Stop Making Excuses: The Mental Toughness Required for Both Financial and Physical Fitness

The Brutal Truth Nobody Wants to Hear

This week I was asked what my secret was. Literally, the voice on the other end of the phone asked what “the secret to getting rich is”. Apparently, wealthy people have secret knowledge and that’s what keeps most people chained with debt. They just don’t know the secret!

Today I’ll share the secret.

Most people fail at fitness. Most people fail at building wealth. They fail for one of two reasons:

1. They don’t know what to do

2. They don’t follow through

Guess which one is the bigger problem?

Unfortunately, most of us have been conditioned to make excuses instead of making progress. I know because I did it too!

I’m going to try adding in some fitness examples today instead of only financial ones. My guess is all of you have tried a new workout or diet at some point, so you’ll be able to recognize the psychological principles and see how they might apply to your spending habits.

I have been moderately overweight my entire life. I fluctuated between 10 and 30 pounds above my ideal weight for nearly 20 years. I would briefly have a fitness obsession (usually in January) or try a fad diet for 30 days and I could lose 10 or even 20 pounds. Then the weight would come back because I either gave up on the unsustainable program or I started making excuses to skip a workout or eat an unhealthy meal.

That all changed last year when I realized the problem was my mindset. I tried applying my financial independence mindset tips to fitness and found they worked just as well as they did for saving money!

I started walking five miles every day in November. I couldn't even run a single mile without stopping to catch my breath. Today, I can run five miles in 45 minutes. Every single day, I became roughly 1% better. Months later, with daily compounding, I was 5x better.

I simply decided that I did have time for fitness and it was a non-negotiable. I would never go to bed without brushing my teeth and so I decided I would never have a day without exercise.

Step after step after step

The same mathematical principle (1% compounded) applies to your money. Small daily improvements in your financial habits compound into massive long-term results. But here's what nobody tells you: the tactics don't matter if your head isn't right.

You can read every investment book, memorize every budgeting strategy, and understand compound interest perfectly. But if you don't develop mental toughness, you'll find excuses to quit when building wealth gets uncomfortable.

And it will get uncomfortable. Just like fitness.

The Excuse Epidemic: Same Weakness, Different Domain

Listen to people explain why they can't get in shape, then listen to them explain why they can't build wealth. It's the same excuse, wearing a different costume:

Fitness Excuse: "I don't have time to go to the gym." Money Excuse: "I don't have money left over to invest."

Fitness Excuse: "I'll start my diet after the holidays." Money Excuse: "I'll start saving more after my next raise."

Fitness Excuse: "I have slow metabolism. It's genetics." Money Excuse: "I didn't grow up learning about money. It's not my fault."

Fitness Excuse: "My knee hurts, so I can't exercise." Money Excuse: "My city is too expensive, so I can't save."

Fitness Excuse: "One cheat meal won't hurt my progress." Money Excuse: "It's just $50. That won't matter."

Fitness Excuse: "I need to research the perfect workout routine first." Money Excuse: "I need to research the perfect investment strategy first."

See the pattern? Most people find reasons why the rules don't apply to them. Those with strong mindsets find ways to make the rules work despite obstacles.

During my running journey, I had to go outside in freezing cold, driving rain, and blistering Texas heat. Every single day, I knew exactly how miserable it would be. I almost skipped dozens of times. The only difference between success and failure was refusing to negotiate with my excuse-making brain.

Your money requires the same mental toughness.

The Predator Industries Built on Your Weakness

Guess who knows you will make excuses about going to the gym? The gyms! They profit from your failure, not your success.

The Gym Scam

Planet Fitness has a business model based on 80% of members never showing up. They can offer $15/month memberships because they know you'll pay and not use it. Their entire revenue model depends on your lack of discipline. (If everyone showed up at once, the gym would need to turn people away. Then they would raise prices to reduce the crowding.) They love the idea of being paid $180/year for doing absolutely nothing!

The same psychological research that explains why people don't use gym memberships explains why they don't stick to budgets: loss aversion bias. Psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky proved that people feel the pain of losing something twice as strongly as the pleasure of gaining the same thing.

Gyms exploit this by making you feel like you're "losing" your membership if you cancel, even when you never use it. Don’t fall for this pyschological manipulation.

The Extended Warranty Scam

It’s not just gyms who prey on you. Extended warranties are pure profit for retailers, preying on your fear of expensive repairs. Best Buy makes more profit margin on a $200 extended warranty than on the $800 TV you're buying. The math is simple: they wouldn't offer these warranties if they expected to pay out more than they collect. If the item you’re purchasing is so unreliable that you expect to need the warranty, why are you buying it at all?

Travel insurance follows the same playbook. That $150 trip protection on your $2,000 vacation sounds reasonable until you read the fine print. Most policies exclude exactly the scenarios where you'd actually need coverage: pre-existing conditions, "acts of God," carrier cancellations, or destination problems. Once again, they only offer these products because they are so profitable. “What’s another $150 on our big vacation?!”

The psychological trap: Companies exploit loss aversion by making you imagine worst-case scenarios right at the point of purchase. Your rational brain gets hijacked by fear, and you pay hundreds to protect against losses that statistically won't happen. (Think about it. How often has your warranty ever paid out?)

The Psychology Behind Why People Quit

Pay attention here! This is literally me on my previous fitness failures. It’s also a source of failure I see all the time in finance!

The Licensing Effect

Researchers have documented something called the "licensing effect": one good decision makes people feel entitled to make bad ones.

In fitness: "I worked out yesterday, so I can skip today."

In money: "I saved money on groceries, so I can splurge on this gadget."

You can see where this is going. Consistency beats intensity every time. You don’t need to work out seven days per week or run a marathon, but you do need to develop consistent daily habits.

The Plateau Effect

Every fitness journey hits plateaus where progress stalls. You run the same pace for weeks. Your weight doesn't change despite perfect diet. This is where most people quit.

The same thing happens with money. Your investments might be flat for months or even years. Your savings rate improvement slows down. The excitement of early progress wears off.

A strong mindset pushes through plateaus. Most people use them as excuses to quit.

During my running journey, I had weeks where my pace didn't improve at all. The weather was miserable, my entire body was sore, and I couldn't see progress. The only thing that kept me going was understanding that plateaus are part of the process, not evidence of failure. (That and I had an accountability group that would have shamed me if I had given up. I’ll save that for another post.)

Your investment returns will plateau. Your savings optimization will plateau. Keep going anyway.

Reframing the Mental Game: You vs. The Predators

Here's the mindset shift that changes everything: Every company is trying to separate you from your money, and you can beat them by saying no.

Turn your financial life into a game where you're the hero fighting corporate predators:

The Grocery Store Game

Prepare your list in advance. This is your battle plan. If you buy something not on the list, the grocery store wins. If you stick to your list, you win.

Track your victories. "Walked past the candy aisle without buying anything = Win." "Resisted the end-cap display = Win." "Used coupons for planned purchases = Win."

The Subscription Game

Every monthly subscription is a corporate predator trying to extract money from your future self. Audit them like enemies. Do you actually use Netflix enough to justify $15/month?

The Social Media Game

Unfollow accounts that make you want to buy things. Every influencer pushing products, every lifestyle account showing expensive purchases, every advertisement disguised as content: they're all predators competing for your money.

You can do this type of “game” with every purchase in life. Every time you don’t swipe the credit card, you beat the predator. They tried to convince you to buy using every trick they know and lost anyway!

Building Anti-Fragile Systems: When Motivation Fails

Motivation is worthless. It's the fitness equivalent of New Year's resolutions: exciting for about three weeks, then gone.

What works is systems that function when you don't feel like it.

Environmental Design

Behavioral economists have proven that your environment shapes your decisions more than willpower. Make bad choices harder and good choices easier:

For fitness: Put gym clothes next to your bed. Remove junk food from your house. For money: Delete shopping apps from your phone. Set up automatic investments.

The principle: If you have to think about the decision, you'll often make the wrong one. Eliminate the decision through environmental design.

I don’t buy anything from Amazon. If I need something *that* bad, I force myself to waste time going to the store. That alone prevents me from making some impulse purchases.

Implementation Intentions

Research by Peter Gollwitzer shows that "if-then" planning dramatically improves success rates:

For fitness: "If I feel tired after work, then I'll put on my workout clothes immediately." For money: "If I want to buy something over $100, then I'll wait 24 hours first."

If you pre-make decisions, you bypass your excuse-making brain in the moment.

The Identity Shift

The most powerful psychological change is shifting from outcome-based to identity-based thinking:

Weak identity: "I want to get in shape" or "I want to be rich"

Strong identity: "I'm a runner" or "I'm an investor"

When running becomes part of who you are, skipping a day feels like betraying yourself. When investing becomes part of who you are, spending your investment money feels impossible.

The Boring Middle: Where Winners Separate from Losers

There's a phase in every improvement journey that researchers call "the valley of despair". This is the boring middle where progress slows and excitement fades.

In fitness: Months 2-6, where you're no longer a beginner but not yet visibly transformed.

In money: Years 2-10 of wealth building, where compound interest hasn't kicked in yet.

This is where most people quit. They expect linear progress and get discouraged when improvement becomes incremental.

During my running journey, the boring middle lasted months. I was no longer excited about starting something new, but I wasn't yet fast enough to feel accomplished. I had to run in freezing rain, blistering heat, and on days when every muscle ached.

The only thing that got me through was understanding that the boring middle is not evidence of failure. It's evidence that you're doing the work that creates breakthrough results.

Your money will go through the same boring middle. Your first $10,000 invested will feel insignificant. Your first $100,000 will still feel like "not enough." Keep going anyway.

My one-mile time in May was 07:30. My one-mile time now (August) is 08:01. It’s incredibly demotivating until I remind myself that it was 65 degrees in May and it’s 100 degrees now. If I keep it up, I’ll see the results in October.

Money works the same way. The stock market might be flat for months or years at a time, but then it rockets forward 25%, carrying your net worth with it. Just remind yourself that you’re getting cheap shares now that you’ll be thankful for later.

The Mental Toughness Toolkit

Pre-Commitment Devices

Behavioral economist Richard Thaler's research on "Ulysses contracts" shows the power of removing future temptation. In Greek myth, Ulysses had his crew tie him to the mast so he couldn't steer toward the sirens' song.

For fitness: Sign up for a race six months away.

For money: Set up automatic investments that are hard to cancel. (I literally used an inconvenient second bank that pulled from my primary account. Turning it off was complicated, so I never did.)

Progress Tracking

What gets measured gets managed. But track the right metrics:

Don't track: Daily weight fluctuations or daily portfolio values

Do track: Consistent behaviors: days exercised, dollars saved, meals cooked at home

The goal is building systems that compound, not chasing daily outcomes.

Reframe Setbacks as Data

Strong mindsets treat failures as information, not evidence of inadequacy:

Most people: "I skipped my workout, so I'm a failure."

Strong mindset: "I skipped my workout because I stayed up too late. I need better sleep hygiene."

Most people: "I overspent this month, so I'll never be good with money."

Strong mindset: "I overspent on restaurants. I need better meal planning systems."

Every setback teaches you something about your systems. Use the data to improve the system.

The Hard Truth About Success

Here's what nobody wants to tell you about achieving fitness or financial independence: It's not about perfect circumstances, superior genetics, or special knowledge. It's about developing the mental toughness to do boring, uncomfortable things consistently over long periods.

The people who succeed aren't special. They just stop making excuses.

They run in the rain because that's what runners do. They invest during market crashes because that's what investors do. They cook at home when they're tired because that's what wealthy people do.

Your mind will generate infinite reasons why today is different, why the rules don't apply, why you deserve a break. A strong mindset ignores that voice and does the work anyway.

Your Assignment

Stop reading about fitness and money strategies until you fix your mindset. Here's your mental toughness test:

Week 1: Do something slightly uncomfortable every day for seven days straight. Walk for 20 minutes, cook dinner instead of ordering out, skip the expensive coffee. No excuses, no negotiations, no exceptions.

Week 2: Add a second small habit. Continue both for seven more days.

If you can't complete this simple challenge, you're not ready for the harder work of building wealth or getting in shape. Your mind is still making excuses instead of making progress.

But if you can push through discomfort for two weeks straight, you're developing the mental muscle that creates compound results in every area of life.

The question isn't whether you know what to do. The question is whether you'll do it when it's uncomfortable, boring, or inconvenient.

That’s the secret. That's the only difference between people who achieve financial independence and people who make excuses about why they can't.

Here's to building the mental toughness that creates financial and physical freedom,

Max

Remember: Your mind is either your greatest asset or your biggest liability. Choose which one by choosing which voice you listen to when things get hard.