For years, our friend Sean Waxman did just that, measuring his toughness by how much he could take — more reps, more pain, more hours. That approach made sense for the weightlifter he was. But when he carried that same hammer into every part of life, it cost him more than it gave…

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But that goal is broken from the start.

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We dig into how a genuinely brilliant idea can be undone by the very people a leader keeps close…

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👋 Chaser! Quick reminder: registration for our latest 21-Day Challenge closes tomorrow. Want to join me and level up your focus? Learn more here.

We’re pretty good at measuring physical fitness. A barbell lift. A mile time. Blood work. A visible, trackable, repeatable number we can chase and beat.

Mental fitness doesn’t offer us any of that. There’s no blood panel for resilience. No leaderboard for self-awareness. And because we can’t measure it the way we measure squat numbers, most of us end up treating it like a binary: either you’re fine, or something’s wrong with you. No in-between, no continuum, no sense that you could actually train for it the same way you train your body.

To say the least, that’s not particularly helpful.

I’m okay knowing we can never perfectly measure our capacity to respond to life’s stressors like we might measure ourselves against a challenge in the gym. I don’t, however, love feeling like a ship moving slowly through a foggy night — hoping I’m on track, hoping I’m ready, hoping I’m moving in the right direction.

That’s why, the last time I had a chance to talk with our friend and frequent guest on the pod, Chris Irwin, I wanted his help to organize myself around an idea I’d been thinking about — that even if we can’t quantify the outcome of mental fitness work, we can absolutely track the process.

See, I’m a big believer in the usefulness of regular journaling, and I know that some of my most insightful sessions have come when I start with a question. So I wanted to present Chris with some questions, framed around his concept of the 5 Mind Killers, to see if we could explore and refine them in a way that would give me a set of regular questions to return to.

The way I figure it, we can’t chart our resilience or our grit or our self-awareness in a spreadsheet — but we can, if we’re persistent, measure today’s answers to a few useful questions against our answers from three months ago or nine months ago or last year.

By charting our answers and examining them over time, I think we give ourselves a chance to lift the fog a little. To see whether we’re moving forward or spinning in circles.

That’s the idea, anyways, behind what follows: Chris’s five “mind killers” — the patterns that quietly erode mental fitness — and for each one, two questions we can actually sit down and answer. Not vague affirmations. Actual journaling prompts, the kind you could revisit every few months to see whether you’re trending toward fitness, or slowly drifting toward the other end of the continuum.

Oblivion is the water you don’t know you’re swimming in — the sense of being, more or less, a passenger to your own thoughts and emotions. Something happens, a thought arrives, a feeling spikes, and you’re carried along without ever clocking that the carrying is happening. The antidote isn’t complicated, but it isn’t easy either: awareness. The simple discipline of noticing a thought or feeling instead of just living inside it.

Can you notice the urge to distract yourself — before you give in to it?

Not how long you can white-knuckle stillness. Just: can you catch the exact moment your hand starts drifting toward your phone? That half-second gap, before the habit takes over, is where all the leverage is.

Can you name your primary trigger — the thing that reliably knocks you off center?

Most of us get thrown off by the same handful of things, dressed up slightly differently each time. Naming the pattern is the fastest way out of oblivion and into something you can actually work with.

If oblivion is not noticing your thoughts, storytelling is noticing them and believing every word. It’s the narrative we build around a memory, a label, a moment — and repeat to ourselves so often it starts to feel like fact. I’m bad with directions. That conversation ruined everything. Most of it isn’t true. It’s just a story told enough times that it calcified. The fix is reframing: going back and asking whether the story is actually accurate, or just familiar.

How do you respond when you’re criticized?

Here’s the uncomfortable part: if criticism really gets under your skin, it’s usually because some part of you already agrees with it. The question isn’t whether the other person is right. It’s what story you’re telling yourself about what their words mean about you.

How often do you catch yourself complaining?

Complaining is almost always a story about how the world should be, held up against how it actually is. It feels like venting. It’s actually just friction with reality. Noticing how often you do it is a quick, honest gauge of how much energy you’re spending resisting things you can’t change.

Emotions carry a charge, and that charge needs somewhere to go. Suppression is what happens when we cap it instead — when we decide a feeling is inconvenient, or inappropriate, or simply too much, and shove it down rather than letting it move. It doesn’t disappear. It waits. The countermeasure is regulation: learning to let the charge move through you without either exploding outward or swallowing it whole.

When something upsets you, do you default to anger, or to going quiet and withdrawing?

Most of us have a default door, and we walk through it so automatically we don’t register the choice. There’s actually a third door — feeling the charge without feeding it — but you can’t walk through it until you notice which of the other two you’ve been defaulting to.

How do you respond to low-stakes, everyday annoyances — slow traffic, a kid not listening, a delayed flight?

These moments are useful precisely because the stakes are so low that any outsized reaction is basically a tell. If you’re regularly more wound up than the situation calls for, something else is feeding that reaction — and it’s worth figuring out what.

Fear is forward-facing — the mind bracing against a future that hasn’t happened yet. In small doses, it’s useful; it’s what keeps you from doing something reckless. Left unchecked, it becomes background noise that runs your decisions without your permission. The countermeasure is openness: a willingness to sit with the discomfort of uncertainty instead of letting it quietly steer you away from things.

When was the last time you made a decision mostly influenced by fear?

If your honest answer is “a few minutes ago,” you’re in good company. Fear is running far more of our day-to-day decision-making than we tend to admit, and most of it goes completely unexamined.

Do you ever go back and check whether the things you feared actually came to pass?

This is the simplest, most effective fear audit there is. Write down what you’re afraid will happen. Revisit it later. You’ll find, almost every time, that the actual outcome was nowhere near as bad as the story you told yourself in advance.

Stagnation is a quiet one — the sense, usually unconscious, that you’ve basically figured life out. You know what you know, you are who you are, and there’s no real reason to keep growing. It’s comfortable. It’s also how you end up exactly the same a decade from now as you are today. The countermeasure is wonder: staying curious, on purpose, about things outside yourself.

Do you have a personal mission statement you’ve actually written down?

Not a goal. More like a filter — something you can run a decision through when you’re not sure which way to go. Most people have a vague sense of their values. Far fewer have ever actually put them into words they can return to.

When was the last time you dedicated real time to learning something new?

Your body’s physical ceiling is going to come down eventually, no matter how well you train. Your capacity to learn doesn’t have the same expiration date. This question is just a check on whether you’re actually using that.

There’s one more question — it didn’t fit neatly into any single category, because it touches all five at once:

If someone you admire could hear your self-talk during a moment of stress, would you be proud of what they heard — or embarrassed?

Ask yourself if you’d ever talk to a friend, or your own kid, the way you talk to yourself when something goes wrong. Most of us wouldn’t come close. We extend patience and perspective to everyone except ourselves, then wonder why the gap between how we want to feel and how we actually feel keeps showing up.

None of these ten questions will fix anything on their own. That was never the point. The point is the same one that applies to every hard thing we do in the gym: you don’t get mental fitness by thinking about it once. You get it by asking the questions again in three months, and then six, and checking — honestly — whether you’re trending in the right direction.

That’s the whole program. Not perfection. Just the process, repeated.

It looks productive. The supplement stack, the recovery gadget, the eight-dollar tonic before bed. Each one feels like progress, and each one lets us off the hook for the harder, slower work underneath it.

Being healthy has never…

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So let’s call it cognitive obesity.

We fill our attention with …

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But screen time treats every minute as equal, and it isn’t. Two hours watching a documentary on a flight is not the same as two hours scrolling an endless stream of…

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But noticing isn’t another task competing for our attention…

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On Monday, we’re kicking off our next 21-Day Challenge. This time, we’re working on focus.

Not because we need to squeeze more work into every hour. Because the things we care about deserve more than whatever attention we have left after checking our phones, answering notifications, and bouncing between open tabs.

A conversation. A workout. A project we keep saying matters. Being where we are, doing what we’re doing.

For 21 days, we’ll practice giving one thing our attention at a time. One deliberate task per day, built around five pillars:

🎯 Deep Work Blocks — making time for uninterrupted, focused effort

📵 Digital Boundaries — managing technology before it manages us

🏗️ Environment Design — making focus easier and distraction harder

📊 Attention Tracking — noticing where our attention actually goes

🔋 Energy Management — protecting the sleep, movement, and recovery that help us think clearly

We’ll start by observing our habits, then make small changes, then put those changes together into something we can keep.

The goal isn’t to become impossible to distract. It’s to get better at choosing where our attention goes—and returning to that choice when we drift.

How to join me:

Option 1 — Inside the ChaseTracker app

Head to the Challenge Hub, find the Focus Challenge, and tap “Count Me In.” Each day’s task will show up right on your dashboard, alongside the key actions you’re already tracking.

Option 2 — DIY with the full 21 days

All 21 days of content are below. No app required.

Grab a notebook, your notes app, a printed copy — whatever works — and show up each day with the day’s task.

Some days, you’ll simply notice something. Other days, you’ll change a setting, clear a distraction, or protect a block of time. You don’t need a perfect schedule to participate.

Option 3 — The Simplified version

Don’t want to follow all 21 prompts? No problem.

Every day for 21 days, do this:

1. Choose one thing that deserves your full attention.

2. Put your phone away, close the other tabs, and give it 25 uninterrupted minutes.

3. Afterward, write one sentence about what helped you focus — or what pulled you away.

That’s it. One thing. Twenty-five minutes. A little honest reflection.

Pick something that matters to you: writing, reading, planning, practicing a skill. The point is to choose where you put your attention, then practice honoring it.

Something New: The Chase Challenge Chat

Substack just introduced a new feature that we’re going to try out for this challenge.

In the past, I’d pop into the Chat once a week, but this new group chat feature seems like a more seamless, ongoing way for us to stay connected throughout the 21 days.

Chase Club members, you should have already received an invite or notification from Substack — but here’s the direct link to the chat.

Let’s use the new chat to share how things are going, ask questions, and connect with everyone else doing this alongside you.

If you don’t already have it, download the Substack app here.

Alright — the full 21 days are below. Save this email. Use it whenever and however you need it.

We start Monday. One thing at a time.

🤙 Patrick

THE 21-DAY FOCUS CHALLENGE

Focus isn’t just about productivity. It’s about being fully present for what matters most. This challenge gives you one deliberate practice per day to help you understand your attention, reduce distractions, and build the conditions for focused effort. You’re not trying to overhaul your life overnight. You’re practicing one thing at a time.

⚡ WEEK 1: AWARENESS

You can’t reclaim your attention without first seeing where it goes. This week is about honest observation.

Day 1 — Attention Tracking

Set a timer to go off every hour today. Each time it goes off, write down what you were doing and whether it was intentional or reactive. Don’t change anything yet—just observe.

Why this matters: There’s often a gap between where we think our attention goes and where it actually goes. These check-ins give you a clearer picture. This is your starting point, not a grade.

Day 2 — Digital Boundaries

Count how many times you check your phone today. Don’t change the behavior—just count. Write the number down at the end of the day.

Why this matters: A phone check can happen before you’ve consciously decided to do it. Counting helps you notice those automatic reaches—and gives you something more useful than a vague feeling that you’re on your phone too much.

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If we wait until Monday morning to figure out what matters this week, we’ve already lost the day. The pressure to produce right now is the worst possible time to decide what’s worth producing.

This is why …

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On one side sits what we might call slow culture: playing a sport, listening to an album, courting a future spouse. In the middle is fast, modern culture: watching a game, streaming a track, swiping toward a relationship. All the way on the other side is something sharper — dopamine culture: gambling o…

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Ultra-processed foods aren’t just at the grocery store. They’re at gas stations, drugstores, craft stores, even the bank. They’re calorically dense, engineered to be impossible to stop eating, and they are everywhere we turn.

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But most of the time, the job isn’t the problem. Our attention is.

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Pushing yourself in a demanding workout doesn’t just build physical strength and endurance. It builds something else too — a kind of mental and emotional muscle that, if you let it, carries into every other hard thing you’ll face.

The benefits of exercise for mood, stress, and brainpower are well documented. Less obvious are the lessons — the actual, practical, transferable lessons — that come from dedicating yourself to genuinely hard training.

We’ve spent the better part of twenty years asking people to do hard things in a gym, and doing it alongside them.

Somewhere along the way, a handful of lessons kept showing up again and again — not just in training, but everywhere else too.

Here are five of them.

Judgment and expectation are two sides of the same coin, and that coin is distraction.

Judgment is what we think other people are thinking of us — the pressure to perform, the comparison game, the fear of looking bad. Expectation is more internal: the standards we hold ourselves to, the belief that we should already be further along, stronger, fitter, faster than we are.

Both are distractions. And distractions are the enemy of one of the best feelings available to us: flow.

A hard training session is practically a flow-state machine, if you let it be. Flow requires open-mindedness, curiosity, and a total absence of judgment, all aimed at the present moment. The instant you start judging yourself mid-effort — I should be moving faster; they’re beating me — you get yanked right back out of it. You slow down. You might even stumble.

There’s a simple reframe that cuts through it all: do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are. Not what you did last year. Not what you think you’re supposed to do today. Just what you can actually do, right now, with whatever you’re bringing to the moment — good sleep or bad, good mood or foul.

Michael Jordan famously played this way — loose, free, fierce, but never burdened by judgment or expectation. “Why would I worry about missing a shot I haven’t taken yet?” he once asked. Watch him shoot around with friends who clearly feel the pressure of going up against him, and you can see exactly what the absence of that burden looks like.

Let go of judgment and expectations to stay focused and perform your best — in the gym and in life.

Hard physical challenges don’t get easier just because you have company. But they do take on a different shape entirely — meaning. Voluntarily taking on discomfort alongside other people, bound by shared values, turns what could be a meaningless grind into something worth doing.

This isn’t just a nice feeling, either. Who you surround yourself with, intentionally, actually changes your odds. People with unhealthy friends are far more likely to become unhealthy themselves — more so than family history or genetics would predict. Your environment shapes outcomes more than almost anything else.

One story makes this real: after missing a personal benchmark by a wide margin on a hard workout, a friend felt the familiar sting of disappointment start to creep in — but this time, he caught it, let it wash through him, and by the time everyone else had finished, he’d already moved on to feeling proud of the effort he gave. That shift, from wallowing for hours to processing in minutes, didn’t happen in isolation. It happened because of an environment built around growth, not judgment.

Difficult things don’t get less difficult with the right people beside you. They just get more meaningful — and because of that, lighter.

To lighten life’s load, tackle challenges alongside others who share your values and push you to be your best self.

Motivation is a feeling, and feelings are unreliable — here one minute, gone the next. Waiting for it before you act is a losing strategy. The better approach is treating action as non-negotiable, the same way you treat brushing your teeth: not something you debate every night, just something you do.

Here’s the part most people get backward: we assume motivation has to come first, that it leads to action. It’s usually the reverse — act enough, and the motivation follows. Discipline removes the back-and-forth entirely. No negotiating, no mental tug-of-war, just doing the thing.

An up-and-coming comic once asked Jerry Seinfeld for advice. Purportedly, his answer was to get a calendar. Write a joke every day — doesn’t matter how bad — and put an X on the calendar. Don’t break the chain. That’s it. Not “write a brilliant joke” or “write a whole set.” Just the smallest possible version of the thing, repeated, without exception.

It’s the same instinct behind the construction worker who shows up to the job site in the rain, in the cold, whether or not they feel like it — because it’s a job, and a job is something you do again tomorrow, whether you’re inspired or not.

Stop relying on fluctuating motivation. To achieve any goal, aim for consistent, habitual action.

In training, it’s called the overload principle — you find out what you’re capable of by pushing against something a little heavier than you’re used to. The same holds true everywhere else. We rarely discover the actual size of our resilience or capacity until something forces the question.

Struggle also clarifies. When things are going well, there’s an infinite number of things competing for your attention. When they’re not, one thing matters, and it becomes obvious fast. That kind of forced focus is uncomfortable, but it’s also honest in a way comfort rarely is.

There’s a cycle worth remembering here: hard times create strong people. Strong people create good times. Good times, left unchecked, create weak people. And weak people eventually create hard times again. The cycle keeps turning — which is really just another way of saying adversity isn’t something to avoid. It’s something to actively seek out, in reasonable doses, because it makes you more capable of handling the next round.

Embrace challenges as opportunities to cultivate inner strength and clarity. You are more capable than you know.

You don’t need to be strong to lift weights — lifting weights is what makes you strong. You don’t need to be a runner to run — hitting the road is what makes you a runner. Confidence is the output of action, not a prerequisite for it.

Most of what stops people isn’t ability. It’s hesitation — waiting to feel ready, waiting to feel qualified, debating which of three equally reasonable paths to take instead of just picking one and moving. The actual gap isn’t between options. It’s between standing still and starting.

Once you start, the hardest part is already behind you. A single mile has far more in common with a marathon than it does with zero miles. Every time you push through resistance and keep showing up, you build something like a callus — a little more resilient than before, a little less rattled by the same friction next time.

Put these five lessons together, and you get something like a flywheel: let go of judgment, build it alongside people who make you better, replace motivation with habit, let adversity do its clarifying work, and just start. Each one makes the next easier to spin.

Start where you are, keep showing up, and let the process develop your potential.

It sounds almost too obvious to matter, but it reframes things.

That nervous flutter before a hard conversation, that tight chest before stepping into a workout you might not finish before the time cap — none of it means something is wrong. It means something matters.

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Real grit isn’t the ability to ignore what your body is telling you. It’s the ability to keep doing what matters while adapting to the season you’re actually in.

That distinction matters because our lives don’t hand us stress fr…

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Let’s take a sub-3:10 marathon goal as an example.

It’s a clear target, gives training direction, makes early morning runs meaningful, and tells us what kind of effort the season will require. But the finish time is never fully ours to contr…

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