One of the most misunderstood pieces of writing advice is ‘write what you know’ because it sounds like beginning writers are being told to limit their writing (and their character’s adventures) to things that the author has personally experienced.
However, I think the advice could be better framed as ‘use what you know.’
As in, borrow from your own knowledge to inform your writing, to make the character’s experiences feel more real, to make their emotions and their motivations make sense to the reader.
So someone who writes thrillers doesn’t have to have been a spy – they can research some of the details they need and then use their own experiences of fear, excitement, confusion, triumph, to make those details feel right to the reader.
Writers are transferring what they know from one context to make another situation more vivid and real.
What does this have to do with your fitness goals?
Well, you can essentially do the same thing with your practice – research relevant details and then apply knowledge from another context to help you succeed.
You have lots of areas of your life where you have succeeded, lots of things that you are good at, lots of plans that you have brought to fruition.
You can use the skills you developed in those other areas of your life to help you succeed in this one.
And the skills don’t even have to be closely related.
Maybe your spreadsheet skills have taught you that you enjoy paying attention to details. Consider ways to make your practice more detailed – What records can you keep about your practice? What details can you put in place before each session?
Maybe your work as a writer has taught you that you enjoy figuring out the emotional content of a scene. Could you start a reflective journal about your current habit building tasks? Writing about your how you feel might give you extra motivation to do your practice and it might be useful for your writing.
Maybe your work requires you to stand for long periods of time so you already know that you’ll have an advantage during standing exercises. Or maybe you find all that standing boring so you know that you’ll need something to distract you during the standing part of your new practice. Or perhaps you know that standing for long periods of time at work gives you a specific pain in your hip and you can design the standing part of your practice to help address that problem (multipurpose exercises!)
No matter what skills you decide to bring to your exercise or wellness practice, you’ll be giving yourself an advantage when you use what you know. The time you spend developing that skill can be invested even further to help you expand your life in new ways.
I think using what you know is also an important reminder that all of the parts of our life belong to one person – to us. There isn’t a work you and a home you and am exercising you, you may be in different contexts and emphasize different aspects of yourself at different times but it is all the one fabulous you.
And that fabulous you may as well use every tool at their disposal in every context they can.
So, go ahead and use what you know.
I think you’ll like it.
Here’s your celebratory gold star (doesn’t it look like they have their arms up in celebration?) for your efforts today – whether you were using what you know, forging ahead, or just figuring out how to put foot to put in front of the other.
Your efforts matter and you matter.
Go Team!
PS – If you need help connecting what you already know to what you are trying to practice, post in the comments and I’ll help you brainstorm.
