Tag: health

One Thing At A Time

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

New round started today, and I’ve spent most of it taking things apart instead of adding to them.

Seven habits, same as they’ve been. Bible reading, calorie tracking, water, exercise, reading, gratitude, and this — the daily writing.

Two of them changed shape, though, and the changes are the whole point.

Bible reading and the picture project are now one habit instead of two.

I’ve been making an image for every chapter I read since January. For most of the year I’ve treated those as separate items on a list, which meant on a busy night I could check one and let the other slide.

So now the reading isn’t done until the picture is posted. One thing, one checkbox, and no version of it where I get partial credit.

The other change is that the blog and my creative work are now the same slot. Not two competing obligations at the end of a long day — one hour, and whatever’s in front of me goes in it.

Which brings me to the part I’ve been circling for weeks.

I have twelve creative projects going. Books in progress, books that need illustrations, an album written and not released, a musical half-drafted, a course outlined, frameworks in various states of almost.

Twelve is not a portfolio. Twelve is a way of always having something to work on that isn’t the hard thing.

So: one product. I finish it. Then I pick the next one and finish that. Everything else is locked — not shelved for the year, not deprioritized, locked — until the thing in front of me is done and out.

The first one is a short guide on intent. It’s the closest to finished and the decision costs me nothing to make, which is precisely why I should have made it in June.

I start on it tonight. When there’s a real draft I’m handing it to somebody outside my own head to read, because both books I published this year got materially better the moment a person who wasn’t me told me what wasn’t landing.

On the fitness side I’m restarting the lifting program from the beginning — six weeks in phase one, six in phase two, six in phase three, which runs almost exactly to the end of the year.

I’m not setting a goal weight. I’ve gone back and forth on a number for months and the number was never the problem. The practice was. So I’m doing the practice daily and letting the scale report whatever it wants to report.

The one thing I am tightening is the tracking. I’ve been estimating my food for months — eyeballing portions, doing the math in my head, calling it close enough. I flagged that as a risk back in the spring and then did nothing about it, and it turned out to be exactly the thing that came apart.

Estimates are not data. I know this professionally. I’ve built a career on the difference and I’ve been running my own body on vibes.

There’s one more thing I’m reconsidering, and I haven’t decided yet.

I’ve been running this year in forty-day rounds. It’s worked well enough. But I’ve noticed the round is the only deadline I have that isn’t attached to anything real — the lifting block has its own clock, the product finishes when it finishes, and the round just ends on a Thursday because forty days elapsed.

At work I’d never structure it that way. At work you commit to a deliverable and a date and you’re done when it’s delivered.

I might just do that here for the rest of the year. Same habits underneath, no calendar theater on top.

Reading comes back tomorrow. That one dropped in the last round and I felt the absence of it more than anything else I let go.

A Grown Man On The Phone

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

My voice dropped when I was thirteen and it dropped all the way.

There was a girl named Misty I’d met at camp. Louisiana, thick bayou accent, and we were friends — not dating, nothing like that, just a long-distance friend I thought was about the coolest person I knew. I called her house one night and her father picked up.

Hello sir, may I speak to Misty please.

She got on the line and the first thing she said was, you just freaked my daddy out. I asked why. She said, my daddy wants to know why there’s a grown man on the phone for me.

I was thirteen. I weighed about a buck fifty. And there was no version of me that could have gotten on that phone and convinced that man otherwise, because everything he needed to know had already happened in seven words.

The size came later.

I was six foot and a hundred and ninety pounds when I graduated high school. Slim, decent shape. Then I went to a summer arts institute that year, caught poison ivy, and got put on prednisone at the clinic.

Prednisone at a camp with three meals a day and all you care to eat. I gained twenty pounds in two weeks. By the end of that summer I was two-twenty, some of it water, some of it a late growth spurt, and some of it just the thing my family does.

Because we are not small people. I had a cousin, gone now, who was a mountain of a man — my dad watched him pick a car engine up off the ground with the headers still on it and set it in a truck bed by himself. His little brother is built the same way. My dad is thick through the chest and shoulders and always has been.

I’m six foot and built like a barrel. Forty pounds down would put me in the best shape of my life, and I would still not look like a man you’d want to startle in a parking lot.

Add a resting face that reads as annoyed when I’m thinking about nothing at all.

So this is the arrangement.

Nobody messes with me. That’s not nothing — I’ve walked through my whole adult life without ever once having to worry about a situation getting physical, and I know exactly what that’s worth and that not everybody gets it.

The cost is that the friendly part of me has a longer trip to make than it does for most people. I have to work to get it out where somebody can see it. There’s a distance to close before anyone finds out I’m not what the packaging says, and it’s on me to close it, every time, with everyone.

The stupid part is that I am the friendly one. That’s not a strategy or a thing I put on. It’s who I actually am, and I have to prove it for a living.

In 2022 I played Maurice in Beauty and the Beast.

The director told me later why he cast me. The young man playing the Beast was six-two and around three-fifty, and he wanted Belle to have been raised by a large, strong father — so that standing up to something enormous would be the most natural thing in the world for her. My size wasn’t incidental to the part. It was the reason for the part.

Somewhere in the run, one of the dancers rolled her ankle badly. She ended up sitting on the stairs outside the stage door with a half circle of people around her, everybody looking at everybody else, nobody moving.

I said hang on. Then I picked her up and carried her down two flights of stairs to where somebody could look at her.

That’s the other half of the arrangement, and it doesn’t come up nearly as often as the parking lot version.

I’ve thought about what I did with all that.

I sang bass. I joined Toastmasters and stayed thirteen years. I’ve spent most of my adult life in front of rooms, and the thing I’ve cared most about the whole time is communicating well.

A guy could look at that and call it compensation, and maybe some of it is. But I think it’s simpler. I got handed an instrument that arrives before I do and says something about me that isn’t true. So I learned to use it on purpose.

My son and I lift together, three nights a week.

Forty-seven years old and I am stronger right now than I have ever been in my life. That’s part of why I’m as thick as I am, and I’ve made peace with the trade.

He’s eighteen and he’s catching me. That’s the whole point of it.

Actually he is 6’2”. He already passed me.

The Craving

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

It took two days.

Two days into assessment week — a planned break between rounds of the 7-40 Challenge — and I was already craving the structure I’d stepped away from.

I’ll admit, some of the break was good. I stopped listening to audiobooks for a few days and let my mind clear out. That turned out to be exactly what I needed to get ready for the next round of learning. And I never stopped my daily Bible reading. I just couldn’t let that one go.

But the calorie tracking slipped. The water slipped. I ate off plan multiple days, some just because I could — which, looking back, was kind of stupid. And it gave me a feeling I didn’t like. I could feel myself sliding back into habit patterns I don’t need. By day three I knew I had to pivot back.

So when I woke up this morning — Round 3, Day 1 — and I had my list in front of me, I felt relief. Energy. A little pep in my step. Because I had those small moments of accomplishment spread across the day again, and they’re fantastic.

Here’s why I think that matters beyond just me.

A long time ago, my grandfather was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He lived for several years after his diagnosis, but he did not do well in unfamiliar places or unfamiliar routines. My grandmother — a retired nurse and a bit of a drill sergeant — kept his framework together. She kept him in line, kept him moving, kept his daily structure strong. And he was able to function for years, even as he lost more and more of his memory, because his routines stayed the same.

There’s a whole different set of blog posts in that story. But the principle is the same one I felt this week.

Our brains crave habit patterns. They are actual physical things happening inside our heads. We expect the rewards they bring. We expect the satisfaction that comes with practicing them. And that’s true for good habits and bad habits alike. The dopamine high from a good workout isn’t that different from the dopamine hit of an addiction. The difference is which pattern you’ve seeded.

Where I feel grateful is this: I’m healthy. I’m more motivated this year than I’ve ever been in my life. I feel daunted and challenged by the work I’ve set in front of myself, which is probably a good thing. Keeping myself in these habits — keeping myself moving forward — is how I prime myself for success through the seasons when fatigue or exhaustion or grief would want to stop me.

My grandfather didn’t have a choice. His framework was held together by someone who loved him. I have the choice. And after two days without it, I know exactly what I’m choosing.

Make Your Own Map

~ David Willis ~ 2 Comments

Day 75 of 280 | The 7-40 Challenge

Nobody is going to hand you the plan.

I’ve only started realizing that this year. I knew if I wanted to be successful, I had to name my own goals — not adopt someone else’s and try to chase them with my own passion. That just doesn’t work. I don’t want somebody else’s dream. I want my dream. I don’t want somebody else’s body. I want my body to look the way it’s supposed to. I don’t want to write somebody else’s book. I want to write the books that are inside of me, about the things I’m interested in.

So I had to make the map.

Not a map someone gave me in a class. Not one I found in a self-help book. Not one my boss outlined for me. Mine. Built from scratch. Designed for the terrain I’m actually walking on.

I’ve been reading Todd Henry’s Die Empty this week, and his principles keep landing on things I’m already living. But the truth is, I didn’t need Henry to tell me these things. I needed him to name what I was already doing — so I could see it clearly and do it better.

I’m seventy-five days into a 280-day transformation experiment that I designed myself. Seven daily habits, forty-day cycles, daily blogging, a published novel, a Bible illustration project, and a philosophical manifesto in progress. Nobody assigned this to me. Nobody approved it. I just decided it was time to stop filling notebooks with “someday” and start building.

That’s what map-making looks like. Not waiting for instructions. Deciding what the terrain requires and drawing the route yourself.

Do your best work even when no one’s watching.

My blog gets ten to twelve views a day. Some days, one or two. I’m seventy-five posts in. Why do I keep writing for an audience that small?

Because I’m not writing it for them.

I’m writing it as my own content library — a record of where I’ve been, what I’ve done, and what I’ve been thinking. I know deep inside me that the questions I’m asking are good ones. The development I’m doing, whether publicly or privately, is still my own personal growth. It’s still interacting with my goals. It’s still getting things done.

And here’s the practical reason: if I don’t do my best now and have my rhythm down, and everybody shows up one day and I screw up — everything blows up. The time to get good is before the audience arrives, not after.

Say yes.

In the last seventy-five days, I said yes to publishing my book. I said yes to throwing myself out there and engaging online with people I don’t know. And from the limited feedback I’ve gotten, it’s all been positive.

What I’m discovering is that the real limitation was put on me by me. The limitations we live inside are self-inflicted most of the time. If we really wanted to get things done — put a plan together, build a system, and just said yes to doing it — we’d be so much further than we thought we’d be.

I’m finding that for myself, seventy-five days in.

But here’s the one that cuts deepest.

Take responsibility for your own progress.

Who was I waiting on for permission? Not my boss. Not a mentor. Not even a sign from God — although a finger is always welcome.

I was waiting on me.

Getting older has had an effect. The man I look at in the mirror these days is a whole lot grayer than he used to be. He’s having to work a whole lot harder to get back in shape. And I’m realizing that if I want to make a contribution to the world like I intend to, I have to do it right now. I cannot wait, in good conscience, for anybody else to give me permission to be the best version of myself.

I think it’s been a sin, in many ways, to limit myself from striving for excellence over the years. I’ve always tried to do my best. But I’ve let the fact that I didn’t know how to do something stop me from even wanting to learn how to do it.

I can’t do that anymore.

I was going through chemotherapy in 2005 for the first time. I would go back to work after my sessions, and I would sit in the office feeling like I’d been burned from the inside. Raw. Just as gross as you can feel. The guy I worked for was smoking cigars in there, and life was still moving at its regular pace. I just wasn’t.

And I remember sitting there thinking: I’m going to choose to take care of the things I’m responsible for, because I chose to. Not because someone’s making me. Because I decided that excellence was my standard, even when I felt like I was on fire inside.

That ability to choose excellence has served me for the rest of my life.

If you can choose it through chemotherapy, you can choose it at any other time.

You’re going to get well. You’re going to get better. And you’re going to come back with a map in your hand that you drew yourself — because nobody else was going to draw it for you.

That’s agency. That’s the yes that changes everything.

Day 75 of 280. Five days left in Round 2.

740Challenge #MakeYourOwnMap #DieEmpty #ToddHenry #Agency #Transformation #LivingProof #DayByDay #LifeOnPurpose

Day 45: The Pain Is the Evidence

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Round 2, Day 5
Thursday, February 19, 2026

I woke up this morning and my first thought was one word: OWWWW.

My legs are destroyed. My body is letting me know in no uncertain terms that yesterday happened. And you know what? Good. Because that soreness is a reminder that I did what I was supposed to do.

The Double Whammy

Here’s the context. I hadn’t lifted in three weeks because of a hand injury. And when I came back, I didn’t just pick up where I left off — I switched programs entirely. I went from an ABABAB workout rotation to an ABCABC split. Different exercises, different structure, different demands on my body.

It’s going to work much better long-term. I’m not overtaxing the same muscle groups. My workouts are more focused and don’t take quite as long. But the combination of three weeks off plus a brand-new program? That’s a double whammy. And my legs are paying the bill.

Sore, But Still Moving

Here’s what’s interesting. The soreness made me want to complain. But it didn’t make me want to skip anything.

I actually went on a walk this morning to recap a meeting via voice note, and it got me out of the office early enough to start working the soreness out. Movement is the best medicine for sore muscles. Not sitting still. Not waiting for it to pass. Getting up and moving through it.

There’s a lesson in that, and it goes way beyond the gym.

Soreness Is Not Just Physical

I was thinking the other day about moving back to Oklahoma last year. It was a good season — I got a new job, I was back in a familiar area, surrounded by people I knew. But learning the new role, adjusting to a new part of town, working on a new house — it was overwhelming. I was sore in every sense of the word.

But here’s the thing. Since I moved here in June of 2025, I’m down twenty-two pounds. I’ve written two books. I’ve started new social media channels. I’ve gotten a ton of work done on the house. I’ve launched the 7-40 Challenge and haven’t missed a day.

The season made me sore. But the season made me better.

That’s how growth works. It doesn’t announce itself with comfort. It announces itself with aches — with the evidence that something changed, that you pushed past where you were, that the old normal isn’t normal anymore.

What I’d Tell You on Day Three

If you’re early in a new habit — day three, day five, day ten — and you wake up hurting, whether that’s physical soreness or the mental exhaustion of doing something hard every single day, I want you to hear this:

Success is on the other side of the hard.

The pain is the evidence that you have challenged the norm. You’ve done the work. You’ve challenged the status quo of your own life. Your body, your mind, your circumstances — they’re all adjusting to the new version of you. And that adjustment hurts.

But it’s supposed to hurt. Soreness is not a warning to stop. It’s confirmation that you started.

So if you’re sore today — in your muscles, in your schedule, in your patience, in your faith — don’t quit. Move through it. Walk it out. Let the ache remind you that yesterday, you did something that mattered.

The pain is the evidence. Keep going.

Day 45 of 280. Sore means it’s working.