You know that feeling you get when you haven’t been to the gym in a few days? A bit doughy. Irritable. Claustrophobic. Uncertain.

That is how people who don’t fulfill their potential feel on a daily basis. Only the cause and effect is obscured. It’s sublimated beneath general anxieties about money, about their status, about bullshit office politics and ego. They mask it in depression or other manifestations of pain—back injuries, carpal tunnel, that bad knee that is always acting up. But deep down it’s stress from the cage, the position the human animal isn’t built to know how to tolerate.

And so they try to find a cure without knowing the disease. Buying themselves things, going out, fucking, careers, vacations, divorces and new loves. The cycle is so vicious precisely because these things don’t have any affect. The person only feels worse about themselves, like it’s their fault the medicine doesn’t seem to take.

The solution is simple and doesn’t really need to be said. To keep with the metaphor though, it’s only possible when you realize the reason you feel like shit is because you gorged yourself the day before and haven’t exercised. Then you know that all you have to do is get off your ass and go work out.