Have you ever been to a psychic?
I mean a “real” psychic.
Not some lady sitting at a folding table set up on the sidewalk or even Madame Marie in her beachside shack on the Asbury Park boardwalk.
I mean a by-appointment psychic. I mean a you-need-a-referral-to-get-in psychic.
I have. His name was Raymond. My Aunt Miriam got me in.
For a while, Aunt Miriam didn’t make a big personal or financial move without consulting Raymond. She was happy to send me.
Raymond worked out of a loft in his West Village apartment. When you arrived you were greeted by Raymond’s quite-frankly-out-of-his-league boyfriend whose job was to sit silently with you on the couch watching “Inside Edition” until Raymond called you up to his space.
The loft was outfitted with a glass table which Raymond heftily set behind. He wore all black, smoked thin brown cigarettes and had a silhouette that was more Jabba The Hut than the chiseled boyfriend who waited downstairs.
In 30 minutes, Raymond determined that I was going to marry a woman named Robin and was going to work for channel 4. None of which came true.
He did give me one simple and amazing piece of advice before I left.
He told me that he could sense from my lower abdomen that I worry too much. He advised me to stop.
“There’s no need to worry, Dan,” he said as I stood up to leave. “Nothing good comes from it, anyway.”
The days and weeks after my meeting with Raymond, I thought about what he said quite a bit. Should I send my resume to someone at Channel 4? Should I start asking girls in bars if their name was Robin?
Ultimately, I took no action based on Raymond’s prognostication. Well, maybe that’s not entirely true. I guess I didn’t worry about finding Robin or Channel 4 which was bang on his final advice.
I’m not sure how much I actually believe in psychics. I am a man of science, after all. But I do know that there are plenty of things that do exist that can’t be explained or that I just don’t understand.
I also know this: while I have no psychic ability, I do know why so many of you won’t reach your fitness goals.
No, I don’t have a crystal kettlebell. I’m not part of some meathead illuminati that controls who gets jacked and who is doomed to perpetually have noodle arms.
I simply have eyes and ears and a lot (A LOT!) of experience talking to people about their approach to fitness. And the thing that separates the achievers from the wannabes is staring you in the mirror.
No, it’s not your aforementioned noodle arms that are the problem (although that isn’t helping). It’s not that your program isn’t optimized or that you don’t have access to high-end barbells or even your genetics. The problem is you.
Or, more specifically, your need to know everything will work out and there will be absolutely no obstacles before you commit. I’ll give you a classic example.
Client wants to start training two days per week. Says they are available any weekday and at most times. I tell them we have Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday available. Their response?
“You don’t have anything on Wednesday???”
And while this sounds made up (and is certainly one of the more comical examples) it is just one of many instances of needing to “check the train stops and what my work schedule looks like in 6 months and see what my astrology chart has to say” before they could possibly sign up.
Here’s the thing, I actually understand.
It’s all new and scary and sounds like a big commitment and while you know that you need to take your health and fitness more seriously when it’s time to actually pull the trigger, you get cold feet and try to find every reason why now is not the right time.
But let me give you an honest-to-goodness pro tip, it’s never going to be a good time. There is always going to be a work project or a family trip or your niece’s Bat Mitzvah or an unplanned bill in your future.
When you are worried that something won’t work because life can get chaotic is actually the best time to try that thing. Because, guess what, life is going to get unpredictable sometimes. So why not give it a shot under less than ideal condiitions so you’ll have confidence you can make it work even when things get wonky. Again, I’m no psychic but I’m pretty sure even Raymond would agree.
Here’s what I’ve come to realize as the decades have passed since my first visit to a real psychic; Raymond's predictions were completely wrong, but his advice was completely right.
He couldn't tell me what was going to happen. Just like I can’t tell you what is going to happen.
People delay decisions because they're trying to eliminate uncertainty before acting. They want to know they'll like the gym, that work won't get busy, that they'll stick with it, that this is the perfect program, that the money won't be needed elsewhere, that six months from now the same schedule will work.
They're essentially trying to be Raymond.
But Raymond couldn't even fucking do it, and he was the professional psychic.
Raymond got Robin wrong. He got Channel 4 wrong. He had absolutely no idea what was going to happen to me.
Neither do you.
You don't know whether the new gym will work out, whether you'll love Pilates, whether Wednesday will eventually become inconvenient, or whether the second date will become the love of your life.
You get to find out only after you decide.
Maybe the only thing Raymond got right was the one thing he wasn't predicting.
There's no need to worry. Nothing good comes from it anyway.