Fum strum. Flashy strum. But the kind of strum where you just keep on showing up, doing the work, putting in the reps. Didn't matter if it was on the ice with the hockey team or in class, in school. It's like I was never the top scorer. Certainly not the points leader, not the highlight reel guy. Alright, I was like out on the penalty kill, grinded out in the corners, getting cross-checked in front of the net. I wasn't winning the points awards or the you know on top goal scorer, not at all. But I was winning most valuable player, most dedicated, and the perseverance awards. That's what I was winning. Okay, in class, certainly not getting the top grades. But I kept on handing in all my assignments. I kept on showing up to class. Now it was clear that rather than being rewarded for output, I was recognized for staying power. This is the energizer bunny. I was just gonna keep on going. Right. And what that taught me is that strength shows up as the ability to keep going. And I want to talk about that. Because as I got older, I started to see the same pattern everywhere. If it was on the gym floor or in business or even in my relationships in life, working out equaled output. And there's a big distinction between that and working in. That was a concept that was introduced to me by one of my mentors, Paul Check in the Czech Institute. That was the first time I heard that. Working in, working in. What does that mean? Working in, isn't it? Isn't it all about working out? And here's the thing: I was in the gym, I was playing hockey, I was playing some good junior hockey, I was working out, I was doing all my things, I was eating, I was going to bed, I was, you know, I was training hard and I was still getting injured. And I was still upset, irritated. It was interesting. I was like, what is going on? But, you know, despite going to bed, I, you know, tend to drink, go for wings. I mean, hell, I was playing in rock bands for half the time as well. So you can imagine that schedule, you know, getting home at like 3 a.m. and getting to work the next day after a quick nap. Like, come on. The recovery just wasn't there. I was never able to downshift or or regulate. So my body didn't know up from down. I was pushing way too hard, accumulating fatigue, losing awareness both internally and externally. How many relationships did I absolutely sabotage? Just because I was not present. Right? Like the effort was staying high, but my actual capacity was dropping because I wasn't recovering. So I want you to think about this reframe strength. Because we think of it as output, output, output. And I want you to think it it is much, much more than what you can put out. It's how well you can come back. Can you bounce? Are you resilient? Rest. It's a cool little acronym. Recovery enables sustainable training. Rest. Recovery enables sustainable training. So that's where things like breath, down regulation, moving at a more comfortable pace, not always go, go, go, go, go. But what if it was more like flow, flow, flow, flow, flow? You know, choosing when to push, when to pull back. Working in is what allows working out to stay meaningful. What allows you to work out is by like being able to recognize, okay, my body's a little underrecovered. I'm gonna take a day to just hang out, not getting addicted. You know, I I I see that some people come in every single day and they go for a run on the treadmill. I I gotta ask sometimes what are you running from? Right. Now to close things off here, I wanna offer this. What if strength was a belief system? You know, the way people train tells me a lot about what they believe about themselves. You know, belief shapes the effort that they're putting in to the to the gym. Like I have to do this, I have to be something. I have like I have to do this, I have to show up, I have to have external validation. It also definitely shapes your recovery because you do that seven days a week, you are not recovering. I don't care who you are. Professional athletes don't do that. Right? There's that pacing, working in, working out. And from a physiological standpoint, how your body interprets it, that belief shapes how stress is handled. Right? Two people can do the same amount of work and pay very, very different prices for it. Why? Because belief influences urgency, self-talk, pressure, all the meaning, who am I, all this identity stuff, right? And strength will hold when our belief supports sustainability. All right, we're gonna dive more into that on our next episode here. All to do with story, because no matter how strong you are, no matter what goals you want to get to, doesn't mean a damn thing if you don't have the identity of the person that already has them. Right, and I want to leave you with that. If you're interested, stay tuned for the next one. We'll dive more into there. And if you got something from this, please be sure to follow along. Do the like, follow, subscribe thing on your favorite platform. Feel free to rate and review as well. And like I said, we'll dive more into the identity and story as our third pillar. Next time. That's it. That's all. Thank you so much for listening. Go show this up with something we care about. Until next time.