Wear Out or Rust Out: The Choice is Yours
Just in Time #396
You are talking to yourself all the time. Probably not out loud, but that voice is always there.
What you say to yourself likely manifests in your life. Are you kind to yourself, or are you berating yourself? Are you encouraging yourself to do better and go further? Do you get angry at yourself or are you laughing and having fun with yourself?
Most people won’t admit to the words they use when talking to themselves.
Peter Attia tells a story about how he stopped being angry at himself. His therapist helped him change his perspective. Instead of “shouting” at yourself for not being good enough, his therapist said, “What if you were talking to your best friend and wanted to help him be better? What would you say, and how would you say it?”
A complete 180-degree reframing of how you look at your life can change everything.
Attia’s therapist insisted that instead of talking to himself in his head, he record a voice note of what he wanted to say to himself and send the note to his therapist. This brought into the open the words and tone he used to speak to himself.
How Peter spoke to himself changed, and the anger disappeared within a month.
When I heard the story about Peter Attia, I became more conscious of how I speak to myself. I started paying attention to my internal voice and realised I had to change a few things.
Ryan Holiday’s book, “The Obstacle is the Way”, helped me frame how I speak to myself. I find the stoic nature of Holiday’s work very appealing.
The saying, “Wear out or rust out”, attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, is a lens through which you can look at aspects of your life. It is a framework I incorporate into how I speak to myself. Yes, there it is, that voice again, that voice in my head.
When it comes to exercise, I am far more likely to wear out than rust out, and I am demanding of myself when it comes to my fitness. However, in other areas of my life, I am far less demanding, yet I constantly ask myself if I am getting rusty. In this context, rusty is another word for lazy.
The voice in my head is asking if lazy is even the right word. Is it perhaps fear?
What are you afraid of? What risk are you making up in your head that is not real? What are you avoiding for fear of failure or what other people might think? What is holding you back? What is standing in your way?
What is your voice saying to you?
Justin Spencer-Young