As a coach, one thing I really enjoy is taking what I see in our community, researching it, and then reflecting and writing about what I’ve found.
As I write this blog for you all this week, I’m deep into Robert Sapolsky’s Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, and it’s challenging the way I think about stress, behaviour, and why we sometimes do the things we swear we don’t want to do.
The idea that keeps coming up repeatedly is that it’s not just what happens to us that matters, it’s what we think it means. And yes, I know the saying, “It isn’t happening to you, it’s happening for you…” which, for the record, I hate.
But the more we coach different individuals, the more fascinating it becomes to see how two people can experience the same stress and have totally different outcomes. One breaks. Another thrives. And it got me thinking: why do some of us hate exercise so much, love alcohol or our own little treats so much, and feel stressed about the whole thing? Why do we know what we should be doing, yet still struggle to do it?
What got me thinking down this line was Sapolsky’s description of a study where two groups of mice received different amounts of electric shocks. One group starts with 50 shocks an hour, the other with 10. The next day, both groups received the same amount, 25 shocks.
Physically, the stressor is identical, yet the group that increased from 10 to 25 shows a huge stress response, while the group that decreased from 50 to 25 is visibly calmer. It’s not the number that matters. It’s the change, the expectation, the story their nervous system has written about what those shocks mean.
It made me rethink something coaches love to tell people: “Let’s ease you into training, then turn it up after day one.” In theory, that sounds logical. Be nice first, then build them up. But biologically? Psychologically? That slower start might actually backfire. If someone’s first gym session is a gentle “10 shocks,” and the next one jumps to “25,” the body reads that as danger, unpredictability, betrayal. Whereas if day one feels like “50 shocks,” uncomfortable as it is, day two feels like relief. Improvement. Progress. The brain thinks: Okay. I can handle this. Now disclaimer I am exploring this in real time, and you are going to have finish the blog to know where this ends up!
This thinking has links to Sapolsky’s other broader argument across his other books, Behave and Determined, both of which hammer home the idea that our actions are far less “free” than we like to think.
In Behave, Sapolsky breaks down a single behaviour into layers of causation that stretch back seconds, minutes, days, years, even thousands of years through evolutionary pressures. Your decision to skip the gym and drink instead didn’t happen in a vacuum. It was shaped by your childhood sport experiences, your stress patterns, your friendships, your genetics, your habits, the cultural norms you absorbed, how your parents raised you and their behaviours, as well as the way your nervous system has been trained to assign meaning to effort and pleasure.
In Determined, he pushes even harder. That the free will we think we have is mostly an illusion! We do what we believe to be true, not because we consciously choose it, but because our biology and conditioning push us there. The environments and the cultural norms we have been privy to cause us to tell particular stories and see things a particular way.
For example, if you “hate exercise,” or struggle to enjoy it, maybe it’s because somewhere along the way, your brain learned that movement equals embarrassment, pain, confusion, or failure. If you “love alcohol,” maybe your brain learned that drinking equals connection, humour, relaxation, and identity. One is a stressor. One is a release. You’re not weak for feeling pulled toward one and repelled by the other. You are trained. And what has been trained can be retrained.
There’s a quote that fits this idea perfectly: “The road to heaven feels like hell. The road to hell feels like heaven.” Which, for the record, I am unsure and have struggled to find who to credit for this quote directly.
The premise, though, in the moment, exercise feels like hell! breathing hard, burning lungs, heavy legs, sore muscles. Alcohol feels like heaven! Laughter, friends, stories, belonging. But zoom out, and the roles reverse. The road that feels like heaven now is the one that quietly leads to poor health, medications,and loss of independence. The road that feels like hell now is the one that leads to strength, vitality, capability, and confidence decades from today.
The question becomes: should you start your fitness journey with the “10 shocks” or the “50 shocks”? Physically, I’m never going to throw someone into a reckless session that breaks them! Safety, technique, and longevity always matter. But psychologically? I’m starting to think the real mistake is pretending this isn’t going to hurt. Pretending that training will be easy. Pretending that change will feel smooth.
The reality is that DOMS, breathlessness, awkward movements, all the things people usually associate with something being wrong, are completely normal. Nothing is wrong. The discomfort isn’t a warning sign; it’s simply the phase you walk through before your body recalibrates and goes, ‘Okay, this is who we are now.’
And to go a long way back into my research about personalities, this is where Dr Eric Braverman’s work on neurotransmitter dominance having an effect on personality becomes important. He argues that each of us has a dominant neurotransmitter profile, dopamine. GABA, acetylcholine, serotonin, and these affect how we respond to stress, reward, risk, novelty, and challenge. Some people are wired to love intensity. Others prefer predictability. Some thrive on routine. Others crave stimulation. So, of course, some people love the grind of training, and others dread it. It’s not about character. It’s about chemistry layered on biology layered on history layered on perception.
Add all this together, and the picture becomes clearer… exercise is hard to love at first because your nervous system hasn’t yet built the associations that make it feel rewarding. Whereas something like alcohol, or any other vice we turn to in times of need for a de-stressor, is easy to love because those associations are already strong. And stress sits in the middle as the interpreter, deciding whether the sensation of strain is a threat or a triumph.
So where does this leave us? For me, it’s shifting how I think about “starting points.” Instead of starting easy and hoping motivation carries you, maybe it’s better to start honestly!
Hard enough that your brain respects the process. Safe enough that you come back tomorrow. Clear enough that you know discomfort is not danger; it’s simply the toll for the results you want later. Because if you start with the story “this is meant to hurt a little,” then the next session doesn’t feel like betrayal. It feels like familiarity.
At the end of the day, none of this is about forcing yourself into someone else’s idea of discipline. It’s about understanding the layers that shape why you do what you do and learning to work with your biology instead of against it.
It’s about choosing the discomfort today that gives you the freedom tomorrow. You don’t want osteoporosis in your 60s. You don’t want brain degeneration in your 70s. You don’t want to lose independence before you must. And the good news is you can influence that outcome. Not by being perfect, but just by being consistent. By taking a risk and changing how we think to get the things that truly matter to us, not just today, but tomorrow!
In closing, this isn’t a conversation about exercise at all. It’s a conversation about the lens you look through. Most people don’t quit because training is hard; they quit because they think it shouldn’t be. They think discomfort is failure. They think soreness is a warning. They think progress should feel smooth.
But nothing about becoming better ever feels smooth. And it never happened in one day!
When you change the meaning you attach to effort, discipline yourself, and stop seeing discomfort as danger, and start seeing it as growth, everything gets easier.
You stop fighting yourself. You stop negotiating. You start showing up.
Your perceptions create your patterns. Your patterns create your life.
And also, remember, those studies were done on mice locked in cages! You have access to this blog, to books, to a conscious mind and the ability to learn. You have the skills and the power to choose the story that moves you forward. The power to choose the meaning that keeps you coming back.
So why not choose the version of you that exists on the other side of effort?
That’s the real lesson here. Not the shocks, not the soreness, not the comparisons.
Just the willingness to change the way you see what’s hard and reconnect with why you’d want to do any of this in the first place.
So get up. Get after it. BECOME EXTRAORDINARY!