Mental Calisthenics.

I strive to stay fit and eat healthy.

Like many of you, I work out on a regular basis and I’m careful about what I consume. But depending on what season of life I’m in, the amount of exercise I get and what I actually allow myself to eat start changing—and often not for the better.

Sometimes it’s vacation. Who wants to work out or eat right on vacation? Sometimes it’s the busyness of my business or my kids’ schedules. Sometimes I just want pizza. 

But in the end, I know these are all excuses. They’re easy “outs” for me to get what I want. Yet when I fall off of my meal plan, it takes that much more effort and discipline to lose that excess. 

Ultimately, the extra work isn’t worth that pizza.

Training your mind to be relationally present is fairly similar. Unless we’re vigilant about how the stories we tell ourselves might be undermining our relationships, we’ll allow ourselves every excuse:

• “Well, that’s just the way she is.”

• “He’s never going to love me.”

• “I’m pretty sure she hates me now.”

If we don’t develop and maintain the mental discipline to silence the stories we tell ourselves, our relationships will suffer. And the extra work to make the relationship better will cause you more stress than if you’d just gotten out of your own way in the first place.

If the key to health is being consistently physically disciplined, the key to better relationships is maintaining consistent mental disciplines.

The great thing is that, just like working out on a regular basis, becoming more mentally aware of the stories you tell yourself increases your muscle memory, making it easier over time for you to notice how your made-up stories about others might be negatively affecting your relationships.

But you still have to work at it—every day.