Day 219 - The Three Habits I Hate the Most

May 15, 2026

Core Idea

Growth often requires consistently doing difficult and uncomfortable things

Key Points

The speaker disliked push-ups, sit-ups, and squats
Began with just one repetition of each exercise
Added one repetition every day for a full year
Incremental progress compounded into massive transformation
Consistency built discipline and mental toughness

The Habit Framework

Daily Progression

Day 1 → 1 push-up, 1 sit-up, 1 squat
Add +1 repetition every day
End goal → 365 of each in a single day

Core Principle

Small improvements repeated consistently create extraordinary results

Key Themes

Embracing discomfort
Incremental growth
Persistence over motivation
Discipline through repetition
Transformation through consistency

Mental & Emotional Lessons

Difficult tasks become manageable through repetition
Endurance builds confidence
Avoiding discomfort limits growth
Discipline reshapes identity over time

Notable Lines / Concepts

“Embrace the suck.”
“The ratchet is built in.”
“The exercise that once seemed impossible became routine.”
“That tired, overweight, discouraged person was gone.”

Episode Transcript

Guy Reams (00:00.962)
This is day the three habits that I hate the most. My journey with physical fitness has mirrored my entrepreneurial experience in many ways. Sometimes you just have to do the things that you do not like. I had always found pushups, sit-ups, and squats particularly grueling. In fact, these were the exercises that I just hated the most. One day I decided to challenge myself with a simple but daunting concept.

I would do one push-up, one sit-up, and one squat, and then add one more of each exercise every single day for a year. On day one, doing a single repetition of each was a struggle, but I persisted. The structure is simple, but the ratchet is built in. Day after day, I added one more to the count. It was not easy. There were days I wanted to give up and days when the mere thought of doing the exercises was exhausting.

I had to remind myself constantly to embrace the suck. After 90 days, was doing 90 pushups, sit-ups, and squats. They completely sucked. But I could do it without melting down. And I started to feel better and I started to dream big. I realized that embracing what sucks is often a prerequisite to achieving any significant goal. Over the course of this journey, I discovered the power of threes when creating new habits.

Setting out to do a push-up sit-up and a squat, plus one every day, until I could do 365 of them in a row was a massive accomplishment. It taught me about persistence and the consequence of letting go of good habits. The power of incremental improvement is easily leveraged here just by simply adding one repetition with each outing. If you incrementally add the numbers of push-ups you do with correct form, the results start to compile over time.

By the end of the year, I could do 365 push-ups, sit-ups, and squats in a single day. The exercise that once seemed insurmountable to me had become part of my routine, and I was in the best shape of my life. I remember going to the gym that morning at a sales conference and peeling off 365 of each of these, realizing how much I had miraculously changed in just one year. That tired, overweight, discouraged person was gone.

Guy Reams (02:29.496)
So the recommended phase to cement in your brain is to embrace the suck. Make a commitment and do the thing that you hate the most anyway, every single day.