Make Your Workout Count, Save For The Unknown, The Power Of Reframing | FRLN 146

Carl Jensen thought he could do about 40 push-ups.

Then he actually tested himself.

He got to around 60.

That gap between what he thought he had left and what he actually had left changed the way he approached strength training.

Our conversation gave me a different kind of wake-up call, too.

When Carl talked about how much of his overachieving had come from wanting to feel valuable, I recognized something familiar.

This morning, I’m finally feeling back to my normal levels of vitality after struggling with what seems to have been some sort of virus that’s been ridiculously challenging to kick.

I first came down with it on September 27th. These past three-plus weeks have been incredibly hard for me as someone who derives so much joy — and, as I’m realizing, identity — from being physically strong and energetic.

Holy shit, it feels good to feel good again.

But before I jump back into everything I love, there’s something from this quieter period I want to take with me:

I want to love and accept myself just as much when I’m doing less.

Carl is the creator of 1500 Days to Freedom. He retired at 43, and he’s someone I’m grateful to call a friend. We recently hung out at FinCon in Palm Springs, where he graciously gave me a ride in his Tesla Model Y so I could experience the self-driving.

It was pretty damn cool.

A week or two after FinCon, once we were both back home, we connected virtually to record Episode 117 of the Fit Rich Life Podcast.

We talked about financial independence, early retirement, spending money, friendship, and the relationship between achievement and self-worth. At the end, I asked Carl for his tips, tools, and strategies for fitness, money, and happiness.

His answers were practical. They also gave me a lot to reflect on in my own life.

Let’s dive in.

FIT — Make Your Workout Count

Carl told me he felt like he’d spent roughly 20 years strength training without getting nearly as much out of it as he could have.

He was showing up. He was lifting. But he wasn’t pushing himself anywhere close to the effort he was capable of.

The push-ups made that obvious.

He’d usually stop somewhere around 30–40 reps. When he decided to see how many he could actually do, he expected to get a few more. Maybe 42. Maybe 45.

He got to around 60.

That’s a pretty big difference between feeling like you’re done and discovering what you can actually do.

Carl said that learning to train with more effort helped change his results. He reported losing about 20 pounds of fat and adding around 10 pounds of muscle over roughly a year as he changed his approach.

His point was that strength training matters, but the way you do it matters, too.

I couldn’t agree more.

In my experience coaching clients and working with people in person at the gym, many people aren’t pushing themselves nearly as hard as they think they are. They’re doing the exercises, completing the sets, and checking the workout off the list. But their intensity and focus are much lower than they could be.

And then they’re frustrated by lackluster results.

Showing up is the starting point. What you do once you’re there deserves your attention.

I want to be clear about what I mean by intensity. I’m talking about deliberate effort with good technique — paying attention to the lift and challenging the muscles you came there to train.

When I’m doing a set, I want to be fully engaged in it. I think about putting my mind inside the muscle. What am I trying to work? Can I feel it contracting? Am I controlling the movement, or just moving the weight from one place to another?

Each rep gives you an opportunity to pay attention. Each set gives you an opportunity to practice bringing that focus and effort together.

You can spend an hour in the gym going through the motions. Or you can bring care and intention to the work you’re already there to do.

Make the time you’re already spending in the gym count.

During our conversation, I mentioned training to failure or leaving roughly one to three reps in reserve. That’s the idea of finishing a set with only a small number of additional good-form reps available, rather than stopping when you could comfortably do a lot more.

Carl’s experience shows how easy it can be to misjudge that gap. He thought he was close to his limit. He had substantially more available than he realized.

That doesn’t make his push-up test a challenge to ignore pain, let technique fall apart, or force an exhausted body through a workout. The useful question is whether your working sets are actually as focused and challenging as you believe they are.

And that’s a question worth asking honestly.

Maybe Carl’s story is the wake-up call you need to give your next workout the intensity, focus, and care it deserves.

You’ve already made the time. You’ve already shown up.

Be there for the reps, too.

RICH — Save For The Unknown

Carl’s number-one money tip was simple:

“Save even though you might not know what you’re saving for.”

I love that.

We often talk about saving as something that requires a specific destination. A house. A vacation. Retirement. A particular number by a particular age.

Those goals can be useful. But you don’t need a perfectly defined future expense to have a reason to build financial resources.

You have no idea what your life will look like in five, ten, or twenty years. You don’t know what opportunities will appear, what your family will need, or what circumstances might change.

Having money saved gives you more choices when life asks you to make one.

Carl talked about the version of financial independence we tend to see online: beautiful destinations, travel, and people enjoying their freedom somewhere spectacular.

That part is awesome. I love getting to travel and explore.

But he also talked about being able to show up when a parent is sick or dying, something he’s experienced himself. Having resources can give you room to respond when life gets really fucking hard.

That hit home for me.

As many of you know, Carly’s mother passed away recently. There were months leading up to her passing when our family was going through an incredibly difficult time.

During the interview, I told Carl that I honestly don’t know how people go through something like that while also having to show up to a nine-to-five job every day.

I know people do it. Many have no other option. Having been through it with our family, I have even more appreciation for how much they’re carrying.

I’m deeply grateful that Carly and I had the financial freedom to be present without that additional pressure.

Money couldn’t change what was happening. It gave us more flexibility in how we moved through it together.

Sometimes the most meaningful thing your money gives you is room to be human.

Time to grieve. Time to support someone you love. Time to take a break when you’re exhausted or burned out. The ability to consider what’s best for you and your family without every decision being dictated by the next paycheck.

And this works on the positive side of life, too.

A great opportunity comes along. There’s a trip you want to take with someone you love, a chance to learn something, or a different direction you want to explore. Having resources gives you more ability to say yes when the opportunity fits your life.

You may never have been able to name that exact opportunity when you started saving. You can still be grateful you prepared for it.

That’s why I agree so strongly with Carl: you don’t need to know exactly what you’re saving for.

You’re creating more power and flexibility for your future self.

You don’t have to reach full financial independence before that starts to matter, either. Building some breathing room beyond living paycheck to paycheck can change the options available to you. As your resources grow, so can your ability to respond thoughtfully instead of being forced into whatever gets you through the week.

Carl also gave a second money tip: index funds. He pointed listeners toward our mutual friend JL Collins and The Simple Path to Wealth for learning about long-term investing.

LIFE — The Power Of Reframing

Carl’s happiness tip was to practice reframing, drawing on what he’s learned from Stoicism.

He gave a wonderfully ordinary example.

A friend asked him to help with concrete work. Carl’s first reaction was to think about the heavy bags, the dust, the heat, and how much effort it would take.

Then he looked at it differently.

Here was a good friend who had helped him in the past. Now he could return the favor. He’d get to move his body, do something useful, and spend a weekday afternoon helping someone because he had the freedom to do it.

The work was still the work. But he could see things in it that he appreciated.

The meaning you give a circumstance can change how you experience it.

I think the ability to find a more empowered perspective is one of the most powerful mindset skills you can develop. And Carl’s example reminded me of when I was really into obstacle course racing and doing things like the Spartan Race.

Everything became training.

Especially carrying luggage while traveling.

Getting the bags out of the house, into the car, through the airport, and to wherever we were staying could have been a nuisance. Instead, I’d catch myself thinking: holy shit, this is so fucking awesome. I get to use my body, my muscles, and my strength to move all this stuff.

The luggage hadn’t gotten lighter. I had given the effort a meaning I enjoyed.

I was training for something I cared about. I got to experience being strong and capable in a very ordinary part of life.

More recently, I’ve been practicing reframing in a much less glamorous way.

Since September 27th, I’ve been under the weather. My energy has been much lower than I’m used to, and I’ve needed far more time resting and recovering than I wanted.

This morning, I finally feel healthy again. And I’m so freaking grateful.

But those three weeks brought up more than frustration about missing workouts and pickleball. As I wrote last week, they helped me see a part of myself I’ve struggled to accept.

I tend to think of strong, athletic, energetic Justin as the real me. The version who trains, plays, creates, and has a ridiculous amount of energy.

Resting Justin? Tired Justin? Recovering Justin?

Part of me treats him like someone who needs to hurry up and leave so the real me can come back.

I’ve been giving one version of myself love and approval while treating another version as a problem.

Carl’s openness about his own life helped me recognize that pattern more clearly. He shared that a lot of his overachieving had come from wanting to feel valuable, and he talked about the healing work he’s done around it.

I’m so grateful he was willing to go there.

Between this conversation and my recent interview with Rachel Richards, I’ve been looking more closely at how achievement and self-worth have become tangled together in my own life.

When I was young, I created a rule: to be loved and valuable, I needed to perform and achieve.

I can see how that rule helped fuel years of effort. I can also see how it makes a quiet period feel threatening. If I’m resting, I’m not producing. If I’m not producing, an old part of me starts questioning whether I’m doing enough to deserve feeling good about myself.

That’s a lot of pressure to put on someone who’s already tired.

So the reframe I’ve been practicing goes deeper than telling myself to look on the bright side of being under the weather.

Resting and regenerating Justin is part of the real me, too.

The version of me who needs recovery belongs here. He deserves the same love, acceptance, and appreciation I so readily give the version who has energy to spare.

Rest and regeneration are an integral part of this body I love. Making room for them supports my ability to have seasons of high energy and output. And I don’t want to make my permission to rest depend entirely on what I might accomplish afterward.

I’m allowed to slow down. To move slower and rest more than I normally do during a high-energy season. I don’t need to turn recovery into another project where I prove how good I am at getting better.

This is part of what I mean by uncovering a shadow side of myself: noticing a part I’ve pushed away and learning to welcome it back. In this case, it’s the part that gets tired, has limits, and needs time and space to recover.

For so long, my response to that part has been: How quickly can I get you out of here?

I’m learning to ask: What do you need from me while you’re here?

That feels like a very different relationship with myself.

Over these last few weeks, I could appreciate what this period was showing me while still wishing I felt better. Reframing didn’t require me to pretend I enjoyed every moment of it. It helped me choose how I related to myself while I was in it.

I can be tired and experience fatigue without making it mean I’m less valuable.

And now that I’m feeling healthy again, I want to remember that.

It would be easy to wake up feeling good and think: finally, the real me is back. But that would quietly reinforce the same old rule I’ve been trying to change.

I was still me yesterday. I was still me on the days I needed more sleep or didn’t have much energy to give.

My energy changed this morning. My worth didn’t.

I’m excited to feel healthy. I’m excited to have more capacity for the things I love. I also want to carry forward the care I’ve been learning to give myself, including when I need to slow down again.

I don’t want acceptance to be something I practice only until I can get back to performing.

I’m grateful to Carl and Rachel for being willing to share their own experiences so honestly. These conversations have helped me see an old rule I’ve been following — that I need to keep performing and achieving to deserve love — and begin practicing a different one.

I can love the ambitious, energetic part of myself without asking every other part to earn its place.

And I hope sharing this helps you notice where you might be making your own acceptance conditional, too. What do you keep telling yourself you need to do, fix, or accomplish before you can feel okay about who you are?

You’re allowed to rest. You’re allowed to be tired. You’re allowed to want your energy back and still treat yourself with love today.

You don’t have to perform your way back into being someone worthy of love. You have always been worthy of love.

ACTION — An Intentional Upgrade

Choose the one that meets you where you are this week:

• FIT — Bring your attention to every rep. At your next strength workout, focus on the muscles you’re targeting and the quality of your movement. After each working set, honestly assess how many more good-form reps you had available. Notice whether you’re challenging yourself or simply stopping at a familiar number.

• RICH — Create a little more room for the unknown. Choose an amount that fits your current finances and automate a transfer into savings (or increase your automated monthly investing). You don’t need to name every future use for it. Let building more flexibility be a worthwhile goal on its own.

• LIFE — Practice one powerful reframe. Write down something that’s frustrating you and the meaning you’ve attached to it. Then ask: “What’s another truthful way to see this that gives me more choice, appreciation, or compassion?” For me, it’s remembering that the version of me who needs rest deserves love and acceptance, too.

There’s room in a fit rich life for focused effort. For preparing for a future you can’t predict. For changing your perspective when an old one is making your life harder.

And there’s room to rest and regenerate.

I’m heading into this week feeling healthy again, and I’m incredibly grateful. I want to bring care to the workout when I’m training and appreciation to my body when I’m recovering. I want to keep building resources that give my family options. And I want to remember that I was just as worthy of love yesterday, when I was still tired, as I am today.

That’s what I’m taking from this conversation with Carl.

To your health, wealth, and happiness,

— Justin David Carl

P.S. Listen to Fit Rich Life Podcast Episode 117 with Carl Jensen (Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Web) for the full conversation. We talk about retiring at 43, what he’d change about his path to financial independence, learning to spend, friendship, fitness, and the healing work behind learning to feel valuable without constantly achieving.