Some mornings my alarm goes off at 5:08am and I genuinely consider pretending civilisation has collapsed overnight so I can skip the gym.
I’ve battled with my weight my entire life. I’ve always been heavy and, for a long time, I approached my health the same way many schools approach improvement: in bursts. It was all bold declarations, resolutions, motivation sprints and temporary intensity. And then the inevitable slide back into old habits once life smacked me in the face again.
One of the most important things I’ve learned through people like Alessandra Edwards is that health is no short-term project. There’s no magical month where you suddenly become a healthy person forever. Health is repetitive, habitual and often pretty boring. The reps matter far more than motivation.
That lesson bled into other parts of my life too.
My friend, business partner and resident Ishaya monk Peter Cook has taught me a lot about meditation and the discipline of slowing my mind down. As somebody who battles very real sporadic bouts of anxiety, that practice has genuinely changed my life.
But again, there’s no meditation finish line where you suddenly breach the ribbon of enlightenment and never struggle again. You practice looking after your mind because the practice itself slowly changes you over time. I lapse sometimes, but I return to it when I do and Insight Timer tells me I’ve now meditated 485 times since I started.
And eventually I realised the exact same thing applies to my thinking, my writing and my contribution to teachers and school leaders.
I can’t sharpen my voice or my intellectual contribution via a one-off professional learning day about ‘How To Be A Better Writer’. Writing improves through writing – repetitively, publicly, vulnerably and thoughtfully.
Even when it’s hard and even when I’m tired, which I absolutely am as I clatter away today. So, I now write every day and post it on LinkedIn, even when I don’t feel like it.
Some pieces strike a chord. Some disappear into the LinkedIn void without much notice. Some trigger people who’ve now decided that “You lost me when you said <insert inconvenient truth>” and that’s ok too.
The result is that, over time, I can genuinely feel the reps working. I can feel my ideas becoming clearer, my convictions galvanising and my instincts becoming easier to articulate. I’m probably also learning to trust those instincts more than I once did.
And honestly, I think schools misunderstand improvement in exactly the same way I misunderstood health for years.
Too many schools still try to transform culture through events, launches, posters, strategy days and inspirational guest speakers who disappear when the invoice is paid. But culture changes the same way fitness changes; writing improves and minds calm through repetitive daily habits that eventually become our identity.
That’s why sustainable cultural leadership is often less sexy than people hope it’ll be. It’s so bloody repetitive! It’s adults consistently modelling the same expectations, language, curiosity and relational skills every single day until those things stop being strategies and simply become “how we do things here”.
The reps really matter. Anyway, tomorrow’s 5:08am alarm is set.
Keep fighting that good fight,
P.S. If my ramblings here aren’t quite enough for you, I’ve also been posting more regularly over on LinkedIn lately. Some of it’s about schools, some leadership, some culture and occasionally just me trying to make sense of things in real time. You’re very welcome to come and join the conversation over there.
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