I want to share a very poorly kept secret: I’m a dog person. I’ll skip the history and go straight to the part where we had four dogs. They were Sweetie, a 10-year-old Mini Dachshund, Gracie, a 3-year-old Lab/Chow mix, Luci a 2-year-old hound mix and Chloe, a 1-year-old Jack Russel Terrier. The three younger dogs needed to be walked every day. On average, time permitting, I tried to take them for an hour long walk. That would generally equate to around three miles.

I bring this up because, for me, it is an internal mindset that has become a point of struggle. In my head, a walk means one hour and three miles. This mentality is not limited to walks. Workouts have a similar structure. A workout, to me, is a minimum of one hour consisting of a warmup, stretching, weights and cardio. And for the longest time, if there was not enough time to do those things exactly that way, I wouldn’t do them at all.

Now, I’m at a point in my life where time is no longer the challenge. Due to the effects of cancer and treatments, there is a new capacity I’m faced with. Energy.

And this capacity doesn’t only affect my ability to exercise. It hits every aspect of my life. Working, chores, time spent with loved ones – there is nothing that is not impacted by my decreased energy capacity.

This is arguably the most difficult part of my life right now: Facing the fact that I simply cannot perform up to the standards that I have set for myself.

The question might be – why is it so difficult to redefine your standards? I have one of the world’s best excuses for having a reduced capacity. No one that has any knowledge of my current reality is ever going to question why I’m not out and about as much as I used to be, or why I’m not as available. Or even why I’m not getting things done the way I used to.

But I do question those things… all of them. I have not lost my ability to think and because my mind still works, it still wants to do things the way I’ve done them in the past. The problem is if I try to do things “the old way” I will likely lack the energy to get very far with it.

Here’s something I realized. This thing that I’m describing – it’s not about cancer and it’s not about me. It’s something that everyone faces. Life is going to change or challenge your capacity and the way you do things.

I remember when I moved in with my wife. Talk about a big change. Going from living alone and being single to now sharing my life and space was a huge adjustment. At the time, I was working four nights a week managing a big night club in Houston. She did not have the same schedule. Big adjustments had to happen for us to survive as a couple. I no longer stayed up when I got home from work, nor did I sleep in until well after noon. Additionally, I didn’t go out on those “industry off nights” like Sunday or Monday if it wasn’t something we could do together.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but my capacity was being challenged. Things I was used to doing were no longer always feasible. At least not in the ways I had been doing them. They just no longer fit in with my new life. I guess I was fortunate that I was young and not “set in my ways” which is why it wasn’t as noticeable at the time.  In hindsight, it’s not hard to see why some couples crack shortly after moving in together.

Getting older is another “capacity sucker” that is going to hit all of us if it hasn’t already. Examples I mentioned before – my definitions of walks and workouts – would have eventually been impacted by age if the other things hadn’t hit first. One of my favorite songs by the late Toby Keith – “As Good As I Once Was” sums it up perfectly with the line, “Now my body says ‘you can’t do this boy.’ But my pride says ‘Oh yes you can.’” In the song, this is in reference to the singer helping a friend that angered “a couple of redneck boys” and a “great big fat biker man” while “hustling a game of pool.”  Very few of us have bar fights in our futures (I hope), but the point is clear. When we get older, we’re just not who we used to be. And for many of us, that is hard to accept.

But the point is this: You should not stop living your life if you can’t live it on terms that you previously set. It’s also unfair to let those realities eat away at you. I’m starting to see that it is smarter to figure out what you are working with – your new capacity – and decide the best way to use it. Most importantly, once it’s set, do not compare it to the previous version.

A few weeks ago while meeting with a friend, I tripped over a phrase that I’m truly feeling these days. I said, “I may not be 100%, but I’m not zero either.” He told me to put that on a shirt, but the more I thought about it, I started to see the lesson.

We are all constantly figuring out the best way to move through this thing called life. Eventually, life is going to challenge us and force us to make changes. At that point, the way things work for us might change. That means making required adjustments. This is where you may find that your capacity is not what it previously was, or the capacity may be the same, but it has filled up with so many new things that you never even realized how much they added up and there just isn’t room for some of the old stuff.

So, the phrase, I may not be 100% but I’m not zero either, will hit differently for everyone. But the lesson is the same. Stop measuring who you are today versus who you used to be. Learn and respect the capability limits you have in the present so that you don’t constantly beat yourself up over living up to an impossible idea of potential you have for yourself.

As for putting the phrase on a shirt… where does the Morse Code line go?