How Surrendering Helped Me Become Consistent With Working Out

This is a story about surrender, and how giving up control actually gave me greater control over my life. Sounds counterintuitive, I know. Keep reading. I promise it’ll make sense.

I've been working out for more than 12 years, and for most of that time, staying consistent felt like pushing a boulder uphill.

I constantly had to convince or remind myself:

• "It's good for my health."
• "It'll make me strong."
• "People who exercise get sick less often."

These are all perfectly logical and responsible reasons that society will nod to and approve of. But no matter how logical the reasons were, my consistency with workouts never truly stuck.

I'd have months of consistency, lose some fat, gain muscle, feel great about myself. Only to fall off again when life got harder, regain weight and fat, and feel bad about myself.

This cycle of consistency and then the sudden lack of it (when looking at it over a long-term horizon of years) would endlessly bother me.

What's wrong with me? I would wonder. Why can't I be consistent in doing something that I know is important?

Then, about two years ago, something shifted when I discovered the idea of surrender. Give up control, to gain it back? It sounded  counterintuitive, but then again, my way clearly wasn’t working. Why not try something new? I thought.

And so, I gave up on "trying to be consistent” in working out.

I stopped micromanaging myself. Stopped convincing myself with logic and reasons as to why I should be working out. Stopped nagging myself or putting myself down whenever I was NOT doing the thing I thought I was supposed to.

I surrendered.

At first, nothing happened. Days passed - nothing. Weeks went by - still nothing.

I remember it was about 3 months later, when something funny or weird (depends on how you look at it) emerged. As I made space for myself and stopped managing myself, I naturally felt like moving.

It started small. Just short walks. Which turned into jogs, hikes, swims, cycling (in the gym) and then hitting the gym itself.

I was doing them all, consistently, without prompting myself to do so.

Last week, I intentionally took a break. Seven days without workouts, just to let my body rest. But when Monday arrived, I couldn't wait to get back to the gym. It felt so wonderful to move my body, exert myself, feel the tension in my muscles, get my heart pumping and work up a sweat.

"I missed it” - is what I told my wife after coming back home.

This morning, I woke up and this thought hit me - the secret wasn't enforcing discipline or logic to motivate myself.

For two full years, I've stayed consistent without ever consciously "trying to be consistent."

The secret ingredient was trust.

Trusting myself, surrendering control, and believing that good things can emerge out of me without me having to manage myself - has finally helped me become consistent in workouts. Luke Burgis, author of Wanting: Mimetic Desires, refers to this as Thick Desires.

Turns out, my body already knew how good movement feels. It didn't need lectures from my hyper-planning, control-seeking self, who thought that the only way to be better is to be even more disciplined, plan even harder, track and measure myself even more meticulously.

My inner hyper-planner - who tries to help by exerting control over everything - noticed this magic happening with my workouts. Seeing that, I began experimenting with surrender in other important areas of my life, trusting deeply that if something truly matters, it'll naturally emerge from within.

I'm actively practicing it with my new project, Petshot Pro, which is an AI Pet Portrait Generator and my first product that I have conceived, designed and built by myself. I also have to do the marketing of the project next, which fills me with thoughts like - Will this work? Would this succeed? I choose to surrender to the outcome, and instead focus on in inputs of doing Good Work, as author Paul Millerd describes it, with the belief that since this is important to me, I would anyway do everything I can to make the project succeed. And if it still doesn't, then I would only care that I tried.

And what if something truly matters to me, but surrendering does not work? Well, then I can have a conversation with myself - with curiosity and kindness - why I believe something matters, but my inner being doesn't yet agree.

Maybe there's a gap I need to bridge. I trust myself to cross it when I get there.

—

Writer’s notes:

This is not part of the blog post. Treat it like a behind-the-scenes section.

After I wrote the first draft of the blog, I sat in my balcony to read another chapter of author Oliver Burkeman's new book, Meditation for Mortals.

Look at the highlighted sections!

It tickled me to see the universe line up this chapter of this book exactly when I wrote this blog post.

Universe - I notice you doing your thing. Thank you!