Most mornings, I run without a watch and by myself. And most evenings for the past 25 years, I’ve stood on a soccer field surrounded by a roster of kids who need direction, encouragement, and a reason to trust in the process of making progress.

Team versus solo.

It’s pretty easy to pit these ways of training against one another, but I truly don’t think it’s a matter of which way is better. Training alone and training with others flex different muscles and form different habits.

That’s why I’ve come to think of it less like either/or and more like cross training.

I’m not much of a Reddit person, but even I haven’t been able to escape one of the more viral types of posts to come out of the platform.

People post the blow-by-blow of an argument with a spouse, a coworker, a neighbor, and end with the same line: Am I overreacting? Thousands of strangers weigh in. The threads get long, the opinions get sharp (even controversial), and the original poster usually walks away with more clarity.

And you know, I find asking myself that question is much more useful before I react at all.

Every August, a new kid would show up to preseason with that look on his face — the one where he's sizing everyone up. Coach Chris included.

Twenty-five years of coaching competitive soccer, and I still caught myself wanting the new kid to like me. Not respect me. Not fear me. Like me.

For a long time, I thought it was a silly instinct. It felt beneath the job or superficial. Especially because these were kids, not my peers. I figured the wanting-to-be-liked part was a leftover from being a kid myself—something to grow out of, not lean into.

Why does it seem so hard to “eat right”?

We have great intentions in the morning but feel deprived and unsatisfied all day, until we break and run through a drive-thru for the greasy satisfaction of a burger and fries. 

When we do, that satisfaction is short-lived, replaced by guilt—even shame. It’s your fault for not trying hard enough, right? For not having the willpower to stick to healthy stuff.

That’s how most people go about it, but it’s really not a sustainable way to approach nutrition habits.

There's a concept in behavioral research called decision fatigue: the idea that the quality of your decisions degrades as the number of decisions you make in a day accumulates.