The Muscle That Tells the Truth

I've been turning something over in my mind while I weed the garden. There's something about pulling the same stubborn quack grass day after day that gets you thinking.

I’ve been pondering what holds me back from doing the reps. The boring ones. The uncomfortable ones — where nobody's watching, nobody's clapping, and you find out pretty fast that you're not as good at something as you thought.

This question has been bothering me: why don't I want to practice the things I actually need to practice?

Because there are parts of my life where I can wing it and get away fine. Years of teaching people. Years of raising a son on my own after my marriage fell apart. Years of sitting with my mom, who at 91 still won't let anyone fuss over her. Years of figuring things out because nobody else was going to figure them out for me.

When you've got that many years behind you, winging it doesn't look like winging it anymore. It looks like confidence. People call it talent. It isn't. It's just old reps nobody saw you put in.

But here's where it gets uncomfortable — in the places where I haven't put in the reps, I avoid them or invest minimal effort.

Running is a good example. You can't fake a weak muscle. You can't charm it, talk your way around it, or instinct your way into endurance. Your body just tells the truth on you.

Business does the same thing. So does leadership. So does an honest conversation you've been putting off.

I think this is where most of us get stuck — we skip the practice because the practice shows us the gap. It's humbling to rehearse something and realize you're not as clear as you thought. It's humbling to picture a hard conversation and notice you get defensive before it's even started. It's humbling to try something new and find out your body, or your nerve, isn't where your mind thinks it should be.

So instead of practicing, we make excuses. "I work better under pressure." "I don't want it to sound rehearsed." "I'll figure it out when I get there."

Sometimes those aren't really reasons. They're protection — from feeling like a beginner again, from seeing how far we have to go.

I started this journey into coaching because I spent years as a teacher watching a system that wasn't built to help people — it was built to keep them dependent and lost. That's not an accident, and it's part of why I care so much now about helping people get some independence and clarity back — from a government and a healthcare system that seem to do better when we stay stuck than when we get strong.

So when I talk about practice, about reps, I'm not talking about hustle for hustle's sake. I'm talking about building something real enough to stand on. Something that doesn't fall apart the first time life gets hard — and life does get hard. I've buried my dad. I've raised a son alone. I've learned the hard way what it costs to depend on the wrong things or people.

Comparison is what kills most people's practice before it even starts. We look at someone strong in an area and feel small, because we never saw their reps. We didn't see the years, the bad first attempts, the awkward conversations, the failures behind the confidence we're now jealous of. We just see the finished product and call it talent. Most of it was built quietly, where nobody was watching.

So I'm asking myself some harder questions this morning:

Where am I leaning on instinct instead of actually building something solid?
Where am I avoiding the work because I don't want to feel like a beginner?
Where have I decided "that's just not my thing" when really, I just haven't put in the time?

"I'm not good at that" can become a pretty comfortable place to hide.

I'm not saying everything in life needs to be a project. We've only got so many hours in a day, and most of mine go to my family, my garden, and the people I'm trying to help. But the things that actually matter — our health, our work, the people we love, the freedom we want for our families — those deserve more reps than we're usually willing to give them.

Not because we're behind. Because we're building something.

The rep isn't proof you're not there yet. It's proof you're serious.

Practice isn't weakness, and it isn't overthinking. It's how trust gets built — trust in your own words, your own body, your own ability to show up when it counts, instead of just hoping you'll figure it out in the moment.

The goal isn't to become some perfectly polished version of yourself. The goal is to be ready. Ready enough that when the moment shows up — and it will — you're not scrambling, and you're not faking it. You're standing on something real.

Maybe the question isn't "why don't I practice?" Maybe it's:

What am I afraid practice is going to show me?

Once I can be honest about that, I can stop running from the reps and start building the muscle — in the garden, in my business, and in the parts of life that actually matter.