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What if success isn’t about avoiding failure but instead learning how to try again when you do fail?
In this episode, I talk with Steve Kamb, founder of Nerd Fitness and author of How to Try Again. Steve built a global fitness community of over 50,000 members and 20 coaches, gave a TEDx talk, and has worked with companies like Google and Facebook. But he’s also faced procrastination, perfectionism, and personal setbacks. We explore why constant optimization doesn’t always work, and how accepting failure and learning to restart might be the real key to lasting progress.
Steve Kamb is an author and full-time internet writer who has been publishing online since 2010. He is the founder of Nerd Fitness, an organization he launched as a hobby in 2009 that expanded into a global health and wellness community with millions of readers. Steve is a dedicated bookworm, gamer, and cinephile who explores behavior change and personal development through his weekly newsletter, Level Up With Steve Kamb. He is a TEDx speaker who has delivered presentations for major corporations and Vanderbilt University. His published work includes the book Level Up Your Life and his June 2026 release, How to Try Again.
Steve’s Website | Nerd Fitness
Steve’s Books: How To Try Again | Level Up Your Life
Zack Arnold: So here’s where I want to start today, Steve. I want to make sure that I put a very clear warning in front of my audience that this is definitely going to have the explicit tag on it. Because we’re going to be dropping a lot of F-bombs in today’s conversation. But it’s not the F-bombs that you think. Because I think you and I are going to be talking a lot about Failure.
Steve Kamb: Yes. Maybe a little bit. I, I think… It’s funny. I… started my company, Nerd Fitness, 17 years ago, and just… things kind of worked. I wrote stuff. And people enjoyed it, and then Google started ranking it, and then more people found it, and over time, it turned into this company and community. And a handful of years ago, I said. I have the perfect idea with how we help people. Nerd Fitness, this is how we help people. We don’t help them be, essentially, like, more disciplined, we don’t create a better workout program for them. We help them pick themselves up after a failure. After they’ve given up on something, after their Couch to 5G program goes to hell, or after they’ve bailed on their diet. Like, that’s what Nerd Fitness does better than anything. So I started writing that book. And then my life took a bunch of left turns, and I went through some personal challenges and professional failures and all sorts of things while I’m writing a book about what to do when life doesn’t go according to plan. And ended up writing the book I Needed Myself as I was navigating failures, and what that word meant to me, and how much of that I personally identified with and internalized as I was trying to figure out what to do next.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, well, we’re gonna start just as they do in any good fitness program, with a little bit of a before and after story to really frame today’s conversation. So I’m gonna be pulling this from your first book, Level Up Your Life. So, you may already know what’s coming, but here’s the definition of Steve at level 50. So Steve is living in a house on a coastline, up early with a sunrise, to write articles or work on my next book. Late morning is spent at the gym training with powerlifting, gymnastics, and capueta exercises. My afternoons are spent playing golf or music until my kids come home from school. My evenings are spent with family and or friends, eating a home-cooked dinner outside around a fire, live music being played, and fun being had by all. And when I’m not at home living my life, I’m traveling on an important mission or adventure that challenges me physically and mentally. This is 10 years ago, 2016, and you use phrases like, I implement cheat codes, shortcuts wherever possible to achieve my results faster. I am hacking my own source code. Is that the same Steve that wrote How to Try Again? Or maybe a couple of things have happened to you since you wrote some of those passages.
Steve Kamb: Yeah, maybe one or two. Gosh, I… it’s funny, I’m reading… I’m hearing those words and… and realizing how differently I think about… about life now. I think that book… was… helpful for me to write at the time to get me moving in a certain direction, and also… I, like, I almost, like, applaud my naive optimism that like, if you just pick this end goal and then work day by day towards it, like, of course it’ll work, right? And as I said earlier, like, I’m… Man, I’m probably one of the privileged people… excuse me, I’m probably one of the most privileged people you could ever meet. I was born on third base, I don’t have any chronic health conditions, I have workaholic tendencies, so that I can just put my head down and things tend to work. And that was certainly true, I think. through that book in 2016, I kept moving down that path, and just assumed things would continue to work, and you just put one foot in front of the other on this perfectly defined plan. And that’s not how things, that’s not how things shake out. Or rather, that’s not how things shook out. It’s been… pretty eye-opening, and I think I have a lot more… Compassion and for myself in challenges, but then also a greater appreciation of chaos and just how much of my life Both the successes and the failures were largely out of my control, too.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, you and I share a love and affinity for Ted Lasso, so know that I’m coming at this conversation not with judgment, but with curiosity. To share a little bit of a backstory, you and I talked beforehand, about the fact that I started an organization that was so close to what you were doing, I’m surprised your legal team didn’t come after me, called Fitness and Post, which was literally a club for editor nerds that worked in Hollywood to get fit. I discovered Nerd Fitness. I’m like, well, shit! My idea’s been taken, right? But here’s the part of the story that I didn’t tell you yet that I think is gonna be really relevant. I rebranded, not really because of you, but I realized that this niche was way too small, so I rebranded to Wait for it. Optimize yourself. It was all about optimization. And by the way, this is before the internet bros co-opted this fucking word and took it from us. My tagline for Fitness and Post was, optimize the most powerful operating system you have yourself. It was all about if you do really intense creative work, if you’re a storyteller, an artist, a designer. We spend so much time worrying about the technology that we’re not looking at ourselves. So for me, it was a much more holistic approach to well-being, and then the internet ruined the word optimize. And it was what we’re gonna talk a little bit more about. I think we have the same affinity and love for a lot of authors. But then I read 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Berkman, and I said, son of a bitch! Like, my entire philosophy of life is shit. And I completely rebranded my company to what it is now, just simply the Zack Arnold Podcast and the Arnold Academy. And I actually had Oliver on the show talking about this transformation, and I had made the joke with you beforehand that we could probably just title this episode, Hold My Beer. Talking about all of the horrible life transformations we’ve gone through since 2023. So I’m gonna pass the baton to you to start, but just know that I will volley with you. Sure. Walk me through some of these life-transforming experiences that you’ve had in the last few years.
Steve Kamb: Yeah, I mean, I can go back to 2020, so I… in… this is funny, actually, I had a meeting with a collection, or a, you know, like, this mastermind group with a collection of authors in January of 2020. So, this is weeks before. pandemic. And I came out of that meeting saying, I don’t think I’m doing the right thing. in my own company. Like, at this point, Nerd Fitness was 20, 25 people. Most of my time was spent in meetings, and groups, and teaching, and being a good CEO, and I was reading business books, and it was kind of sucking the soul out of… me, I’m like, I’m a writer, and these people at this retreat were like. I don’t know, dude, sounds like you should just be, like, you should be writing, like, what are we… what are you doing? I was like, got it, no problem. Of course, then the pandemic shows up, and the world shuts down, and every gym shuts down, and through no fault of my own, Nerd fitness was the number one search term for online coaching.
Zack Arnold: So… Wow.
Steve Kamb: the number one organic search term, rather. Pretty soon, Google started stuffing about 15 blue links above that first organic search for coaching.
Zack Arnold: Yeah.
Steve Kamb: But all of a sudden, the business exploded. I think we doubled in size in about a year, and it still kept my focus. And yet, I just found myself more and more overwhelmed. And right around this time, I think that’s when I discovered, same thing, Oliver Berkman, and kind of realized, like. I kept trying to clear the decks for me personally, like, oh, if I can just get these things out of this way, and if I can just hire the right person and structure my meetings, then I will finally have space to write. And… eventually, in 2023, I had that idea for this book and said to my team. I can’t do both of these things. I need to step back. I want to give this book the attention it deserves. And then over that next year. things went to shit. Step one was, I think, 2 weeks after signing the book deal. I had a skin cancer diagnosis. Fortunately, it was the good kind, but it was in my hair and scalp, so they had to, like, scoop it out and then suture my head shut. And, you know, I’d keep an eye on it for a few months until that healed. Also thanks to things like ChatGPT, and as I said, Google stuffing all of these links above every organic article. And then kind of hoovering up all of our content and just giving people the answers. I watched slowly as Nerd Fitness lost 75-80% of our traffic.
Zack Arnold: Wow.
Steve Kamb: So, you know, that’s going from a million and a half hits a month down to 300,000 hits a month, which is still a lot, but when you have a team and a structure built around the big thing, that, doesn’t go well, and even worse, it’s like, this is not a problem I can necessarily solve. That train has left the station. The organic search traffic is not coming back. And then, I went through an amicable but heartbreaking and life-changing divorce. And all of these things are happening while I’m writing a book about what to do when life goes to shit, and how to pick your… like, and I was like, oh… Huh, okay, thank you for that, life. Hey, book editor, I’m gonna need a little bit more time to write this book. I, I promise it’ll be worth it, but I’m… I need to take care of a few things, and also, I need to expand the scope of this book. Yeah, so that was, 2023-2024 were not, not, not great. They were not great at all.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I can relate, to say the least. I remember thinking over and over, basically it was the January 2023 until about September of 2024, that I kept saying over and over again to the universe, I get it. Nope. Lesson received! Are we done yet? Like, seriously. Anybody that’s followed me for a while, they know this story. I’ll… just for context, I’ll give you, like, the briefest version, but we’ll not turn this into the Hold My Beer episode. But the shortest version of it was that, up until, like, almost very similarly to you, in 2020, my business started to explode when I assumed I was going out of business. Not even remotely at the scale that yours was, but a similar trajectory, where I went from doing online coaching and building a community to thinking in the middle of March, like, I’m going out of business. And then everybody raised their hand simultaneously. Said, I have no idea what to do with my life. And I’ve been forced to hit pause, and now I have to figure out where I want to go with my work and with my life. I’m like, that’s what I do! So that’s when I started to build a community and do a lot more, coaching, and build classes, and things were just going great, right? Just as I had come up with the kind of big picture, alright, this has been fun, this has been my side hustle, but now here’s the vision. I went through a much longer phase, where you’re just like, oh, nerd fitness, like you said, it just worked, it just grew. I had about 7 years of, what am I doing? Like, I don’t understand what this is, I’m gonna try and find it, and then when I finally said, alright. I want to rebrand, I want to do all these things. Two weeks after I had this gigantic epiphany and I presented it to my team, got a call from my mom. You need to fly home immediately, something’s wrong with Dad. So I flew home immediately, turns out that he had congestive heart failure, that’s just the beginning of the story. Over the next 6 months, both of my parents simultaneously were taken over by dementia. All of this while I was trying to figure out how to rebrand my business. And all of this simultaneously, while my entire industry was on strike and artificial intelligence was becoming the rage, and as you probably know by now, Hollywood has been completely decimated in the last 3 years, much of it actually literally burning down, the rest of it metaphorically burning down. Right? So both of my parents disappeared from in front of me. My mother’s actually still alive, but I haven’t had a conversation with my mom for 2 years. But it was so bad that we had to move them into a memory care facility. My father passed away, I think it ended up being 8, 9 months later, all… Within that period, my business… it’s crazy you gave this number, my business shrunk by 80%. Because of the state of the industry. Right? But this is where the story gets really fun, and this is where we start to talk about failure, and how we pull ourselves out of failure, and we’re gonna go into your PACT framework. Right? But I’m… this is where I really started to realize, holy shit, I’ve got some lessons to learn about life. In the span of 4 weeks. I lost my dad, I lost my job, and I lost my house. So, my dad passed away, just, you know, other than the dementia, the heart failure, it was just ultimately natural causes. He passed away peacefully, I got to spend time with him, I have no regrets. I lost my job through no fault of mine and through no hard feelings, but I was, finishing… I worked on, Cobra Kai for years. I was the lead editor of the TV series Cobra Kai. And I was working on the series finale.
Steve Kamb: I love that show, by the way.
Zack Arnold: Thank you, I appreciate it. I assume that you might have an affinity for it, because it’s very.
Steve Kamb: Oh, man, the amount of Karate Kid I watched as a kid, and then when I heard about Cobra Kai, and… I don’t know if I’ve ever done a bigger 180 than, like, hearing about it. I’m like, oh, I don’t know, and then watching the first episode, and being like, oh my god, this is amazing. Like, started telling, and it was on YouTube… YouTube… what was it called?
Zack Arnold: Oh, so YouTube Red, so you watch it on YouTube Red, dude.
Steve Kamb: Oh, yeah, yeah, I watched it on YouTube Red.
Zack Arnold: My story was even… it was just to, I think, I’m gonna go off on a tangent for a second. I’m just gonna plant the seed here. You and I have a very, very close mutual friend that you may not be aware of. ADHD.
Steve Kamb: God.
Zack Arnold: So, this is gonna be the asterisk, there might be some really weird tangents and disclaimers, because you pull on a thread, I’m gonna go on the thread, I’m really good at bringing it back to where we were, but I’m gonna pause for a second, because I had the exact same experience that you did, except mine was, how dare they? They better not be remaking the Karate Kid, because the Karate Kid was my Star Wars. Like, I like Star Wars, I know you’re feeling for Star Wars, the Karate Kid was my Star Wars. I saw Cobra Kai the week it came out on YouTube, I saw the trailer, and I’m like, fuck these guys. How dare they? And I watched the trailer, and I’m like. This doesn’t look awful. I’m gonna watch the pilot and see, it’s crap. Then I watch the pilot. Five hours later, I watched the whole season. I went on IMDb right after, and I said, who made this show? I’m cutting it. Literally, cold approach, got myself on the show, lead editor for the rest of the series. The point being, all to tee up, like, this was my magnum opus. The series finale of Cobra Kai was my magnum opus. I just delivered the editor’s cut, which is a very… it’s like you delivering your first draft, right? Got the call that night, you need to fly home if you want to be able to say, goodbye to your dad. So, I had to drop it, flew home, got to spend, like, a week with him, and then the nurses had basically said, you know what? He probably has some more time, he’s rallying, I think you’re safe to go home. So I go home, I do one day of notes, I get the call 4 o’clock in the morning, your father passed away. So I missed it by one day, and I’m doing notes on a TV series. So it’s like, you gotta be shitting me. But, that’s life. Again, no regrets. Sure. But then, I fly back home, deal with, you know, the service and the eulogy and whatnot. So this is where the story begins. So I fly home after all of this, having… I had to quit Cobra Kai, and they needed to replace me, because, you know, we’re… have to deliver, and Hollywood doesn’t give a shit. So then, had to give up the rest of working on Cobra Kai. Father just passed away. Get in the Uber on the way back from LAX to drive home, and I thought, I just need a week. I need a week to just sleep, and do nothing, and worry about what comes next in life. I get home, I open the front door of my house, and our house had been infested by and destroyed by rats while we were gone. All of this happened in the span of a week. And I turned around to my wife, and I said, don’t get alarmed, but we’re moving. She’s like, what? So she walked in, she’s like, oh my god, I’m never going in this house again. So literally, sitting on my front porch with my laptop, found an Airbnb in the neighborhood. We didn’t even unpack our stuff, we just went to an Airbnb. We threw away over half of our belongings, we had a whole pack, a whole pile of our front lawn, of all of our couches, our clothes, two dumpsters worth, and it was like, alright, reset button on life, you know, all your life’s gone, reset, start over from level 1-1. So, needless to say, I had so many of the same epiphanies that you have had, that you’ve talked about throughout your book, of… Maybe sometimes it’s not gonna go the way that we planned, and maybe deliberate goal setting isn’t always the way to get where we want to get, nor is consistently setting habits, and it’s… it was just like, alright. I guess what I’m gonna have to do right now is pause and accept my circumstances. Enter Segway.
Steve Kamb: Yeah, well, first, I’m so sorry all of that happened to you. That’s heartbreaking, Gosh, man, I’m so sorry. I bet you were probably kind of chuckling as you read the… what chapter… Chapter 9, What to Do When Life Kicks Your Ass, like…
Zack Arnold: Yes. There are multiple LOL moments, as the kids might say.
Steve Kamb: Yeah, I’m… Gosh, when you think about failure, and rather, when you think about situations like this, like you said. you know, there’s no amount of positive thinking, or you hear from people, like, oh, look, on the bright side, it could have been worse, or…
Zack Arnold: Living happens for a reason.
Steve Kamb: that you’re gonna look back on this like, I don’t know, man, maybe. But also, this can also just suck. And it can be bad, and it might be bad for a while. And, like, positive thinking and journaling, like, might not get you through it, and that’s okay. You know, I tell that story in Chapter 9 of a friend of mine who had a life-changing, debilitating surgery gone wrong, and she went from world traveler to now essentially confined to her bed in her small apartment. And she’s like, nothing made me feel more alone than people sending me, like, you know, toxic positivity messages, and just, just believe in yourself, and like, just try, and things will get better, and all this unreasonable hope, so I’m sorry you went through that. Thank you. my challenge is, I think quite a few of them were, you know, obviously between businesses, and I’m… I’m not religious, but I can find a way to give myself the greatest amount of Catholic guilt one can possibly give. For anything and everything, I will make it all my fault, and I will say, I could have done this differently, I should have been more, whatever, like, I will pile all of that onto my shoulders, and I carry that shame and guilt around. I really struggled with it for Nerd Fitness, with my relationship, just all of it. Like, I… I had to… give myself permission to do the things that I needed to do for myself, and that felt so challenging. But I also needed to find a way to stay afloat, right? I had to find a way to… Like, not even pick myself up, but just be like, yeah, man, this sucks right now. Like, stop… remove all of the expectations you have for what you should be doing, or how you should be doing it, or how fast you’re getting where you think you need to go. And, like, let’s just narrow the focus to today. Like, right now, how do we stay afloat? How do we tread water? How do we not make things worse? And how do we stop beating ourselves up that I’m not making progress on all of my goals, all at the same time, while I’m navigating, like, just a completely different life, in nearly every way possible?
Zack Arnold: Yeah, speaking of treading water, this is actually where I wanted to go next, so this is great. I loved the story that you told about this guy named Brett Archibald. So, talk a little bit more about, literally, this idea of treading water, because for me, the biggest lesson that I learned, and also the hardest lesson that I learned, is sometimes you can’t always be moving forwards, and you just have to stop. Right? So, this story in your book just hit me so hard.
Steve Kamb: Yeah, I… so I had kind of fallen in love with this idea This actually… the reason… the impetus of this actually came many, many, many, many years ago. When I got scuba certified, you know, there’s a whole part of your scuba certification where you have to… you have to get in the pool, and you have to tread water. And if you kick your arms and legs too much, you kind of pop a little bit too high out of the water, and… You have to tread water for a certain amount of time in order to get your certification. So, I’ve just always… this idea of, like, treading water and thinking of it as something that you’re doing for a specific reason has always resonated with me. And as I’m navigating this new aspect of my life, of, like, I’m living in a different part of town, I am navigating a new career, I’m trying to write this book, I’m trying to figure out what my life is going to look like moving forward, that is different than the life I thought I was going to be living. If that’s the case, Fitness cannot be a priority for me right now. And as a guy that owns a fitness company.
Zack Arnold: I was gonna say, the nerd fitness guy just said.
Steve Kamb: Yeah, nerds.
Zack Arnold: Authority, yeah.
Steve Kamb: who never missed a workout, who, want, you know, who wanted to be the poster child for discipline and adherence to my routine, fitness is everything, and now fitness was, like, my eighth priority. So, I thought about this from the perspective of, like, I’m gonna stop trying to win at fitness, I’m gonna stop trying to make progress. Instead, I’m just gonna try to not lose. You know, we think when we’re not making progress, we’re falling behind. Like, we’re forgetting there are a few other options, but it’s not one or the other. You’re not making progress or falling behind. There is also regression, aka making things worse, or swimming in the wrong direction. Or, giving up and just saying, I’m done, and not swimming at all. So, when you look at it from that perspective. Treading water is actually, like, the second best option. If you’re not swimming in the right direction, the next best thing you could be doing is treading water to figure out where you are and what’s happening. And as I was doing research into treading water, I stumbled across this story of a guy named Brett Archibald. who was on a 50th surfing trip with his friends in the… I think in the Philippines, and they’re sailing through the Mentawai Strait in the middle of the night on their surf boat. To take them to the surf break that they’re heading to. And he had eaten a bad calzone before, the night before, so he wakes up in the middle of the night, like 2, 3 in the morning, and says, like, -oh, that calzone’s coming back up. Danger, danger, alert, alert. So he runs up to the top of the deck to throw up over the side of the boat, and the sea gets… is so rough that he literally tumbles over the side of the boat, falls 15, 20 feet into the water. And it’s 2 in the morning. It’s pitch black out. And he pops up. The only person awake is the captain. The captain’s at the front of the boat, didn’t notice, and he watches as this boat sails away. And he… does what he thinks anybody should do, when you’re… you’re like, alright, I guess I’m just gonna start swimming. He’s a pretty fit guy, so pull, stroke, you know, pull, kick, breathe, pull, kick, breathe, he’s swimming. And then when the sun comes up a few hours later, he looks around, still can’t see anything. And he pulls this little cardboard container out of his pocket. It’s the keycard holder from his hotel the night before. And he rips off this tiny corner, and he drops it on the top of the water. Because he knows there’s ocean currents, and they can maybe lead you to land, whatever. And he watches as that little, tiny piece of paper floats in the exact opposite direction of the one that he had been swimming. He had spent hours swimming directly into a current, which is a great workout if you’re trying to tire yourself out and burn a lot of calories, the exact opposite of what he should be doing. you know, there’s this great quote from, astronaut Chris Hadfield. He says something like, there’s no problem too bad that you can’t make it worse. That’s Brett Archibald here. trying… trying to do something better, and burning himself out, and spinning his wheels. So what he instead ends up doing is, like, okay. I’m gonna stop trying to win and get somewhere, and I’m just gonna focus on treading water for as long as possible, and let’s see what tomorrow brings. And I don’t want to spoil it, sure enough, he does end up getting rescued, but not in the way that you would think. It’s one of the most phenomenal stories I’ve ever stumbled across, and I think just perfectly encapsulated How many of us try to change when things are bad, and often end up making things worse, and don’t give ourselves the credit we deserve When we should be telling ourselves, like. Yeah, shit’s pretty bad right now. But, considering, I’m actually, like, yeah, I might be held together with duct tape, but I’m still here? I’m still float, I’m still afloat, like… That’s pretty incredible. It’s really easy to forget that because we think we’re falling further behind. That’s not true. We are giving ourselves the space we need to figure out what the heck we actually need to do next.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, space is a really scary place for overachievers. I literally had this conversation with one of my longtime clients in a couple of private sessions, where she’s very much, very ambitious, overachiever. really kind of, like everybody that I think does knowledge work right now, losing a sense of what is the path? Where am I going? Am I even useful to society anymore? And had a whole list of things, like, there’s this, there’s this, and this. Help me figure out my next domino. Help me figure out what’s next. And I said, what if your next domino is creating space for yourself? What if that’s what you’re doing right now, rather than trying to do more? And she’s like, no, I don’t like slowing down, right? It’s just, it’s our natural tendency.
Steve Kamb: Yeah.
Zack Arnold: But needing to pause, I think, is so essential, but the problem, especially for me, and I think with so many others, is that pausing means, well, look at all the room for judgment for the things I’m supposed to be doing right now, the things I’m supposed to be achieving. Like, the other component that I had completely forgotten about is that, again, backstory, ADHD tangent for a second, I decided, set a very deliberate goal, January 1st. 2018, I’m gonna become an American Ninja Warrior. I was 38 at the time.
Steve Kamb: I had that same goal, too, at one point.
Zack Arnold: a massive dad bod, and I spent years working towards this, and I’ve actually made it onto the course twice, so now I have the byline, I’m a two-time American Ninja Warrior failure. Because I’ve never made it on the show, because I suck at the sport of American Ninja Warrior. But I spent 7 years really ingratiating myself into this sport, building my networks, getting to know the producers on the show. Jesse Graff was my trainer. Like, I was really, really into it. My other trainer was Tony Horton, the guy that created P90X.
Steve Kamb: Yeah.
Zack Arnold: I’m really good at building relationships and finding mentors, but I kind of suck at the sport and I don’t have very good balance. The point being that the same time that I found out about my dad, I was testing on the show. I hadn’t been called to be cast that year, but I knew all the people that worked on the show, so they’d say, hey, why don’t you come to the warehouse? We’re testing a bunch of obstacles. So I can literally just play on the obstacles on the show. And they said, we have a… here’s a calendar for the next month. You can come whenever you’d like. When we go to Universal Studios, you can run the course. It was carte blanche, right? First day, I hurt myself. The first fucking day. I tore, I think it was my bicep tendon, so for 6 months, I couldn’t lift my arm higher than this. So as you know what it’s like being so much into fitness, that when fitness is a part of your life, I was working out 7 to 10 hours a week, doing parkour and all kinds of stuff. All of a sudden, I’m doing nothing in the midst of all this other upheaval, and it was nothing but constant judgment. you should still be working out today. Why are you not at least working out on your legs instead of your shoulders? Like, it was just this constant voice. And there had to come a point, and it’s taken me years to get good at this, where I had to say, you know what? I accept my circumstances. And I think acceptance with everything that’s going on in the world right now is so hard for people.
Steve Kamb: Oh, not only hard, but… So, acceptance is… the lesson that I struggled with the most, I think, like many people, and I’ll give you a funny ADHD, quick tangent here, I recently discovered this, you know, I started with… started up therapy recently, and had been talking to a friend about this idea of a, you know, an emotionally… er, gosh, what’s the term? A highly sensitive person, but I was talking to this friend who has known me for 15 years, and I was like, man, like, I’m working through some things, and… And he was like, he goes, yeah, dude, I don’t know what you have, but you got something. And he said it very kindly, and, like, whatever it is, and have recently, yeah, spoken with my therapist and gone through the ADHD diagnosis, and unsurprisingly, discovering as I’m talking to more people that are or are in the space, I’m like, oh yeah, these are my people, and this is me. Yeah, that’s how my brain operates, and no wonder why I struggle with this, but I’m really creative in these other areas, like, okay. So, the biggest struggle for me with acceptance was, Like many, I would say I’m a recovering, insecure overachiever. And, that’s a term I heard, And just, like, never resonated with something more. You know, I didn’t feel enough. And then I was like, well, once I get to this space in my life, and I do enough, then I will feel enough. Of course, once I get to that spot, I would then feel so… I would have imposter syndrome, so then I would work twice as hard to feel like I could then allow myself to feel enough to be worthy of that honor, or that level of whatever. And I lived a lot of life like that. I… thought, I was always… One optimization strategy away from being able to get all of it done. I thought the things that I was… that were driving me were going to make me happy, and they were the things that were going to solve all of my problems, if I could just get to the next thing. I can’t tell you how many years I spent with Nerd Fitness saying, I would love to write another book. oh, but wait, Google just changed an algorithm, okay, time for me to put my head down and rewrite the top 100 articles so that I can fix our Google traffic to make sure that everybody on the team can get paid for the next 6 months, or a year, or whatever it may be. I’ll just… I just need to work unsustainably until, and then I can get to the thing.
Zack Arnold: Yeah.
Steve Kamb: Things are bad now, but then next week, things will get back to normal, right? Interestingly, this is the same thing we heard from every coaching client at Nerd Fitness. Sorry, life is super busy this week, but next week things should get back to normal. Yeah. And eventually. I realized our team, every… we all realized, like, oh, we keep waiting for this normal to come back. normal is… normal’s gone. Like, post-pandemic, you know, if you’re… if you just had kids, you’re dealing with a parent with dementia, you just went through a relation… a new rela… or, you know, the end of a relationship, or something different in your life. We’re waiting for normal. And we are holding ourselves to an expectation that either we can keep going unsustainably until normal comes back, or we can give ourselves permission to do nothing because we think normal will be back, and then we can do all of the things. And this is where acceptance comes in. You know, we have to stop avoiding the reality that we’re not seeing in front of us. And this isn’t, like, resignation, this isn’t giving up, this isn’t… Letting ourselves off the hook. Instead, it’s, like, compassionately accepting what is actually happening in our lives right now. It means looking at it with clear eyes and saying, yeah, like. stuff sucks right now, and I don’t… I’m… I’m a new parent, or I… we just adopted a puppy, or I’m dealing with a medical condition. Like, this is the reality, and we’re not doing ourselves any favors by expecting it to be any different than what it actually is. And the sooner we can accept the warts and the ugliness of whatever our chaotic existence is right now, like, the sooner we accept that, then we can say, like, okay. what the hell do I do about it? And I think a lot of people never get to that acceptance step, because it’s… it’s… it’s really… it’s scary, you know? A lot of us avoid a lot of things. I would say I typically have avoidant tendencies, and it’s really easy for me to just kind of cram stuff down, or kick it further down the road, and just say, like, oh, I’ll get to it, I don’t have time for this now, or I’ll get to it eventually. And the truth of the matter is, like, now is the time that it must be dealt with, because every day that I’m avoiding it, it’s either getting worse. Or it’s becoming a bigger problem in my mind. compared to the actual problem that might take me 15 minutes to solve in some cases. It’s so interesting, but it requires you to accept with complete transparency and compassion, this is what is actually happening in my life right now.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I am completely on board with this in theory, logically, emotionally. Boy, this is a tough, this is a tough pill to swallow.
Steve Kamb: Oh, yeah.
Zack Arnold: So yeah, acceptance is a really, really hard one, but I’ve noticed, especially since the pandemic and beyond, that, literally for now 6-plus years, people have been in the state of waiting for things to go back to normal, and this has been a core theme of so much of what I’ve written about and spoken about, is literally the word normal. I had a piece that I wrote in, I think it was, like, June or July of 2020, where I’d said, not only are things not gonna go back to normal, but normal wasn’t working anyways. Right? But I still, 6 years later, especially for those that are creatives, especially for those that are creatives in the entertainment industry. There are still people that are saying. It’s gonna pick up eventually, right? I mean, things are gonna go back to the way they were, and I just, with all the love and compassion in the world, I want to shake them, and say. this is reality. This is the world that we live in now, and we have to accept these are our circumstances, but what they hear, and I’m glad you pointed this out, is, well, that means that I’m giving up. I’m resigning myself. It means there’s no more hope and I have to accept it. It’s like, no, you accept, but now you focus on what are the things that you can control. In this new game you’re playing with these new rules that you’re playing by. That’s the piece that I feel so many are missing.
Steve Kamb: Yeah, it’s funny, I listen to, you know, I’m a member of the Belcourt Independent Movie theater here in Nashville, I listen to movie podcasts and TV show podcasts, and I remember back in 2020, what was the… Survive Until 25, or whatever?
Zack Arnold: Drive till 25, and then it was stay in the mix till 26, and like, stop it! Yeah, so you know a little bit of industry insider management.
Steve Kamb: I do, I do, I mean, I love… I… my heart… my heart breaks for the people in the creative industry that are having to navigate just these… apocalypse of creative… and then throw in AI slop, and it’s just, ugh, like, the worst. So… Yeah, the accept… the… I… there’s… there’s two parallels I want to quickly draw here. So, how I’ve… how I’ve navigated this acceptance, is… there’s dialectical behavioral… dialectical behavioral therapy…
Zack Arnold: Therapy, yep, yep.
Steve Kamb: DBT, created by Marsha, Dr. Linehan, I believe, and then Improvisational comedy. And both are essentially the same thing, which is, like, your dialectical behavioral therapy is the ability to hold two opposed thoughts in your head at the same time and still function, to borrow a quote from, I think it’s F. Scott Fitzgerald. And then improv is yes and, right? It’s, I accept with complete sincerity whatever absurd… situation my partner in improv came up with, and I’m going to accept it, and then I’m going to build on it. So, take all of those things, stick them in a blender, and what do we come up with? We have yes and. Like, yep, this sucks. This situation, I accept with complete sincerity and compassion for myself that this is not how I expected things to go. And… These are these small steps that I can take that are in my control. And here’s how, you know, I talk about literally creating hope in a later chapter in the behavioral science behind that, but there’s, like, okay, this sucks. And what are we going to do about it? And I think for so many people, we kind of forget that… like, we almost don’t want to say, like, oh, it’s not so bad, it’s not so bad. We know it’s, oh, things are gonna be fine, things are gonna be fine. I don’t know, maybe. But, like, if you just do that without actually accepting the… it might be really bad. But the sooner you accept that it’s really bad, only then can you finally start to address the problem. And I have the utmost, appreciation and respect for people that, after years or decades of kicking the can further down the road, or avoiding that uncomfortable conversation, or… not going to the doctor because they think there’s a problem, but they don’t wanna… they don’t wanna be… it scares them. Like, when you finally… Give yourself the courage to say, I’m going to face this, I’m going to shine a light on the thing that has been scary for me, like… I’m… it can be life… life-saving in many instances, for many, but then also life-giving in other ways, because you’re finally giving yourself the belief of the agency that this is something you can actually deal with.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, this just kind of goes back to the cornerstone of Stoic philosophy. Just focus on the things that you can control and ignore everything else, and the frustration, at least for me, and I’m sure for so many others, is there’s so many fewer things that we can control But again, if we just accept, well, all these things that I used to control are no longer within my control, well, now at least I know that I’m spending my time, energy, and attention on things that are worthwhile. So I’ve… I’ve basically reduced my life to… When I go to bed tonight, I know that it’s still gonna be chaos, I’m making way less income than I used to, everything’s uncertain. Do I feel good about how I spent my time today? Do I do it on things that I can control? Alright. Like, that’s my definition of success right now. It’s not, I got called for another season on American Ninja Warrior, or I’ve tripled the size of my list. It’s like, do I feel good about what I did today? Alright, good. That’s, like, it’s just become that simple for me.
Steve Kamb: Yeah, and that might, like… I treaded water for 6 years when it came to my… the guy that owns health and fitness, a health and fitness company, fitness was my 7th priority for, like, 6 years. And I was okay with that. It’s like, I’m gonna do one… I’m gonna go to the gym sometimes and do one exercise. I’m going to strategically half-ass quite a bit of my health and fitness journey. I might have one healthy meal today, it might be one healthy meal tomorrow, but right now. That’s enough. That’s allowing me to tread water long enough to see tomorrow. while I can try to get these other things that are, you know, a little bit more on fire, those are the things that I can still deal with, but… Doing one thing and treading water in this one way is kind of also reminding myself, like, hey, dude, you’re still in the fight, like, you haven’t given up yet. You might not be winning, but you’re not losing. That’s really… that can be really powerful in reminding yourself that you are, in fact, resilient.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and what I want to go into next, we’ve kind of already talked about, but I think it’s important to go even deeper, where you said this wasn’t a matter of a month or two, it was 6 years. This process takes a while, and I feel like so many are just like, well, alright, so I get it, things are chaotic, but, like, when am I gonna know where I’m going on the next path? When am I gonna have this figured out? And they think they can measure it in a 12-week semester. It’s like, no, this can potentially take years. Right? There’s a quote that you pulled up that I love as well. It was a Joseph Campbell quote, where he said, if the path before you is clear, you’re probably on somebody else’s. And right now, no path is clear for anybody, but we keep clinging for what’s the path, what’s the next step, what’s the direction? And again, we have to accept, number one, that there might not be any clearly defined paths for many of us anymore. But the other thing that I think is so important to dig into, and I… the way that you framed this was so helpful for me, even though I think you and I read a lot of the same books, you know, we follow a lot of the same authors, even watch a lot of the same movies, the way that you… dug into this really… it even kind of got to me. Because usually, like, oh yeah, I know this psychologist, I’ve read this book, but this one, I’m like, oh, shit. That was when you talked about caterpillar soup. And you talked about how we are, you know, we’re not who we were anymore.
Steve Kamb: Yeah.
Zack Arnold: But we’re not who we want to be yet, and there’s this big, giant, messy middle, and this was a new concept for me. So talk to me a little bit more about Caterpillar soup.
Steve Kamb: So, as kids, you know, we’ve all read The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I think that’s the title. No, not Hungry Hungry Hippos, which is a great game I played as a kid, the Very Hungry Caterpillar. And it’s this cute story with these beautiful images of, you know, the fuzzy little green caterpillar eats, like, five apples, and four strawberries, and three oranges, and, you know, I can’t remember the order of which, which, Which fruits are consumed in which quantities, but at the end of the book, it says, like, and then the caterpillar knitted himself a cute little cocoon, and two weeks later, popped out this beautiful butterfly. And I remember reading this as a kid, and thinking, like, oh, that’s a cool story, like, yeah, a little caterpillar, yeah, knits its… goes into its little cocoon, and knits itself these beautiful little wings, and then bam, pops out, like, great! And then you actually look into how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. It is disgusting. So, I think the way in the book I put it is, like, it’s way less lovely and way more Lovecraftian. It’s… what happens is, you know, with respect to the author who, I think it’s Eric Carle, who, said something… I’m sure he’s trying to keep things simple for kids, turns out moths come out of cocoons, and butterflies come out of chrysalises. So, the, the… The caterpillar goes into the chrysal… or goes, creates its chrysalis. And then it literally eats itself. Like, it dissolves all of its cells and every part of it, with the exception of, like, there’s, like, a few retinal cells or something that remain. And so, which means, like, if you cut into a caterpillar, cut into a chrysalis at the wrong point of time, like, goo will come pouring out. Like, there’s not… you’re not, like, interrupting a little caterpillar knitting its wings. You are going to just see a pile of goo come… seeping out, like, it’s disgusting. But that’s what it… it breaks itself down, and it is no longer a caterpillar, and it’s not a butterfly yet. And then, it essentially reorganizes itself into a butterfly, which is… if you think about it, like, one of the most mind-blowing things that could possibly happen, I think I say it’s something… it’s like if a can of alphabet soup, like, magically rearranged itself into war and peace. Like, how… How does this happen? what… and yet this is, like, the process of metamorphosis that that caterpillar has to go through. And that’s how I think about change. Like, we read self-help books, and we’re like, oh, yeah, this is exciting, and fun, and everything’s gonna be different from this moment on. And, like, that’s not how it works, probably. Like, you have to do really hard work on yourself. You have to break down parts of who you were. and you haven’t built the parts of who you want to be yet, you’re in that messy middle, and you’re just kind of caterpillar goo. And it’s ugly, and it’s uncomfortable, and it’s weird. And also, like, that’s part of the process. And that requires acceptance too, right? Like, you have to accept that this isn’t going to be fun. Like, going to therapy? And digging up, like, old challenges that you faced? Or… finally addressing that conversation that you’ve been cramming down, or swiping through, or drinking through, or whatever, like, those things that you’re avoiding, like, when you finally address them, it can get ugly and messy, and also, it’s required for you to finally start to move in the direction of who you want to become.
Zack Arnold: I would say that that pretty much encapsulates the last two years, where anytime I could have asked, how do I feel, how do I look? Pretty much a big, giant pile of goo, for sure.
Steve Kamb: Me too men, me too.
Zack Arnold: And this was an idea that I’d never heard of before. I’m like, oh my god, this makes so much sense. And what it led me to, and I think this kind of more, in my opinion, perfectly frames your book. This is, again, where we go to. We have a lot of shared authors that we like to read, people that I know that are friends and mentors of yours. Your book is essentially Atomic Habits for Mortals. If we want to combine your work and James Clear’s and Oliver Berkman’s, it’s Atomic Habits for Mortals, which is, alright, great, so all of that stuff, other people might be able to do that. What about the rest of us that fail at consistency all the time? And one of the traps that I’ve fallen into, and this is not to speak poorly at all about James Clear, but it’s this mindset of, I need to be making at least 1% progress every day, which I think is a great idea. But I think with when you’re in the middle of the chrysalis, there is no 1% better every day. It’s not like, well, I made a little bit of progress and a little bit more progress, but then you’re like, what the fuck happened to me in my life? I am a total failure, because I can’t even make 1% progress today. That’s why I think talking about this is so important.
Steve Kamb: Yeah, well, so the whole first chapter, too, and I know we talked about it briefly, but the thing I remind myself of, There’s no such thing as square one. And… it’s really easy for us, when we have failed, or when we’re trying to change, and we’re breaking things down, it feels like we’re moving backwards. I mean, I can, you know, like, I went to visit my family after, you know, trying to navigate my new life, and I’m, like, sleeping in my childhood bed, being like. Well, this is interesting. Not what I would have expected to visit my family. You know, like, it just… Things don’t go the way that you want them to, and it can often feel like we’re falling back to square one, we’re starting over. Like, the amazing thing is we get to bring all of our past experiences and failures and struggles and the version that we used to be All of that gets to come with us, and we get to stand on the shoulders of those past experiences. And it might… even if the only lesson we learned was, like, wouldn’t do that again, great. We are learning, and we’re making… we are… we are giving ourselves, you know, grist for the mill to try to figure out what the next version of us looks like. And, you know, even James Clear would tell you, like, yeah, of course you can’t just do 1% every day, eventually, like, that’s ridiculous, but the idea of, like, a small improvement helps. And I did want this book to be like, James, here, man, you can have January, and everybody’s like, near your new me. Cool. When life happens for people. And they’re like, man, I couldn’t even stick with 1% every day. Great. Read how to try again, here’s why you struggled, and yes, hopefully you have more compassion for yourself when things go wrong. And you are in the caterpillar goo stage, and you’re like. I am a failure, and I’m struggling, and change is hard, and I feel like I’m going backwards, read this, awesome, and then you can decide, go back to atomic, try a new habit or strategy, or, oh, now I can try a different couch to 5K, or whatever the thing is. I wanted this book to be, like, the… the… the hug from your friend Steve when things go wrong. and say, like, hey, I get it. I have failed too. I’m still not like, I failed, and then everything got better, and if I can do it, you can. Like, that’s not true or helpful at all. I’m still going through it, I don’t know what your situation may be. But, here’s somebody that’s kind of a mess, that has helped a lot of people, so maybe here are some lessons that we can work on together, but it’s gonna be messy and ugly, so let’s do this together. We can both be piles of caterpillar goo at the same time, and maybe we can help each other… I’d say, like, both become beautiful butterflies, but to be honest with you, butterflies kind of creep me out, so I would prefer to not be a butterfly. I might just stay in the… So let’s…
Zack Arnold: Mmm, I know that it’s a little bit too late, and you’ve already published the book, but if you were looking for an alternate title, Piles of Goo Together, that could be a nice alternate one. That was nice. One of the things you said that I love is, I hope what happens for you is that every January, James Clear sells all the books, and every February 1st, you sell all the books. Right? Because they’re like, well, I did the thing, and again, I love James Clear, I teach his work every single semester, so I say all this lovingly, but it doesn’t work for everybody. And it sets such a high standard of, well, I now have all of the information. Like, he wrote the only book we’re ever gonna need on habits. There were a lot of other great books about habits, like Charles Duhiggs’ The Power of Habit changed my life. Right? But nobody needs to write another book about habits. James did it. It’s done, taken care of, we can move on, right? Yep. But it just, it doesn’t work for certain types of people, especially, at least for me, being highly neurodivergent. Consistency is my Achilles heel. So I want to make sure that for anybody that’s thinking, oh, it’s another habits book, I want to encapsulate, like, this one line in your book is so good. And for everybody that wants to know, this is not just another book about habits, this is my favorite line of the whole book. This is how you’re gonna know that Steve’s a little bit different. I treat the thoughts in my head as if they’re an upstairs roommate that I met through the internet. His name is Chaz, and he has a ferret. Like, that’s the kind of book you’re gonna read. But the, you know, beyond the humor, when you say failing with compassion, that to me is how this book is different. It’s about failure, it’s about being compassionate about that failure, accepting it. Now, let’s try again. But this is a distinction that I know that’s important to you. It’s not trying again. It’s how to try again.
Steve Kamb: Yeah, well, so, likewise, I’m a huge fan of James and his work. You know, he talked about nerd fitness and Atomic Habits, so I’ve returned the favor. You know, maybe I can finally try to get him a little bit of attention by mentioning his name in my book.
Zack Arnold: Man, if we can sell some books for him, I know he’s really struggling right now.
Steve Kamb: Oh, man. Yeah, the reason I wanted to write it, like I said, is we’ve all heard the phrase, like, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. I don’t know, man, maybe. But, like, if you failed at trying to follow this strategy, and it didn’t work for you, I think… we see… we see the strategies and morning protocols and supplement stacks and whoever of people on Instagram, or… Twitter alpha bros that are just like, oh, I get up at 4.30 and I stare at the sun, and then I go for a run and levitate, and then… and, like, this is how I became a billionaire. It’s like, no, dude, that’s not what… stop it. Like, knock it off. That’s not… that’s not what’s happening here. I feel so badly for people that then try to follow these strategies, and when they mag… when they don’t… either they don’t work, and they beat themselves up that they can’t follow through with it, and likewise, I cannot follow through with most of the conventional strategies. I wanted this book to be for people that are, you know, whose brains or bodies work differently, and they’re just like, I… Oops. Sorry, I just popped you off the screen there accidentally, because I got too animated with my hands. You’re back. I, I wanted people, when they read this, to think, like. Here’s how I can take this framework. And then use it as a filter or a lens so that everything I read after this, I can stop being like, oh, this didn’t work for me, I’m a failure. And instead, start evaluating those things and saying. Will this work for me? If I accept my normal weirdness, and my struggles, and the things that I’m currently dealing with, if that’s true. Is there something I can take from this, without judgment of myself. And try it for me, like an experiment, and if I try it and I don’t like it, or I try it and it doesn’t work. There’s no shame or judgment on me, it just means that was a thing that didn’t work for me. Fantastic, we can cross it off the list. You don’t have to ever have to try to go keto again, because carbs make life worth living. So, enjoy your carbs. There is a different way that you can eat different, you know, that you can find a way to eat healthy. I don’t love applying morality to food here, but, people understand what I’m trying to say, right? Like, this is… Change is so hard. And so many people want to tell you they have the one true path. And we get so excited about that path, and when it doesn’t work for us, we beat ourselves up, or we follow through with it, and then we get disheartened because it didn’t give us, magically, the same results that it did of this other person who was in a completely different life situation.
Zack Arnold: Oh, man, just makes me so exhausted, thinking about all of these things that we think we’re supposed to be doing, and all the things that we’re doing wrong, and all the failures, like, I just… Oh, man. So, I think… I think what I need to do now is I need to reveal the… the true reason that I built this relationship and I brought you on this podcast today. It’s basically to steal your coaching for free. So here’s the idea. I want to use some of the frameworks that you talk about in your book.
Steve Kamb: Yeah?
Zack Arnold: And I’m gonna be super vulnerable, and I know how difficult it is, we’re like, you’re the leader of nerd fitness, and you’re struggling with fitness. Like, I was literally the Optimize Yourself guy, and my life was a shitshow. And I’ve learned how to become much better at being vulnerable, and it’s not, I have things figured out, let me teach you. It’s, hey, both of our lives are a shitshow, what do you do in the works? Let me tell you what I’m doing that works. Here’s what isn’t working, right? Yeah. So I just led an in-person retreat over the weekend, and a couple of the topics that we talked about that we walked away with, and I participated just as all my students did, what’s the one thing over the next few months during the summer that you want to focus on improving, and what’s the one thing that has to go? So, for me, when it comes to just generally exercising and being fit, I’m very much a weekend warrior, where, like, Sundays, I’m, like, Spartan Racer, I’m doing the Murph this Sunday, like, I’m totally into it. But when it comes to during the week. useless. I am useless. I cannot, cannot bring myself to just exercise consistently throughout the week. So for me, building a… and it’s not even about getting stronger, tougher, it’s not about improvement. Again, it’s just kind of like treading water, working on mobility a little bit. And I think what you can probably relate to is physical activity is so essential for ADHD, and the ADHD, if you don’t channel it through movement, at least for me, turns into anxiety and overwhelm. So the first, the first component of this is how do I just get myself to consistently, there’s that word again, just move more throughout the week, and then the thing that has to go? Emotional snacking. This is not a hypothetical, let’s work through your framework. I am stuck, Steve. Obi-Wan Kenobi, you are my only hope. Why can’t I do these things?
Steve Kamb: I mean, there’s one real reason. You don’t have to. Right? Like, if… if there was a bear. In that room with you right now. You would have no problem sprinting and running Away. if I dropped you in the middle of the ocean in the… maybe not the middle of the ocean, let’s say, you know, 200 yards off of shore, you would probably start swimming for sure. So, we are fortunate that right now in our lives, there’s… if you don’t go for… if you don’t go for your run today, or do a CrossFit workout, like, there’s nothing… You’re… there’s no part of you that is going to… you know. Your life is not on the line. Even if you go way back in the day, like, people… voluntarily exercising to burn calories is something that no species on the planet has ever done, and no human has done. I think it’s Daniel Lieberman has a lot of great work on this called the mismatch hypothesis, but we don’t… we’re humans who would prefer to probably be lazy. And we are now in an environment where we don’t have to exercise. So, I think step one is, like. You need to talk to that voice in your head who beats yourself up every day, being like, why can’t I get myself to just do the thing? I get it, dude. I don’t want to either. I’ve had to identify different strategies and hacks and tactics for myself to get me to do the thing that I know deep down would be good. For me. Now, I have a whole chapter in the book called, like, How to Keep Doing the Thing. It’s 10 strategies, and I would say, like, it’s not magic, it’s not magical protocols, it’s not… One size fits all, but it’s like, hey, here are some strategies that might work for you. it’s finding ways to make the activity that you’re doing more fun by maybe recruiting a friend. It might be finding a way to make the exercise, like, really making the benefits of it front and center for you. It could be something on, you know. adding a monetary incentive where, like, you pay a friend to check in with you each morning, and every day that you don’t check in, that money goes to the political party that you don’t want money to go to. Like, there’s all sorts of, like, little hacks and strategies, but, like, at the foundational level. if you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to, because we don’t live in that environment anymore. So, like, don’t beat yourself up that, like, oh, it’s really easy to be lazy, like… Yeah, man, I know. I don’t want to either, but I know how good I feel after I do it. So, it’s like, how do I reduce the distance between me and just getting started? How do I give myself permission? This is what I’ve been doing lately. I’ve just joined a new gym. again, for the first time in 6 years, I joined, like, a big commercial gym. I actually hired, Matt, who’s running Nerd Fitness now, to be my coach. To coach me so that I have accountability, and then I tell him, like, hey, I got to the gym today, I did one exercise, and then I was just… I had to get the hell out of there. Like… Workout complete. I did one exercise, and that was enough for me to tread water. So, I think for you, it doesn’t have to be 1% better. It might be as simple as, like, hey, I have a competition with the friends. I’m gonna accumulate 100 push-ups this week. And that’s it. You can do them all on the first day, you can do them 10 push-ups a day, whatever. I don’t know, because I don’t know you specifically and what your day looks like, so I can’t prescribe, but…
Zack Arnold: Yeah, of course.
Steve Kamb: But I think… I think maybe there’s a mindset aspect here that is… I’m very familiar with, which is, like, the, man, why can’t you just get it together? Other people can. And I think instead accepting, like, yeah, I don’t want to exercise. I don’t enjoy it, but it makes me feel really good. If that is the reality here. How do I find some different strategies to get me out of my own way long enough to just freakin’ get started without expectation for it magically solving my problems? And… and… start there. So start from a position of… compassionate acceptance. I realize I’m, you know, kind of, beating that phrase into the ground here, but I think there was some aspect of this that you and I probably are really good at tough love with ourselves, and it probably got us to where… we think we got it to where we are. And… If it was… if it continued working, it would have already continued working, and this wouldn’t be a problem. So maybe try a different strategy here with acceptance and no baseline of what your expectation is for the week. And, and, and build off of that.
Zack Arnold: the… the couple of things came to mind when you shared this. The first one, which really hit me hard, is where you started. It’s because you don’t have to. And… that hadn’t even really occurred to me, like, it seemed so simple, but it’s like, oh, I don’t actually have to, and this is where I can share, I think, you and I might also belong to similar organizations, but I’m the founder and president of Overthinkers Anonymous. And what I’m… what I’m really good at doing is logicking my way out of everything. And years ago, it really was a matter of, I have to be doing this. I am horribly out of shape. I remember, back when I was thir… I can’t believe I have to say back, but back when I was 30, way back in the day. I remember playing with my son, who was just, maybe 1 years old at the time, and we were playing on the floor, and I had trouble getting up. I’m like. Fuck! Like, I’m 30! This shouldn’t be a problem! So I had to do the things. That’s when I started getting into Spartan races, I started getting into Tough Mudders, and that led me down the American Ninja Warrior path. So I had to do it. The problem now is that I can sit on my ass all week, and I can write stuff, and I can coach with people, and I can do a full MRF on Sundays. So I can logic my way out of needing to do anything, because I have reached a point where I feel good about my strength, and I feel good about my cardio, and I see my doctor, he’s like, wow, you’re healthy as a horse! Which means that I sit on my ass for all but 3 hours of the entire week. But I know that that’s detrimental to just my general feeling of energy throughout the day, and most importantly, to my creativity. Because when I don’t move, it’s harder to write.
Steve Kamb: Yeah, I think… so maybe, maybe that’s it. I mean, are there other ways… like, I wouldn’t recommend hiring a bear to chase you, or having a friend drop you in the ocean.
Zack Arnold: But…
Steve Kamb: are there ways that you can… you know, at Nerd Fitness, we talk about, can you find a big why? You know, like, what’s the… for you, when you were 30, like… Shit, I can’t even get up off the floor to play with my kids. Like, that’s a problem. So that is a have-to, because you have… 60 more years of… of hoping to… the 60-plus years with your family, and you know that, you know, move it or lose it, or use it or lose it, rather. So, are there ways, whether it’s signing up for more classes, you know, me, for me, I also don’t have to fit, you know, I’m… I don’t have to, but now that I have a coach who I’m accountable to. I’m like, fine, I’ll go do this stupid workout. You know, there’s that great meme of the… it’s like this bald eagle stomping around on the beach, and he’s, like, going from my stupid little mental walk for my… my little walk for my dumb mental health. I bet that eagle felt pretty good after we went for his dumb little walk for his stupid mental health. Now, we can be a little bit more kind with the words that we use. But are there ways that you can introduce have to in your situation, or somebody that you can be accountable to, or an organization of people that are now counting on you to show up during the week? And you’ll drag yourself there kicking and screaming, and then you’ll be like, I’m so glad I did that. I can’t tell you how many things I’m just like, ugh, I don’t want to go, and then I go and I’m like, that was awesome. I’m so glad I did. And I learned nothing from it, and then I fight it tooth and nail the next time. And then I find a way to do it, and I feel great again, and just, like, have to, like, override that part. Chaz, in my brain, who was telling me, like, no, dude, you don’t have to go, like, it’s fine. Like, Chaz, we’re going, it’s gonna be good for us, we write all day at home, go see people, go do stuff. Sure enough, I do it, and it makes me feel better, but I have to remind myself, or be accountable to others, because it’s really easy for me, like you, to overthink my way into or out of pretty much anything.
Zack Arnold: Yeah. I’ve found that over the years that if we’re gonna kinda look at the 10 strategies, the one to me, that just completely popped off the page and could very easily be an entire part 2 of this series is this one thing. Find people who do the thing. And I have found that that has been the difference for me for everything that I’ve ever accomplished, which is ironic, given that I am extremely introverted. And I am not one to network and not one to be in groups, but if I think about all of the major inflection points in my life, the goals that I’ve achieved, the growth that I’ve had. just begrudgingly, it’s because I’m with other people, right? I just want to kind of be in my own small dark room and be left alone and be introverted and be creative. But every single possible thing that I attribute that is successful or something worthwhile or meaningful, it’s because I found other people. Right? Yeah. So for… I think for me, the component is, and I’ve actually been thinking about how do I integrate this as kind of in a similar way that you do. just, how do I build in daily challenges with my students? Because if there’s one thing I’m not gonna do, it’s gonna look like a failure in front of my own students, who are counting on me to be the one that has all this shit figured out, even though my students know at this point, I don’t have any of this shit figured out.
Steve Kamb: Yeah, well, I mean, it’s funny you say that, actually. So there is a… I spoke with a professor at the University of… I’m sorry, Stevens University in Hoboken, New Jersey, who teaches a class on failure. Her name is Teresa McPhail, which, I’m not kidding, is like… I’m not joking, she’s delightful, but she, you know, I think she’s a, like a… she teaches in a completely different discipline, but she noticed so many students coming into school completely unprepared to handle their first bad grades. Like. mentally… just, like, they had never failed before. These are also overachieving kids to get into a great engineering school, and then they get their first D or C- on a test, and, like, they don’t know how to handle it. So she went to her faculty and said, like, hey, I have this idea for a class specifically on failure. And, the punchline here is, it’s become so successful that now, 7 years later, she has a waitlist every semester. But what she says on day one is. Like, we’re gonna do this class together, and we’re going to figure it out together, and we’re going to navigate failure and what that means. And I’m not always going to have my shit together either, but this is life, and we’re going to do it together. And I think that’s really… there’s something to that. You know, I get really vulnerable in this book and share… to… to, at the risk… of being complete cliche, like, I am an open book. And this book shares all of my flaws and struggles, and say, like, this is what I’m struggling with, and how I’m trying to navigate it through this book, and the research, and the philosophy, and the lessons I’ve learned from our, you know, Nerd fitness coaching 20,000 people, or whatever it is. I’m still struggling with these things. I think there is some part for you where you can be the vulnerable person in sharing with your audience what… like, not the guy that has it all figured out, not the Yoda… who gets to speak in pithy quotes and say, like, no, you have to, you know, do or do not, there is no try. Like, sorry, Yoda, try is totally acceptable. Like, that’s fine. That’s fine, right? That’s fine. You can… it’s okay for you to say, like, hey, I’m struggling through this too, here’s… here’s how I’m trying to figure it out. Like, what are your thoughts on this? I bet your class and your audience would be like, oh, thank God. I can’t tell you how many emails I’ve got from people saying, like. Oh, thank God, like, for… I loved Nerd Fitness, but man, like, you… you set an impossible standard back in the day. Like, you were, like, Captain America to me, and, like, I have Captain America’s shield on my wall behind me. Because, like, that’s who I wanted to be for these people. And then when I started saying, like, hey, here’s all this shit that’s going wrong, and here’s the thing I thought I was doing, and here’s the insecurities that led me down this path, the replies were like, oh, thank God. Thank God, man, you’re real. Like, and I think now, online, with everything being airbrushed, or AI, or slop, or whatever, like, real vulnerability is gonna be just so much more valuable and important. Because it’s getting harder and harder to find in the polished version of the internet.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, which is, again, what I think drew me directly to you, and vice versa, is we’re singing from the same hymnal. And I… this is a discovery that I made, I would… probably 2-3 years ago, and the simplest distillation of my rebrand is my former business strategy was selling optimization. My new business strategy is selling my coping mechanisms.
Steve Kamb: Love it.
Zack Arnold: Right? Like…
Steve Kamb: Yeah.
Zack Arnold: My life’s a shitshow, like, if I didn’t have a calendaring strategy, I’d walk in circles all day looking for my pants. So let me share with you how I manage my time so I can.
Steve Kamb: Why did I get over there?
Zack Arnold: Right? How did that happen? Yeah. So here’s where I want to leave us today. I want to be very respectful of your time. But I want to get… I want to get deeper into the why, and I’m gonna do my best to get through this without being emotional. Just thinking about it is already making me emotional. But I’d shared with you, the trailer for the documentary film that I did years ago that was about the first quadriplegic to become a licensed scuba diver. And he was… he wasn’t just a subject that I found, he was a very close friend of mine, and somebody that I knew for years. Before he unfortunately passed away, and I learned about all the things he accomplished, and I said, I would like to make a movie about his life. But then what happened is I realized. what he does, or what he did, that’s actually become my calling. The calling my entire life was, I’m gonna make movies, and I’m gonna win gold statues. And then in telling his story, I realized, but that’s not what I’m here for. What I’m here for is to help people deal with all the difficult obstacles in their lives and overcome those obstacles so they can achieve their goals. And you had said specifically in your book. That this was your life’s work. Why.
Steve Kamb: I didn’t set it out… it didn’t set out that way. I… have had a lot of success with Nerd Fitness, and built a really cool team that helped a lot of people over… at the time when I started this process, 15 years. And I thought I had a lot of life figured out, and was moving down a specific path. And, and then, like I said earlier, things went… things went sideways for… a good year and a half while I was writing a book about what to do when life goes sideways. And… I am so proud of the fact that I, like, I gave myself permission, which was so hard, to step back from Nerd Fitness and say, I can’t… I can’t be the person this company needs me to be. Because that’s not who I am. It’s not my skill set, it’s not what I’m good at, it’s not how I want to make an impact. what I think I am really good at is writing really relatable, helpful content that make people… are really helpful… sharing really helpful stories and… and ways of writing that make people not feel so alone with their struggles and their challenges. And as I put this book together, there was actually a while where I became paralyzed From being able to write it. Because I thought to myself, man, there is, like. you know, I had 120,000 words of chaos, and my final book was gonna be 75,000 words, and I was paralyzed by thinking. I don’t know how to find the right book in here, just like I had been thinking and helping people with my writing, saying, you know, like, there is no perfect workout plan. There is no perfect strategy. There’s no… this perfect thing that you’re seeking that will solve all of your problems, and finally make you feel enough and reduce your anxiety, like, that doesn’t exist. And it took some friends, and like I said, therapy and journaling, and a lot of long walks to realize, like. I don’t need to write the perfect book, because that doesn’t exist. I need to write the most Steve book I can possibly write. I actually sat down with a good friend of mine named Josh Kaufman, who wrote, Personal MBA and, a number of other really fantastic books. And he helped me. He said, like, hey, this is the chapter where you’re trying to sound like Mark Manson. This is the chapter where you’re trying to sound like Oliver Burkeman. This is the chapter where you’re trying to sound like Morgan Housel or James Clear or whoever. But this part right here, man, like, he coined the phrase, he goes, this is Maximum Steve, right here. I need you to know that this is good enough. And I’m like, oh man, I don’t know if I believe that. And I had to work through this, of being like, Hey. you’re not those people, you’re trying to write the best, like, the most Steve version of this story to help people. not feel so alone, not feel like failures, to stop beating themselves up when they can’t be as resilient as they think they should be. And over the course of three and a half years, I think I’ve changed pretty dramatically in the you know, I ended up… this is so cliche, but I ended up writing the book, like, I really needed for myself. To stop beating myself up and stop feeling that guilt and shame around things not working out. In some ways, and others, like, not my fault, or, through no fault of mine, whatever it may be, like. I’m so proud of how this turned out. And… I… Hope it can reach the right audience of people that Are tired and burned out, and… just trying to figure out, like, how do I stop feeling like crap because I can’t follow through on all these popular tactics and strategies? How do I be okay with who I am? Like, that’s what this book turned into, which was not expected, you know, I talked… I show this at the very end of the book, but, like. I’m really privileged, and it still took a village of people to help me through these past few years, and to get this book across the finish line, and really fundamentally changed how I think about, productivity, optimization, life, behavior change, like, all of these things, I feel like I have such a better perspective on. So, you know, I’ll say this is my life’s work up until now. I have learned a lot, and have changed a lot, and… I’m okay not knowing what the future version of me looks like. Like, I think there’s always gonna be a part of me that is just perpetually in the caterpillar goo stage, and… I’m kind of okay with that. Like, I want to keep changing, and I want to keep learning, and I want to be… I want to keep being surprised by what opportunities or things come my way, and being resigned and accepting of the fact that, like, I don’t know what the future holds. And I’m not gonna beat myself up because I don’t have a 5-year plan, or a 10-year plan. I try to live a pretty great day today. And spend time with the people that are important to me. Try to do some work. More often than not, that feels fulfilling, that might help people. And then be kinder to myself when I’m not operating at 100% capacity all day, every day. Like, I don’t think that’s healthy. So, it’s been a journey. I couldn’t be happier with the book that I wrote, and I think it’s hopefully, if it finds the right people, can help them, Navigate whatever apocalypse is coming next, because we all know it’s, I don’t know what the next few years will bring, but I think having a flexibly resilient mindsets and healthier… You know, way that we speak to ourselves, is gonna be really, really important.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I can… I can share unequivocally that you found Maximum Steve in this book. For sure, like, from all the reading of yours I’ve done over the years, following you, like, it is 100% Steve. It did not feel like another personal development book that was putting together the marshmallow test, coupled with this thing, like, it was all Steve, but it was also really useful stuff. So, that’s gonna lead me to the very last lightning ground question. Maximum Steve is gonna time travel 10 years ago, and he’s gonna talk to level 50 Steve. What does he have to tell him about what’s coming?
Steve Kamb: Gosh. I mean, there’s a part of me that, like, I think… I think there’s a part of me that would say… You’re about to walk down this path because you think… you think it’s what… You want, or it’s what you should do. You have all of these opportunities, Nerd Fitness is riding high, And you’re telling yourself. hey, if I jump on these opportunities, like, I can put my dent in the universe, and… and… you’re neglecting to ask the question, you know, I say, like, don’t just ask, is the juice worth the squeeze, but, like, do you even like juice? Right? Like, Do you want to be in charge of a really big company? Do you want to sit in meetings and build this giant thing and be responsible for all, like… If your only reason you’re doing it is because it’s an opportunity and you think you should, like, that’s… I think that’s probably something I would have done differently. At the same time, I don’t know if, like, even through… heartbreak, and life-changing, and all these other things, like, I don’t know if I would change I don’t know what I would change. I don’t know, like… maybe this is the book that I needed to write, and maybe Nerd Fitness is doing exactly what it’s meant to be doing, and I’m exactly where I need to be right now, too. And going through hardship, and learning, and getting my ass kicked a lot. Is going to allow me to help more people in a much different, larger, broader way than just, like. I don’t know. So… I think there’s certain things I would like to say, and then there’s… there’s probably the reality, which is, like, I don’t know if I would be in a position to hear it either. Right? I had this funny joke, and I was probably running up on time, but… or not joke, but my.
Zack Arnold: My time, by the way, is fine. I want to respect your time, but my time is fine.
Steve Kamb: Let’s keep cooking. So, I was gonna say, I had this funny realization recently where I was talking with some friends about philosophy. And… I was like, man… I wish I had taken, like, philosophy classes in college. You know, like, it’s probably the most practical thing I could have taken, and, like, I wish I had the courage and the foresight and the… to, like, take those interesting classes. And then I found my college transcript, because I had to find it for… there was some student aid, thing that I needed to find, and I found the transcript. I totally took philosophy classes, and I don’t remember any of them. Wow. I took them, and I don’t… I remember thinking they were boring as hell, and I didn’t… I was like, this is dumb, fine, I’ll fill out my… I’ll fill out my essay about what is being, or whatever, and like, I’ll just do it. I wasn’t ready to learn those lessons. You know, I think there’s a lesson I share in the book about, I think it’s a Buddhist nun, I believe, named Pima Chodron, and she says something like. any sign of discomfort is, like, life is trying to teach you a lesson. And fortunately, life will keep trying to teach you that lesson until you’re willing to… accept it and address it, or you’re in a position to finally start dealing with it. So, I don’t know. I imagine if I told myself back in the day, hey man, building a giant-ass company is not gonna be fulfilling. I don’t know if I would have been able to hear it. Or if I accept… or if I said, okay, fine. there’s probably a part of me that always would have wondered, man, what could this have become? And, oh, I wonder, boy, I can’t believe I turned down that opportunity. And, oh, I could have been… you just never know, so I’m… I’m okay with the decisions I’ve made. And I’m thankful that the lessons I’ve learned, I was in a position to finally accept them and appreciate them and learn from them now. just like that philosophy class in college, I probably wouldn’t have been ready to hear it 10 years ago. I’d be like, whatever, old man Steve, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m in New York City, building this team, numbers are going up, this is great, higher, higher, higher, let’s see what comes out, and I don’t know if I would have been able to hear it.
Zack Arnold: Very honest answer, which does not surprise me whatsoever, given you’ve been very honest and open and vulnerable, and ultimately, I think if I walk away with one thing, it’s being willing to fail compassionately, and I think the compassion that you’re bringing to this entire process and to the world is sorely, sorely needed right now, so… Thanks for swimming through the shit and treading water for the last 3 years to bring us this book, because I’m… as we talked about pre-show, like, this is gonna be a core part of my curriculum with my students for at least the next 20 to 30 years. So…
Steve Kamb: I was gonna say, if you’re in the shit, maybe you can swim past the shit and then tread water. Treading water in the shit might be… if it’s like a, you know, maybe get a little bit to the side of that.
Zack Arnold: For sure, definitely. Well, now we come to what I call the shameless self-promotion part of the program. For those that have made it all the way to this part of the conversation, they’re totally in love with Steve Cam and his philosophies. Where do we send them to buy the book and learn more about you and enter your ecosystem?
Steve Kamb: Simple. HowToTryAgain.com. I couldn’t believe there was no book named to this, and I came up with the title about 2 years into the process, when I realized this is exactly what we do and how we help people. So, howtotryagain.com, it’s available. Literally around the world. It’s in a bunch of countries, and it’s already been picked up for translation in a bunch of others, which is… mind-blowing to me, and really fun. Howtotryagain.com, and, you know, there’s bonuses, and, you know, I put together a secret chapter of stuff that couldn’t make it from the 120,000 words down to the 70, but is still really, really great. And then I’m just everywhere on the internet, Steve Kamb, on pretty much most platforms. That’s S-T-E-V-E-K-A-M-B, whether it’s Substack, Threads, Instagram, YouTube, that’s… I’m pretty much everywhere.
Zack Arnold: Yeah. Well, they always say that things happen, you know, in the speed that they’re going to, not necessarily for a reason, but I’m glad that even though it took this long, you and I finally connected, because this was well worth the wait, and thoroughly enjoyed today’s conversation, and I very much appreciate you giving us your time, your story, and your expertise.
Steve Kamb: Well, thank you for the opportunity, this is really fun, I… I feel like at least this version of Steve, I’m doing the thing I’m meant to be doing, which was write this book, and getting an opportunity to share that story, and my challenges, and hopefully doing so in a fun, funny, and meaningful way.
Zack Arnold: And there we go! Sweet! Nicely done, man. Dude, that was great. God, that was a lot of fun. That was awesome. Yeah, I hope that it was a little bit off the beaten path of maybe some of the more standard, you know, tell me more about the book, let’s, you know, go through chapter 4, 5, whatever it is. Like, I’ve… to be honest, most podcasts I can’t even listen to anymore. They just make me sad, because nobody puts in the time. Sure.
Steve Kamb: Well, I appreciate you putting in the time, that’s clearly obvious, and… gosh, I had forgotten about level 50, Steve, from Level Up Your Life.
Zack Arnold: I had a feeling that would have been the case.
Steve Kamb: I was like, oh, I’m like…
Zack Arnold: Oh, wow. We’ll be opening with this.
Steve Kamb: I love it, that’s so funny. Oh, sweet, naive Steve, boy. Yeah. He thought he had it all figured out at 26. Yeah, exactly.
Zack Arnold: Exactly. Well, I’ll just reiterate one more time that beyond just, like, yeah, I’ll put this out there, we’ll release it on book release day, et cetera, et cetera. I really do want to do what I can to get this in front of people. I’m, you know, I’m not Tim Ferriss, I can’t sell millions of books for you.
Steve Kamb: But I wanna…
Zack Arnold: and I’ve talked to a lot of authors, I’ve done hundreds of interviews, but there are a few where I’m like, you know what, I really want to invest the time to get this out there, so I want to do whatever it is that I can, maybe I’ll even build some kind of a resource around it to help people dig into it deeper. I’m already talking about doing a book club in my, my academy, so we can actually start using it, so.
Steve Kamb: Yeah, and let me know what else I can do for you, like, if that is something you end up deciding doing, you’re like, hey, can you film this, or come back for a live thing, or fucking whatever, like, hell yeah, man, I’m up for all of this.
Zack Arnold: I mean, that would be amazing, like, that… I felt like, you know, asking to come back for a Q&A or something with all the publicity, I didn’t want to get on your calendar again.
Steve Kamb: Oh, dude, I would love to. That would be awesome. That sounds great!
Zack Arnold: That would be great.
Steve Kamb: I mean, again, if, like, if your audience is, like… there’s nothing worse than being like, hey, we got this guy, for this, and they’d be like, who? Or not interested. But if they are interested, I would love to. That sounds amazing.
Zack Arnold: dude, you’re the nerd fitness guy, talking to the guy that built Fitness and Post. Like, come on! Like, I would venture to guess that essentially every person that’s ever paid me money would probably pay you money and be a part of your community, too, because the intersection of the avatars of the kind of people that you help and how you help them is exactly the same way that my community is built, too. Like, it’s understanding how much overlap there is. So, are you kidding? My audience would love to hear from you, that’d be amazing.
Steve Kamb: I’m in. Sounds great.
Zack Arnold: Cool, alright. I have, I won’t keep you anymore, but I just… I always like to ask for permission. I have a couple of ideas for other collaborations that might make sense for us. Do you mind, at some point, knowing you’re in book mode, just sending an idea or two? Because it’s stuff that, again, I think there’s a… there’s so much synergy between what we’re doing. I’d love to throw out an idea or two, and… Of course. You know, start the conversation, but knowing you’re in book mode right now, so…
Steve Kamb: Yeah, dude, and also, like, I check Substack messages, kind of, but, like, I don’t know, I don’t know if you have my phone number, but I can give that to you, too, or I’ll put it in Substack, I’ll message you my phone.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, sure.
Steve Kamb: You can just text me, that’s way… that’s… I’m pretty responsive via text, and pretty unresponsive on most other platforms.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, well, I very much appreciate that. That’s definitely going, you know, a whole other level of connection, so… Awesome. I will not abuse it, but yeah, send me the number, and I’ll text you a couple of thoughts.
Steve Kamb: Sounds great.
Zack Arnold: So, alright, you have a wonderful rest of your weekend, Memorial Day, and we’re gonna get this book out into the world, sir.
Steve Kamb: Thanks, man.
Zack Arnold: That’s a good one.
Steve Kamb: Later. Bye. See ya. Bye.
Edited by: Curtis Fritsch
Published by: Vim Pangantihon
Music by: Thomas Cepeda
You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.”. My guest today is James Clear, an author and speaker who specializes in habits, decision making, and continuous improvement.
Gretchen Rubin is a NYT bestselling author who has sold over 3.5 million copies of her books, some of those titles which include Outer Order, Inner Calm, Better Than Before, The Happiness Project, Happier at Home, and the book that we discuss in-depth in today’s conversation: The Four Tendencies.
