It started with my back going out. A dramatic moment, actually — I was helping some neighborhood kids fix a riding lawnmower. I even gave them the warning: be careful, watch how you lift. And then, as we hoisted the mower, it started to roll backward away from me. I overextended trying to hold it. Pop. What I thought would be a few days with a heating pad turned into six weeks on my back. Six weeks of lying there in pain, unable to stand straight, walk or do much of anything. I had nothing but time and my own thoughts for company.
By the time I got back on my feet, my clothes didn't fit. Not because I had gained weight — because I had lost so much that I looked, and felt, like a smaller version of myself. Sickly was the word that came to mind when I looked in the mirror. It wasn't vanity. It was something deeper. Like I had let myself disappear.
And here's the thing — the back injury was only part of the story. The truth is that I had been coming out of a miserable decade. Professionally. Personally. The kind of ten years that wears you down in ways you don't fully realize until you're lying on the floor with nowhere to go and nothing to distract you. I wasn't in a great place. I hadn't been for a while. And being unable to move gave me a front-row seat to just how not-great things had become.
You find out what you're made of when the only thing left to do is decide.
I made a decision somewhere in those six weeks. Not a resolution, not a plan — just a decision. I was going to get back in shape. I was going to get my life back in order. And I was going to start with the one thing I could actually control: showing up.
I couldn't control the decade that had just passed. I couldn't undo the professional disappointments or the personal ones. I couldn't change my bloodwork or the number on the scale or the way my clothes hung off me. But I could decide to go to the gym. And I could decide what I put in my mouth. Those two things — that was it. That was the whole plan.
The first few weeks back were humbling. I was nowhere near where I used to be. But here's what I learned that no financial plan had ever taught me: the goal wasn't to be impressive. The goal was to show up. Day after day. To make one good decision in the morning that made the next decision a little easier.
I go four days a week now. At 62. Not because I'm trying to look a certain way — though I'll be honest, feeling better in your own skin matters more than people admit. I go because the gym is the one place in my life where I am completely in charge of the outcome. The market does what the market does. Caregiving is unpredictable by definition. The algorithm decides who sees my content on any given day. But whether I walk through that door and put in the work? That's mine. Every single time.
There's something else it gives me. On the days I go to the gym — even the days I don't want to, especially those days — I leave having already made one good decision. And that one decision seems to make the next one easier. I eat better on gym days. I think more clearly. I handle the hard things with a little more steadiness. I don't fully understand the science of it, but I've lived the results for long enough to trust them.
The hardest part wasn't the first workout. It was the second one. And the third. It was the Tuesday morning when I really didn't want to go and went anyway. It was learning that motivation is a visitor — it shows up when it wants and leaves without warning. But habit is a resident. And you build a habit one unremarkable morning at a time.
I'm not asking you to become an athlete. I'm not telling you that the gym is the answer to everything that's hard about life after 50. But I am telling you that taking control of one thing — just one — changes how you feel about all the other things. And for me, the gym was that one thing.
It still is.
Whatever your version of the gym is — a walk every morning, a swimming pool, a bike, a yoga mat in the living room — the mechanism is the same. One decision. One kept promise to yourself. One morning where you showed up when you could have stayed home.
That's how you start getting your life back.
YOUR BETTER CHOICE THIS WEEK
Schedule one form of movement this week — not someday, this week — and treat it like a meeting you are not allowed to cancel. It doesn't have to be the gym. It doesn't have to be impressive. It just has to be kept. That one kept promise is where everything else starts.
If this resonated with you:
→ 10 Better Choices After 50 Checklist — free at stan.store/BetterChoicesOver50
→ Private Consulting Call with Michael — one hour, no judgment, honest answers. $97. Book at stan.store/BetterChoicesOver50
— Michael
P.S. Next Saturday we're talking about money — specifically, the one number that determines your entire financial future, and why most people over 50 don't know what it is. It's not your net worth. It's not your income. I'll see you at 8:00 AM.