track of this. And I think one of the big ones is not necessarily having a super clear intention. So then you're just sort of taking arbitrary actions. And arbitrary actions don't feel like you're getting anywhere, which then leads to just not taking any actions. So having a very clear intention is Super important to making sure that the actions align with your intention. Otherwise, there's nothing for your actions to align with The other issue that pops up the other mistake that we see people making is having a goal But not even understanding which actions will lead towards that goal So you have intention, but you haven't put the thought into what steps will lead towards that intention So you're again taking actions that aren't necessarily well matched up with the end goal

Angie: 16:36

Right. So when you think about what that intention is, when you think about what the end goal is, and kind of starting with the end in mind. Once you, once your answers to the more simple questions, those more general questions are consistently yes, then you can add in more detail. So, did you run today? Yes. Did you work out today? Yes. Like, and you're getting consistently, whatever consistency looks like for you. Again. Maybe you are someone that wants to run three days a week. Maybe you want to run five days a week. Whatever it might be. Whatever that consistency looks like for you that you have defined. Okay. Consistency does not mean you have to do something every day. This is where a lot of people, you know, get messed up. They think, oh, well, I have to run every day to be consistent or I have to work out every single day. No, you don't. Okay, you need to figure out what your goal is, what your intention is, and then align your actions with that intention. So if your goal is to get stronger and to get in better shape, then just decide how many days a week do I need to work out in order to achieve that goal? If your goal is to run a half marathon or a full marathon or an ultra marathon, those things are going to require different types of training than if your goal is to run a 5K. So are your actions aligning with your intention? So once your answers to those simple questions, those more general questions are yes, however you define them, then we can start to add more details, but we have to start. With consistency with the basics first, because so many times we try to dive into some of these details and it totally throws us off, right? If you're having a hard time just getting out the door for a run, then the details of your speed workout don't matter. I would argue. You shouldn't even be doing speed workout. They're like, Oh, well, no, no, no. I heard this thing. Oh, Angie, I joined your free class last week where you talked about the 80 20 rule. So 80 percent of my runs are supposed to be easy and 20 percent of my runs are supposed to be harder. So I'm going to think about, okay, what speed work should I be doing? What workouts do I really need to be hitting here? But if you're not consistently running four days a week, why are you worrying about? The details of your speed workout, you need to start with the basics first, right? If you're not strength training at all, you don't need to worry about progressive overload. You have to start by just checking the box, right? Progressive overload is a detail. It's a concept to make sure that you're making progress and that you're constantly loading the body so that you, that is in a way that leads to muscle growth and hypertrophy. You don't need to worry about that if you're not doing strength training at all. You need to start with just checking off the box. And once you start to check off that box in a consistent manner, then you can start to ask yourself the more detailed questions. Then you can start to ask yourself And you can make those binary questions, you can still stick with the binary questions, but you can make those binary questions more specific. I think

Kevin: 19:43

you can just start asking yourself a whole heck of a lot more binary questions. Yeah. Like you can check off multiple boxes through the day, which I think is Partly why you like and sometimes fight against this thing. Sometimes you try to make a concept overly complicated, but you also love checking boxes Like you really can take a more complex idea and be like, all right Well here are the 45 steps that I needed to do in order to get this thing done And then you make a list of 45 things and check off all the boxes because you enjoy checking off boxes Most people enjoy checking off boxes because it really looks like you're getting stuff done But in order to have boxes to check you have to have a very clear idea of what your, your goal is. What are you trying to align towards

Angie: 20:26

and what your boxes should look like? What are the boxes that you're actually checking? Because this is the thing that I think a lot of runners that this is the trap that so many of us fall into, and this goes for writing and so much in the rest of our life also is that we feel like checking the boxes make us productive, but we're checking the wrong boxes because the boxes that we're checking and spending so much time doing. Every day, every week, every month, whatever it might be, aren't actually driving us towards our goal. They're not actually aligned with our intention. We're just checking boxes for the sake of checking boxes. Sometimes we're

Kevin: 21:01

literally checking inboxes throughout the day for no reason at all. Like that is literally, it's a box that I check on a regular basis, and it's not necessarily the most productive thing for me to be doing at school. But it's so

Angie: 21:14

easy to default to. Yeah, because it Oh, I better check my email and make sure somebody doesn't need me. Right, because

Kevin: 21:19

it feels productive because every once in a while, somebody does actually need me and the email comes in that I actually do need to be reading. But when I, if I stop and think about it, I don't need to be reading that email with utmost urgency and priority. It's super rare that I've ever gotten an email that I needed to respond to within 30

Angie: 21:37

seconds. Well, and that'll, and the other thing too is that if you are constantly checking your email, especially if you don't actually have time to respond to it and you're just using it as a distraction, then you're going to have to go in and you're going to have to read that email again to actually take time to respond. When you Have the time to respond, right? So you're actually wasting time and thinking that you're being productive when you're actually not being productive at all, right?

Kevin: 22:03

If you don't have time to actually deal with the emails, then you probably shouldn't be reading the email. You

Angie: 22:08

should not open your email unless it's, you actually have the time. And the energy to respond. Yes. And do something with them. Yes,

Kevin: 22:16

that is a good way of putting it. Um, sometimes I get emails from parents at school, and I have to put them off to the side before I can write them back though. So, in that case I do actually have to read the email twice. It's best that I not respond immediately. Right away. On occasion. On occasion, I have had a parent email. Yeah,

Angie: 22:33

depending on the tone of that incoming email, you might want to take a minute or two. Sometimes

Kevin: 22:38

I'm asked to have a blessed day at the end, and those are not necessarily the best emails coming in. Sometimes they're great.

Angie: 22:44

Yeah. So once you start to get consistent with those binary actions, and then You add more details, right? So did I run every day? Yes. Great. Now you're, you're consistently hitting four out of four. Like if that's your, if that's your goal for the week, right? I'm, I'm, I want to run four days out of the week. Fine. Four out of four. I'm, I'm hitting the runs. I'm hitting the runs. I'm hitting the runs. Okay, great. Now let's add in the detail. Did I run two miles? Yes. Yes. Yes. Great. Now we're, we're consistent with that. Now I want to up it a little bit. Did I run three miles? Did I run four miles? Did I do some speed work today? Right? Then you start to add in more of those details, but you're still maintaining that consistency and checking those boxes so that your brain again is getting that positive feedback loop that, yes, I did that thing. And then. You align it with the intention. Okay. My intention of this training cycle is to build my mileage. So first I have to be consistent. Okay. I already know I'm consistent. I've been consistent for the last year. Great. Now I want to build up my mileage. So now I have to be consistent with increasing my miles by X amount per week. And also making sure that I am strength training to. Allow my body to handle the demands of the increased

Kevin: 24:01

mileage. Yeah, that's, I mean, now your, your actual goal, your, your overall intention here has become a lot more specific. At the beginning, the intention was generally, I'd like to be in better shape. And the more general your goal is, the, the broader your plans are. Like, did I work out today is a great box to check to see if, am I generally being healthy? Like that's a box like you should check out that I did some sort of workout on a regular basis But as the goal becomes more specific, I'm looking to increase mileage over the next three months Yes, suddenly you've got to go through and figure out all the things you need to do very specifically aligned and look around see What other resources do I need that's going to help me towards my goal. You mentioned strength training I want to mention make sure you have enough in the pantry Because as you start increasing mileage and making sure that your strength training is possibly also Enough to support it. You're gonna need to make sure that you're throwing in plenty of calories to support the increased workload

Angie: 25:01

as well Right. And so these are the questions that we want you to go through when you are ready to set a new intention So start off more broad start off more general when you're ready to set A new goal or a new intention for your next training cycle. Here are some questions that you can ask yourself that will lead to the binary actions that you will need to take to achieve your next goal. Okay, so number one, what is my intention? Get very clear on specifically what is your intention. So maybe you're saying, okay, I want to run a half marathon. That is a very specific goal. Maybe you're, I want to run a half marathon in That is a very specific goal. If your intention is something like, I want to get stronger, that's a great goal. But, it's a little bit, it would be better if we could make it a little bit more specific. Stronger how? Stronger, how, how will you actually know if you, Okay, because the more specific that goal is, the better you're going to be able to determine whether or not you actually achieve that goal. So number one, what is my intention? Number two, what resources do I need to make that happen? So Kevin mentioned fueling, I mentioned strength training, like what is it? So let's, let's just break one of those down. Let's look at strength training because that's always where I default to. How many days do I need to strength train? What does my strength training actually need to look like? What exercises do I need to do? Like these are all resources that I need in order to make that happen. I have to have the knowledge of which exercises am I supposed to even be doing? How much am I supposed to be doing? Like how many? Rounds of each exercise. How many, how many repetitions of each exercise? How many days per week do I need to be doing this? Which, you know, strength circuits should I be following? Do I have a membership somewhere? Do I need to find videos on youtube? Do I have a friend or am I a part of a gym that i'm going to go and work out at the gym? Like what resources do I actually need so that I can start to be consistent with those things? Right

Kevin: 27:05

and I mean You kind of skipped a whole idea of maybe we actually need to buy some weights or something. Maybe you're going to do all this at home, but what resources do I also need in order to be able to fit this into my schedule? What human resources do I have around me that are going to help support me to be successful towards this intention? Because If I'm heading to the gym, I need to work and I've got, you know, a spouse and kids. And now this is going to be another 30 45 minutes, whatever my time at the gym is going to be. I need to make sure that my resources include people who are going to be supportive of this. Is the family all on board? Is someone going to be able to watch the kids if they're little? Is there a place that you can drop the kids off at the gym if they're little? Know what all of the resources are from so many different angles. What are the possible roadblocks and what resources are you going to need to help kind of, I don't know, lift the roadblocks, go through the roadblocks, go over the road. Like what

Angie: 28:01

are they? Yeah. I mean, and that you, you kind of jumped over into my bonus question there, but, um, the bonus question, well, let me, let me talk about number three first. So number one, what is my intention? Number two, what resources do I need to make that happen? And number three, What actions do I need to take to actually align with my intention? Okay, what are the specific actions? And those are the ones that are the binary actions, right? Did I strength train today? Yes or no. Did I run three miles today? Yes or no. Like what specific actions do I need to take to align? With the intention that I set for myself in number one, and then the bonus question that Kevin just talked about is what is getting in my way or what has the potential to get in my way? And how can I overcome it? Because when you start to look ahead and start to think about what Potential roadblocks could step, you know, get in your way and block you from achieving the goal or making it harder for you to achieve the goal. If you can try to think about as many of those ahead of time as possible, then you can start problem solving and coming up with solutions. When you're not actually in the moment, and a lot of times we think a lot clearer when we're not actually in that stressful situation,

Kevin: 29:19

right? So you can see both the steps that you need to make and the steps that you need to avoid or the steps you need to make and what's going to prevent you possibly prevent you make it more challenging to hit those specific actions. And again, the more specific the intention is, the more specific your, your check boxes can be like. If, if the, you have the idea of, I'd like to get stronger, that might look like Lifting weights two to three times a week, if you have a more specific way of defining that you're getting stronger, there might be a list of specific exercises. And you're like, okay, I'm going to actually increase my squat from X weight to Y weight. Like you have a specific number that you're going. It goes the same way as, as adding mileage. I'd like to run more miles during this three, you. Three month training block. Okay, but what does that mean? Like are you currently doing 20 miles a week and you'd like to do 21 because that is more miles But that might not be what you have in your head. How do you know? It's gonna be successful So the the clearer it is to know that you're gonna be successful at the end of this Whatever the time period you're working with we like three months but the the more easily it is to say yes or no, I was successful in this, the easier it is to figure out the very specific actions that you're going to take. And then you can say, yes, did the action, didn't do the action.

Angie: 30:38

Exactly. So again, you can apply this to anything else in your life. Like there are so many different areas of our life. There are habits that we want to develop, whether it be with our nutrition or our workout or the way we. Handle, um, you know, things that work the way that we show up for our family or our spouse. Like there's a lot of different areas of our life that this applies to. And so when you can make it binary and believe me. I know that the world is not black and white. I know that we live in a lot of gray, and I have talked about that on many, many, many podcasts. Like, most of the time, it's very hard to boil it down to black or white. But sometimes, this can be a really helpful thing, which is why we wanted to talk about it today. Because some, in some circumstances, in some situations, it can help to remove the overwhelm, to remove the confusion, to simplify things. Because When we overcomplicate things, which I have such a tendency to do. So you guys hope probably can hear, like, I am talking to myself here in, in this podcast, like, and most of the time I, I, I like to think about nuance. I live my life with nuance. I think about the big picture. I think about visions. I think, how can I help people? I, oh, there's, and there's so many different answers and there's so many ways that we can ask ourselves questions to inspire more creativity. And sometimes thinking that way can get very overwhelming and can bog us down and kind of let, make us feel like, well, I don't really know what to do next. And so it's helpful to be able to switch it over to say, okay. What are some of the binary actions that I can take right now that will actually get me into action, that will get me moving in the direction that I want to go, because sometimes we all just need a kick in the butt, sometimes we all just need to take that next step, what is the next step? Minimum next step that I need to take that will lead me closer and closer to my goals and my intentions,

Kevin: 32:35

right? The minimum next step that's the whole idea of you might need to lower the bar if you've been saying no too many times It's possible that saying I'm gonna go out and run five miles five times a week is Too high of a bar and if you keep saying no bring that down a little bit I mean and if you're like but I've I already feel like I've lowered the bar and I still find it so difficult to get out and run. Maybe the bar needs to be, did you get your workout clothes on today? Because a lot of people, if they start there by getting into their workout clothes, that might at least be enough to head out the door. Okay. Sometimes the answer is, did I change my clothes and head out the door? Did I give it five minutes and say, maybe I'm going to try five minutes because five might turn into 30 or five might turn into Nope, five. I'm done. I'm going back home. But if you were able to at least say, I changed into my clothes, I started a workout to see how it goes. It builds a habit. It starts a routine. And that is where consistency begins.

Angie: 33:29

Yeah. And for. Us runners that are okay with our running, but it's the weights that we don't like. Did I pick up a weight today? Yep. It can be as simple as that. Not did I do, you know, three sets of eight and progressively overload my weights and make sure that I like was maximizing the effectiveness of this glute workout today. Did I do a squat? Did I do a squat? A squat? I, did you get up and down out of a chair today? Then the answer is yes. Yes, I did a squat. Yeah. And did I, did I pick up a weight? Did I put a band around my ankles? Like make it pretty simple so that you can start saying, yes, I did that. And the more yeses that you get, the more consistency will build. And then the more you can start moving in the directions of your intentions.

Kevin: 34:14

And then you can eventually be doing three sets of progressive overloads. Squats.

Angie: 34:19

And then you're going to be so glute happy. Glutastic. Glutastic. Lord have mercy. Let's end the episode now before we come out with any more other crazy puns. As always guys, if this episode was helpful, please share it with a friend, take a screenshot, share it on social media so that your other running friends can find the podcast so that we can help more runners to get stronger both physically and mentally and learn how to run their life. And this has been the Real Life Runners podcast, episode number 349. Now get out there and run your life.