Rust Out or Wear Out, the Choice is Yours

Reading time ~6 minutes

After I completed my 100 days push up challenge last year, I was consistent with my home workouts (at least twice a week).

However, in the past 2-3 months, something happened, and I stopped working out. I like to tell myself that it was because of work and family emergencies, but if I am honest, I was just complacent and lazy.

As I lost my tempo, waking up early to exercise at home (alone) became hard. So, earlier this week, I joined my running group for a Strength Training session (after a gap of more than 1.5 years – thanks to Covid-19). And boy! it was refreshing; both – the workout & meeting up with friends after such a long time.

Unfortunately, for the next couple of days, my entire body was sore. The soreness was no different than what I remember from a few years ago, post my first workout after years of living a sedentary lifestyle.

And it got me thinking.

If my muscles got weak from just a couple of months of inaction, would this be a universal rule? What happens when things become inactive?

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When people go for a hike, for instance, they are told that it is relatively safe to drink water when it is running/ flowing down the mountain, rather than when it is still (say from a pond). Why?

Running water remains fresh. Still water, on the other hand, becomes stagnant, thereby breeding all sorts of germs.

Similarly, a piece of iron quickly rusts when left untouched.

Likewise, a garden gets unwanted vegetation (e.g. weeds) when left unattended and moss grows on stones when they are left untouched.

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So … what about our mind? and our brain? Does it also suffer a similar fate?

Research has shown that contrary to popular belief, our brain can continue to learn new skills even when people have aged. The one condition – the brain has to be kept in use.  

Unfortunately, when people become complacent, their growth and learning stops.  And when they stop growing, they get stressed and restless. Life becomes dull and boring. As if they begin to rust (proverbially).

Theodore Roosevelt has famously said, “We must all either wear out or rust out, every one of us. My choice is to wear out.”

If you look at your own life, you may identify several places where you are ‘rusting out’.

Perhaps it is your health or fitness? Or your mind and habits? Or you are rusting at work (doing the same things over and over, year after year)? or perhaps in your relationships? How about in your creativity?

Each of us is falling short somewhere, and unless we actively pursue our shortcoming to course correct, it may be too late! We do not want the rusting to become irreversible.

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Today, lets look at a few strategies to avoid this.

#1 – Rebalance Your Life every few Months

Admittedly, life is busy. We keep juggling multiple balls at the same time. Thus, it is only natural that some areas of our life take priority over everything else.

For most people, it is their work that takes center stage, since it gives them their identity. Just think about how you introduced yourself to someone new you met recently. The first thing you would have probably talked about would be the place where you work and the work that you do (probably even before you shared your name).

Since most people tend to hold their work ‘ball’ for a disproportionately longer period of time, it is no wonder that their ‘health’, or their ‘relationships’ etc. balls remain in the air much longer than preferred.

And this can lead to the proverbial rusting in those areas in our life.

Ultimately, we need to be mindful that it is unhealthy for such lopsided prioritization to continue over a long period of time.  You will find multiple examples of ultra-successful people (money/ career wise) who may have a health issue or a broken relationship (with a spouse, or with kids).

Financial advisors keep talking about rebalancing your investment portfolio to maximize gains. Why not use the same principle to rebalance your life every few months?  So:

• if you have been working a lot, take some time off to spend with your family; or
• If you have been training for a marathon or for a competition, take some rest after the competition to look at other things in life which got neglected during such training.

Such rebalancing should be actively pursued. It cannot happen on auto pilot. One way to know that it is time to rebalance your life is by way of journaling. Try to write down (every day) the three most important things you did during that day. Over time, you will see a trend.

When I saw a trend of zero exercise in the past two months, I knew it was time for me to rebalance my life and get back to exercising.

Remember, it is pointless to defer the things you wish to do in life for a future that no one has seen. Life is HERE and NOW. We can only live in the PRESENT.  Most people, unfortunately, ruminate about the past or worry about the future.

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#2 – Never Stop Learning

Learning is a Treasure that will follow its owner everywhere ~Chinese Proverb.

The easiest way to get your mind and your brain to rust is to stop your learning.

I feel sad when people tell me that they have not read any book since their graduation. Most such people spend their free time on infinity loop apps (looking at how well others are spending their lives) or on OTT platforms binge watching TV shows.

Unfortunately, their life has lost direction. It only revolves around being at work till late evening (mostly due to low productivity), getting home exhausted & then wasting time on social media or watching TV which leads to them sleeping late, and going to office groggy eyed the next day.

At a certain point in time, I lived exactly this life. No new learning was making me dull.

As I wrote in my previous article, it was only after I started reading books that I was able to take the corrective action in my life to steer myself into self-development. Only then I realized how little I knew about life and living.

The path towards self-development is slow, and the results take time to show. The key is to stick to the path, and to never stop learning.

If you are pressed for time, you can always read book summaries on paid apps such as Blinkist, or you can watch the book summaries for free on YouTube channels such as Productivity Game. Or like how I started: by watching Ted Talks. Ultimately, the medium through which you gain the knowledge is not important. But it is important that you invest time to gain such knowledge.

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#3 – Live at the Edge of Your Comfort Zone.

A lot of times, we reach a certain milestone that we have in our mind (in our education, or at work), and it leads our brain to feel that we have attained our peak.  This incorrect belief leads us towards complacency, and we fall into a comfort zone trap.

As they say, “You cannot read the label from inside the bottle”, we do not ourselves realize that we are living in our own comfort zone.

People living in comfort zones do not like to take more responsibilities (at work or in life). They are in general resistant to change. Such people are even resistant to understand other people’s point of view (basically they become rigid), they stop taking any risks (financial or otherwise), & in general, they tend to lead a similar type of life year after year.

If you identify yourself with the above, then it is time to change.

Alain de Botton has said that, “Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.”

One way to overcome the complacency trap is to try and live at the edge of your comfort zone. So:

• Ask for more responsibility at work which is just at the edge of the work you typically do;
• If you have a stable business, try to add more products/ lines of business, or do a forward or backward integration so that you add more customers;
• If you can comfortably give a presentation to an audience of say 5-6 people, try to give presentations to a room with 10-12 people (eventually expanding it to a full auditorium);
• If you are able to run 5 kms, push yourself to run for 8 kms. If you are already running a half marathon, try running 30 kms. Or look at cross training (cycling or hiking);
• If you are reading books already, try to collect some friends and discuss what you learn to see how much you can recollect;
• If you can cook basic meals, try to learn new recipes and with different cuisines;
• If you have a certain political or religious affiliation, you should still be keen to understand the point of view of the other side. That way, you can break free from your own echo chamber.

Ultimately, doing this consistently will enlarge your circle of competence, and will eventually give you more satisfaction from your life.

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#4 – Pursue a Hobby.

We all had hobbies when we were kids. For some it was collecting stamps, or collecting matchbox covers, or collecting trump cards. For others, it may have been singing, or painting, or poetry or playing some musical instrument or playing sports.

Unfortunately, as we age, our hobbies take a backseat as other things in life take priority. One way to reconnect with our soul is to find time to pursue a hobby. It is in a way therapeutic and meditative when we get back to doing something we enjoyed doing as a child.  Try it.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

In his short literary work मनाचे श्लोक (Manache Shlok) in Marathi, Samartha Ramdas says that:

“देहे त्यागिता कीर्ति मागे उरावी ।

मना सज्जना हेचि क्रीया धरावी ॥

मना चंदनाचे परी त्वां झिजावे ।

परी अंतरी सज्जना नीववावे ||”

In essence: Samartha Ramdas says that, “The most important thing is to live this life in such a way that you leave behind a rich legacy when you die”.

He goes on to use the metaphor of the sandalwood; and concludes by saying that we all should strive to ‘wear ourselves out’ like the sandalwood stick, which emits nothing but fragrance even when it gets worn out in the process!

Do I need to say anything more?

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^{Cover photo by Sean Stratton on Unsplash}