There’s a saying that goes “you’re stepping over hundred dollar bills to pick up pennies.”

It’s an analogy that has many applications, but my favorite use is in this personal development space, especially on an individual level.

So often we are looking for grandiose ways to change our lives or make ourselves feel better. I’ve got an easy one for you this week that serves the purpose of the proverbial penny.

Send a text to a friend or family member this week. Tell them something you admire about them. Tell them you’re thinking about them. Schedule time to get together with them.

This will take you 30 seconds and have a deeper impact on them than you can predict, but what it really will do too is completely rewire your brain for the day, and if you continue on, the week, the month, the year - and your life.

There’s a concept in behavioral science called “commitment consistency.” Once people publicly identify with a goal, they become dramatically more likely to follow through, not because motivation magically appears, but because their identity gets involved in a public way.

Research around accountability and social commitment shows that when other people know what we’re pursuing, the goal stops being private wishful thinking and starts becoming part of how we see ourselves. You’re no longer just “someone trying to get in shape.” You’re the person training for a marathon. The person preparing for a bodybuilding show. And humans are deeply wired to behave consistently with the identity they present to the world.

There’s also another layer - social consequences. Even subtle ones.

Not or shame, but the quiet discomfort of knowing other people are aware you said you were going to do something. For most of us, that matters more than we realize.

At the beginning of my fitness journey, I signed up for a half marathon and quit training about three weeks in. Looking back, there was no real accountability attached to it. Nobody knew. Nobody expected anything from me. Walking away was easy because the only person I felt like I was letting down was myself.

But when I signed up for my first marathon and my first bodybuilding show, I posted both publicly.

And whether people were actually paying attention or not, it changed the way I approached the hard days. On the mornings I didn’t want to run or train, I always had that thought sitting in the back of my head: “You said you were going to do this.”

That created stakes.

Sometimes that’s what people are missing, not motivation, not discipline, but witnesses. Sometimes you just need to feel like you’re not the only person you’ll disappoint if you quit.

This week, try creating a little pressure on purpose. Tell a friend what you’re working toward. Post the goal publicly. Make it real outside your own head.

You might be surprised how much harder it becomes to walk away from the version of yourself you already introduced to the world.

This here serves as a friendly reminder for all of us on a cutting journey for the summer swimsuit months. One of the biggest mistakes people make when trying to lose weight is treating fat loss like an emergency. Like if it doesn’t happen by June 1, then it’s an abject failure.

We’ve all been here before. The second the motivation hits, we slash our calories in half, we double the cardio, and then wonder why we stall when suddenly the body is being asked to survive instead of adapt. It works for a couple weeks, usually just long enough to create false confidence, before everything starts slowing down.

That’s because the body is incredibly good at protecting itself.

When calories drop too aggressively, your metabolism begins adapting almost immediately. Hormones that regulate hunger and energy shift against you. Leptin, the hormone that helps signal fullness and metabolic activity, drops. Ghrelin, the hormone that drives hunger, rises. Cortisol climbs from the added stress, making recovery harder and increasing cravings. On top of that, rapid weight loss often pulls muscle mass down with it, which matters because muscle is one of the biggest drivers of metabolic output in the first place.

In other words: the harder you force the process early, the harder your body fights back later.

This is why so many people plateau quickly after an aggressive start. They cut calories so low upfront that there’s nowhere left to go. Energy crashes. Training quality drops. Hunger gets louder every week. Then progress stalls before they’ve even gotten close to where they wanted to be. And mentally, that’s usually the breaking point.

Most people don’t quit because they aren’t capable of losing weight. They quit because they tried to sprint a process that rewards pacing.

The people who sustain results the longest usually take the opposite approach. They start with the smallest calorie deficit that produces progress and only adjust when necessary. They prioritize protein and strength training to preserve muscle. They give their metabolism room to work instead of cornering it on day one.

The irony is that slower fat loss often ends up being faster long term because you can actually stick to it.

If you’re trying to lean out right now, resist the urge to go nuclear immediately. Start by removing a few hundred calories, tighten up food quality, increase daily movement, and let consistency do the heavy lifting first.

You do not need to suffer your way into shape. You need a strategy your body can survive long enough to succeed with.

I mentioned last week that I was picking this book up, and invited you all to join along. The early returns say this was the right move.

Arthur Brooks introduces a type of person in The Meaning of Your Life that I immediately recognized, not just in myself, but probably in a lot of you reading this too.

He calls them “strivers.”

Strivers are typically high-achieving people who are very good at solving hard problems. They know how to build businesses, train for races, lead teams, create plans, hit goals, and optimize systems. Give them a technical challenge and they’ll figure it out.

But they often hit a wall when they ask a very different kind of question:

What is the meaning of my life?

Because strivers approach that question the same way they approach everything else, as a problem to solve. That’s the trap.

Brooks makes the point that existential questions don’t operate like technical ones. There is no six-step framework for meaning. No productivity system. No perfect answer waiting on the other side of enough effort. You can figure out how to build an app or lose 30 pounds because those are technical problems with measurable outcomes. Meaning is different. It’s emotional, relational, spiritual, deeply personal. And often frustratingly unclear.

Ironically, the people who are best at achieving more are often the people who struggle most to feel fulfilled by it.

Because if your identity gets built entirely around accomplishment, eventually every goal becomes temporary. You hit it, feel good for a moment, and then immediately look for the next mountain. The striving never stops long enough to ask whether the climb itself is actually giving your life meaning.

And if I had to sum up some of my own mental dilemmas to a T, then I would just copy paste the first few chapters of this book.

I think a lot of ambitious people quietly carry this tension. Outwardly successful. Inwardly unsure why the accomplishments never feel as complete as they were supposed to.

I’m picking this book up right now as much as an exploration as a recommendation. If you’ve ever felt strangely uncomfortable trying to answer the question of what your life actually means, even while succeeding in other areas, I think you’ll probably see yourself in these pages too.

If you decide to read it alongside me, let me know what stands out to you. I have a feeling this is one of those books that lands differently depending on where you are in life.