Most people don’t fail to start things because they’re lazy. They fail because the thing they’re trying to start is too big to pick up. Write the book. Get in shape. Turn the organization around. Fix the marriage. You stand in front of a goal that size and you freeze, because there’s no obvious place to put your hands. So you wait. You tell yourself you’ll begin when you have a plan, or more time, or the motivation you’re sure is on the way. It isn’t on the way. There’s a bet

I’m not knocking traditional meditation. It works. The research is real, the people who do it are better for it, and if you can sit on a cushion and find the bottom of your own mind, that’s a gift and I’m jealous.

Without meaning to, we model the exact self-sufficiency that keeps everyone around us just as isolated as we are.

When someone dies of cancer, we say they “lost their battle.” It’s meant as honor. They fought. They were brave. But the phrase subtly suggests that If the dead lost, they must have been beaten. And if they were beaten, some part of the story whispers that they didn’t fight hard enough.

The climbs aren’t hard because they hurt. They’re hard because you can’t see the top. You grind upward with no proof the crest is close, and the only thing keeping you on the bike is the next pedal stroke, then the one after that. That’s chemo. That’s the waiting room. That’s the stretch of recovery long after you ring the bell. You don’t get through it by believing the summit is near. You get through it by refusing to stop.

I’ve been diagnosed with cancer twice. Prostate cancer first. Then stage 3b colorectal cancer. Two separate diagnoses, multiple rounds of treatment, and lots of time sitting across from doctors, nurses and research associates recalibrating everything I thought I knew. Both times, I made it through. Both times, I kept working, kept training and desperately trying to hold onto the life I had. There were lots of days when I wondered whether I would survive.

Nobody told me that when I got my cancer diagnosis, I was also getting a leadership test. I found out on a Thursday. By Friday morning I was back at my desk, fielding calls, running a meeting, making decisions for an organization that serves tens of thousands of people. Not because I was fine. I wasn’t fine. But because I was the CEO, and I had spent thirty years believing — without ever examining the belief — that my job was to project stability regardless of what was happen

Last week, Los Angeles Marathon organizers did something unsettling. With temperature forecasts climbing, race organizers offered runners an official option: stop at mile 18, take a shuttle to the finish line, and collect the same finisher medal as everyone who ran all 26.2 miles. It was going to be hot. And nobody should die for a race. But a marathon is not a suggestion. It’s not a goal range or a general direction. It is a specific, ancient, non-negotiable agreement with

For most of my adult life, I told myself I just wasn’t a morning person. I’d hit snooze. Reach for my phone before my feet hit the floor. Scroll through email, check the news, absorb everyone else’s urgency before I’d had a single intentional thought of my own. By the time I walked into the office, I was already reactive — already behind — already running on someone else’s agenda instead of my own. And I was the CEO of a $28 million organization, responsible for the wellbeing

Real gratitude - the kind that actually sustains you - doesn’t look like the social media version of Thanksgiving.

Sometimes the speeches we need to give and the speeches others need to hear find each other at just the right moment.

Cancer doesn’t care how many miles you’ve logged or how fast you can run. Chemotherapy doesn’t negotiate with your VO2 max. Your cancer cells aren’t impressed by your swim times.

What was happening to my body, however, was only half the battle. The other half was the story I was telling myself about what it all meant.

"Every Mile Matters: Turning Triathlon Training into Cancer Triumph" is available now as an audiobook on Audible, Spotify, Google Play, Apple Books and in multiple formats via Amazon.

I had the pleasure of running all 86 flights or 1,576 stairs up the Empire State Building last night as part of the NYU Langone team.

Cancer changes your relationship with time. Before my diagnosis, birthdays marked the passage of years in a vague, abstract way. Sure, I was getting older, but that timeline stretched comfortably into a distant, hazy future. After cancer, each birthday became something more concrete - less a marker of age and more a testament to survival.

Races - especially long course races that challenge you - hit differently these days. Sure, the sleepless nights leading into the race remain and there’s that nagging sense that this is just too much too soon. But as I faced yesterday’s choppy 1.2 mile swim, a windy 56 mile bike ride and steamy 13.1 mile run, I knew I could do it, because, well, I survived cancer.

I didn't ask for cancer, wouldn't recommend it to anyone, and would gladly give it back if I could. But since I can't, I've chosen to extract whatever wisdom, strength, and purpose I can from the experience. Not because I'm grateful for the disease, but because I refuse to let it win.

I've never been particularly religious and put my spiritual journey aside for decades, focusing instead on building a career and being my own higher power. The idea of suddenly finding God after cancer felt cliché, like I was following some predictable script about foxhole conversions.

In his powerful new memoir, "Every Mile Matters: Turning Triathlon Training into Cancer Triumph," Reynolds reveals how years of grueling athletic training became his secret weapon in a fight for survival that would test his physical and mental endurance.