All right, everybody. Welcome back.

So today we have the repeat offender guest who has been on the show the most. It’s Jon Acuff. He’s back. He’s got a new book. Tell me the name of the book. I always want to call it procrastination and procrastination-proof. I know I keep calling it that. I’m reading the procrastination book.

Yeah, Procrastination Proof. The subtitle is Never Get Stuck Again.

Yes, and it’s really good. I’m going to let him introduce himself right now, and then I’m going to tell him my favorite part of it because I think it’ll be great for everyone to hear it. So tell them a little bit about you, and then we’ll get started.

Yeah, my name is Jon Acuff. I live south of Nashville in a town called Franklin. I’ve been married for 25 years to Jenny. I have two adult kids, which makes me feel a little bit older than I expected. I have a 22-year-old daughter and a 20-year-old daughter. Procrastination Proof is my 11th book. And I’m super passionate about writing books and speaking, and then teaching other people who want to do that too, how to do the same thing. We have some small events we do in Franklin called Stage and Page. And yeah, I had a pivotal moment in my mid-30s where I kind of turned my life around. And so I have a real passion to help people get unstuck in their own lives. As somebody who spent a lot of time stuck, I don’t want you to spend one more minute stuck than you need to.

Well, let me just say this. Every book is always great. I can tell my audience, they know I don’t interview very many people.

Yeah, I’m honored that I get to do it.

I know. And we also have a lot in common. We’re both in Nashville, tangentially. Kids about the same age. And I’ve also been married 25 years this year.

Oh, congrats. That’s awesome.

I know. It’s the little things here. But I will tell you, my favorite part of this book, which is kind of what I want to kick off with, is that you intentionally made every chapter super consumable. Small little freaking bites. I just so appreciate it because one of the concepts I teach my people all the time is take small actions, smaller than you think you need. And I believe you even talk about that in the book. But can you just start with why you made it so consumable?

Yeah. So I would read all these books while I was researching mine, and they would be like 400-page books about procrastination. And if you have a 90-page note section in your book, you’re not a procrastinator. You’re a monster.

So I was like, a real procrastinator, since I am one, wants to win. They want to finish something. So when I read a Kindle book and it says 82 minutes left in the chapter, I’m like, oh. And so I wanted to write a book where I think sometimes people write books when they don’t struggle with the thing, and it feels like Jane Goodall writing about monkeys. And I’m a monkey writing for other monkeys.

In the same way that no one in your programs goes, “I don’t think she understands what it’s like,” or “I don’t think she has a similar story.” And what’s so appealing about the way you do it is you’re like, no, I’m in the same trenches. Here’s what my life looked like. Here’s what yours can look like.

So I think that’s another reason we connect, is that I write books and create content from the perspective of hopefully an honest participant in the challenge, not an expert who’s talking down to you going, “Well, here’s how to get your life together.”

You read it and go, oh, this guy even formatted the book to make it extra easy for me to build some momentum. And I wanted every detail to say, I see you, I get you. It can be amazing. Watch how easy it is.

Well, I think it really comes across in the book. Like I was saying, I’ve been listening to it. Actually, I’ve got the hard copy sitting right here.

Nice.

One thing that I just want to encourage my readers with is, you know, I’m always advocating for them to make sure that whatever person you’re listening to, you need to make sure they do understand you. And so I found it so refreshing. And I was telling my husband, I was laughing, I was like, man, I’m just flying through this book. That feels great. I’m just like, look at me go. This is amazing.

And then I think the other thing was that I don’t think a lot of my readers see me as a procrastinator, but when I was reading the book, there were a lot of things that were jumping out to me where I can see where I do procrastinate in certain areas of life. So I just wanted to start this off with: please go buy the book.

No, no. And you’re already overwhelmed. Again, why would I make you slog through a book about speeding up in life and enjoying it? So for me, I was just honestly proud the publisher was willing to do it because the publisher could have very well said, no, we need it to be 11 official chapters at 3,000 words. And they were like, oh yeah, we’ll try that.

Like today on LinkedIn, I posted chapter 55, and I was like, holy cow, this book has a lot of small chapters. But again, every time you finish a chapter, you get a chemical reward from your brain, a little burst of dopamine that goes like, hey, good job. So why wouldn’t I want you to have 71 encouragements even in the format of the book?

Well, I think that’s such an interesting point because when it comes to weight loss, in your way, this is how I would interpret it. I’m always telling my women, I have what’s called the Not Good Enough Challenge. So I always tell them, if your mind is sitting there telling you this is not good enough, then that is now your new trigger to go fucking do it because your brain will always trick you.

And I feel like in your book, how can we relate that to weight loss in terms of just the small dopamine rewards? Because we’ve got to get it from somewhere else now.

Yeah. I mean, you already know you’re really motivated by it, so just use it. I love to take something and turn it to good. So for something like that, I go, man, if I’m already wired that way, the lie is now I have to become the opposite. Now I need to become a monk. Now I need to kill every desire I have and not be wired that way. You go, no, no, no. I’m really short-burst motivated. Let me just create a lot of short bursts.

I like to stack finish lines. In a marathon, there’s only one finish line, 26 miles. That’s a long way. But in a weight loss journey, have as many finish lines as you want. Your brain loves to say things like this doesn’t count.

I see weight loss people, I’ll have somebody go, “Jon, I want to get in shape.” And I’ll go, “Oh, that’s great.” And they’ll say, “I’m going to run.” I’ll go, “Do you like running?” They go, “No, I hate it. I hate it. That’s why I know it counts, and that’s why I know it’s good for me.”

And their brain has told them a walk with a friend around your neighborhood doesn’t count. Pickleball for half an hour doesn’t count. Ballroom dancing doesn’t count.

And I think you and I are similar in that we are like, it all counts. Movement counts. Don’t we become this drill sergeant when it comes to our life change? And no wonder we don’t want to spend time with that person.

Here’s something on that point with weight loss. I’ve had people say to me, “But this other influencer tells me I should yell at myself and be unkind to myself, and you tell me I should be kind.” And there are a number of reasons I believe you should be kind to yourself.

One is the way you talk internally is the way you talk externally eventually. So if you beat yourself up, eventually you yell at your kids in a way, you yell at your spouse in a way.

But two, we eventually try to spend less time with people who are mean to us. And that includes ourselves. So if part of your weight loss journey has involved you being mean to yourself, “Oh, you only lost two pounds. Could have been three, could have been four.” You don’t even get to celebrate it. Eventually you’ll spend less time with that bully, and the bully is you.

And so that’s where I’m like, no. What would it look like to have some small finish lines? What would it look like to say, “I’m so proud of myself. Look at this thing I did.” That’ll keep you going versus, like you and I have seen, no one is long-term sustainably successful via the engine of shame or via the engine of beating yourself up or proving yourself to somebody else.

So what does it look like for us to have lots of things that we do enjoy?

I’ve got to say, I’m definitely going to be reusing the whole idea of if you’re the bully, you’re going to want to get away. Because that is exactly what my women do. It’s like, well, I’m going to eat because the second I sit down at night, all I’m doing is telling myself, “Well, you’re just so lazy. You should be doing this. You should be doing that.”

And that is like, nobody wants to hang out with an asshole, even if the asshole is you. So you’ll find another place to hang out, and it’s usually the damn pantry or the fridge.

Yeah.

One thing also that I think is just really important that you said was the small little wins. I can’t tell my listeners enough: you have got to find ways to win because all of us that listen to me are hardwired to never win. We are always not good enough. We are always one more goal away from finally being able to relax. We are one more item on our to-do list before we feel complete. And so for everybody listening, it is so important to get those wins. And it’s going to be hard at first. And it’s not hard to get wins. It’s hard for you to acknowledge them.

And accept them.

Yeah. And accept the size of them too.

A lot of times people go, okay, what’s one thing I can do differently? And I’ll always say, well, can we audition a small goal for seven days, 15 minutes a day? Just audition one. You don’t have to. Part of the reason New Year’s resolutions fail is we commit to something for a year we haven’t done for a day. That’s like marrying somebody you just met at speed dating.

And I’m much more the like, one of our broken soundtracks in life is go big or go home. And the reality is, most people go home. So it doesn’t feel big enough to go 15 minutes a day for seven days, but that’s where fear is such a jerk. It tells you, you shouldn’t do it, you shouldn’t do it, you shouldn’t do it. And then when you do it, it goes, “It should be even bigger.”

So it argues both sides of it. One day it tells you you shouldn’t even do it. And then if you dare to try it for 10 minutes, it goes, “Ten minutes? Is that all? You’re not going to change your life with 10 minutes.” So you just have to be like, oh, it’s going to lie to me regardless of what I do. I might as well be in motion. I might as well do the 10 minutes. I might as well do the 15 minutes and be glad about that and grow them over time.

So let’s jump back into the book. There was something super interesting that you taught, and I loved it. It was that procrastination isn’t a problem, it’s a solution. Can you really talk to them about that? Because I always say it this way in the weight loss world, because I work on emotional eating. It’s like, your overeating is not your problem. It is literally your coping skill. It is the one way you know how. It’s your solution. And all we need are different solutions. You just haven’t been taught them yet.

So can you help them really understand that when it comes to procrastination?

Yeah. So procrastination comes along and goes, “Hey, you don’t want to tell your mom you’re not coming for Thanksgiving this year. So I’ll solve that. We won’t tell her for seven months. We’ll wait until the week before Thanksgiving.” And it goes, “I got you.”

Or it goes, “Hey, you really want a raise, but you don’t want to ask for it because you’re afraid. So I’ll solve that. You don’t have to do it.”

Or, “You’re afraid of getting one-star reviews written about your book. So I’ll solve that. We won’t write a book.”

So you use it as the solution. I’m just arguing it’s not a good solution.

And I would say this, I’m sure you say the same thing. Like, hey, your emotional eating in the middle of your divorce was the only solution you knew. It was the only solution. And it wasn’t the best solution. It wasn’t a long-term healthy solution. I’m not here to beat you up about using that as a solution. I get why you did it. You were drowning, and it felt like a life raft.

But now that we’re on land, now we can say, “Oh, this is no longer serving me.” Or, “Oh, the cost of it on the other side isn’t a solution I want.”

And so that’s where I go, the better solution to situations like that is permission. The permission to do it smaller than you think. The permission to go slower than you think. The permission to try. The permission to need help. The permission to join a community.

Permission long term is a much better solution than procrastination.

If you ever have friends that are in AA, they say the same thing. Alcohol was the solution temporarily. It just wasn’t a good solution.

And the metaphor I like to use, Corinne, for people, and this is relevant because we just had a rocket launch, is when the rocket leaves the atmosphere, it has to have really violent fuel. It has rocket boosters. But once they break through that thing, they have to drop those fuel sources because you can’t steer with them. It’s not safe enough. And for long-term travel, it doesn’t work.

So there are people I work with where I’ll go, hey, I know trying to prove yourself to your dad or your mom was a fuel that got you out of some situations. It’s just going to burn you up. It can’t be the thing. Or I know the way an ex-husband made you feel about your body, you used that as a fuel to get somewhere, but it’s going to be a fuel that burns you up. There’s a better fuel. What’s a long-term sustainable fuel?

And that’s why people will stay in your community for years and years and years, because that’s a long-term healthy solution to a challenge. So that’s what I’m trying to argue. Permission is a better fuel long term than procrastination is.

So when you’re talking about the permission, because I know this is going to come up for my people, they’re going to ask, how do you give yourself permission? Do you have any tips on that? Because I can just hear them right now. It’s like, well, that sounds great.

Yeah. I guess I would say, if I was sitting down one-on-one with somebody, I would say, I wonder what permission they’re missing. So the four permissions I teach the most, in this order, are permission to dream, permission to plan, permission to do, and permission to review.

And usually in a conversation, I can figure out, okay, this person is stuck with this. They’ve lost sense of the dream. Or they haven’t reviewed in a long time. They don’t even know they’re making progress. Or they’ve got the dream, but they’re not actually doing it. Maybe I need to give them permission to do.

So usually I try to figure out which of the four permissions is missing in their life. And often it’s related to a specific hang-up.

Meaning, permission to dream, they’ve got a thousand dreams. They just don’t know how to turn them into actions. And where I used to blow it in my community, to be honest with you, is I would have somebody do this blank-page dream exercise, like write new dreams. And I realized they already had too many. And then I gave them an exercise that made them more overwhelmed. They had 28 dreams. I was like, blank page. And then it was just brainstorming stuff they felt overwhelmed by.

So now I spend more time going, okay, let’s dream, but let’s give you permission to pick the one to move forward on.

And then planning, I’d go, oh, they’re a perfectionist. That’s where they’re locked up. They’re locked up in the planning station. Like, as soon as I know everything, it’s got to be perfect. I’ve got to know my macros. I’ve got to have a scale to measure my food. I’ve got to dial in my creatine. I’m going on vacation in six months. I’ve got to figure out my meals I’m going to eat there.

And you’re like, well, but you’re not changing your life today. Six months from now doesn’t matter right now.

So that’s what I try to do, figure out which of the four permissions I feel like is missing from people’s lives. And then sometimes I look at what the hang-up is of why you can’t give yourself permission.

The challenge of food to me is that it’s one of the few addictions where you have to do it. No one who deals with cocaine is like, got to go do coke three times a day to stay healthy. That’s some of the difficulty.

And then there’s the family stuff. I had a man tell me two weeks ago, “I was afraid to lose weight because food in my family was comfort and was kindness and was culture, and I felt like I was breaking family norms. I was being disobedient to my family.”

And he’s in his 50s.

So the permission I’d give that particular person is, you have permission to honor your family and not repeat your family. You get to do both. It’s challenging. It’s not easy. But you can say, I love my mom, and there are so many things she does well, but I’m not going to repeat her relationship with food. I don’t have to because I get to be my own person. And I’m going to hold that tension.

But that’s like, I give myself permission to write my own new relationship with food versus just repeat what my mom had, even if I feel like I’m breaking family norms by going my own way. Even if it’s awkward at Thanksgiving. Even if a cousin makes a snide comment like, “Is that all you’re taking?” or “Oh, you don’t like your mom’s potato pie?” Whatever the thing is. I give myself permission.

Yeah, I think in that case too, for my women, it’s like really understanding where does this come from and why.

I grew up where food was a big comfort. We had a lot of food insecurity. People on my podcast have heard my sob story about growing up, how hard it was. But when I got older, I didn’t even realize until a while into my weight loss journey that for me, food was giving me permission to actually sit down at night and not worry and not do things.

Chris would come home and take care of the baby after I’d been at home all day long taking care of him, and I would just eat my face off on ice cream because I felt guilty that I wasn’t a better mother. I felt guilty that I wasn’t doing my wifely duties and stuff. So I really needed a break. My son kicked my ass that first year in particular. He was just hard as a baby. And I couldn’t give myself permission to just sit on the couch and enjoy an amazing husband that saw how tired I was.

So I found all the permission talk very, very insightful because for women in particular, I think we find it hard to give ourselves permission, especially to do things. Some women have a hard time giving themselves permission to dream because they’re so worried they’ll fail again.

Or they feel selfish. I’ve heard moms say, “This is my family’s time. I’ll dream when my kids are 22.” And you’re like, what? No. I don’t know who told you that. It might have been a parent. It might have been culture. That’s the other thing. You have to remember you’re being talked to an awful lot by culture, by outside voices. And we sometimes create our own broken interpretation of that.

I mean, Corinne, for a solid year, and I didn’t put this in the book, it was just something I did, I kept a Jon Acuff owner’s manual. So I had a Google doc in my phone, and every month I’d say January, and then I would just keep a list of things that made my life go well. Little things. Small things.

It could be little things like, hey, the left line at TSA in Nashville is always the line where the flight attendants come and 11 people will cut you. Don’t go to that line.

But it’d be big things like, don’t bring up a serious conversation with Jenny right before bed. Because what I was doing is I would download a worry to her and go, hey, now you’re holding it. Good night. I’d go, “Hey, we’ve got to talk about the taxes. Good night.”

So that became one of our soundtracks. That’s a coffee conversation. Let’s talk about that at 9:00 a.m. when we both have coffee.

So I just kept an owner’s manual, which in essence gave me permission to go, I function best when these things are occurring. And then I turned, I had 360 of them, I fed it into Claude, and was like, okay, organize these by situations.

And even the permission to have insight about yourself, everyone that’s listening should be the best note-taker about themselves and go, oh, when I’m with this person, this is how I feel. Or, oh, when this happens, this is how I feel. Or, oh, this is a thing that kind of sets me off. I need to remember that because it’s going to happen again. I’m going to have this type of situation. I want to make sure I don’t turn to food as the numbing agent in this. I need to have a different thing I do.

But even the permission to be curious about how you best work and not see that as selfishness, but actually see it as self-care that allows you to really love the people in your life even better.

Well, it’s also just so empowering. For my women, they are almost always the victim of their life. And I say that with love. This is not me bitching at them. But it’s just so true from what I’ve watched. I was the victim of my life for a long time.

And when you think about having an owner’s manual where you actually are looking at, here are all the things that trigger me, and here’s a better response for it, because the triggers are never going away. Thanksgiving comes every year at the same time.

Yes.

It’s just like my mom is chock-full of worries. I love her to death, but good Lord. It’s not even the glass is half empty. It’s like the glass fell off the table and broke.

And somebody stole the shards.

Exactly. And I used to get so pissed about it.

Did you want to fix it?

I tried fixing it probably when I was younger. My mom was 17 when she had me. And for most of growing up, I think I was always trying to fix it for her. I can remember situations, specifically when I was 12 through 14, bill collectors would always be calling the house, and I’d always try to answer the phone. I had an ex-stepfather. She married him for just a little bit. They didn’t work out. He was a really great guy. They ended up being friends later, but they just weren’t marriage material.

I remember calling him and asking for money on our behalf when I could tell there was just too much going on. So I think for a while I was trying to hold things together and fix things and whatnot. And then after I got into my 20s, it was like everything just pissed me off. It was almost like I was just like, I shouldn’t have to do this. Somebody should take care of me.

But anyway, I say all that because I spent a lot of time in the last 10 years really thinking about the relationship that I wanted with my mother, knowing my mother will always worry. She will always bring me problems. She will never, ever see that things are okay. And I have to quit getting mad about that.

My owner’s manual is now when my mom says that, have perspective. This is your moment to take a few deep breaths because at the end of the day I want a good relationship with her.

Yeah, that matters.

And it brings me to something else you said. You asked a question. I literally was on the treadmill listening to this, and I wrote it down in my phone, which was dying, so I couldn’t bring it. But it was something like, don’t ask yourself what you do believe, ask yourself what you want to believe.

I’m just going to tell you right now, if there was one part of that book, and there was a lot that was really good, that right there, I was even thinking about it this morning, and I listened to that three or four days ago and it has stuck in my little craw.

Can you talk about the power of stop asking what you currently believe and start asking yourself what you want to believe?

Yeah. I just think we forget sometimes that belief is a choice. We act like the set of beliefs we have is the set we’ll always have to have.

Or we do this with our past too, where we’ll go, I can’t become the person I want to become because of mistakes I’ve made, things that were done to me, issues I have in the past. And so we give the past all this power. And then we forget that today, a year from now, this is the past. So either the past has no power, or it had some power.

And I go, well, today you can choose. What if today was the day you talked about a year from now? Because if you’re a weight loss story, then people go, yeah, I got to this season in my life, and here’s where it all changed. In my own life, it’s like in my mid-30s, here’s where things started to change.

And even just the other day, I was like, what if being 50 is what I talk about 10 years from now? And I go, okay, what did I do at 50 where I started to believe differently?

And I just like that idea because then it opens you up to anything is possible versus I need to figure out what I currently believe and then see, can I slightly change that?

And the question I love to give people is, don’t say, what would a great mom do? Or what do I really like? Or how do I become really healthy? Because the I word wakes up all your fears, your insecurities, your doubts. Your fear will go, well, it didn’t work last time, won’t work this time. Who are you to think you can do this? You come from an out-of-shape family. You always...

Versus going, what would an in-shape person do? Then that gives you ideation. I’m always trying to go, let’s not get stuck on identity. Let’s look at ideation.

Because then you can go, even if you just did the exercise and I said, write down what it would take for you to be a better mom, that’s a tough exercise. You’re like, here’s the list of ways I fail.

Versus, what do you feel like great moms do? Now you’re thinking about somebody else, and your fear doesn’t wake up in the same way.

So that’s what I mean by you get to choose that. Right now one of my soundtracks is growth is the goal, not comfort. I’m trying to really lean into growth, and it’s making me uncomfortable. And often if I interpret discomfort as a reason to stop, I stop almost immediately. I go, oh, this doesn’t feel right. I don’t like this.

And I’m like, no, growth is the thing I’m trying to do. That’s the thing I’m trying to pursue. And I honestly believe that about 7 percent right now. I’m not there yet. When I get uncomfortable, I go, oh, this is the wrong thing. I don’t like this, and I want to stop it. But I’m leaning into that.

And so that’s what I mean. The belief doesn’t have to be 100 percent for you to make forward progress. It could be 4 percent. You could say, I’m the type of person who exercises.

I meet so many people, Corinne, and they’ll go, well, I’m not athletic. A woman the other day told me, “My strongest muscle has always been my brain.” And that was this really subtle way to label herself as not athletic. And then she followed it up with, “My sister was the athletic one. I was the smart one.”

So then you go, okay, so now you’re believing, because in eighth grade you got cut from the volleyball team, you’re no longer an athletic person. And now you’ve accepted that label.

What if you could say, I’m becoming an athletic person? Or I want to believe that I’m the type of person that enjoys exercise. I don’t right now. This sucks.

Somebody told me today, me and my husband started taking walks, and we’d say, “We have to go on our stupid walk for our stupid health.” Because that’s how they could laugh about it and do it. And now she says, if I miss it, it feels weird.

The goal, part of the goal for me on consistent eating well and exercise is eventually it feels weird to not do it. It feels weird to do it when you start. But eventually when you get in a rhythm, you’ve seen women get into a rhythm. And if you said to them, “Hey, you don’t get to work out this week,” they’d go, “You’re not the boss of me. I exercise.”

And I just think if you choose those beliefs at the front end of it, it’s easier to do it.

And that goes back to the last thing I’ll say about this. My definition of mindset, and it’s a very common definition that a lot of people use, is great thoughts lead to great actions, great actions lead to great results. So the things that I think turn into the things I do, which become the things I get. So I’m always going, hey, how does belief turn into an action? How does that belief feed that action, which feeds the result?

Yeah. And that’s so important. One of the things I tell my people all the time is, very much in the beginning, your old thoughts are coming along for the ride. If I was to preach to you all day on a Sunday and you left out of there with your ass on fire at 2:00 p.m., by 3:00 p.m. every old thought is right back.

So I always tell them, you don’t need the thoughts to be able to do. What you really need is to notice the thoughts that get in the way of what you do. We can’t make them go away for a long time, but what we can do is get so much better at responding to them.

And then something else you said, I don’t know if this helps, but this is something I tell my clients all the time, since you’re working on growth versus comfort. When you start doing things that are basically against your current habits and nature, like if you’ve been someone who is not eating healthy and you’re not exercising, and then you start doing stuff, they’re like, fuck it, I’m going to do it anyway. Jon said I should just get in there and give it the old Girl Scout try.

Number one, you will not be good at it at first. Nobody is good at anything new in the beginning. So we all have to transverse the incompetent phase before we even get to the competent phase. But we quit when we feel like we’re not doing it right.

And I think the second thing is people don’t realize, my women will say this all the time, I’m struggling to find my enough. I’m struggling to get started. I’m struggling, blah, blah, blah. It’s like, you’re not struggling in the beginning stages. It feels very different. And if you keep calling it a struggle, you will eventually stop because there ain’t no woman that I know that has got such a leisure life that she’s got a lot of time to add some struggle on top.

Yeah. Her life is already so easy. She’s like, I’d like some recreational struggle.

Yes. Just throw me a side of that, please.

No.

But we need to identify it as different. This feels different because I ain’t used to it, and I’m not good at it yet.

Well, and the thing, the way I say it is, be brave enough to be bad at something new. Be brave enough to be bad at something new.

During COVID, young moms especially would tell me, “Oh, Jon, I’m the worst at virtual schooling. I’m terrible at virtual schooling. My eight-year-old...” And I’d always go, yeah, but you suck at hang gliding too. They’d go, what? I’m like, yeah, you’ve never hang glided. You’ve never virtually taught an eight-year-old. And by the way, the worst time to learn a new skill is during a global pandemic. It’s very distracting.

So for me, I think what you’re getting at is the big thing is, I had a counselor tell me once, it’s not your feelings, it’s your feelings about your feelings that really wreck you.

Meaning, I run into a new thing. I feel like it’s hard. And then I judge that and I go, this is a struggle, versus no, this is 100 percent what should be happening.

I tell people all the time, they go, “I don’t know why I’m so sad about blank.” And I’ll go, because it’s sad. That’s the right feeling. They’ll go, “I’m really struggling with this divorce.” And you’re like, yeah, divorce is impossibly difficult.

Or “I’m really mad at myself for blank, blank, blank.” And you’re like, well, let’s just acknowledge, that’s a feeling. It doesn’t have to be the only feeling, but it’s going to be challenging in this first part. And it’s always challenging.

That’s because then if you tell somebody who’s in the middle of that, oh yeah, this is what should be happening, you can see the weight of that judgment kind of fall off them, where they go, oh, other people have this too.

When I tell people it’s hard for me to write books, they’re often like, wait, what? I’m like, yeah, books are hard for me. And then they go, oh, it’s hard for you? You’ve written 11? Then it’s okay that it’s hard for me right now.

And I think that’s part of being honest about your own journey so that other people can go, oh, I’m where I’m supposed to be. It’s supposed to feel this way.

Yeah. People are always shocked because I’ve been pretty much working out and lifting weights for 19 years now. 2007 was the year that I finally lost weight. And I tell them all the time, if you think for one fucking second that I wake up in the morning and I’m not haggard, tired, with a long to-do list and thinking that there’s a thousand better things to do other than go to the gym, you are crazy.

Every single day, I have to convince myself to go because it’s that whole competing desires. Everybody’s got competing desires in life. My to-do list, very important. Things have to get done. But I love what we talked about earlier. I just know me. I’m going to go even if I hate going.

And then when I get there, it’s not that I suddenly am shooting sparkle and glitter out my ass that I’m there. It’s just once I get going, I’m not thinking about what I’m not doing anymore. Now I’m just focused on this, and I get done and I’m better for it.

I also am one of the ones too that finally is the person who, if I have to miss a few days, like two or three days in a row, now I’m aggravated that I’m not going. And I think that’s the glory moment. But people need to quit expecting that even if it’s good for you and you’ve been doing it for a long time, you’re not just going to suddenly become somebody who says, well, I just look forward to every healthy thing that I do.

No. And I feel that way. I’ve just found ways to make it easy to sell myself on the decisions I want to make. I tell everybody, you’re the best you salesperson in the history of the world because before every bad decision or good decision you’ve made, first you talked yourself into it.

So I am the best Jon Acuff salesman in the world. And so what I realized is, like, I do this workout called F3. It’s a free men’s boot camp. It’s at 5:30 in the morning. When it’s eight degrees out, there’s no part of me that’s like, oh, I can’t wait to do pushups in a parking lot outside. It’s held outside.

And so I’m never excited about 4:55, but I just found ways to talk myself into it. One simple hack I do is I realized if I tell three guys the night before that I’ll drive, I’m going. Because there’s no world where I’m texting three different guys at 5:00 in the morning going, “Hey, turns out I’m not going.”

I’ve already put some positive pressure on myself. This is happening.

So when you have to do something you don’t want to do, my favorite definition of discipline is make tomorrow easy today. Make tomorrow easy today. What can I do today to make tomorrow easy? I want to make great food choices on Friday. What can Monday me do to hook up Friday me? What can night me do to hook up morning me?

That gets back to the owner’s manual. I know without a shadow of a doubt, if I wake up on Monday morning without a plan and it’s 8:00 a.m. and the phone’s already ringing and clients and everything, I’m overwhelmed. But if night me spends 10 minutes coming up with a plan for Monday, morning me will run through a wall if you pick out the right wall first.

But if I don’t have a plan, I’m overwhelmed. So once I realized that about my mornings, it was like, oh, therefore come up with an easy plan so that you feel better and you make better decisions and your day goes better.

So again, that gets back to that curiosity about what makes you really work. And then 90 percent of goals is talking yourself into doing things you won’t feel like doing most of the time. It’s just like, okay, it’s time to enter the Jon Acuff sales funnel. This is ultimately the deep joy we want. This is shallow, superficial. We want this.

So in order to get to the deeper version, we’re going to make some different decisions, and we’re going to make it as easy as possible to pick that right decision.

I think that’s so important because most of us are just in the habit and the default. And literally, I just think that our brains are wired to talk ourselves out of things, especially if it’s going to be hard.

I’m going to tell you right now, Corinne would not be the 4:55 person.

Yeah. Like a lunatic.

And here’s the other thing I would love every listener to believe. Desire leads to discipline, not the other way around. I’ve helped more than a million people with goals. I still haven’t found somebody who said, today I just woke up and decided to have grit or sacrifice or willpower. No one willingly leaves their comfort zone, and they shouldn’t. The first name is comfort.

What always happens, in my opinion, is that there’s either desire or disappointment. Desire is I want this. Disappointment is I don’t want this. So the only reason people leave the comfort zone is that something outside it is worth being uncomfortable for. And that creates discipline.

I didn’t start getting up earlier because I was Mark Wahlberg doing 2:00 a.m. burpees. I started to get up earlier when I was in my 30s because it was the only time I had to write. I had two kids under the age of four. And if I wanted to write my blog, I bumped into this desire that lit me on fire. And then you start to look at your hours of your day like logs, and you can’t throw enough logs into that fire as possible. I stopped watching as much TV because TV was giving me nothing and blogging was giving me everything.

When you catch that, that’s when it leads to discipline.

And then the flip side is, Sean Johnson, the gold medal Olympian, told me, “I agree. But the flip side is when your desire doesn’t show up that day, your discipline will carry you.” There’s going to be moments where you’re like, this is dumb, I don’t care about this. But the rhythm, the discipline of rhythm you’ve got going, will carry you through that tough spot.

But I think there are a lot of women that beat themselves up and go, I don’t have enough discipline, willpower, sacrifice. And it’s like, well, let’s plug into desire. Let’s plug into what’s the thing that’s going to motivate you? Because then you’ll do the difficult things. You won’t do them just because. Nobody changes their life just because.

Yeah. And you’ve got to have something that feels really true also. I think a lot of my women try to come up with their whys or their desires, and it’s based in bullshit.

Oh yeah. You can spend years doing that.

When I first got started, I hit a rock bottom, which was the I can’t do this anymore stage. Once I got going, though, I just wanted to be hot. That was the only thing I cared about. I’d never been hot before. I’d never looked good before.

So good.

It was like that rocket ship thrusting out of space.

I was tired of being poor. I was tired of being poor. I told Jenny, I didn’t know we were poor. I just thought we liked camping. Because when we were newly married, it was like, we sure were outdoorsy. And she was like, no, we were broke. The only thing we could afford for vacation was an $11-a-night campsite.

Or, oh, Jenny, you were so nice, you volunteered for that church thrift sale. And she was like, no, I volunteered because if you volunteered, you got to buy the toys first. And if we cleaned them up, the kids wouldn’t know they were used.

So I’m very pro you being like, I love that you said that. I think where the lie is, people come up with a noble thing. Like, “Well, no, I just really want to show my kids a good lesson.” And you’re like, that might be in there somewhere. That ain’t the driver, though.

What’s the driver where you’re like, oh no, this is the thing that I really care about? This is what’s going to get me started. For me, it’s community, male community. I love working out with these dudes. It’s really uplifting to me. The rest of my day goes better when I do something difficult with like 20 other guys I like in the morning. I’ve figured that out.

That’s why it’s fun to talk. That’s why I’ll come on as many times as you’ll have me. We’re in the same spot, just different executions.

Yeah. I remember when I first started exercising, my secret why for going was because I could get out of the damn house and not have to talk to anybody but me.

Some women will say, well, no, I need to improve my health and blah, blah, blah. It’s like, look, if your fucking kids are driving you crazy, there’s nothing wrong with that.

I think women always think that their whys are somehow tattooed on their head like a scarlet letter and everybody knows what they are. It’s like, no one fucking knows. We only need to know what gets your fire burning in you. And whatever that is, you have to remind yourself, this is not bad. This is not selfish. This is not weird. It’s not anything. It’s just, this cranks me up, and I need this for me.

So just for all the listeners, y’all just be honest about it. I don’t think there’s any shame in any of that.

Well, and in your community, that’s the other thing. Nobody’s going to go, oh, that’s weird. That doesn’t make sense to me. They’re going to be like, let’s go. Did that encourage you to get to the gym four times this week? Awesome. Ride that thing all through May. Work that through June. Did that make a hard July easier? Great. Use that.

That’s where, again, the owner’s manual concept, or even just the permission, the permission to do and then to review and go, oh, I’m pausing for a second. When I do these three things, wow, look what happens. I should do those more often.

The reality is we forget the good things in life and over-remember the bad. So we have a photographic memory for the failures. We forget the good.

And so I think a lot of times what you find with goals and life changes, it’s a reunion. I guarantee there are women in your community that go, yeah, I was in this really good rhythm where I was walking all the time with my friend and I had a weighted vest. And then for some reason I got off track and I haven’t done it for nine months. And then I did it again today and I realized, oh, that’s right.

And it’s like a reunion.

And so I’m just saying, let’s be really patient with ourselves, but also really intentional about, oh, this thing works, and I’m going to do this thing until the cows come home. Like this other thing doesn’t work, and I’m not going to do it. That doesn’t motivate me. It doesn’t move me. And yeah, you’ll never change your life with somebody else’s motivation. You’ll do the hard work for your own if it’s honest, but you won’t for what culture tells you or what another person tells you.

Yeah. It really has to be for you.

Do you have any other systems? Because I know in the book you talk a lot about having systems. And one thing I really agreed on, and I actually wrote it down, was that your system has to work on the hard days.

One of our systems is making a 24-hour food plan. So you wake up in the morning, you pre-decide what you’re going to eat for the day so that tired-ass you at night is not sitting there after she’s made four bajillion decisions and told everybody what to do and held everything together. The last thing she wants to do is figure out dinner. The only thing she’s going to figure out is how to call Uber Eats.

So can you talk more about, do you have any other systems?

Oh my gosh, my whole life is systems at this point.

I realized I was making excuses about working out when I travel. I travel for work. I have 50 to 60 speaking events a year. And I’d be like, oh, the gym’s the wrong size, I don’t have enough time. I had a list of excuses. So I got to a point where I came up with a new soundtrack. And the new soundtrack was, if I have a floor, I have a gym. Meaning I can do sit-ups. I can do push-ups. I just made a list of bodyweight exercises that I can do for 20 minutes in the Hilton Garden Inn, even if they don’t have a fitness center, even if I don’t have the right clothes. I’m in boxer shorts doing bodyweight exercises like a maniac. And for 20 minutes, not for two hours.

So that was a system to go, wow, I find myself not working out on the road. Here are the excuses I’m making. What’s my system? Oh, my system is this. If I have a floor, I have a gym.

Even travel. I decided when I’m on a plane, there are 30 minutes between when you sit down and when it takes off. That’s a window I can do something with. So can I pre-plan what I do with that? Oh, I can do that.

For me, I found myself buying stuff I didn’t need. So I didn’t connect Apple Pay or anything to Instagram. I knew myself. I’d be very susceptible to be like, oh, I should buy that. So that’s a good system for me, to not have that set up so that if I see something on Instagram, I’m going to get annoyed if I have to go fill out a form. So I won’t buy the thing I thought maybe I needed in the moment because I can be compulsive.

So yeah, I’d say most of the best parts of my life have at least a small system. And to your point on the days where it’s really hard, you can’t make the system complicated or you won’t do it. You can’t make it super detailed or you won’t do it. It’s like, on my worst days, how can this system still serve me well?

Like, what does this look like? I found a salad at the BNA airport. I travel out of Nashville the most. There’s a Cobb salad they sell, and it’s very filling. And I eat that every time I travel because I felt like I found myself at the Greek restaurant, and they were like, I got a gyro plate. And then the guy one day was like, you want extra meat? And I was like, I didn’t even know that was an option. And then all of a sudden, I feel gross on the plane because I’ve overdone it.

So having a consistent salad I eat, that’s a system.

Yeah, we teach a similar concept for the hard days called minimum baseline. So I always tell my people, you know, we have days where we’re highly motivated. We have days where we’re going to kick ass. And luckily on those days, the world is like, oh my God, let me clear the way for you.

Yeah. Green lights. All green lights.

Yes. But then there are a lot of days where the world is not cooperating. Everything gets in your way. It jacks everything up.

And I always tell them, you need that minimum baseline, which is like a system. It’s like, if this, then this. So I just tell them, watch your life, watch your patterns. And wherever you’re getting off track and stuff, part of it’s mindset work, but sometimes we are legitimately blocked from doing our thing.

Like if you were going to eat a chicken salad for dinner and you’re going to come home and have it, and your kid all of a sudden has practice that nobody knew about and you have to drive because they can’t drive themselves, and you’re going to go sit your ass there, I always tell my women, keep in your phone, in your Notes app, things you can get through a drive-through that won’t blow your diet to hell.

Because we’re just going to have times where we have to have fallback plans. Plan B, plan C. I always tell them, if you just look at everything, it’s like your owner’s manual. Start with everything that gets in your way right now and then become the person who can come up with your plan A, B, C, and D.

I just don’t think there’s anything wrong with having a lot of thinking ahead of time so that your life gets easier.

I think that’s the planning part. If I plan for an hour on Sunday, every one of my days that week goes better. And if I give myself the space to do that, then I don’t get caught in surprises. A lot of the things we call surprises, you go, no, you’re going to have a kid’s practice thing happen three times a school year, four times a school year.

And the easy thing you just described is, yeah, have it in a note. Decide in a moment of clarity, not a moment of chaos. The more decisions you make in a moment of clarity versus the chaos of you’re sitting on a bleacher, you’re mad, these two hours that you had a plan for have been hijacked, and you get all that frustration first, and you’re like, I can just DoorDash something, whatever. And it’s like, no, I have a note that’s almost like a break-in-case-of-emergency note.

Have as many of those as you need for the emergencies that are going to come up, like you said, and go, yeah, this is what it is. This is the healthiest meal at Taco Bell because it’s the only thing near the ball field.

And it’s not like this, this is what it is. Here’s my emergency.

I tell people all the time, you have to accept uncertainty and increase certainty. It’s two very different things. Accept uncertainty because life is uncertain. There are so many things you don’t control. But increase certainty where you can, where you go, I have five notes, and it’s like break in case of emergency, Sheila. And when I get into these five common emergencies, this is what I do.

Well, I would love to keep talking, but I just looked up and I was like, oh my God, we’re already out of time.

That’s a good problem.

That’s a great problem. Is there anything else you would like to tell everybody, though, before we end today? Like one key piece of advice or something they need to know other than buy your book, Procrastination Proof. We will make sure the link is in the show notes for everybody. But anything you would like to tell them before we go?

Yeah, I’ll give it to you in categories.

If you’re in your 20s, I always say don’t wait. And I also say don’t use the phrase work-life balance in your 20s. I had a 25-year-old man tell me the other day he wants to worry about work-life balance. I said, these are the building years. No, no, no. You have the least amount of money and experience and the most amount of time and energy. Use those to get more.

If you’re in your 30s, I’d say you’re not behind. Everybody in their 30s has a friend who has a rocket-ride career. They get the marriage and the house and the dog and all this stuff, and you feel behind. You’re not behind.

If you’re in your 40s, I always say I meet a lot of people who think they’re burned out, but they’re really just bored. They’re overstimulated and under-challenged. I think sometimes in our 40s we need even bigger problems and challenges to really engage us.

And if you’re in your 50s and 60s, I’d say you’re just getting started. I’ve had people come up to me and be like, oh, when are you going to slow down? I always think, ask a bird why it still flies. Because it’s a bird. I haven’t helped everybody yet. There are still so many humans.

And if you’re in your 70s, we need you. You’ve been to the future we’re trying to get to, and we’re humbly asking you how you got there. People who are 10 years older than you are time machines. They’ve been to the future you want to go to. And if you’ll ask them, they’ll often save you five years on the journey.

I know there are people in your community that have been in it for a while, and they love helping somebody who’s new to it because they can say, hey, this is the way to do it in a smarter way, or this is the way to do it in an easier way.

So yeah, I would just say don’t wait. And depending on what decade you’re in, lean into different things.

Well, that might be very wise. I appreciate that you went through the decades, especially because most of my people are in their 40s and 50s, but a lot of them are in their 60s and 70s. And they really struggle with thinking that it’s over.

And it’s like, it’s not over.

Oh, no. It’s just not. And new chapters. You have new chapters too. I look at it and go, I could do something completely differently for 10 years. I know some 60-year-olds who are like, I had no idea I’d end up doing this, but I’m loving it. And I took all those things I learned in the first 40 years, and here’s what I’ve built.

So yeah, if you’re alive, it’s not over. And there are people that need you.

Whenever I meet somebody who’s in their 60s and they’re learning AI, I’m like, let’s go. I think that’s amazing.

One of my favorite health goals a woman told me, and she’s retired, she said, “Here’s why I want to be in shape.” I was like, let’s hear it. She said, “I want to be in shape so I can lift my paddleboard.” She said, “In retirement, I discovered how much I love paddleboarding. So I don’t have a number. I don’t have a thing I’m doing. I just want to be able to consistently get a paddleboard on top of a car and carry a paddleboard down to the water.”

One, I love that she’s got a new hobby in her 60s. Two, I love that she’s tied it to, hey, remember, if you want to be able to do this, you have to stay in shape. You don’t want to be where someday you can’t lift the paddleboard.

So no, I think it’s a fun season of life.

I do too.

All right. Well, I appreciate you always coming here and sharing all the wisdom with my people. And they love you. You are like an honorary No BS woman.

I love it. You’re the other No BS woman.

I’ll take that. I’ll take that honorary degree. I’ve got a No BS degree.

There you go.

All right. Thank you so much.

Thanks, y’all. We will see you next week.