I am turning 60 this year. My body has stopped accepting excuses as a form of training.
I love riding my road bike and want to remain strong and physically capable for as long as possible. But I travel, work a lot and spend many days with clients. There is always an early flight, a late dinner, bad weather or something more urgent.
So I train anyway. Not heroically, not every day, and certainly not because I am always motivated.
I have learned something simple: If something matters, it needs a place in your life before life fills the space.
I hear the opposite surprisingly often from executives. They want to exercise, meditate, sleep better, reflect, spend more time with people they love.
Then comes: “I just don’t have the time.”
Sometimes that’s true. But if you’ve been saying it for years, no time usually means: not enough priority.
Look at your habits. Work hard, stay connected, arrive home exhausted—and reward yourself. Good food. Wine. Netflix. Comfort. Recover, then repeat.
Nothing wrong with that. I enjoy some of it myself. But:
What are you actually practicing?
Behavioral science is clear. Motivation fluctuates. Discipline carries us when motivation disappears, but constantly overriding ourselves is exhausting. Repetition turns behavior into habit—and habit requires less negotiation.
Almost 30 years of meditation have taught me the deeper lesson: practice means showing up. Some days are profound, many aren’t. You wander, return and keep practicing.
The bike isn’t that different. Eventually, you stop asking whether you feel like it. It becomes part of how you live—and who you are.
The same applies to leadership. You may want to become calmer under pressure, more courageous in conflict, less reactive, more present.
But wanting is not capacity. Neither is insight.
What you repeatedly practice, you strengthen. What you repeatedly postpone remains an intention.
And if you’re 35 or 45, don’t assume this is a question for later. What you fail to build early has a way of presenting the bill eventually: strength, fitness, attention, emotional regulation, relationships, the ability to be still.
Compounding works in both directions.
So forget your intentions for a moment. Look at your calendar.
What are your practices? What are your habits? What are you becoming good at through repetition?
Working? Being busy? Distracting yourself? Rewarding yourself for surviving another week?
Or are you practicing things that develop the human being doing all that work?
At almost 60, I cannot negotiate with aging. But I can influence how I meet it—on the bike, on the cushion, in my work, in relationships, under pressure.
Motivation starts things. Discipline sustains them. Habits embody them. Practice changes us.
P.S. The jersey was a gift from a client. Thank you, dear Alexander Krümke. Given the Alpecin branding, I probably should have discovered their products a few decades earlier. 😉