We’ve been doing an in-house competition at our gym for the last couple of weeks. It’s super fun. It means people are training extra hard. People are trying new things. They’re achieving new skills and milestones.
They’re also failing. They’re swinging big and missing. They’re digging deep and sometimes the wheels come off.
Seeing all of that reminds of a lesson I’ve learned more times than I can count over the last 15 years: you can work really hard, and be really passionate, and really dedicated, and really committed, and still sometimes do a bad job. And when that happens, it’s very easy to become discouraged.
One time one of our members told me to look up “The Rule of Thirds.”
This is something that’s come into cultural conversation from Olympian, Filmmaker, and Author Alexi Pappas. In her book Bravery, she relays a story in which her coach tells her, “When you’re chasing a big goal, you’re supposed to feel good a third of the time, okay a third of the time, and crappy a third of the time…and if the ratio is roughly in that range, then you’re doing fine.”
Not every workout will feel good. Not every session will feel good. In fact, if you’re working out 3 days a week, maybe only one of those sessions will feel really great. Which means maybe once a week, maybe as often as every week, you’ll feel like you’re making no progress at all.
But that’s ok. It’s part of the process. It doesn’t mean you should quit, it doesn’t mean you’re failing, it doesn’t mean you don’t belong or that your training is worthless or that it’s not working. It just means it’s a one-third day; or a one-third week; or a one-third month even. It’s ok. Tomorrow – or next week, or next month – it’ll be a new third. And that one will be better.
Keep at it, my friends.