FRLN17: Taking a Deload Week, Automating Your Money & Planning Your Own Birthday
Fit Rich Life
Newsletter #17
Weekly Tips, Tools & Strategies to alchemize your Fitness, Money & Life
"It's not living that matters, but living rightly."
— Socrates, Greek Philosopher
Photo from 2018 when I did a Running Music Festival Marathon for my Birthday with a bunch of friends. A memory that will pay happiness-dividends for the rest of my life.
Greetings my fellow Life Alchemists!
I'm wrapping up a 10-day staycation where I got to explore more of my new-ish hometown area & rejuvenate my body, mind & spirit. We moved to Santa Cruz County back in September 2022 and I've been so busy with my podcast, coaching & Stanford startup that I haven't had the bandwidth to explore as much as I'd like.
For my Birthday Staycation, I got to do a lot of the things that truly nourish my Spirit. This includes some epic hiking, rollerblading Santa Cruz for the first time, getting a Library Card & checking out a ton of books, reading, taking multiple 1-3 hour naps, getting a Thai massage, eating at my new favorite local restaurants & doing some deep reflection. All in all it's been an awesome birthday celebration this year. Big thanks to my wife for helping make my birthday super special & big shoutout to my teams/colleagues for empowering me to step away & recharge.
In other good news, the rebrand of the podcast is finally complete on both Apple Podcasts & Spotify! Can I get a woot woot?! [Special thanks to the people who recently left me a 5-star review on Apple & Spotify for my birthday, that meant a lot!]
I also released a new podcast episode that features my Financially Independent friend David Baughier who has been officially retired since his early 40s & hasn't been working for the last 2+ years. David used a combination of Military Pension, Stock Investing & Real Estate to reach Financial Freedom. If you or anyone you know are in the Military this is a must-listen episode.
Without further ado, let's proactively build your Fit Rich Life—FRL! Your weekly dose of actionable tips, tools & strategies to alchemize your Fitness, Money & Life to the Next Level.
FITNESS: Proactively take a Deload Week.
If you consistently train hard like I do then proactively taking a "deload week" every 4-12 weeks will do wonders for your physical growth trajectory. A proper deload week is where you will reduce the overall volume of your training routine by 30-50%. This empowers your body & strength to catch up. One version of a deload week would be sticking to the same strength training program you've been doing but during the deload week you would reduce the total number of sets for each exercise while maintaining your current poundage & reps for each exercise. For example, let’s say you normally do 5-exercises for 3-sets of 10-reps. For your deload week you would cut each exercise down from 3-sets to 2-sets while maintaining the poundage & reps. I often will use vacation as a perfect time to do a deload week (which is what I've done). After a proper deload you will not only feel great but will also likely see significant gains in your strength if you return to your regular training regimen. After finishing a deload week is also a great time to start a new training routine that may include some, but not all of the exercises you were doing. [Special Note: if you're inconsistent with your training I would not bother with a deload week. Instead, focus on becoming consistent AF. Deloading is for people who rarely ever miss a workout.]
MONEY: Automate your money.
FRL Podcast Guest David Baughier said during the interview that "the point of Financial Independence is to forget about your money." This was to illustrate the point of automating all your investing, bill paying, & other money tasks so that you can take back that energetic bandwidth & use it to do the things that will empower you to live your Fit Rich Life. Both David & I have most of our money stuff automated so we can keep our energy directed where it will really count. If you don't have all of your investing & bill-paying automated this is your sign from the Universe to get that set up so that you can forget about it and get on with proactively designing & living your best life!
LIFE: Plan your own birthday celebration.
This is a Life Lesson I learned a number of years ago. Prior to learning this lesson my birthdays were a total crapshoot and tended to end up in me being disappointed & depressed around my birthday. Somehow I got this notion that "someone else" would make my birthday special. Then when it didn't go exactly how I wanted I would be upset. I was pretending that other people could read my mind & when they didn't I would blame others (instead of myself). What a shitty way to live life. Then I decided to start taking 100% responsibility & started planning my own birthday celebrations. This resulted in me having the best birthday celebrations ever! I've done Potlucks at the Stanford Oval w/ lawn games like Spikeball, running music festivals w/ a big group of friends, traveled to new exotic destinations for many of them & rollerbladed a new city for the first time like I just did for this one. The truth is this year I was a little late in my own birthday planning & it almost all fell to shit, but I decided to put together a list of all of the things I wanted to do during my Birthday Staycation to make it special, shared that with my wife, and guess what happened? We did most of the things on the list & it ended up being an unforgettable birthday celebration! It truly is amazing how good life can be when you decide to be the Author & script out your own Heroic Journey!
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Sending you all lots of Energy & plenty of Dragon Magic!
Your Fitness, Money & Life Coach,
Justin "Dragon" Carl