I went back and re-listened to a Modern Wisdom episode with Chris Bumstead this week, and found this analogy too good not to just share word for word. Here’s a healthy dose of perspective to start your week. And while a little longer, a reminder we all need every so often.

The Mexican Fisherman

An American investment banker was taking a vacation in a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the boat were several large, fresh fish.

The banker was impressed and asked how long it took to catch them.

“Only a little while,” the fisherman replied.

“Then why don’t you stay out longer and catch more?” the banker asked.

The fisherman said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs.

“But what do you do with the rest of your time?”

The fisherman smiled.

“I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my friends. I have a full and busy life.”

The banker scoffed.

“I have an MBA, and I could help you. You should spend more time fishing. With the proceeds, you could buy a bigger boat. Then you could buy several boats and eventually build a fleet. Instead of selling to a middleman, you could sell directly and open your own cannery. You would control production, processing, and distribution.”

He continued,

“You’d need to leave this village and move to Mexico City… then Los Angeles… then New York, where you would run your growing enterprise.”

The fisherman asked, “How long will this all take?”

“15–20 years,” the banker replied.

“But what then?”

The banker smiled.

“That’s the best part. You would sell your company, become very rich, and make millions.”

“Millions… then what?”

The banker said,

“Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal village, sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, and spend your evenings drinking wine and playing guitar with your friends.”

The fisherman looked at him and said:

“Isn’t that what I’m already doing?”

Over the years I’ve become obsessed with this idea that “normal” isn’t fixed, it’s trained.

Your brain doesn’t operate off some universal baseline, it runs on whatever you’ve repeatedly shown it is standard. What you experience often becomes what you expect. And what you expect starts to feel… normal.

That’s the game.

When you first start running, one mile feels brutal. Your lungs burn, your legs tighten, your mind searches for exits. Then you stack a few weeks together. Three miles becomes your new standard. One mile? That’s a warm-up. Push it to five, and suddenly three feels manageable. Then 7, 9, 26.2…Same body. Same mind. But a different baseline adjusted through experience.

This isn’t just physical. Think about your work:

Your brain is constantly recalibrating what “hard” means.

You’re wired for neuroplasticity. Your brain physically rewires itself based on repeated experience. Pair that with habituation (your ability to get used to stimuli over time), and you get a powerful effect: things that once triggered stress, resistance, or fear start to feel neutral, even easy.

There’s also a layer of what is labeled as “hedonic adaptation” - you adjust not just to difficulty, but to outcomes. The promotion, the new role, the bigger goals, they quickly become your new normal. The ceiling rises. Then it disappears.

That’s the exciting news. The scary part is that this cuts both ways.

If you consistently avoid discomfort, your baseline shrinks. Small things feel big. Stress tolerance drops. If you consistently lean into it, your baseline expands. Big things feel doable. Pressure becomes familiar.

“You don’t rise to the occasion. You fall to your training.”

Your action this week:
Pick one thing you’ve been avoiding because it feels “hard”. A tough conversation, a voluntary chance to public speak, a mile further than you’ve ever ran, and schedule it. Don’t wait for confidence. Let the action create it.

Because the fastest way to change what feels normal is to show your brain a new version of it.

If you have the goal of the masses and want to get shredded for this summer, I’lll reiterate a few points so you don’t overcomplicate this.

It comes down to three things:

That’s it. If you do those every single day from now until the start of summer, I guarantee you will get results.

But with our sedentary jobs and Microsoft Teams meetings all day, here’s where most people break: the steps.

Because if you’re sitting at a desk for 8–10 hours a day, 10,000 steps feels like a second job. You finish work, look at your watch, and you’re sitting at 2,800. Now what, pace your kitchen at 9 PM?

I run into the same dilemma. Even with my weekly mileage running, it can often be hard to find ways to get in the 10,000 steps outside of the training while I mind numbingly sit through another call. This is where the walking pad changes the game, and something I intend to reimplement this week.

For under $150, you can turn your desk into a fat-loss machine. Some of them even have their own mini desk attachment to set your laptop on.

One hour of walking while you work (emails, calls, even light focus work) and you’ve just knocked out 3,000–4,000 steps without “working out.” No extra time carved out. No willpower battle after a long day.

It’s quiet. It’s mindless. And the underrated part is how it makes you feel.

That 2–4 PM slump where your brain goes foggy and you start reaching for caffeine or snacks? Walking tends to flip that. Blood flow increases. Energy comes back online. You’re sharper, more focused, and ironically, more productive.

And over time, this is what separates the people who “try to get in shape” from the ones who actually do. It’s not the intensity or the perfection, it’s baking consistency into your environment.

Your move:
Get a walking pad. Put it under your desk. Start with 30–60 minutes a day this week. It doesn’t matter if you move at 1 mph to start. Just keep the feet moving for a while. Next thing you know, you’ll be walking for over half your day, and feeling great doing it.

I picked up Smile or You're Doing it Wrong by Andy Glaze this week. I’ve followed Andy for years now, and his 300+ week streak of running 100 miles, and couldn’t wait to get my hands on this one. But his story is much more than a bunch of miles and ultras.

He’s been through a lot - addiction, setbacks, mental health battles, and the kind of internal struggles most people don’t talk about publicly. His career path hasn’t been linear, and his life definitely hasn’t been easy. But that’s what makes his perspective so powerful. He’s not writing from a pedestal, he’s writing from experience.

And what stands out early in the book is how he found his way forward.

Not through some grand breakthrough. Not through a single moment of clarity. Through movement.

Running became his outlet. His anchor. The thing he could return to when everything else felt unstable. And it wasn’t about becoming elite or chasing times, it was about using physical effort as a way to process, to cope, to rebuild. The message resonated with me, and I hope it can inspire one more person to find the same outlet.

You can feel it in the way he writes. There’s an honesty to it. He talks about how putting one foot in front of the other gave him structure when life felt chaotic. How suffering (chosen suffering) helped quiet the noise in his head.

It’s something I think a lot of us overlook.

We chase mental clarity through thinking more, planning more, consuming more… when sometimes the answer is to move. To sweat. To put your body in motion and let your mind catch up.

I’m only partway through, but it’s already been a reminder of why we train in the first place. Not just to look better. But to feel better. To think clearer. To handle life with a little more resilience.

If you’ve ever used running, lifting, or any kind of physical challenge as a reset button, this one will resonate.

And if you haven’t, this might be the nudge.

Worth grabbing a copy and diving in. Not for perfect answers, but for perspective. And maybe a reminder that sometimes the way forward… starts with moving your body.