My wife is an avid gym-class-taker.

She has an app on her phone where she can view the schedule of classes and manage her attendance.

Obviously going to the gym 3 or 4 times a week is a great thing but the constant internal debate seems exhausting.

She is forever battling herself about the timing, the energy, the weather, child care, house responsibilities, work responsibilities. Should all those things line up she clicks “attend”. Should they not, she doesn’t and feels guilty.

The effort is in the deciding.

Now lets flip the script.

I run every day.

After work I come home, kiss my family, put on my running shoes and head out for 3 miles.

There is zero internal dialogue/debate leading up to the activity. I am going, period.

Staying active now requires zero mental energy [and zero guilt should I miss a day].

Which got me thinking…

Can this paradigm be implemented in other areas of life?

Like eating healthy: Instead of battling day in and day out, meal in and meal out, what if we said to ourselves, “at every meal I am going to eat healthy, period”. We’ve just eliminated many of our internal daily struggles.

Or being honest: Instead of having to continually conjure up historical context, maybe just say, “in every conversation I am going to be honest”. Mark Twain put it best — “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”

Or work relationships: Instead of constantly being on the watch, what if we entered every situation as being helpful, thus eliminating the need for calculations [**caution: may be hazardous to near-term career prospects].

Embracing “always” frees up a ton of mental bandwidth that gets clogged with “sometimes”.