There is a pattern I have seen repeat for over 25 years — and that has even happened to me.
Someone reaches the end of a difficult period in life — work, caring for others, giving more than they received — and decides that this is the moment to make the change their life demands.
They sign up for a gym. Buy a program. Buy a self-help book. Restart with determination.
With the determination that this action will reverse the months or weeks of restlessness and tiredness.
However, two weeks later they stopped — still with increased fatigue.
Not for lack of will but for lack of energy to sustain what was started.
When the mind fails
There is a difference between the energy we imagine having and the energy we actually have available.
The mind plans enthusiastically. The body responds with the energy that is in fact available.
Reality meets imagination.
The mind looks to the future and to the promise of a different life record. The body needs time and space — and to manage not only a new energy expenditure but also the expenses that already exist. Because the old life didn’t stop. It continues to demand attention.
And when there isn’t this alignment between the two, the beginning becomes just another episode in an already long list of restarts — each followed by more guilt, more frustration, and more distance from what is really needed.
The problem is not the wrong choice. It is the starting point that doesn’t always match what we think we need and the energy we actually have available.
Who manages to win?
There is something that history repeats with surprising regularity.
Outnumbered armies that win battles against much larger forces. Patients who recover from diagnoses that seemed definitive. People who rebuild their lives from points others would consider the end.
What they have in common is not strength. It is strategy.
They don’t waste energy on what isn’t essential. They don’t try to do everything at once. They focus on one thing — clean, clear, repeated — and it is this simple discipline that creates the conditions to recover.
The winner is rarely the smartest but rather the most persistent, especially the one who persists with proper management of the resources they have.
What defines them is not special talent. It is the ability to recognize where they are, what they have available, and to act from there — without expecting to have more strength than what exists now.
This ability is not rare. It is human. And it is available to anyone who decides to use it.
That is, it is not necessary to have a lot of energy to start. It is necessary to have the right strategy that allows taking the first step.
A clean practice, focused on the essential, without demanding more than what is available — that is what creates the conditions to recover. It is not the most ambitious that works. It is the one most suitable to the moment.
The most suitable and that resonates with you.
Best practices
Lourenço de Azevedo