It’s 4:30 in the morning and we’re on our way to the gym. This is six days a week, rain or shine, Christmas, Fourth of July, your birthday. I hate it. Everybody does. We’d all rather be home in bed munching bon-bons. Why do it then? For me, it’s not because I imagine I’m going to be the next Mr. Universe.

It’s about the mental game.

Yes, the fitness and health aspects are important, even indispensable. But what this pre-dawn expedition is really about for me is the Inner Game. I am preparing myself mentally and emotionally for the day’s work that will start for real in a couple of hours.

Maybe you’re a runner, maybe you’re a biker, maybe you practice martial arts or yoga or tai chi, maybe you train for the Ironman or the Spartan race. It’s all great! And it’s all for the same reason—to rehearse, to prepare, to beat into our thick skulls the mindset of embracing adversity.

When we work out physically, we are doing three things that are superb rehearsals for creative work.

We’re doing something we’d rather not do.We’re doing something that resists us.We’re doing something we’re afraid of.

In the gym or on the track or the trail, we experience moments of real physical fear. A weight we don’t think we can handle. A hill we’re not sure we can climb. Watch the faces of men and women at CrossFit or any other serious venue of training. See them going deep within, psyching themselves up to overcome the fear, to ready themselves for the pain, to anticipate the level of effort and intensity they’re going to have to summon.

That’s the artist’s way. That’s the mindset of the professional, the warrior, the independent operator.

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