Mike Gives You A Plan?!

I hit record while sick, sleep-deprived, and filling in solo, and it turned into the most honest lesson I’ve learned about sustainable weight loss and mental health: slowing down is not the same as stopping. A ruptured eardrum forced me to lower my usual walking pad pace, and that tiny choice became proof of growth. Years ago I would have called that “giving up” and punished myself harder. Today it’s just smart training, realistic habit building, and self-respect. 

We also sit with grief. I read a message from Rob about losing someone and the hole it leaves behind, then talk about how you do not erase pain, you grow around it. That same idea applies to fitness and body change: progress is not a straight line, and a break can be part of the plan when your body is sending signals you should actually listen to. I share a story about an injury that kept me out of the gym, and how the emotion wasn’t rage, it was sadness because I finally had a routine that was for me, not against me. 

From there we get practical. I explain how to tell the difference between needing rest and simply not wanting to do the work, plus one of my best consistency rules: you can skip the gym, but you have to go to the gym to skip it. Then we zoom out to long-term health, aging, mobility, and why micro commitments and small wins rebuild belief when you feel stuck. If you want my Micro Commitments lesson for free, DM me “micro.” Subscribe, share this with someone who’s being too hard on themselves, and leave a review with the smallest “next step” you’re taking this week.

Transcript

A Rough Day And A Solo Host

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Hey everybody. Welcome to In Moderation. Let me make sure that my microphone is unmuted. I just recorded 15 minutes of a now lost episode because I didn't check to make sure that my microphone was unmuted. I am now checking. I'm seeing that the levels are there and present. This is just a peek into my mind right now. I am sick. I'm recovering from an ear rupture, an eardrum rupture from that illness. And somehow I am the most fit to run this episode today. Liam was up all night with Oakley. And Rob unfortunately is his dad passed away a few days ago, as uh some of you know now. And so he's with his family. Um, so I, on my last leg, am taking care of the podcast duties for today. Um, we were just talking about, or we, I was just talking about taking a break when it is necessary. And the episode was fantastic. I was like, this is really good. This is gonna be a good episode here. Um, but hey, not everything is going to work out the way we anticipated to work out. But we're gonna get right back into it. I am a professional, I do this for a living. We will talk about things, we were gonna talk about things. But the the lead up to this was um a message that Rob had sent to me. Um, ever the poet he is, uh, he had said, Losing someone leaves a large hole in your life, one that will never be filled, and it can be intimidating. But if you continue your journey, the further you keep pushing yourself, the smaller that hole is going to look behind you. Time doesn't heal wounds, they're always there, they're part of you. But moving forward, one day, you'll look back and realize how small that hole looks now, and it'll be easier to remember the happy little things instead of the scary ones. Upon the topic of grief, I am aware of the concept that grief never really gets smaller, but we grow around it. It's it just kind of stays the same, it stays there, and for a while it is all-encompassing because it will fill its container. Um, but it does not grow from there. But you do. And I know that Rob is going to get through this the way he he gets through everything. He's one of the strongest people I know, and I love him dearly just as I love Liam. And I'm so grateful to be here to get to do this. Um, to those of you that don't know, uh I'm my name is Mike, uh, also known as Mike Needs a Plan on Instagram and TikTok and all the platforms. I lost 110 pounds and uh now I'm down like 80 pounds because I'm actually gaining weight. And we'll we'll talk about that in just a moment. Um, but I started the episode, the the lost episode prior to this, um, by starting my walking pad uh at the normal speed that I use my walking pad. And then I realized at a certain point, you know, this is this is too fast right now. And so I pressed the button, I brought it down a notch, just to a saundering pace. And here I am, walking, doing what I can with what I've got right now. If you're watching on YouTube, I I my eyes are all red, my nose is red. It's it's not a pretty sight at this point. But I'm doing what I can with what I've got. And there was a period in my life where that was not the path that I always took with myself. I was a lot harsher on myself than I should have been. And I'll take you back to four years ago when I was looking in the mirror. It was one of the first times I was looking in the mirror. I actually had had a shirt covering my mirror for a few months. And that was an improvement. Before that, I was anytime I was in the bathroom taking a shower, I would just turn the lights off. And I had two different shampoo and conditioner bottles with different caps on them, so I could feel the difference. I did not want to see myself. Now, when I was looking in the mirror, I'm 155 pounds, 6'3. Uh, for those of you that don't know, that's very bad. Um, I still thought I was fad, right? And so I was looking in the mirror and I thought to myself, well, the weight will come off when it comes off. It will, it'll go. I just have to keep grinding and keep pushing, keep going forward. I was dying. I mean, like, think about this. I was walking an obscene amount of steps per day. I was not eating anything. Some days I would go without eating anything, and I considered that to be a success of a day. If I didn't eat for a whole waking period, I'm like, yeah, I got another one. What an awful way to look at things. That path, grinding myself down as hard and as fast as I could. I mean, I don't really have to spell it out to you what would have happened to me if I had kept going. And I really was convinced that this was in the best interest of my health. This is something that's good for me. If I can just keep going towards this impossible ideal, I will eventually be given the answer. I didn't have the answer, but I was hoping to be given the answer. That if I just worked hard enough, the answer would come to me and everything would be fine. But it was that picture that I took four years ago in the mirror, gaunt as could be. You could see my ribs, you your skull doesn't shrink when you lose weight, so I got this big bobblehead on top of a stick body. And then I ran the math and I realized I cannot go down this path any further. I've gone down as far as this path will allow me to go. And that was the day I realized if I wanted to be happy, if I wanted to be healthy and I wanted to be fulfilled, I am going to have to slow down. And that was terrifying to me. As somebody who used to be obese and if felt that if I had even taken one finger off of the steering wheel, that I would veer off the road. Slowing down was death. Slowing down was endgame. That was it. It's basically tantamount to giving up. So just that little gesture of feeling that I was going too fast on my walking pad when I'm sick, recovering from an eardrum rupture, and not feeling my best, getting up on my walking pad to do what I can do, going up to my normal pace and saying, I can I can't do this right now, and slowing down and not having a second thought about it, that's growth right there. Yes, the physical stuff is great, fantastic. And that's that's for everybody else. You know, oh, you look so great. I haven't seen you in a while. Okay, cool. Whatever. The fact that I'm not torturing myself anymore, that's the win. Because through that, I can do anything. If you can stop torturing yourself, you can do anything. Let's fast forward uh uh about a year from that story I just told you to uh 2023. I had just started working out at the gym, getting deja vu because I told a bunch of these stories in the uh episode that you'll never hear. Um, I had just started working out at the gym a couple of months prior to that, and I was driving in my car on the highway, and my alternator gave out. And the alternator powers the car, it provides electricity. So if that goes, your car just kind of shuts down. And so mine did, and I coasted off to the side, but it didn't coast far enough, and so I had to get out and push it off to the side of the road onto the shoulder. And in doing so, I pulled out my neck, and I'm like, well, that's gonna be inconvenient. That sucks. It's never fun to have your neck pulled out like that. But um, next day I wake up, obviously, it's much worse, and I'm getting ready to go to the gym. And then I think to myself, I I can't do this. Like physically, I'm not, I it's gonna be too uncomfortable. And I got mad at myself for a second, but I'm like, what am I gonna do? Next day I get up, same thing, still hurting. I go and I grab a couple of my adjustable dumbbells and I do some shrugs to see, like, you know, I'm just gonna activate my neck and see if you know what happens to me. Couldn't do it. And then I realized something very interesting. I wasn't so mad at myself as I was sad that I couldn't do it. I missed my routine. And that was the first time on my journey that I realized I I was doing something for myself rather than against myself. And just as I was doing something for myself by going to the gym, I was doing something for myself by not going when I knew I couldn't. And I recognized that in the moment. It was the first time that I'd recognized that taking a break and slowing down, other than at the very beginning when I was basically killing myself, was in the benefit of my health. And so every day I checked excitedly to see if I could get back to the gym, if I could get back to that routine that I enjoyed that was for me, not to destroy myself, not to get as small as I could, but to get stronger and happier and healthier. And on day nine, I felt that I could do it. I was like, you know what? Today might be the day. But you know what I did? I took one more day just to be sure. I said, I don't want this to be a thing where I've got to wait several months to get back. I don't want to get in there and pull something out worse and then have an injury that keeps me out for a lot longer. Because, man, I've missed this thing. And how awful would it have been if I had overextended myself to the point that I couldn't do it, or that I had a lifelong injury or something that needed, or a long recovery, or a surgery. I don't know. But I went back the next day, had a great workout, and that was that. A year prior to that, that sort of break would have been unimaginable for a couple of reasons. One, I would have been under the false impression that taking a few days would completely reset my progress, and I would lose everything physically and you know, be far worse off. I would also be afraid of the mental toll of having taken that time off. Well, I'm losing my my streak here. I'm losing my ability, I'm losing the motivation and the desire, and I'm just gonna fall back into binge patterns and uh you know it all this will be bunk. Nothing. When you enjoy the things that you're doing and you're not doing them through self-punishment and hatred, tends to be a lot easier to stick with it and get back to it. If you are punishing yourself every day on your journey and you fall off, I'm not surprised. Why would you be surprised? Have you ever had a shitty boss every day you go in and they berate you or they put too much work on your plate and they don't consider your feelings or your thoughts and they're criticizing you and making you feel awful. What do you want to do about that job every day? You want to quit. You want to leave, you want to walk away. When you are your own shitty boss, you can't quit you. You're gonna have to go home and wipe your shitty boss's ass. You're going to have to put your shitty boss to sleep or into bed. You want to euthanize them. But if you are your own shitty boss, you're always gonna want to quit. And I know, I know. It's it's scary to give yourself room, right? Because you think, well, if I'm given room, I will walk away. I'll stop doing it, I'll lose my motivation. Have you tried yet? And furthermore, why is it that the the only kind thing you can do for yourself is self-harm? Because that's what overeating is. No one has ever given me a good story of overeating where they've really afterward been like, man, I needed that. I felt great after doing that. I never did. I used to commit food crimes beyond you know uh what is is safe. I'm surprised I'm okay after all the things I used to do to myself. I didn't enjoy any of it, but it was the only option that I felt I had in a life that had very limited options. There are a lot of you out there on your journeys who are probably listening to this right now, looking for the motivation to get started again or to get going again, or maybe you're on your very last leg of what you can do with this attempt, right? And you're hoping that I will say something to get you back in, to get you grinding again at 150%. I slowed down today. Some of you don't know me, some of you are getting to know me, uh, and some of you are, you know, longtime listeners of mine, whether it be for my podcast, Mike Needs to Plan, or or my Instagram or my TikTok, whatever. You're listening to me because you want something that I have. I don't know what that is, but you want something that I have. If rest is okay for me, why is it not okay for you? And you'll tell me, well, Mike, you already have everything. You already won. So you can take a, you can, you can slow down. It's okay. Why? Shouldn't it be more important that I keep going every day if I have all the things, right? I don't want to lose that. So I should be grinding as hard as I can every day to make sure I'm not sliding back up the scale. You've got more wiggle room than I do, right? People will always tell when I tell them that I'll have a slice of cheesecake, and I'll say, well, you can afford it. I can't. You have a probably a higher resting metabolic rate than I do. That cheesecake is probably going to have, if I were to just sit and do nothing, it's going to have a larger caloric impact on me than it will on you. Because I'm smaller. You're going too hard on yourself. Life cannot be punishment. We want to avoid punishment. We don't want to be involved in punishment. So we will do anything we can to avoid it. If you keep falling off of your journey and you're looking at your journey as punishment, that's why. But while we're here, let's talk about the difference between needing a break and just not wanting to do it. Because that's a thing too that I struggle with. I deal with that. I am also human. Just because I'm on a different part of the journey than you are does not mean that I too do not struggle with not wanting to do stuff sometimes. And there are a couple of ways that I go about figuring out whether or not I really need to slow down or, you know, I need to take a break or whatever. Like when I got on my walking pad, now a half hour ago for you, uh, 17 minutes ago. And um, you know, I put my thing up to 2.6. I don't know what that measure is. It's it's not miles per hour, it's probably kilometers, kilometers. I don't know. Uh Rob help me out. Um, and I I couldn't do it. It was just, it was too fast for me. And that's my normal pace. When I'm on here giving lessons in my group coaching uh community, or I'm doing live streams on my page, whatever it is, that's my pace. Couldn't do it today. Body's not feeling it. My lungs are not feeling it. My eardrum is not feeling. If I put too much pressure on my eardrum, it hurts. That was not me not wanting to do it. That was me accommodating for my circumstances. I put myself in a position to succeed. I gave myself the opportunity to gauge my ability. And in doing so, I'm here doing something. I don't know how many steps I've got right now. I can usually tell how many steps I'm gonna have by how long I've been walking. Yeah, I'm looking at my steps right now. I'm not at as many steps as I would normally be right now because I'm at a slower pace. But I've got steps now. If I had decided I'm too sick, I'm just not gonna do it, I would have no steps right now. And there are some instances where that may be necessary. Yesterday, I did not get quite as many steps as I wanted, but I was in a much worse position yesterday. Like I the the eardrum rupture was new. It's still my ear is ringing right now. It's very annoying. I'm I'm leaning very heavily on my now years of broadcasting experience to just talk through it and fill the dead air, dead space, and what have you, and thank you for your patience as I do this. Um, but there were times in my past where in the very beginning I would say, Well, I can't. I can't do that. I'm not gonna do it. And those reasons are valid. You are exploring valid things that are happening and that you're feeling, but you're not putting yourself in a position to succeed. Now, on an average day, and this is something for those of you who are in my uh my coaching community on school, uh you will recognize what I'm about to say here. Put yourself in a position to succeed. And what I mean by that is I've got a rule, right? I've got a clause about the gym. I can skip any gym routine that I want. I can skip any gym day that I want to skip. I'm allowed to, if I want to skip every day, I can. But I have to go into the gym to skip it. I have to put on my pants and my shoes, go to the car, drive all the way over to Planet Fitness, get out of the car. I cannot quit in the car in front of the gym. Go inside through the two doors, scan my thing, beep. And if at that point I don't feel like I can do it, if I've put myself onto a machine and I'm like, today's not the day, I can go. Do you know how many times I quit when I do that? How many times I go home when I do that? Barely any, ever. But do you know how many times I don't work out when I decide not to work out when I'm home? A lot of times. If I decide here that I'm not gonna do it, there's a solid shot I'm not gonna do it. But most of the time when I get to the gym, I'm already there. I'm gonna, I'm even if I'm feeling awful. I'm not going today because I'm a biohazard, but I've got some weights I'm gonna maybe throw around over here. I I haven't done it yet because the the doctor had said to go like if I have to strain, I can't do it because it'll rerupture my eardrum. I want to see what I can do, put myself in a position to succeed. If I really can't do it, dropping the weights, walking away. No problem. So we want to gauge our ability, we want to gauge our desire. You are here listening. If you're listening 20 minutes in, you have a desire to accomplish something. I don't know what that is. I would love to hear about it. You can send me a message, you can send Rob a message, you can send Liam a message. Liam's inbox is probably swamped. Uh, but if he sees it, I'm sure he would love to respond to you. Your journey and and you and the things that you want are too important for you to not give yourself the opportunity to move closer to it. Liam needed a rest today. I don't remember if I said this in this version of the episode or the last one. Uh Liam was up all night with with Oakley, uh, his kid, and you know, Rob is obviously very busy with his family right now. Liam needed a rest. Rob needs time with his family. I am slowing down, doing what I'm doing right now. I'm not doing this at a full pace. I feel like my brain's a little bit slower. Usually for an episode like this, I've got notes, right? Uh not today. I'm just talking, working through it, and putting something out there because something's always going to be better than nothing. And three years ago, when I started doing what I'm doing right now, it was May 25th of 2023, is when I filmed my first video for uh it wasn't even called Mike Needs a Plan Yet. I was deliberating for weeks over what my first video should be. What's my first topic gonna be? I don't want it to be not important, I don't want it to just be nothing, because then you know who's gonna tune in for video number two? But if it's too important, how am I gonna follow that up? And I wasn't even considering that nobody would see my first video. The only people that have seen my first video are now people that like when I pull that video up as a reference, I will send it to them. And that's the only way that video gets views. Um, but what I had settled on was why is it that everything I do has to be the greatest thing I've ever done? Why can't it just be something? Why does every meal I have need to be the greatest meal I've ever had, or the most optimal meal, or the healthiest meal? Why does every workout I do have to be the greatest workout I've ever done? Why can't I just do something? And that started a career that has landed me here once a week on the Inmoderation podcast with Rob and Liam, uh, two people that I at that point was just uh, you know, uh big fans of. I I really just enjoyed watching their content and the things that they put out and and said. And, you know, now I hate them both. Now they're but they're both terrible individuals. They need to be held accountable. And I do believe that with enough effort and outreach, we will bring them to justice for their crimes. I love those guys. I miss them very much. I hope I'm doing well here on is this my first solo episode of Inmoderation? I've hosted the show. I've done an episode, I've done a couple episodes with uh just Liam. I've done a couple episodes with just Rob. I I think this might be my first where I'm just alone, which is uh crazy position to be in, to go from just being a a guest here almost two years ago to the day now, uh, to now being on every week. And um, I think I had said this in the the last go, but Rob brought me on here a while back. Um, he just started bringing me back. Like it so I was on as a guest. We all got along very well. We started streaming videos, uh games together, and um you know, we we just we clicked immediately. And then Rob started bringing me on to the panels, and that was great. And then anytime you needed a fill-in guest, somebody dropped out last minute, uh, he'd bring me on. And at a certain point, he's like, you know, I like how loud you are. Let me bring you in. Because Rob is always insistent that he doesn't have a lot to say. And um, you know, that he drops wisdom and poetry anytime you give him the opportunity to uh to do that. Uh especially that episode he did solo a couple of months ago. I I get comments. About that. If you guys have not heard that one, go check it out. But um I will say, as much as Rob does not think that he is as good at talking as he is, the podcast is a whole lot quieter without him here. He's slowing down today. Liam's slowing down today. I am slowing down today while still doing the things. Liam's going to take care of the things that he's doing in his life. He's not going to completely regress and you know rot on a couch with his arm and a bag of Doritos or whatever. Like that's not going to be conducive to him living a good feeling life. Like I was talking about before. The ways that I used to live when I would quote unquote take a break didn't feel good. Shouldn't a break feel good? Shouldn't taking a rest be nice? If a break for you or a rest for you is like it was for me back in the day when I would take a break from my diet and I would just like eat an entire pizza in my car until I was physically ill, it how is that benefiting you? Genuinely, and I I always put this out there. If somebody out there has found a way of emotionally eating that feels good, they're like, I can't wait to do that again. Genuinely, with no guilt and no shame and and no trouble about it. If you found a way, tell me. But I I've been putting that call out for about three years now, and no one has been able to give me a positive answer on it. We don't turn to these habits because they're good. We turn to them because it's all we know. We turn to stopping or quitting or regressing because it's all we know, or it's all that we feel we're capable of. Or we've got that all or nothing mindset. If we walk away for too long, like I was saying before, that it well, the motivation's gonna go away. We won't be able to get back to it. Don't you think it'll be harder to get back to something you've stopped completely than to ramp up something that you're still doing? An object in motion stays in motion, even if that motion is a little bit slower some days. I used to be terrified that I would lose all my progress if I slowed down. But today, I pressed a button on my walking pad, one button, two buttons, to go down in pace. And because of that, I am moving forward. And I feel good. I'm not up walking to watch my waistline. In fact, I'm I'm gaining weight right now. I want to gain weight. That's the point. Those of you who have been listening the last couple of months, you know I'm doing a bodybuilding thing. I can't do that this week. Not to the best of my ability, anyway. I am going to be taking a bit of a break so that I don't overextend myself, so that I don't hurt myself. I'm I'm running the risk of permanently damaging my ear if I push myself too hard. So I've got to make sure I don't do that. There was a period of time in my past where this would have scared the hell out of me because I'd think, well, that's it. It's over. What do you mean it's over? I've got years ahead of me. Decades, statistically speaking. So do you. I know the demographic. Well, not my demographic. I don't know the inmoderation demographic, but I would imagine it's not much different than mine. I kind of live in the 18 to 34 range. That's where most people that listen to me live. Statistically speaking, you are all going to be here a long ass time. And those of you outside of that were, well, I'm in my 40s. Okay, you're still gonna be here. Oh, I'm in my 50s. Okay, there are people in their 90s out there. You're gonna be here a while. One of my clients from a long time ago, he came to me at uh 68 years old. He was one of my first clients in 2024, and he had seen a video of me saying that aging is a choice, age is not a choice, of course, but aging within a certain degree is a choice, which was a bold thing for somebody at that age, at that point was 29, uh, to be saying on the internet. Like, what do I know? Right. Especially back then. Like I hadn't even seen all the stuff I've seen. Now, now I really believe that aging is a choice. Um, again, barring certain illnesses and such. Um, but I digress. Uh, this guy, at first, uh, when we got on our call, he admitted to me that I kind of pissed him off. And then he thought about it and he was like, you know, let me see what this kid has to say. Let me hear him out. So we got on the phone and we talked about it, and he had told me that his father had just recently passed a few years prior at 90 years old. 90. What a hell of a run. And he retired at 65. I forget what job he had, but he retired at 65. And he basically, from the moment he got home from his last day, he sat in his recliner and didn't get up for 22 years or 25 years, whatever. And that was that. And this client here, he was just retiring there at 68, and he saw himself doing the same thing: getting home, sitting in his recliner, and that was that. That was life. And he thought to himself, well, if I've got 22 years in this chair, what could I do if I filled that with something? What might life look like if I took advantage of it? He didn't know what he wanted, he just knew he wanted something different. He didn't know what he could achieve, he just wanted to achieve something different. And so we worked together. And while he's no marathon runner, nothing, he's uh he'll be 71 this year. And he goes out and takes nature walks. That's his thing. Loves walking in nature, and he'll send me pictures from time to time and uh texts. Every few months I get a picture from him, and he'll just say, Hey, I'm feeling great, having a good time, hope you're doing well. And this is a guy who had resigned to dying in a chair at almost 70 years old. And again, you know, he's he's not doing Olympic sports, but like if he wanted to take an international trip somewhere that required a lot of walking, he could do it. He's he's got the mobility now. If he wants, if he sees a national park that he wants to go to, or he sees a trail near him that he can drive out to. He can go there and he can do it. And he's not worried about what's going to happen to him. And sometimes he chooses the recliner, but it's not the default. It's not the one thing he has. There was a period of time where it was, just as eating an entire pizza in my car or going to McDonald's three times a day, was the one thing I had. I still like McDonald's from time to time. There's almost nothing better than a McDonald's fry, but that's not my only option anymore. I'm doing other things now. I'm achieving other things, I'm experiencing other things. And I like the choice. One of the best ways to go about building the belief that your choices matter and the things you want matter are to start achieving, or is to start achieving, as many little things as you can. Not big things. I'm not talking about big swings, right? Those big milestones, they will, they will happen. But if your only measure of success is the big milestones, you're going to be disappointed most days. I have a lot of just very average days. You look at me, you think, well, he's at the end of his journey, he's doing great. Most of my days are just kind of average, normal. It'd be kind of exhausting for every day to be noteworthy, no? But like this life, any day that I have in this life is infinitely better than the life I had before. Because I have the opportunity to make choices and decisions. And I'm not worried about where I can go and what I can do. But there was a period of time in my life where at my heaviest, I did have to consider certain things. How am I going to fit in an airplane seat? Are we going somewhere that's going to require a lot of stairs? Are we walking a lot? Is there going to be a place where I can bend over to tie my shoes or sit down halfway to tie my shoes? I've got a course in the school group uh that's called Micro Commitments, the power of microcommitments. And it's just an hour of me talking about like how you can build the belief system that anything is possible through it's it's an old sales term. I I was in sales for a long time because I'm surprised I'm good at talking. I didn't like sales though. It was very disingenuous. And I I just just because I'm good at talking doesn't mean I'm good at living with the consequences of selling somebody else's product. That's why I only sell mine. I have no sponsorships, I don't have any affiliate codes, I only sell my coaching because I truly believe in that and I have complete control over it. But there's this idea in sales that if you can get somebody to say yes to a bunch of little things before you hit them with a big thing, that psychologically they will be more inclined to buy the big thing or to do the big thing. So, you know, you could just get them to like, hey, do you you know, can you just read this for me? Or like, hey, come and sit down. Like just getting them to agree with you a bunch of times and in little ways will make them more inclined to listen to you in the bigger ways. And so I've taken this and I've taken the you know, the the this the fire out of it and applied it to the weight loss journey of like you currently don't believe that the things that you want to do or the things that you want to have can happen for you. You don't believe that. There are a lot of you that again are listening to me hoping that I'm gonna tell you something that will convince you to get going or get started, but you've got all these different reasons of real reasons, mind you. This is I'm I don't believe in the word excuses. I believe in explanations. And your explanations are valid. They're just not they're not strong. You feel they're strong, but it it should not be enough to discount yourself. If you can give yourself a bunch of little wins, you'll be so much more inclined to chase the bigger ones. And the the power of micro commitments is my course. You know what? You guys, okay. Anyone who's been listening this far, um, if you send a message to Mike Needs a Plan at um Instagram and you say micro commitment or micro or whatever, something, something indicating that you want this thing, I will send you the lesson for free. You don't even have to sign up for the the group. You can if you want to. Schoolsk o L dot com slash plan, which you can also get a seven-day free trial of, and then you can get all the courses if you want. Um, but if you just want that one, I will personally DM it to you. Just DM me micro. That'll be the thing, micro. And um, we can start building that belief system because I I truly, for me, personally, on the on the other end of a 100-pound weight loss journey, having the belief that anything I set my mind to I can achieve makes it so much easier to move towards it. And I was not built that way. No, God, no. I it was a struggle getting myself to do anything because I didn't have that. I didn't have the belief or the proof that I could achieve anything. And that's another thing, too. You'll be like, well, I've never succeeded before. Okay, well, let's succeed at some small stuff. Well, I don't want to succeed at the small stuff because it's not big. Okay, well, so are we just not gonna ever do anything? You can't be so afraid to fail that you never give yourself the opportunity to succeed. And sometimes to do that, we just have to slow down. You may be intimidated right now because you're thinking to yourself, well, to get to where I want to be, I have to change my life completely. I have to change everything all at once, right now. And if I don't change everything all at once right now, it's not worth doing. You don't have the skill set to change everything all at once. You have the ability to change all of those things, but you don't have the skill set to do it all at once. The information to fly an airplane exists and is available to you at any time. If you are not already a pilot, you can't do that. But you can be at some point. My dad is a pilot, and before he was a pilot, he was not a pilot and did not know how to fly an airplane. But he is getting now close to retirement. And um, as far as I know, he's never crashed a plane. I think we probably know about it. He's doing pretty well. Bat in a hundred. Good job, Dad. What makes you think you're gonna be perfect day one? What makes you think you're going to succeed at everything you want to have at the end and the very beginning? You need to have a period of learning. You need to have a period of growing and succeeding. And to do that, you've got to start off a little bit slower. And there are going to be times in the journey where you've got to slow down again, take a bit of a break, maybe assess your situation and realize, hey, I'm I need a readjustment here. I need to change something here. And then press a couple of buttons on your walking pad and saunter along as you fill in for two of your best friends on their podcast that they have graciously provided to you for the day. So if if there's anything you pull from this lesson today, I hope it is that slowing down does not mean you're gonna stop. So long as you've got the right plan and the right mindset about it. Sometimes slowing down is the plan, it is the path forward. Sometimes we're just not doing it because we don't want to do it. Put yourself in a position to succeed and find out how much you can. I did that today by doing what I'm doing here. You can do the same thing. Whatever your journey is, whatever you're trying to achieve, it is not too late, and you are definitely not incapable. Take it from me. I lost 110 pounds, and I've been keeping it off a long time, and I'm helping people just like you to do the same thing. And if you're interested in more of that, we meet up twice a week in the school group. You can meet me and a bunch of your new closest friends. We're on your journey as well, doing the same thing you're doing, achieving the things you want to achieve. You've got support, you've got accountability, and it's got to be a hundred something hours of lessons in there at this point, just step by step of everything that I would want somebody to know about the weight loss journey, not just the numbers, not just the diet. And we do talk about that. I've got an eight-hour something lesson on calories and macros and diet and all that. It's it's there. We talk about it, but it goes so much deeper than that. I I I wouldn't have you wouldn't be here now with me for 45 minutes just listening to me talk about the mindset portion of it if it wasn't important. You would have said, Oh, he's this guy's not talking about which protein source is the best one. So I'm gonna tune out. You needed something here that you're not already getting. School S K O-O-L.com slash plan. That is P-L-A-N, you can get a seven-day free trial. Come hang out with us over there. Either way, whatever you're doing today, make it a fantastic day. Do something to defy your own expectations, whether that be you're gonna challenge yourself or you're just gonna do the same thing you did yesterday that you were happy with. Doesn't have to be the biggest thing you've ever done, just has to be something. So, on behalf of Rob, Liam, and myself, the inmoderation crew. Wow, it's kind of crazy that I get to be part of the inmoderation crew. Be kind to yourself. Don't be your worst. Rob, do you have a catchphrase? You should have a catchphrase. K bye.