Wednesday Reps (Mental fitness for leaders and teams. You have to be well to lead well.)

Hey all… we’re still the same guys… Focus Now Training, Men Talking Mindfulness… but we just changed our newsletter/substack name to our actual names (Jon Macaskill and Will Schneider) to make this whole experience more personal. We are also going to be releasing more content that we hope adds value to your lives. That said, here’s our new Wednesday edition of the newsletter… Wednesday Reps!

I’m almost 49 … and while that isn’t “old” (at least not in my eyes!), it IS after the age our body starts breaking down. But I’m still working to hold a high level of fitness, and the part that surprises people is how incredibly boring the work can be. Same lifts. Very similar meals. Tuesday looks like Monday looks like the Tuesday before it. Nobody claps. You just show up and put in the reps. Nobody’s body holds at 49 on motivation alone… it holds on the boring stuff you do whether you feel like it or not.

Mental fitness works the same way, and a lot of us run it backwards. We treat our heads like something you only deal with when it breaks. Wait until you’re anxious, burned out, snapping at people, then scramble for help. That’s mental health care. Useful and necessary, but it’s reactive. It’s the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.

Mental fitness is the training you do when nothing’s wrong. The daily reps. 5 minutes of breathing before the day starts. A 10-minute walk with the phone in your pocket (or better yet left at home!). Quiet stuff that builds capacity you can draw on when the hard day shows up. And the hard day always shows up… eventually!

If you lead anything, whether that’s a team or a household, you can’t pour from an empty cup, and your people feel your state before they hear your words. I’ve watched leaders try to rally a room while running on 5 hours of sleep and a full pot of coffee, white-knuckling through it. The team reads it every time. Stress is contagious. So is steadiness.

You have to be well to lead well. I say it constantly because I keep relearning it. The weeks I skip my own reps are the weeks I’m shorter with my team and thinner on patience at home. Not a coincidence.

So your rep for this week: pick one. Just one. 5 minutes of quiet in the morning before the inputs start, or a 10-minute walk at lunch with no screen. Do it every day for 7 days, even on the days you don’t feel like it. Especially those days.

Aim for one rep so small you can’t fall off of it. Find the floor… the level you will not go below… and get just that for now!

What’s your one rep going to be? Hit reply and tell me. I read every one.