This entire newsletter came to me in the shower.
For some reason, I think more clearly in there than almost anywhere else. I actually used to keep a notebook in the bathroom just so I could jot ideas down as soon as I stepped out, before they evaporated with the steam.
It’s really not the water or the tile that does it, though. It’s that the shower (usually) removes the need to be somewhere, the notifications, no kids needing my attention. Just a few minutes of nothing pulling at me from every direction.
⚡️ F5 Fast Files - Short Summary
I get asked all the time why I spend so much time in the gym.
A place isn’t always a location — sometimes it’s a person, a feeling, or a state of mind.
God has been telling His people to change locations since Exodus. Turns out it’s still the advice.
📣 Big retreat news: we’ve landed a new partner location in Rockville at the foot of Zion National Park! To make that happen, we’re moving the date from November to March of next year — likely February, possibly March. Exact dates and registration details coming soon, but trust us, the new setting is worth the wait!
For anyone already registered: Your ticket transfers or gets fully refunded. We can’t wait to have you out, this retreat just got a major upgrade!
🏋️ Environment for a Purpose
People ask me all the time why I spend so much time in the gym. Like it’s just about the lifting.
It’s not. The gym is one of a handful of rooms in my house I’d call “creation rooms.” They’re places set apart for a specific kind of output.
In the gym I do more than gym. I pray. I think. I study scripture. I exercise. I create content for this very newsletter. It’s a space that holds me accountable to showing up, and once I’m there, good things tend to happen.
My office is different. It’s a productivity room. Not really I go to be present or come up with new ideas, but where I go to execute on ones I already have. Paperwork, logistics, getting things done.
We built our house with these in mind, not because every room needs a special purpose, but because we wanted a few rooms that pulled a specific kind of output out of us just by walking into them.
Undistracted spots. Connection rooms. Creation rooms. Pick your categories, but pick them on purpose, your environment is a huge factor on what you produce.
🗝️ A Place Isn’t Always a Place
Not every environment that shapes you has four walls.
When we say something is a “safe place,” we’re rarely talking about the room. We mean the relationship, the conversation, the person across from you who makes it safe enough to actually say the true thing. That’s not a physical location. It’s a metaphorical one.
Your mental state can be a place. Your group of friends can be a place. The people who surround you, create an environment every bit as powerful as any room you could build.
Which means you can be standing in a good place despite a genuinely bad physical environment — and you can just as easily be in a bad place while sitting inside a beautiful house, if the state of mind or the people around you are the wrong ones.
This is exactly why brotherhood matters so much to what we’re building here. A room full of men who are doing hard things together, who actually care how your week went.
It’s part of why we’re so excited about the new location for the retreat. Zion National Park does the work for the physical location, but what makes it amazing and safe is who you’ll be standing next to there! The mountain is just the room. You are the place.
⛰️ God Has Always Called His People to Go Places
This isn’t a new idea. God has been telling His people to change their environment since the very beginning of the story.
Get out of Egypt. Leave Babylon (D&C 133:14). Go up the mountain. Go to church. Go to the temple. If you want to connect with heaven, the pattern is almost always the same: go to the place set apart for that result.
“Wherefore, stand ye in holy places, and be not moved, until the day of the Lord come.” (D&C 87:8)
⚖️ Two Jobs, Not One
That leaves two jobs, not one.
First: seek and build good places on purpose.
Assign one room, or even one chair, a single purpose — no multitasking allowed there.
When you’re stuck, don’t sit and grind harder. Change rooms. Go to your version of the shower.
Protect a recurring environment with other people in it — a standing workout time, a weekly call, a Fire Team.
Second: build resilience for the places you can’t choose or escape.
Name the environment out loud — “this is a loud room,” “this is a negative group chat.” Naming it loosens its grip.
Build a portable holy place — a verse, a prayer, a song, something you can carry into a hard environment you didn’t pick.
You can’t always leave a bad place, but you can usually shrink how long you’re fully in it.
This newsletter came to me in the shower, and was sent to you from London.
So build good places. Rooms, conversations, friendships, states of mind. And when you can’t build one, carry one with you.
Justin
F5 Brotherhood
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