Mini-Feature: Being Consistent & More Lifestyle Tips

What is your lifestyle tip for readers this week?

When informed that you can be very difficult to deal with, do not respond by being very difficult to deal with.

-Matthew Peterson, founding editor of The American Mind

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Stretch. Physically. Daily. A good half an hour. Before and after workouts. Befriend the foam roller. Embrace the theragun.

-James Poulos, executive editor of The American Mind

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I don't know why it took me so long to figure this out, but compulsive book buying is just another form of hoarding. Every time I have moved as an adult, say 4 or 5 times, packing, moving, and storing books has been the single biggest annoyance of the process. I always wind up getting rid of tons of books, and yet ignoring past experience, I acquire more. It would be one thing if I could assure you that I read all of them, but I can't even say that I open all of them.

It's like if I routinely brought home paving stones that caught my eye, and stacked them up, and then made sure to take them all with me when I had to get a new place to live. I used to think that my book collection made me seem smart, but now I grasp that it actually proved I am dumb.

-Seth Barron, managing editor of The American Mind

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I am told that consistency is very important in the gym, and I am coming to see how true that is. People expect results quickly, and when they don't see them immediately they get discouraged and stop. But of course one of the most precious things a good workout routine can teach is what delayed gratification really feels like. A gymbro adage holds that it will take four weeks for you yourself to even notice any difference in your body, six weeks for your family and friends to notice, and eight for everyone else to start noticing. From there it's still a long, slow, daily process of getting to where you want to go.

All of this seems good for conservatives to remember as we enter what will surely be a bit of a slog—the daily, incremental grind of clawing woke thuggery down from its position of ascendancy. Keep the morale up, do a little each day, and remember: if we are about to become pariahs, we cannot possibly be more reviled than the extreme Left once was. Think of how a Communist sympathizer, or a sexual deviant, would have been regarded just sixty years ago: repulsive to all but the most radical kooks. But they took to the academy and the arthouses and they worked on us slowly, bit by bit, until everybody either feared or loved them. 

If we conservatives are forced into a similar position—pariahs thought unfit for polite society—then we must do the same thing in reverse. Gradually, winning small daily victories every day, we must replace their psychosis with our virtue. Consistency: good for the gym, great for the country. Don't let up.

-Spencer Klavan, associate editor of The American Mind