When someone joins our coaching program, we ask them to rank three things in order of importance so their coach knows where to start:
- Fitness
- Nutrition
- Mindset
Almost everyone ranks them in exactly that order. Fitness first. Nutrition second. Mindset a distant third. (And that makes sense! They came here to move better and eat better. That’s the tangible change.)
But here’s what’s interesting:
When I look back through eight years of success stories, the physical wins are there (stronger, healthier, more energy, etc.) But almost none of them lead with that. What they talk about is the mindset shift.
It was the thing that took them from “fitness is a struggle” to “fitness is a natural part of my life now.”
And it’s not the mindset you’re probably picturing. It’s not “just do it.” It’s not white-knuckle motivation, or gritting your teeth and building an iron will like a Marine.
The real unlock comes from an unexpected place: improv comedy.
“Yes, and…”
If you’ve ever watched Whose Line Is It Anyway?, you’ve already seen this. The first rule of improv is “yes, and.”
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Steve draws the comparison really well in his upcoming book, How to Try Again (which releases June 16th!):
“During an improv scene, somebody will suggest an absurd scene or situation, and the best responses will then build on it with the philosophy of ‘Yes, and.’ If somebody declares they’re a circus bear on a unicycle, their scene partner might build on this by saying, ‘Yes, and I am a polar bear mechanic who repairs unicycles.’‘Yes’ implies that we accept the situation with absolute sincerity. ‘And…’ means that we build upon this with our actions.”
Turns out that’s also one of the most powerful things you can do for your fitness.
In coaching, the “yes” is accepting what’s actually going on in your life right now – and stating it as neutrally and factually as we can.
The “and” is the piece that’s within your control to act on. It’s where we decide what we’ll actually do with that information.
What this sounds like in real life
I have a client, Val, going through a job transition right now. Pressure to wrap everything up at the old role, real fear about the unknown, and genuine excitement about what’s next. A lot of big emotions at once.
But the sentence I kept hearing was: “This is just going to be hard.”
That’s not a bad place to start. It’s honest. And it beats saying “everything is wonderful” when it isn’t. But it’s loaded, and it was sitting on her like a weight. So we reframed it into something more neutral and factual:
“This is a transition. I’m likely to feel a lot of different emotions through it.”
Same reality. We didn’t minimize it.
And we definitely didn’t slap an “everything happens for a reason!” sticker on it. We just took the bite out of it. And that left room for the “and”: okay, what’s one realistic thing I can do this week?
Liz, another client of mine, struggled with stress eating at work and kept beating herself up over it. So we worked on framing the moment neutrally, as it was happening:
“My coworker just dumped a lot of their stress on me. I feel the craving to grab a snack from the break room to reset.”
That neutral statement of the facts gave Liz a beat of space to process and figure out her next step.
Try it this week
Run one of your own situations through “yes, and”:
- Yes: What’s the neutral, factual version of what’s actually going on right now?
- And: Given that context, what’s one realistic action step?
As Steve says:
“Acceptance is the only way we can function in a world that feels contradictory, because it lets us embrace those contradictions.
YES, life is challenging and we have some real limitations. AND here’s what we’re planning to focus our efforts on today.”
You got this. 💪
– Matt