Legally Fit at One Year — Win the Day 201
Legally Fit - A year in review
When I recently told a friend that tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of when I launched Legally Fit, she said, “Wow, that went by fast!” My response, “Not for me, it didn’t!” This is my 45th post of the year – far more than I ever imagined when I set out to do this. It added a whole new layer to my life – all while working my day job as a lawyer, maintaining a very active fitness routine, and living life to the fullest. And as I reflect back to where it all began, it so appropriately started with my Win the Day post.
Of all that I’ve shared over the past year, there’s no method, concept, or mantra that I find more important to the success of my journey than winning the day. I really do ask myself every day what it takes to win it. Sometimes I win and sometimes I lose. But focusing on what winning the day means each day is more about being in the frame of mind for success than it is about the actual wins or losses. I win more days because I define it at the beginning of the day than I would if I simply looked back afterwards and only then thought for the first time about what winning meant.
As I discussed in that first post, part of the process of winning the day is to consistently reassess and reevaluate what winning means. In some ways, that’s a daily task that helps me understand if I am defining it correctly. In other ways, it’s a weekly, monthly, semi-annual, and yearly task as well. We can’t often see the progress or regression we make in a day, so it’s important to assess winning at longer intervals to see how things have changed. Which is why this is the right time for me to assess its meaning as it relates to Legally Fit. As I do this, I’ll note that this very same framework can apply not just to Legally Fit, but to how we all define our wins and losses.
Commit to it
First and foremost, winning the day is about committing to something and doing it. But understand that doing it doesn’t have to mean succeeding at it. Trust me, if you succeed at everything you do within your definition of winning the day, it’s time to try something harder! But commitment also means more than doing and trying. It takes sacrifice.
With Legally Fit, I committed to posting nearly every week. When I first came up with the concept of this blog, I really thought this would be a once-a-month thing. But I was encouraged by a colleague to post every week. The task seemed daunting, but he was right – at least for the beginning of this journey. To make this a place for others to benefit from, a series of monthly posts over the past year that could only cover a small amount of what I had to say might have gone unnoticed. Out of sight, out of mind. So, I committed to weekly posts and delivered beyond my expectations. And a committed following emerged.
Since May 14 last year, my website has had over 14,000 visits with over 18,000 page views, and I have over 13,000 Instagram followers! All of that wouldn’t have happened in the first year with just 12 blog posts. But that also doesn’t mean posting every week is the right thing to do going forward.
Committing to Legally Fit took sacrifices. My one rule was that it could never interfere with work. But at some point, everything else in life had to take a back seat. There’s only so much time to do it all. To be honest, what I probably sacrificed the most was sleep, but it wasn’t the only thing. Even if it was, sleep affects performance, fitness, mood, recovery, and health. I’m in tune with this to know how much I need, and I mostly get what I need. So that’s where other sacrifices come in. At times, it was fitness. Perhaps shorter workouts were required to accommodate time to write. Other times it was fun. As often as I did things like climbing, golfing, skydiving, and touring with Pearl Jam last year, there were certainly moments where I had to pass on good times to get in the work on this project. Sacrifices are part of winning any day. Again, if you won the day without making some kind of sacrifice, you might want to reevaluate how you define it.
With all of this in mind, as I redefine winning the day for Legally Fit going forward, I know that changes are ahead. Both because there are places that I want to take it beyond where it’s been thus far, and also because I need to sacrifice Legally Fit to make more time for some of what I had to scale back on this past year. For starters, this year the NYC Marathon comes first. I’ll even have to work in training for it when at trial in September – my peak training month. But as I’ve said before, Man plans, God laughs, so I won’t dare predict my September yet.
So, with that, I would say that committing to Legally Fit this year means blogging about every two to three weeks on average. But there’s another reason for this beyond time shifting for things outside of this blog. It’s also because it is time to expand. The number one request I’ve had since starting this is for a podcast. While I can’t guarantee right now that it’s coming, I can say that I will commit to doing it. It’s just going to take time for me to know what that even means and how to make it happen.
Embrace it
The second aspect to winning the day is embracing it. Once again, it’s not whether you reach the destination you had in mind, it’s whether you embraced the journey.
As an example, when I came up with the idea for Legally Fit about eight weeks before it launched, I had no idea that rock climbing would be a thing. That was about two weeks before my first day out with Patty at The Gunks where I just wanted to see if I was as scared of it as my first time out a year earlier – when I felt that I had not fully embraced the experience. Since then, I’ve been all-in, and climbing has become a journey within my journey. As my readers know, it features prominently here.
I had only one expectation for Legally Fit. To be honest and transparent in everything I do. The most important conversation I had to have with myself before committing to this was whether I was willing to be this publicly vulnerable. I knew that’s where most of the value I had to offer comes from. Just about any success story you can find out there is not about the achievement, it’s about what it took to get there. Given that mine started when I was essentially living at my lowest point – unhappy with my looks, my fitness, and my health – sharing all that I experienced at those low points is where much of Legally Fit’s message lies.
So, as I consider how to embrace Legally Fit’s journey ahead and whether to redefine it, the first thing I know is that I will remain committed to sharing my vulnerabilities, and I will remain open to any other new adventures that I might never have expected. As I see it, there’s not much need to redefine this aspect of it.
Learn from it
One of the most important aspects in defining what it means to win the day is the hope and expectation that, win or lose, you will learn from it. With that in mind, one thing I can undoubtedly say is that today I am a much different person than I was a year ago. And I am a different person than I would’ve been had I never taken on this project. The process of writing and sharing my experiences, my accomplishments, my failures, my vulnerabilities, and simply my life has perhaps taught me more about myself than it is taught you all about me.
Throughout most of my first decade on this journey, I was selfish about it. At first, the selfishness was simply that I only had one goal in mind – getting through a golf trip. When my trainer gave me a task, my only question was, “how does this help golf?” At times, he admitted it didn’t, and we moved onto something else at my insistence. It didn’t matter at the time that it probably would have helped me sooner reach other levels that I have since achieved. But later, as I became addicted to the process of becoming fit, my selfishness took on another level. I sacrificed everything for it – friendships, family, and other life experiences. At that time in my life, winning the day was about turning my life around and getting healthy. But as I succeeded at that, I also failed to redefine what winning was at the appropriate times. Surely, after I had developed such a committed routine, I could sacrifice a day or two here or there to spend more time with friends and loved ones. But I didn’t.
To be honest, in many ways, it was not until started writing about my experiences that I truly understood that selfishness. By writing this blog about my journey, I realized that there were many days that I thought I had won at the time, yet upon reflection, I lost them. I’ve learned not only to stop keeping score of the wins and losses, but to also stop assuming that at the end of the day that I even knew the answer to whether it was won or lost.
So, as I consider how I can learn from Legally Fit going forward, all I can say is that I won’t know the answer to this until quite some time from now. The learning will come from doing. It will come from embracing. And then it will come from reflecting on it all. At any given time in that process, I could see things very differently. The lens with which I view wins and losses changes daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. As you reflect on your own wins and losses, consider what you’ve learned. Being honest with yourself here is the best way forward for defining what winning means.
What’s ahead . . .
As I already alluded to, some of what I have in mind for the coming year includes posting less often and putting together a podcast. I’ve also had requests for merch – given that I have my own branded attire already. Selling it is a whole other thing that I must learn, but again, I’m ready to try.
Sporting my logo on my 50th birthday golf trip to Cabot Cape Breton in Nova Scotia. Merch is coming!
There are also posts that I’ve written that I think should be reposted. I don’t expect anyone except my parents to have read this blog every week. Yes, I know there are those that do. But I also know that, for most, it’s not always part of winning your day. So, during some of the weeks off, I’ll simply recirculate a post that I feel is worth sharing again. I’ll also be using my Instagram and Facebook pages much more for content. A year ago, I didn’t even know what an Instagram reel was. Get ready for much more of that content.
But beyond those simple changes or additions, I do want to keep the core of Legally Fit the same, which is to say, that it will remain something that evolves organically. To date, I’ve never pre-written a blog entry before the last one posted. In fact, I don’t even let myself contemplate it until at least a day or two later. What you all get is me in real time – just doing my very best to win the day. That will never change. Whether I won it or not, I may never know. But what I know is that I will commit to it, embrace it, and learn from it.
The verdict . . .
Now that I’ve reassessed what winning means for Legally Fit, it’s time to look back at this past year and think seriously about whether it was a win. I know I said we don’t always know the answer to that question, but we are still the only ones who can judge it. As I reflect on the past year, I feel like I did more than I ever thought was possible with Legally Fit. Throughout the process, I not only learned so much about myself, but also about so many of you. I sit here writing this post feeling blessed for how I have been forever changed by the experience. Right now, I can’t see calling this anything other than a win.
Thank you all for being a part of the first year of this journey within my journey, and most importantly, for being the vehicle through with I’ve been able to better myself. I hope you have all learned a little something too. ❤️
Aaron